He was beginning to wonder whether he shouldn't get up and start somehow helping out when she came back and sat beside him. She was humming to herself, he noticed, and glanced at her curiously; evidently she wasn't so upset after all. "I knew," she said, dreamily swirling the coffee around in the mug to stir it, "that two of us would go. It is the difference between six and eight." "The what?" She laughed as if a child had done something clever. "I knew you weren't a student of the Great Science," she said cheerfully. "There are perfect numbers, and imperfect numbers; the imperfect numbers are--imperfect, and the worst of them are the deficient ones. Eight is an imperfect number, you see." She grinned at him. "You think I've flipped," she commented. "Well, I wouldn't say--" "But you'd think it. No matter, Mickey--do you mind if I call you Mickey? I'm quite sane--I have the advantage of you, you see, because I have my diploma to prove it." She sipped her coffee. "That's what makes Artie so mad," she said pleasantly. "He got me committed to the Haven, and they kept me there for nearly a year; and now when he threatens to tell people I'm crazy I don't have to worry, because six perfectly fine psychiatrists agree that I'm not." Mickey Groff said weakly, "That's very nice, Mrs.--Polly, I mean." She said seriously, "You mustn't think that the Great Science is one of these crackpot cultist affairs. I know gematry has a bad name, but you'd be astonished at the great minds that have worked on it. Fermat, Bachet--back as far as Diophantos, in fact. Why, if you'd just--oh, please, Mickey." She touched his arm as he started to move. "I'll stop. This isn't the time to talk about important things." "Important." "This," she said, "is a time for shallow, surfacy affairs, a time when distractions come crowding in and cannot be ignored. One such distraction is that Mr. Starkman is dying and needs oxygen." "I have an idea," he said. "Come on." There was a boy of fourteen standing by with a handkerchief tied around his left arm, an improvised brassard. "Son," Groff said, "do you go to the junior high?" "Yes." "The burgess, Mr. Starkman, needs oxygen and they can't get at the firehouse tanks. It occurred to me that there might be some in the school--those little tanks they call lecture bottles that they use for demonstrations in chemistry classes." "I haven't taken chem yet, mister, I don't know," the boy said unhappily. "Are there any teachers here?" "Yes sir! Mr. Holtz the math teacher's making the coffee back there." Groff approached Holtz, a small, harried man. Holtz listened and said: "Not in the junior high, no. No lecture demonstrations, just recitation and lab. But the senior high across the river would have some. My good friend Mr. Anderson lectures there and he believes in making it spectacular. Yes; they would have lecture flasks. I'd guide you there if I weren't assigned. Perhaps you can find somebody--"