"Thanks. Forgive me for the godawful gag, friend. I haven't eaten breakfast yet and an empty stomach plays the devil with my sense of humor." He rattled over to a chair and sat down. At least, thought Brave, closing the door, you expected him to rattle. He was the longest and thinnest bag of bones ever seen on Long Island. Fully six feet eight, he was lean from the top of his narrow skull, which was covered by an inch-long mat of straight stiff blond hair, to the soles of his number twelve feet. If he had any fat in him at all it must have been a very lonesome blob of fat indeed, well camouflaged and utterly alone in a wilderness of stringy muscle, meager sinew, and shaving-slender bones. His green eyes, perpetually half-lidded on either side of a nose like the prow of a Chinese junk, were humorous and sharp and as bright as polished emeralds. Brave said to himself, Here is a shrewd customer, who isn't one-tenth the fool he appears to be. "You don't have an appointment with Dr. Rackham." "No, I don't. A plump little meathead called Getty over at the central offices said he'd be here, and I popped over on the chance. I want to inveigle him onto a TV program of mine." "Dr. Rackham is a busy man." "So is President Blose of the U.S. of A., but _he_ came on the program, Lo. Pardon me," said the man, "there I go again. It's second nature. I don't mean to offend, but I was a disk jockey once. Look, friend, my name is Jim McEldownie. I'm _Worlds of Portent_ McEldownie." "I'm _Lashings of Victuals_ Kiwanawatiwa, and my eggs are scorching," said Brave, going out to the kitchen. "The books are counted, so are the pipes, and the first editions are booby-trapped. Don't get ideas." "Injun, I could grow to love you," said McEldownie. "Listen, seriously, don't you ever watch TV?" "I do not." "That explains it. Existing in the dark like this, you wouldn't have heard of me. I run this klatch, see, called _Worlds of Portent_, onto which I entice various important and pseudo-important characters, and there I cajole and browbeat and query till they tell me all sorts of fascinating lies, and the public laps it up like a bunch of silly cats." * * * * * Unquote, the Siamese, rose out of her hygienic playbox and gave him a frozen glare. He recoiled. "My God," he said, "I seem to be offending everyone this morning. Forgive me, puss." Unquote snarled and collapsed in a boneless pile of beautiful fur. Alan stuck his head into the room and said, "Where do you classify me?" "Huh? Oh, hallo, Doc. You're important. Anybody from Project Star is important. Whether the same can be said for those officials of our mighty government who have gasped and babbled and turned blue on _Portent_, I'm not one to declare. How about it, Doc? Will you appear?" "Talking about what? Fuel? That's all I really know."