"It _can't_ be!" he exclaimed. "You're sure?" "Of course we're sure," said Beryl. "What if the power came on and we didn't notice?" mused Parrish. "He wouldn't just leave and not tell any of us, would he?" "You know him better than I do," commented Beryl. "I'm beginning to wonder, from what you told us on the phone, if he jumped out of a window somewhere. I know it's a terrible thing to bring up--" Westervelt stopped listening to her. He was remembering the draft he had felt, twice now, in the laboratory. TWENTY Westervelt watched them walk up the hall. He thought of going back into the laboratory to find the open window. In his mind, he could see the straight, twenty-five story drop down the side of the dark tower to the roof of the larger part of the building. He recalled having looked down once or twice. The people down there had paved patios outside their offices. A hurtling body would.... He shook the thought out of his head and hurried to catch up to Parrish and the two girls. They trouped into the main office and took turns in telling Smith the story. He flatly refused to believe it for about five minutes. Ultimately convinced, he told Pauline to check Rosenkrantz by phone every ten minutes. "If we're wrong," he said, "it's unfair to have him sitting down there all alone. Bob might somehow have outsmarted us, but if he did it to this extent, it means he isn't safe on the loose!" Westervelt noticed that Simonetta was looking pale. He wondered about his own features. The eye would probably stand out very picturesquely. "I don't believe it," he said when the others had all fallen silent. They looked at him, hoping to be convinced. "He isn't that kind," said Westervelt. "All right, you tell me he had a hard time in space and it left him a little off; but this doesn't sound like the direction he would go off in." "What do you mean, Willie?" asked Smith intently. "Well ... maybe he'd run wild. Maybe he'd get desperate and blow something up. I could see him taking a torch to that door and burning anybody that tried to stop him...." He paused as they hung on his words. "... but I _can't_ see him quitting!" said Westervelt. "If he was that kind, he never would have gotten back to Terra, would he?" Smith snapped his fingers and looked around. "Sure, sure," he said. "I don't know what I was thinking up in my imagination. We've all heard Bob utter a threat now and then, when some bems out in deep space broke his own private law, but no one ever heard him even hint at suicide." He grinned ruefully, and added, "I should have thought of it myself--I had to review his application and examinations when he came to us." "Some days," said Parrish, "are just too much. Nobody's fault." "Then, in that case," said Westervelt, "there was one little thing I noticed." He told them about the open window. Who would keep a window open with the building air-conditioning operating as perfectly as it did?