Or Darwin, If You Prefer By Mel Hunter Mr. Harbinger could not quite believe in the Mouth. But poor Mr. Harbinger--or Darwin, if you prefer--are gone to other times. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe September 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _Mr. Hunter's superb art work has appeared on a baker's dozen science fiction magazine covers during the past year, but incredible as it may seem with this story we introduce him to the reading public for the first time as a science fiction writer. We say incredible, because this is not a beginner's story. It is sparkling, sophisticated, erudite--the work of a craftsman._ Mr. Harbinger was tired of his job. In fact he was so tired of it he put down his pencil in the middle of a series of chemical notations. All noted, he realized with sudden clarity, in a disgustingly neat and orderly fashion. "Mr. Cushman, sir," he said quietly to the small, prissy man at the desk near the wall, "why don't you take these titrations and jam them straight up the middle of you know where?" And with that previously inconceivable remark Mr. Harbinger put on his hat, removed his spotless, starched smock and passed through the doors of the Cushman Chemical Co., Inc. for the last time and decidedly the most satisfactory time. Upon arriving home to his ridiculously--he suddenly noted with even greater clarity than before--orderly, proper, drab room, Mr. Harbinger sighed. He removed his hat, pocketed his glasses, and sank in bleak defeat into the sole, uncomfortable easy chair which graced his room. There was another of those momentarily crystal-clear glimpses. "I've trated my last ti," he said aloud with the depths of the Styx in his colorless voice. Closing his mind as best he could to this very disconcerting habit that had acquired him, Mr. Harbinger continued to sit there, looking at the dingy wall he had examined minutely now, every evening, for the past thirteen years. _I would appreciate it if that wall would just go away_, he thought, knowing that it wouldn't, and that he was probably condemned to stare at it, or one worse than it, every evening for the rest of his life. It was while he was contemplating a particularly uninteresting spot in the fading design of the wallpaper which was intended to decorate his room that he noticed it wasn't a spot at all, but an _eye_. Of all things! Reacting in exactly the same manner as he would when confronted with a line in a newspaper ad which defied his watery vision, he plucked his pince-nez from a vest pocket and placed them in their accustomed notch upon the bridge of his nose. "Go away," he said to it, when he had assured himself that it was most decidedly an _eye_.