A look of gratitude appeared on Kelly's fleshy sweat-shiny face. "Jim, I want you to understand--that is--look here, I asked you to come in with me when your party booted you out, and don't think I didn't get my wrist slapped for it. But this reanimation thing is too big. I don't want to get associated with it in any way. And so--well it seemed to Portobello and Klein and me--" "Sure, Bill." Harker had a sudden dizzying vision of himself standing at the rim of a bottomless abyss, but he heard his voice saying, calmly, rock-steady, "I'll draft a note informing you that I'm resigning because of the pressure of outside activities." Hoarsely Kelly said, "Thanks, Jim. And if this thing blows over--if it all works out---we'll have a spot for you here. Don't forget that." "I won't." _Not even because you don't mean it_, Harker thought. It wasn't possible for Kelly to mean it. It was just a formal ritualistic statement, this implication that he could come back at a future time. He was through here. Probably he was through with private law practice forever. Kelly was a brave and intelligent man, but Kelly had been afraid to keep the hot potato named James Harker on his letterhead any longer. No one else would welcome him either. Beller Labs was the straw to which he had to cling now. He stood up. "Okay, Bill. Glad we got everything cleared up. Just thought I'd tell you about the wrap-up on the Bryant case. I'll clear out my office next week." "No hurry about it. Oh--nearly forgot." Kelly consulted a memo slip. "Leo Winstead's office phoned here for you earlier today. The Governor wants you to call him back between one-thirty and three o'clock this afternoon." Harker frowned momentarily. _Winstead? What does he want with me?_ He said to Kelly, "Thanks, Bill. And so long." * * * * * He bought a noontime edition of the _Star-Post_ and ate a gloomy little meal by himself in a nineteenth-floor automated restaurant overlooking the East River. He pushed the meal-selector buttons almost at random; the result was largely an assortment of cheap synthetics, but he hardly cared. He ate abstractedly, not looking at his food but at the increasingly more troubling news in the paper. There was a new statement from Senator Thurman, more doggedly anti-reanimation than the last. Apparently Thurman's views on the subject mounted in vitriol-content in hourly increments; now he said that "reanimation is of dubious value in mitigating human sorrow--a crude and unsatisfactory process that robs life of dignity." Evidently he had read about the Janson suicide. And speaking of that-- Yes. The body had been found and identified, according to a story at the bottom of page one. Wayne Janson, 58, an unmarried industrialist. Listed as suicide; Jonathan Bryant identified body. Investigation now proceeding as a result of Bryant's statement that Janson had recently undergone reanimation.