Ross shrugged. “I must have been crazy,” he said shortly. “I kept thinking that she was half-dead, dying on the vine like the rest of Halsey’s Planet. And I must still be crazy, because I still think so.” The little man involuntarily felt his breast pocket. He said gently, “Maybe you’ve been working too hard.” “Too hard!” Ross laughed, a curious blend of true humor and self-disgust. “Well,” he admitted, “I need a change, anyhow. I might as well be on a longliner. At least I’d have my spree to look back on.” “No!” Marconi said, so violently that Ross slopped the drink he was lifting to his mouth. Ross looked hard at the little man—hard and speculatively. “No, then,” he said. “It was just a figure of speech, of course. But tell me something, won’t you, Marconi?” “Tell you what?” “Tell me why such a violent reaction to the word ‘longliner.’ I want to know.” “Hell, Ross,” the little man grumbled, “you know what a longliner is. Gutter-scrapings for crews; nothing for a man like you.” “I want to know more,” Ross insisted. “When I ask you what a longliner is, what the crew do with themselves for two or three centuries, you change the subject. You always change the subject! Maybe you know something I don’t know. I want to know what it is, and this time the subject doesn’t get changed. You don’t get off the hook until I find out.” He took a sip of his drink and leaned back. “Tell me about longliners,” he said. “I’ve never seen one coming in; it’s been fifteen years or so since that bucket from Sirius IV, hasn’t it? But you were on the job then.” Marconi was no longer a man in love or one of the few people whom Ross considered to be wholly alive—like him. He was a hard-eyed little stranger with a stubborn mouth and an ingratiating veneer. In short he was again a trader, and a good one. “I’ll tell you anything I know,” Marconi declared positively, and insincerely. “Tend to that fellow first though, will you?” He pointed to a uniformed Yards messenger whose eye had just alighted on Ross. The man threaded his way, stumbling, through the tables and laid a sealed envelope down in the puddle left by Ross’s drink. “Sorry, sir,” he said crisply, wiped off the envelope with his handkerchief and, for lagniappe, wiped the puddle off the table into Ross’s lap. Speechless, Ross signed for the envelope on a red-tabbed slip marked URGENT * PRIORITY * RUSH. The messenger saluted, almost putting his own eye out, and left, crashing into tables and chairs. “Half-dead,” Ross muttered, following him with his eyes. “How the devil do they stay alive at all?” Marconi said, unsmiling, “You’re taking this kick pretty seriously, Ross. I admit he’s a little clumsy, but——”