Only then did she notice that something was wrong. His left hand was no longer beneath his head, but was concealed in the mass of cushions that overflowed his couch in a mute, glittering cascade. Perat swirled his glass silently, apparently watching only the tiny flashes of iridescence flowing from his jeweled right hand. Evelyn thought: What made him suspicious? There's something in his left hand. If I only dared probe.... But he'd know I was afraid, and I'm not supposed to be afraid. Anyway, in a little while it won't matter. If the field crew has started pulling the columns, they should be through in half a metron. If they haven't started, they never will, and nothing will matter then, anyway. The man's face was inscrutable when he finally spoke. "You couldn't have gone on much longer, anyway, on account of your rib." "It was becoming a little painful." "Twice you nearly fainted." So he had noticed that. He continued mercilessly. "Why were you so anxious to keep me shut up for a whole metron?" "I wanted to amuse you. We have so little time left, now." "So I thought, until your rib began to trouble you. The reaction of an ordinary woman would have been to stop." "Am I an ordinary woman?" "Decidedly not. That's why the situation has become so interesting." "I don't understand, Perat." She sat down beside him, forcing him to move his legs so that his left hand was jammed under the cushion. "A little while ago, I decided to contact Gorph's mind." He took a sip. "It seems he had been trying to reach me through the communications box." "He had?" She pictured Gorph's old-womanish anxiety. He had found the sealed message, then, but hadn't been able to verify it because his chief had been listening to a tale of gods. Had he or had he not sent the message by the early jet? It had to be! Possibly all five of the columns had been drawn by now, but she couldn't assume it. The strain-pile would not erupt for a full Terran hour after the fifth column has been drawn. From now until death, of one sort or another, she must delay, delay, delay. Her blue eyes were widely innocent, and puzzled, but the nerves of her arms were going dead with over-tension. Perhaps if she threw the _terif_ in his eyes with her left hand and crushed the numbing supraclavicular nerve with her thumb.... Perat turned his head for the first time and looked her full in the face. "Gorph says he sent the message," he said tonelessly. She looked at him blankly, then casually removed her hand from his knee and dropped it in her lap. He must absolutely not be alarmed until she knew more. "Apparently I'm supposed to know what you're talking about." He turned back to the ceiling. "Gorph says someone prepared a priority dispatch with my signature, and he sent it out. I don't suppose you have any idea who did it?" Time! Time!