Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life. It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment. John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying. "John!" I cried. "You're drunk!" His watery eyes squinted at me. "No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!" "But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory." His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter." "Then what is it, John?" "It's my body. It's--" "Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?" His face was white with terror. "No, my--_my body's full of holes_. Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?" He rose and staggered to his _Zloomph_, clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation. I patted him gingerly on the arm. "Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now." We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the _Zloomph_, and I. I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the _Zloomph_--steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street. Then--he was gone. John just slipped out of my grasp--_Zloomph_ and all--and was gone--completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing--nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit. "--is it.--is it.--is it.--is it." John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed.... * * * * * Tonight is our last night at _The Space Room_. Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract." Without John, we're notes in a lost chord. We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.