"Now who else should I gossip about?" Eileen questioned. "Oh, yes--Harv Diamond, hero of our lost youth, who got space fatigue. Well, he recovered and returned to active duty in the U.S.S.F. Which perhaps leaves me with just my own love life to confess." She smiled lightly. "Once there was a kid named Frankie Nelsen, who turned out to be a very conscientious jerk. Since then, there have been scads of rugged, romantic characters on all sides... You're going to ask about Miguel Ramos." She paused, looked unhappy and tired. "The celebrity," she said. "Mashed up. But he'll recover--this time. I've seen him--sent him flowers, sat beside him. But what do you do with a clown like that? Lock him in the closet or look at him through a telescope? Goodbye--hello--goodbye. A kid with gaudy banners flying, if he lives to be forty--which he never will. They'll be giving him artificial hands and feet, and he'll be trying for Pluto. A friend. I guess I'm proud. That's all. Anything else you want to know?" "Yeah. There was a cute little girl at Serene." "Jennie Harper. She married one of those singing Moon prospectors. Somebody murdered them both--way out on Far Side." Frank Nelsen's mouth twisted. "That's enough, pal," he said. "I better go do my sitting tight someplace else. Keep your Archer handy. Thanks, and see you..." Within forty minutes David Lester was showing him some pictures that a hopper had brought in from a vault in a surface-asteroid. On the screen, great, mottled shapes moved through a lush forest. Thousands of tiny, flitting bat-like creatures--miniature pterodactyls of the terrestrial Age of Reptiles--hovered over a swamp, where millions of insects hung like motes in the light of the low sun. A much larger pterodactyl, far above, glided gracefully over a cliff, and out to sea, its long, beaked head turning watchfully. "Hey!" Nelsen said mildly, as his jaded mind responded. Lester nodded. "_They_ were on Earth, too--as the Martians must have been--exploring and taking pictures, during the Cretaceous Period. Oh, but there's a perhaps even better sequence! Like the Martians, they had a world-wrecking missile, which they were building in space. Spherical. About six miles in diameter, I calculate. Shall I show you?" "No... I think I'll toddle over to the offices, Les. Keep wearing those Archers, people. Glad the kid likes to play in his..." Nelsen had donned his own Seven, with the helmet fastened across his chest by a strap. At the KRNH office, there was a letter, which luckily hadn't been sent out to Post Eight. The tone was more serious than that of any that Nance Codiss had sent before. "Dear Frank: I'm actually coming your way. I'll be stopping to work at the Survey Station Hospital on Mars for two months en route..."