"If you wouldn't mind running the risk, I'd appreciate your company. I'm going back to my place now. The--ah--refreshments here lack the needed stimulation. I have a much better supply home." Now, maybe it was that stinger and the Uranus delight, because under ordinary circumstances I would turn down such a invite from a guy who is no doubt a no-orbit meteorite. But then I realize--he's invitin' me to his apartment where, accordin' to _his_ story, the luscious LaTour, queen of the strip world, has not been seen since. So I gives in. * * * * * When we reaches his apartment, he snaps on the lights, like he was nervous somebody might be hidin' inside, and locks the door tight. I watch close. He leaves the key in the lock, which makes me feel some easier. He has quite a nice little joint. Not gaudy, but nice. He goes to one bookshelf, presses a button, and a shelf slides back. Inside, he's got enough wiggle-water to fill all the Martian canals and irrigate the Moon. Well, we're heisting a couple, and then he starts talkin' like we was never interrupted. "Please forgive me for not introducing myself sooner, but under the circumstances--My name is Timothy J. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., M.A. and A.B." "Oh. Well, me monicker is Benjamin Spelvin, but you kin call me Benny." "Very well--uh--Benny. I am, you see, a psychiatrist." "Oh, yeh. But you'd never be able to figure _me_ out, Doc. I got so many bumps on my head from hittin' th' anti-gravitational screens on the jets during free fall--" He laughs. "No, that would be a phrenologist you're thinking of, Benny. I'm concerned mainly with psychological abnormalities and mal-adjustments of the psyche. I'm also known as something of an expert in the more physical science of phenomenology," he adds modest-like. Now all this adds up to minus zero to me, but I'm sittin' in a comfortable apartment in the better section of Venus, I got me a glass of Uranus Number Eight, Vintage 2480, so I lets the little fellow ramble on. Finally I says, "Uh, Mister--uh, Doc, you was sayin' somethin' about Helen LaTour, the strip--" "Oh, oh yes, I was coming to that. Well, now--uh, where was I? Oh, yes ... Benny, these were the events that brought me, a modest scientist, into contact with this Luigi and that--uh--delectable creature, Miss Helen LaTour. And I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself that I am telling the truth." * * * * * Not so long ago (the Professor starts out) I was visited here by a rather attractive young woman who told me her name was Helen LaTour. It is true, she had called me first on the telescreen, and at the sight of that lovely--um--face, obviously mirroring distress, I assumed that, having heard of my reputation she had sought me out for--um--treatment. Still, it was rather--um--disturbing to me to be interrupted by this beautiful young woman while I was in the midst of my studies.