“Get the jug.” He caught Wendt’s eye and held it. “Then we can _both_ settle down. All right?” It was close. Johnny wavered, then grinned crookedly and went for the bottle. _All right._ There wouldn’t have been much sense even in trying to talk if Wendt was lushing so bad he couldn’t admit it. _All right_, Chris thought: _Here goes nothin’...._ He talked steadily for half an hour. Wendt sat and listened, arms folded across his chest, legs crossed, lips pressed in, his whole face narrowed and closed. When he spoke at all, it was in monosyllables. More likely, he would just grunt a reply to a question. But he listened. * * * * * “Damn place has turned into a bio lab,” Chris said. Johnny shrugged, didn’t smile. The man was a guest in his home; he’d been childish enough already. “Those damn bugs you brought back....” Johnny lifted his glass to his mouth, barely sipped, put it down. _So I brought ’em back. All right. We’ve made that point now. Let’s drop it, hey, boy?_ He folded his arms across his chest, sat listening. “Look, before I get into this any more--this is so new, some of it, I mean, it hasn’t even been classified yet. But they’ll probably top-secret it out of habit. For that matter, it might be pretty big. If you’d rather _not_ hear--?” “It’s okay with me,” Johnny said. “Who the hell would _I_ talk to?” And cursed himself for an idiot. There went the last chance to get out from under the whole damn fool thing gracefully. _Well_, he thought, _maybe I like to suffer_ ... or maybe it was time to find out how bad it was to sit through this kind of crap. Some day it had to get to where it just didn’t make any difference. It wasn’t _his_ ball game now. He was off the team. He was too old for it. If the kids still wanted to play, why should it matter to him if they babbled about it? _About time_, he decided, approvingly, biting his fingers into his biceps across his chest. “Okay. Well, you remember those freak results on the first chromosome charts?” He nodded. Doug had--_Hell with that bit_! Listen to the man.... “Well it got even freakier when we got some good clear micropics and tried it again. Turns out all seven varieties had the _same damn charts_--let alone the same crazy number of genes.” “Yeah?” This time he allowed himself a small smile. It was getting just too damn silly. He knew where the damn bugs came from, and what they did, and they were no more related than-- _The Hell with it! Nobody’s asking you anything. Just listen, that’s all you have to do--listen!_ After that he managed to sip and hear, hear and sip, and not think at all, mostly. “... maybe different parts of a cycle, or even mutated species of the same bug? And we had just about decided we were dead wrong, when this crazy new thing comes up--