TOFFEE TAKES A TRIP By CHARLES F. MYERS Marc Pillsworth decided he needed a vacation--so he went on a trip. But where Marc went, Toffee followed--with trouble. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Adventures July 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Glumly, situated in sandy discomfort, Marc Pillsworth watched as another blustering wave tripped, fell flat on its watery face, and embarrassedly dissolved into a foolish fringe of giggling froth. It was the sameness of the thing that was getting him down, the business of being constantly sold short on a promise of something interesting. He rolled carefully over, onto his stomach, which had, by now, become a bloody shade of vermillion, and transferred the sunny torture to his back, which had only reached a color, approximately that of tomato soup. Taken either way, front or back, and considering his bright yellow trunks, he was, as the biographers always say, a pretty colorful citizen. Also, as the biographers never say, he was a pretty dejected one. With one slender finger he traced a circle in the gritty surface before him, then jabbed viciously into its center. There was something frightening, deliberate in the action, especially when it was known that, to Marc, the circle represented the eye of a rascally unknown writer of magazine articles. It seemed only a matter of time before he entered into the refreshing pastime of sticking pins into wax effigies. He didn't really wish the fellow any harm; only that he'd break his treacherous neck by next Saturday at the latest. Marc was certain that on the eve of his last earthly day he would be able to point an enfeebled finger squarely at the present day and the three preceding it, and assuredly say, "That was the darkest period of my life." He didn't know which magazine article had planted the hideous idea of separate vacations in Julie's golden head, but he had already sworn violence, bloodshed, and even sudden death to its author if ever he found out. That a man should spend two weeks in a beach house without his wife was plainly, to him, a new and outstanding high in sheerest idiocy. He was only surprised that in a country so nearly glutted with legislation of all descriptions, there should be no laws to protect an unwary husband against the published oozings of so loathsomely promiscuous a mind as would endorse, and even encourage, the diabolical arrangement of separate vacations.