* * * * * Andy saw Rayne approaching with Lenore, and smiled. "Why so thoughtful?" asked his wife. "Thinking deeply again?" asked Rayne. "More power?" "Don't laugh at me, Gerd," pleaded Andrew. "Laugh at you?" asked Gerd in genuine dismay. "Never. You are a good friend, Andrew. I will never laugh at you." He shook his head. "Tell me, what makes you think I'm laughing?" "I can not but think, sometimes, that you are playing with all of us." "Please ... please. Is there nothing I can do to dispel this idea, this fixation of yours?" he turned to Lenore. "Do you, too, think I'm toying?" "No," she said quickly. "You're too fine a person to toy with another. I know." Gerd flustered at that. "The trouble with this job of mine," he said, "is that no one ever tells me that I'm a meddling fool or to mind my own business." "That's your fault," said Andrew. "Honestly, I doubt that there is a man on this confounded planet that wouldn't hasten to carry your banner. You are a well-liked man, Gerd, and as such no one wants to tell you off. Furthermore, you always seem to know when to let a man alone--and that in itself precludes any possibility of telling you to stay away. How do you know that sort of thing?" "Accident of birth," said Gerd wryly. "Spacewash." "You think I studied to learn it?" Andrew laughed. "If I thought that, I'd apply for entrance to the same school," he said. "I'd like to have that trait myself." Lenore interrupted. "Andy," she said, "you must remember that Gerd is a sensitive man. You might have been a sensitive man at one time, but being a publisher has taken all of the reticence out of you. Wresting hidden secrets from people who have things to hide is life and blood for a newsman--and it does not make a man sensitive for other people's feelings." "Well," grumbled Andrew, "I'd like to be able to recognize when someone does not want to be bothered, anyway." "And those are just the people you'd bother, I know." "But what was bothering you?" asked Gerd with honest concern. "I was just thinking about brains. One of the women said that your wife's brains excluded her from the 'dangerous female' classification because she wouldn't be really bothered with any one of the husbands present. It led to other trains of thought and I came to the universal question: Why does a man use but nine tenths of his brain?" "Oh that? That's obvious! You have a flier. What is its peak power?" "About seven dirats." "And it develops that total power only at high speed. Suppose you drove the machine at that power all the time?" "Wouldn't last--besides, you couldn't. It takes time to get to that speed."