Was he really crazy, he asked himself; was Lucky just a psycho's dream cat, or had he somehow been tricked? Once again he tormentedly totted up the evidence. Nobody but himself had admitted to seeing Lucky. And there were so many other indications of hallucinations: that crazy color, the silly food, his fleeting hunch that Lucky wasn't "really" a cat, his suspiciously godlike elation and sense of power. But those feelings of his were also the reason that Lucky _had_ to exist. After what had happened today, Phil simply couldn't endure life without Lucky, without those warm insights that had galvanized him this afternoon and shut away all thoughts of his lost job, his loneliness, his cowardice and frustrations. "Lucky," he whispered without knowing he'd been going to, and the sick child sound of his voice frightened him so that he fumbled in his pocket for the phonoscribe tape Swish Jack Jones had given him. Puffing his cigarette hard so that it made a hell red glow, he read the smoky words, "Dr. Anton Romadka. Top of The Keep. Eight O'Clock." He visualized the thin black shaft of The Keep, a luxurious office-hotel, and thought of how few minutes it would take him to get there. But then he suddenly crumpled the paper in his pocket and began to pace. Going to Dr. Romadka would mean that he didn't really believe in Lucky. He thought of the sleeping pills but was afraid there weren't enough left. He reached for a book he'd been reading, but the thought of its stereotyped sadistic plot was unbearably boring. As a last resort he turned on the radio again, voice and sight. "... ravins the antichrist." That phrase, together with the gaunt bucolic face, inevitably meant that President Robert T. Barnes was telling his Fellow Americans about Russia all over again. "But there are sinners on this side of the polar battlegrounds," the great midwestern father-image continued, swaying forward and arching his bushy eyebrows. "Sinners in our midst, creatures of the fleshpots. They have catered too long to the vilest desires and lusts." He shook a finger and swayed once more. "I warn them that their time is at hand." Phil reached for the knob (how often had Barnes made those futile, and some said drunken, threats, when everyone knew his administration was hand in glove with Fun Incorporated!) but he hesitated as an unfamiliar and rather eerie note crept into the President's voice. "Fellow Americans," Barnes almost whispered, wobbling a little from side to side, "strange forces are abroad, insane thoughts, spirits of the upper air like those which troubled ancient Babylon. Our minds are being worked upon, it is the final testing time for--" His momentary curiosity gone, Phil twisted the knob to silence and darkness. Nevertheless, the President's rhetoric set the tone of his next reverie. He did not pace now, but crouched back in the foam chair wedged between the radio and bed.