"From upstairs?" Phil asked and instantly chuckled at himself for interpreting the movement as a gesture. "Why not stay with me for a while? I like your looks and I admire your color. Often wished I were green myself. Anything for variety--begging your pardon." It was a strange and curiously attractive cat face. The ears were large, the forehead high, the nose-button lost in furry down, the whiskers hardly apparent, and the mouth had a suggestion of a pucker or pout. For a fleeting instant Phil had the notion Lucky might look rather different, rather less like a cat, if caught unawares. And he was really very green--the green of tarnished copper, only brighter. Thinking the word "he," Phil wondered for a fleeting instant about Lucky's sex. The fat tummy was suggestive. Yet he was somehow sure the cat was a male. Then Lucky smiled again and Phil was aware only of feelings. He reached out a tentative hand, jerked it back when a little paw flicked out at it, then shamefacedly corrected the gesture. The little paw touched his middle finger. Phil stroked the silken paw in turn. Neither time could he feel a hint of claws. They must all be tucked inside their smooth sheathes. "Now we're friends," Phil said huskily. The cat sprang fearlessly onto the bed. Coppery eyes came close. A furry cheek briefly brushed Phil's with casual masculine friendliness. Sudden tears smarted in Phil's eyes, enough to brim the lids but not to run over. What a lonely, empty-lifed fool he must be, he told himself, that a cat could make him cry. Yet it was true enough. All his life had been a fading. His parents had seemed warm and wonderful at first, but then he had begun to sense their gray uncertainties and boredoms. School had been full of breath-taking promise at one point, with infinite vistas of knowledge and idealistic brotherhood opening up; but too many of the vistas had ended in signs saying "restricted" or "subversive" or the even more maddening blank signs of calculated silence--just as man had promised himself he'd reach the planets soon, but hadn't. Phil had had friends, too, at one time, and had really been in love with girls; but even that had somehow become washed out and worthless. And then the endless business of being beaten out of jobs by white-collar robots, beginning with the mail-sorting robots who fed envelopes into the proper slots by scanning their addresses photoelectrically. The only thing robots couldn't do, it seemed, was sit in foxholes. That was one place where Phil recalled no mechanical competition. Yes, it had been a very empty, purposeless life indeed, Phil told himself, at the same time wondering why even that thought could not mar his present happiness. He came out of his reverie and saw that the cat was marching down the bed, closely inspecting his naked body.