Or he could once more tell himself that if only Lucky were at his side, he would be brave and bold again. But even that was no longer quite true. Fact was, that everything had become much too big for him. He wanted the green cat, yes, but he wanted him as his own special pet, his mascot, his good luck cat, something to sleep at the foot of the bed--not as a mysterious mutant monster that kept getting him involved with male and female wrestlers, religious crackpots, gun-toting psychoanalysts, girls with claws, hep-thugs, world-famous scientists, espers, vice syndicates, FBL raids, national and international crimes, and a whole lot of other things that were much, much too big for Phil Gish. He coded open his door, stepped inside, and had almost closed it behind him when he realized that he was not returning to loneliness. On her hands and knees, apparently to look under his bed, but now with her face turned sharply towards him, was the black haired, faun-like girl whose window was opposite his. He froze in every muscle, his hand locked to the barely ajar door, ready to jerk it open and run. She got up slowly, with a smile. "'Allo," she greeted in a warm voice with a foreign accent he couldn't place. "I have lost something and I think maybe he hide in here." She smoothed out the black pied gray suit he'd watched her take off last night. Then she leisurely ran her hand back across her head and down the pony tail in which her hair-do ended. "Something?" Phil croaked gallantly, his hand still glued fast behind him. He couldn't help it, but every time he looked her in the eye his gaze had to travel fearfully down her figure to her 10-inch platform shoes. "Yes," she confirmed, "a--how you call him?--pussycat." Then, after a bit, "Say, you act like you know me." Her smile widened and she shook a finger at him. "'Ave you been peek at me, you naughty boy?" Phil gulped and said nothing, yet that remark did a great deal to humanize her for him. Hallucinations don't make one blush. "Thas all right," she reassured him. "Windows across, why not? Same thing--windows across and both open a little--make me think maybe my pussycat jump over here. So I step across to see." "Step across?" Phil demanded a bit hysterically, his gaze once more shooting to her legs. "Sure," she said smilingly and indicated the window. "Take a look." With considerable reluctance, Phil unstuck his hand from the door and gingerly walked to the open window. Spanning the ten feet between it and the one opposite, was a flimsy looking telescope ladder of some gray metal. Phil turned around. "Is it a green cat?" he asked reluctantly. Her face brightened. "So he did jump across." Phil nodded. "What's more," he went on rapidly, "I think I met your brother today, a journalist named Dion da Silva, representing the newspaper _La Prensa_." She nodded eagerly at the first proper name. "Thas right," she said. "I am Dytie da Silva." "And I am Phil Gish. Did you say Dytie?"