come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've gotto find my hole."
I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit.We'll--well, we'll help you."
"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst ofinspiration. "We're going to make a more scientific approach."
"How?" John asked.
Fat Boy gulped.
"Just wait another day," I said. "We'll have it worked out. Just bepatient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."
"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay--until tomorrow."
* * * * *
All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider:_What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what,what?_
Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and wentfor an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes weredrumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John'sinterest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging aletter from this mythical university telling him his theory was provedvalid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwballabout holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that musicof his I'd baby him the rest of his life.
It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.
John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forestof empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilderthan usual, and he was swaying.
"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"
His watery eyes squinted at me. "No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awfulscared!"
"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll helpyou with your theory."
His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."
"Then what is it, John?"
"It's my body. It's--"
"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"
His face was white with terror. "No, my--_my body's full of holes_.Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"
He rose and staggered to his _Zloomph_, clutching it as though it weresomehow a source of strength and consolation.
I patted him gingerly on the arm. "Now John. You've just had too muchbeer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong blackcoffee. C'mon now."
We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the_Zloomph_, and I.
I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even underthe _Zloomph_--steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. Thestreet lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. Ididn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be allright at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M.of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with alittle nip at the bar across the street.
Then--he was gone.
John just slipped out of my grasp--_Zloomph_ and all--and wasgone--completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck andjumped in the manhole after him. Nothing--nothing but the smell ofozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.
"--is it.--is it.--is it.--is it."
John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone itwas as if he'd never existed....
* * * * *
Tonight is our last night at _The Space Room_. Goon-Face is scowlingagain with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said,"No beeg feedle, no contract."
Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.
We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs,hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere,nowhere is John Smith.
Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seemsinevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits.There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spendmy time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the otherend of the hole and let John and his _Zloomph_ back into his own timedimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the bestbass player in the galaxy.
And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.
... THE END
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