"How fortunate I got out of my coffin
when I did. I might well have been thrown into one of your Incinerators
and burned up." "That would have been terrible, wouldn't it have?" "Quite." Lantry toyed with the dials on the beetle dash. He wouldn't go to Mars. His plans were changed. If this fool simply refused to recognize an act
of violence when he stumbled upon it, then let him be a fool. If they
didn't connect the two explosions with a man from the tomb, all well
and good. Let them go on deluding themselves. If they couldn't imagine
someone being mean and nasty and murderous, heaven help them. He rubbed
his hands with satisfaction. No, no Martian trip for you, as yet,
Lantry lad. First we'll see what can be done boring from the inside. Plenty of time. The Incinerators can wait an extra week or so. One has
to be subtle, you know. Any more immediate explosions might cause quite
a ripple of thought. McClure was gabbling wildly on. "Of course, you don't have to be examined immediately. You'll want a
rest. I'll put you up at my place." "Thanks. I don't feel up to being probed and pulled. Plenty of time in
a week or so." They drew up before a house and climbed out. "You'll want to sleep, naturally." "I've been asleep for centuries. Be glad to stay awake. I'm not a bit
tired." "Good." McClure let them into the house. He headed for the drink bar. "A drink will fix us up." "You have one," said Lantry. "Later for me. I just want to sit down." "By all means sit." McClure mixed himself a drink. He looked around the
room, looked at Lantry, paused for a moment with the drink in his hand,
tilted his head to one side, and put his tongue in his cheek. Then he
shrugged and stirred the drink. He walked slowly to a chair and sat,
sipping the drink quietly. He seemed to be listening for something. "There are cigarettes on the table," he said. "Thanks." Lantry took one and lit it and smoked it. He did not speak
for some time. Lantry thought, I'm taking this all too easily. Maybe I should kill
and run. He's the only one that has found me, yet. Perhaps this is all
a trap. Perhaps we're simply sitting here waiting for the police. Or
whatever in hell they use for police these days. He looked at McClure. No. They weren't waiting for police. They were waiting for something
else. McClure didn't speak. He looked at Lantry's face and he looked at
Lantry's hands. He looked at Lantry's chest a long time, with easy
quietness. He sipped his drink. He looked at Lantry's feet. Finally he said, "Where'd you get the clothing?" "I asked someone for clothes and they gave these things to me. Darned
nice of them." "You'll find that's how we are in this world. All you have to do is
ask." McClure shut up again. His eyes moved. Only his eyes and nothing else. Once or twice he lifted his drink. A little clock ticked somewhere in the distance. "Tell me about yourself, Mr. Lantry." "Nothing much to tell." "You're modest." "Hardly. You know about the past. I know nothing of the future, or I
should say 'today' and day before yesterday. You don't learn much in a
coffin." McClure did not speak. He suddenly sat forward in his chair and then
leaned back and shook his head. They'll never suspect me, thought Lantry. They aren't superstitious,
they simply _can't_ believe in a dead man walking. Therefore, I'll be
safe. I'll keep putting off the physical checkup. They're polite. They
won't force me. Then, I'll work it so I can get to Mars. After that,
the tombs, in my own good time, and the plan. God, how simple. How
naive these people are. *       *       *       *       *

McClure sat across the room for five minutes. A coldness had come
over him. The color was very slowly going from his face, as one sees
the color of medicine vanishing as one presses the bulb at the top
of a dropper. He leaned forward, saying nothing, and offered another
cigarette to Lantry. "Thanks." Lantry took it. McClure sat deeply back into his easy chair,
his knees folded one over the other. He did not look at Lantry, and
yet somehow did. The feeling of weighing and balancing returned. McClure was like a tall thin master of hounds listening for something
that nobody else could hear. There are little silver whistles you can
blow that only dogs can hear. McClure seemed to be listening acutely,
sensitively for such an invisible whistle, listening with his eyes
and with his half-opened, dry mouth, and with his aching, breathing
nostrils. Lantry sucked the cigarette, sucked the cigarette, sucked the
cigarette, and, as many times, blew out, blew out, blew out. McClure
was like some lean red-shagged hound listening and listening with a
slick slide of eyes to one side, with an apprehension in that hand that
was so precisely microscopic that one only sensed it, as one sensed
the invisible whistle, with some part of the brain deeper than eyes or
nostril or ear. McClure was all chemist's scale, all antennae. The room was so quiet the cigarette smoke made some kind of invisible
noise rising to the ceiling. McClure was a thermometer, a chemist's
scales, a listening hound, a litmus paper, an antennae; all these. Lantry did not move. Perhaps the feeling would pass. It had passed
before. McClure did not move for a long while and then, without a word,
he nodded at the sherry decanter, and Lantry refused as silently. They
sat looking but not looking at each other, again and away, again and
away. McClure stiffened slowly. Lantry saw the color getting paler in those
lean cheeks, and the hand tightening on the sherry glass, and a
knowledge come at last to stay, never to go away, into the eyes. Lantry did not move. He could not. All of this was of such a
fascination that he wanted only to see, to hear what would happen next. It was McClure's show from here on in. McClure said, "At first I thought it was the finest psychosis I have
ever seen. You, I mean. I thought, he's convinced himself, Lantry's
convinced himself, he's quite insane, he's told himself to do all these
little things." McClure talked as if in a dream, and continued talking
and didn't stop. "I said to myself, he purposely doesn't breathe through his nose. I
watched your nostrils, Lantry. The little nostril hairs never once
quivered in the last hour. That wasn't enough. It was a fact I filed. It wasn't enough. He breathes through his mouth, I said, on purpose. And then I gave you a cigarette and you sucked and blew, sucked and
blew. None of it ever came out your nose. I told myself, well, that's
all right. He doesn't inhale. Is that terrible, is that suspect? All
in the mouth, all in the mouth. And then, I looked at your chest. I
watched. It never moved up or down, it did nothing. He's convinced
himself, I said to myself. He's convinced himself about all this. He doesn't move his chest, except slowly, when he thinks you're not
looking. That's what I told myself." The words went on in the silent room, not pausing, still in a dream.