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seconds later, I was standing with my arms flung across the mantel, like someone in an old-fashioned play, pretending to look at a book.
    "Barney! What are you doing here?"
    What I was doing was blushing furiously. I couldn't tell whether they were angry or merely surprised. "Well, uh, you asked me to come over, but nobody was here, so I thought . . . you wouldn't mind if I just read this book for a minute."
    They looked at one another slowly; then Zena was giggling. She had a rapid, high-pitched, silly giggle, like a teenager's, that bore no relation to her husky speaking voice. "And just what is it that you found to read, Barney, hmmmmm?" she asked teasingly, moving toward me and lifting her eyebrows.
    She didn't seem to be angry, but I wondered how she would feel if she knew what I really had been reading. I looked at the book in my hand for the first time. "When the aversive stimulus is the withdrawal of positive reinforcement," said the paragraph at the top of the page, "the resulting non-reinforcement of enough items ..."
    "I see, A Psychological Approach to Abnormal Behavior," Zena said, reading the title on the jacket. "A little weighty for a Sunday afternoon, but certainly a step up from science fiction. So you're an abnormal psychology enthusiast, is that it?"
    "I ... well I just ... it seemed . . ."
    "Well who isn't interested in abnormal psychology?" Manny demanded, hurrying over to the fireplace to defend me. "I love looking in volumes like that and discovering how abnormal I am."
    "You have to look in a book?" Zena asked him.
    "Everybody's abnormal, when you come to the bottom of it," said Joe, glancing at his watch. "Who's coming with me—to pick up the windsurfers?"
    "I'll go," Manny said.
    "I think I'll stay here and entertain Barney," Zena said. "Also, I need to do some work on my tan."
    "Hey, that's not fair," Manny whined, quickly holding his arm up to hers and comparing them with a critical eye.
    "Relax, Manny, well take the top down," Joe said. "Everybody knows you tan better in a moving vehicle than when you're just lying still."
    "Is that really true?"
    "Well I never heard of it before," Zena said.
    "It's because of relativity and time dilation," Joe explained with a straight face. "The greater your velocity, the slower time moves for you, so you have more time in the sun. Also, you age slower, so you stay younger looking."
    "No, but wait a moment," Manny said, sounding really concerned. "If time slows down for you, then it actually signifies you have Jess time in the sun than—"
    "If you don't get going now, it'll be too late to get any sun, even if you travel at the speed of light," Zena said impatiently.
    "Come on, Manny."
    And then, in that strange sudden way, the two men were gone. "Well, perhaps now we can get to discover each other, Barney," Zena said, her smile widening. "Perhaps we could even play the game."

6
    She made a pitcher of lemonade and cajoled me relentlessly to sit with her out on the patio in the sun, insisting that it was too late in the day to get a bad burn, and offering me a tube of protective cream. I continued to balk. Finally she said, "Do you want a private lesson in Interstellar Pig or not?"
    "Sure I do!" I was flattered, and hoped I'd be a worthy opponent.
    "All right, I'll teach you a lesson, but I refuse to stay inside. We do it outside or not at all."
    "But . . ."
    "This is your final chance, Barney. And if you don't take it, I warn you, the others won't want to play with you."
    "Oh, all right."
    She handed me the lemonade pitcher and two glasses, and draped towels over my arm. "Take this outside, and take your shirt off and slather that cream all over you. I'll get the board."
    She didn't want me to know where they kept the board, it seemed. What if it was in the drawer where the document had been, and she noticed it was missing? I felt a sudden burst of panic. But the board hadn't been in that drawer, I assured myself, spreading out the towels—if it had been, I