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dulled.
    And, after the accident, he had insisted that they invest together in the East Pennsylvania farm. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
    But now Forsythe was a Screamer. And, in the seclusion of the farm, his niece was somehow powerless to administer the injection that might save his life.
    Within another ten minutes, Gregson crossed the state line and abruptly altered his course for the Monroe Isolation Institute outside Stroudsburg.
    At the reception desk, however, there was no record of admission on a William Forsythe. Yes, another attendant assured him, the institute had responded to his call and had dispatched a Pickup Squad car. As a matter of fact, it should be at the farm by now. No, there was no comviewer available for him to use.
    Verticaling back into the sharp, bright Pennsylvania morning, he thought of Helen for the first time and,didn’t quite see how she would manage—with this latest blow compounding all the other tragedies that had befallen her.
    It wasn’t enough that her fiancé had been felled by the plague three years earlier and had taken the suicide route. Less than a year later, her immediate family had been caught in the nuclear blast which had buried Cleveland under an arm of Lake Erie. With her uncle now gone Screamie, what would she do?
    Two months ago Gregson would have readily produced the solution to her dilemma. But not now—not after he had already taken his first, irrevocable steps along the Screamie road.
    Above the farm, he verticaled precipitately down to the bull’s-eye and cut his jets.
    Leaping out, he inhaled, but without the usual sense of appreciation, air spiced with the musk of livestock and the vigorous fragrances of harvest.
    He sprinted to the house and paused in the kitchen doorway, ready to shout out for Helen.
    But Bill was there—seated next to the table, his right foot immersed in a pan of steaming water.
    “Greg?” the old man said, casting about for further sound.
    “You’re all right!”
    “You wouldn’t say that if you were in my place.”
    Forsythe shifted his foot painfully. He was a smallish man with a salubrious complexion that set off his thick crop of white hair. In his rotundity, there was the persuasive suggestion of jollity. But, with his face set in a grimace, he didn’t seem to be very jovially disposed at the moment.
    “What happened?” Gregson demanded.
    Helen drew up in the hallway and glanced down at the floor. She had repaired the damage to her face and, despite puffed eyes, was as subtly attractive as Gregson had last remembered her.
    “You see, it was like this…” she began.
    Forsythe snorted and, with pretended severity, said, “You’re entitled to the first ten swats, Greg. Then you can hold her for me.”
    She came into the room, carrying herself with a grace and poise that seemed anomalous to the farmhouse setting.
    “But, BUI…” she protested.
    Her uncle relented with an exaggerated gesture of concession. “On second thought, I don’t suppose I can shift the blame. After all, I guess I was bellowing like a wounded elephant—and with the shower going full blast so I couldn’t hear how Helen was reacting.”
    Finally Gregson felt his tension subsiding. “What did happen?”
    “Slipped in the shower stall. Sheared off an ingrown toe-nail.”
    “I tried to call you back as soon as he quieted down,” Helen explained, smoothing out her skirt over well-proportioned thighs.
    “Believe me,” Forsythe added facetiously, “I was ready to run her down and administer those ten swats without assistance, if. only I had my eyesight.”
    Bill, of course, would never recover his vision. That had been the verdict after months of surgery to relieve his concussions.
*  *  *
    Gregson called headquarters and reported he wouldn’t be back for the rest of the day, but that they could expect him Saturday morning. Then Helen prepared a lunch of ham steaks and French fries, desultorily chatting with him all the while. It