Field Study Read Online Free Page A

anywhere. Your popular concept of time may be superstition, but the limiting speed of light is not. We don't travel. We arrive. I'm afraid the distinction is not clear to you, but it will have to do.
    "And now — " The slender man took Pake's arm. Crowds brushed against them again. "Quick visits to a burlesque show, an all-night cinema. And perhaps we could look in at those nightclubs where your wife might be. I owe you a favor. Then I must return home."
    They cabbed to three clubs before they found Betty.
    "You are not members, we are booked up, it is evening dress only," objected the hastily summoned manager.
    "Are you mad?" asked Trancore pleasantly. "Or is your memory so very short?"
    The manager thumb-and-fingered his eyes, then beamed at them.
    "Good evening, gentlemen. Good to see you again.. This way."
    "Teach me that trick," muttered Pake as they followed him.
    He looked down at his open overcoat and tweed suit.
    "Tell me, am I wearing a soft shirt or a boiled one?"
    "Boiled."
    "Good. I like to be formal."
    Trancore stopped at the entrance to the big circular room. The manager left them and hurried back to his private office with the conviction of a frantic headache to be numbed with aspirin immediately.
    "Do you see her?" Trancore asked.
    Pake glanced around the soft-lit tables. He looked hard at one table. He made a wry face.
    "Boiled," he said, "has more than one meaning. Or maybe Betty just can't resist using that torso of hers as a prop. I wish she wasn't wearing that dress at that angle of inclination. Would you think me so uncivilized, Trancore, if I walked up and poked Football Shoulders in one of those roving eyes of his?"
    "You are not altogether without blame in this arisement," Trancore observed mildly. "You make insufficient allowance for her. You are reasonably well-adjusted. She is not."
    "I'd like to adjust that damned dress."
    "Primitive possessiveness. You disappoint me, Pake," Trancore said, but his eyes were laughing.
    Betty looked up as they approached. Her eyes weren't quite focused. "Frankie . . . What the hell! Look-it what the river washed up!"
    She grabbed the table for support as Football Shoulders rose suddenly, rubbed his forehead.
    "Phone call or — or something," he muttered. "Pardon me. Must go."
    Betty did a double-take like a puppet as the shoulders lumbered off. "Wheel me home. What goes — "
    Pake said, "Meet Mr. Trancore."
    TWO men walked slowly along the footpath of a great girdered bridge. The taller man had a hesitation in his walk and stooped a little, as if burdened.
    Halfway across, they stopped and watched in silence the slow dawn rose-gilding the towers of Manhattan.
    A tugboat below, looking no larger than a water beetle, made its loud, self-important noise. As much noise as an ocean-going liner.
    Pake had put Betty in a cab, had walked with Trancore, had asked many more questions, and learned very little. Now he asked the final question as Trancore turned and held out his slender hand.
    "Good-by, Mr. Pake."
    "At least tell me — which star?"
    "You haven't seen or named it yet. Take care of Mr. Trancore for me, won't you? You'll find his address in this pocket. Good-by."
    Pake took the hand. For a crazy moment, despite what he knew, he expected it to be withdrawn from his grasp suddenly, to see a figure drawn heavenward along a lancing path of light.
    But there was merely a sigh from the lips of the slender man, who collapsed limply into Pake's ready arms.
    PAKE told his chief, "Those quacks can examine him until they drive the poor devil crazy, but he won't be able to tell them any more. His name is Chandra Trancore, a second-rate Doctor who disappeared from his practice in Madras province ten months ago. He has less idea of what he has been doing during those months than they have."
    "How do you explain it?"
    Pake stood by the window of the office and inhaled deeply. Somewhere nearby there was a window-box with gardenias. He caught their scent as well as if they had