Stern morality replaced humor. Pulling his lank body upright, he finished, “But let me say that we’ve been in the swibble repair business ever since old R.J. Wright introduced the first A-driven experimental model.”

For a time, Courtland said nothing. Phantasmagoria swirled through his mind: random quasi-technological thoughts, reflex evaluations and notations of no importance. So swibbles broke right down, did they? Big-time business operations … send out a repairman as soon as the deal is closed. Monopoly tactics … squeeze out the competition before they have a chance. Kickback to the parent company, probably. Interwoven books.

But none of his thoughts got down to the basic issue. With a violent effort he forced his attention back onto the earnest young man who waited nervously in the hall with his black service kit and clipboard. “No,” Courtland said emphatically, “no, you’ve got the wrong address.”

“Yes, sir?” the young man quavered politely, a wave of stricken dismay crossing his features. “The wrong address? Good Lord, has dispatch got another route fouled up with that new-fangled—”

“Better look at your paper again,” Courtland said, grimly pulling the door toward him. “Whatever the hell a swibble is, I haven’t got one; and I didn’t call you.”

As he shut the door, he perceived the final horror on the young man’s face, his stupefied paralysis. Then the brightly painted wood surface cut off the sight, and Courtland turned wearily back to his desk.

A swibble. What the hell was a swibble? Seating himself moodily, he tried to take up where he had left off… but the direction of his thoughts had been totally shattered.

There was no such thing as a swibble. And he was on the in, industrially speaking. He read U.S. News, the Wall Street Journal. If there was a swibble he would have heard about it—unless a swibble was some pip-squeak gadget for the home. Maybe that was it.

“Listen,” he yelled at his wife as Fay appeared momentarily at the kitchen door, dishcloth and blue-willow plate in her hands. “What is this business? You know anything about swibbles?”

Fay shook her head. “It’s nothing of mine.”

“You didn’t order a chrome-and-plastic a.c.-d.c. swibble from Macy’s?”

“Certainly not.”

Maybe it was something for the kids. Maybe it was the latest grammar-school craze, the contemporary bolo or flip cards or knock-knock-who’s-there? But nine-year-old kids didn’t buy things that needed a service man carrying a massive black tool kit—not on fifty cents a week allowance.

Curiosity overcame aversion. He had to know, just for the record, what a swibble was. Springing to his feet, Courtland hurried to the hall door and yanked it open.

The hall was empty, of course. The young man had wandered off. There was a faint smell of men’s cologne and nervous perspiration, nothing more.

Nothing more, except a wadded-up fragment of paper that had come unclipped from the man’s board. Courtland bent down and retrieved it from the carpet. It was a carbon copy of a route-instruction, giving code-identification, the name of the service company, the address of the caller.

The numbers, the information, meant nothing to Courtland. He closed the door and slowly returned to his desk. Smoothing out the crumpled sheet of paper, he reread the dull words again, trying to squeeze some meaning from them. The printed letterhead was:

That was it. The meager printed statement: Established in 1963. Hands trembling, Courtland reached mechanically for his pipe. Certainly, it explained why he had never heard of swibbles. It explained why he didn’t own one… and why, no matter how many doors in the apartment building he knocked on, the young repairman wouldn’t find anybody who did.

Swibbles hadn’t been invented yet.

After an interval of hard, furious thought Courtland picked up the phone and dialed the home number of his subordinate at the Pesco labs.

“I don’t care,” he said carefully, “what you’re doing this evening. I’m going to give you a list of instructions and I want them carried out right away.”

At the other end of the line Jack Hurley could be heard pulling himself angrily together. “Tonight? Listen, Dave, the company isn’t my mother—I have some life of my own. If I’m supposed to come running down—”

“This has nothing to do with Pesco. I want a tape recorder and a movie camera with infrared lens. I want you to round up a legal stenographer. I want one of the company electricians—you pick him out, but get the best. And I want Anderson from the engineering room. If you can’t get him, get any of our designers. And I want somebody off the assembly line; get me some old mechanic who knows his stuff. Who really knows machines.”

Doubtfully, Hurley said, “Well, you’re the boss; at least, you’re boss of research. But I think this will have to be cleared with the company. Would you mind if I went over your head and got an okay from Pesbroke?”

“Go ahead.” Courtland made a quick decision. “Better yet, I’ll call him myself; he’ll probably have to know what’s going on.”

“What is going on?” Hurley demanded curiously. “I never heard you sound this way before … has somebody brought out a self-spraying paint?”

Courtland hung up the phone, waited out a torturous interval, and then dialed his superior, the owner of Pesco Paint.

“You have a minute?” he asked tightly, when Pesbroke’s wife had roused the white-haired old man from his after-dinner nap and got him to the phone. “I’m mixed up in something big; I want to talk to you about it.”

“Has it got to do with paint?” Pesbroke muttered, half humorously, half seriously. “If not—”

Courtland interrupted him. Speaking slowly, he gave a full account of his contact with the swibble repairman.

When Courtland had finished, his employer was silent. “Well,” Pesbroke said finally, “I guess I could go through some kind of routine. But you’ve got me interested. All right, I’ll buy it. But,” he added quietly, “if this is an elaborate time-waster, I’m going to bill you for the use of the men and equipment.”

“By time-waster, you mean if nothing profitable comes out of this?”

“No,” Pesbroke said. “I mean, if you know it’s a fake; if you’re consciously going along with a gag. I’ve got a migraine headache and I’m not going along with a gag. If you’re serious, if you really think this might be something, I’ll put the expenses on the company books.”

“I’m serious,” Courtland said. “You and I are both too damn old to play games.”

“Well,” Pesbroke reflected, “the older you get, the more you’re apt to go off the deep end; and this sounds pretty deep.” He could be heard making up his mind. “I’ll telephone Hurley and give him the okay. You can have whatever you want… I suppose you’re going to try to pin this repairman down and find out what he really is.”

“That’s what I want to do.”

“Suppose he’s on the level… what then?”

“Well,” Courtland said cautiously, “then I want to find out what a swibble is. As a starter. Maybe after that—”

“You think he’ll be back?”

“He might be. He won’t find the right address; I know that. Nobody in this neighborhood called for a swibble repairman.”

“What do you care what a swibble is? Why don’t you find out how he got from his period back here?”

“I think he knows what a swibble is—and I don’t think he knows how he got here. He doesn’t even know he’s here.”