"There probably is."

"It could be used to fuel a ship for another expedition."

"Perhaps."

"This time we could instruct Zindrome to bring back something with alonger lifespan and more deliberate habits--somewhat nearer our own."

"That would have its dangers. But perhaps we could junk the Mono-RobotProtection Pact and order Zindrome to manufacture extras of himself. Understrict supervision."

"That would have its dangers too."

"At any rate, I should have to ponder your suggestion carefully."

"And I yours."

"It's been a busy day," nodded Dran. "Let's sleep on it."

"A good idea."

Sounds of saurian snoring emerged from the great Throne Hall of Glan.

Forced to admit that his art was going unnoticed in afrivolous world, Jay Smith decided to get out of that world.The four dollars and ninety-eight cents he spent for a mailorder course entitled Yoga--the Path to Freedom did not,however, help to free him. Rather, it served to accentuate hishumanity, in that it reduced his ability to purchase food byfour dollars and ninety-eight cents.

Seated in a padmasana, Smith contemplated little but thefact that his navel drew slightly closer to his backbone witheach day that passed. While nirvana is a reasonably estheticconcept, suicide assuredly is not, particularly if you haven'tthe stomach for it. So he dismissed the fatalistic notion quitereasonably.

"How simply one could take one's own life in idealsurroundings!" he sighed, (tossing his golden locks which, forobvious reasons, had achieved classically impressive lengths)."The fat stoic in his bath, fanned by slave girls and sippinghis wine, as a faithful Greek leech opens his veins, eyesdowncast! One delicate Circassian," he sighed again, "thereperhaps, plucking upon a lyre as he dictates his funeraloration--the latter to be read by a faithful countryman, eyesall a-blink. How easily he might do it! But the fallenartist--say! Born yesterday and scorned today he goes, like theelephant to his graveyard, alone and secret!"

He rose to his full height of six feet, one and a halfinches, and swung to face the mirror. Regarding his skin,pallid as marble, and his straight nose, broad forehead, andwide-spaced eyes, he decided that if one could not live bycreating art, then one might do worse that turn the thing theother way about, so to speak.

He flexed those thews which had earned him half-tuition asa halfback for the four years in which he had stoked the stithyof his soul to the forging out of a movement all his own:two-dimensional painted sculpture.

"Viewed in the round," one crabbed critic had noted,"Mister Smith's offerings are either frescoes without walls orvertical lines. The Etruscans excelled in the former formbecause they knew where it belonged; kindergartens inculcate amastery of the latter in all five-year-olds."

Cleverness! More cleverness! Bah! He was sick of thoseJohnsons who laid down the law at someone else's dinner table!

He noted with satisfaction that his month-long asceticregime had reduced his weight by thirty pounds to a mere twotwenty-five. He decided that he could pass as a BeatenGladiator, post-Hellenic.

"It is settled," he pronounced. "I'll be art."Later that afternoon a lone figure entered the Museum of Art, abundle beneath his arm.

Spiritually haggard (although clean-shaven to thearmpits), Smith loitered about the Greek Period until it wasemptied of all but himself and marble.

He selected a dark corner and unwrapped his pedestal. Hesecreted the various personal things necessary for a showcaseexistence, including most of his clothing, in its hollowbottom.

"Good-bye, world," he renounced, "you should treat yourartists better," and mounted the pedestal.

His food money had not been completely wasted, for thetechniques he had mastered for four ninety-eight while on thePath to Freedom, had given him a muscular control such asallowed him perfect, motionless statuity whenever the wispy,middle-aged woman followed by forty-four children under agenine, left her chartered bus at the curb and passed through theGreek Period, as she did every Tuesday and Thursday between9:35 and 9:40 in the morning. Fortunately, he had selected aseated posture.

Before the week passed he had also timed the watchman'smovements to an alternate tick of the huge clock in theadjacent gallery (a delicate Eighteenth Century timepiece, allof gold leaf, enamel, and small angels who chased one anotheraround in circles). He should have hated being reported stolenduring the first week of his career, with nothing to face thenbut the prospect of second-rate galleries or an uneasy role inthe cheerless private collections of cheerless and privatecollectors. Therefore, he moved judiciously when raidingstaples from the stores in the downstairs lunch room, andstrove to work out a sympathetic bond with the racing angels.The directors had never seen fit to secure the refrigerator orpantry from depredations by the exhibits, and he applaudedtheir lack of imagination. He nibbled at boiled ham andpumpernickel (light), and munched ice cream bars by the dozen.After a month he was forced to take calisthenics (heavy) in theBronze Age.

"Oh, lost!" he reflected amidst the Neos, surveying thekingdom he had once staked out as his own. He wept over thestatue of Achilles Fallen as though it were his own. It was.

As in a mirror, he regarded himself in a handy collage ofbolts and nutshells. "If you had not sold out," he accused, "ifyou had hung on a little longer--like these, the simplest ofArt's creatures...But no! It could not be!

"Could it?" he addressed a particularly symmetrical mobileoverhead. "Could it?"

"Perhaps," came an answer from nowhere, which sent himflying back to his pedestal.

But little came of it. The watchman had been taking guiltydelight in a buxom Rubens on the other side of the building andhad not overheard the colloquy. Smith decided that the replysignified his accidental nearing of Dharana. He returned to thePath, redoubling his efforts toward negation and lookingBeaten.In the days that followed he heard occasional chuckling andwhispering, which he at first dismissed as the chortlings of thechildren of Mara and Maya, intent upon his distractions. Later, hewas less certain, but by then he had decided upon a classical attitudeof passive inquisitiveness.

And one spring day, as green and golden as a poem by DylanThomas, a girl entered the Greek Period and looked about,furtively. He found it difficult to maintain his marblyplacidity, for lo! she began to disrobe!

And a square parcel on the floor, in a plain wrapper. Itcould only mean...

Competition!

He coughed politely, softly, classically...

She jerked to an amazing attention, reminding him of awomen's underwear ad having to do with Thermopylae. Her hairwas the correct color for the undertaking--that palest shade ofParian manageable--and her gray eyes glittered with theicy-orbed intentness of Athene.

She surveyed the room minutely, guiltily, attractively...

"Surely stone is not susceptible to virus infections," shedecided. "'Tis but my guilty conscience that cleared itsthroat. Conscience, thus do I cast thee off!"

And she proceeded to become Hecuba Lamenting, diagonallyacross from the Beaten Gladiator and fortunately, not facing inhis direction. She handled it pretty well, too, he grudginglyadmitted. Soon she achieved an esthetic immobility. After aperiod of appraisal he decided that Athens was indeed mother ofall the arts; she simply could not have carried it asRenaissance nor Romanesque. This made him feel rather good.