I limped into the mosque on bloody feet, a martyr to my duty as an Apparatus officer.

A Moslem marriage is pretty businesslike. They don't consider women have any souls so the religious angle is almost absent.

Nurse Bildirjin was dressed in a white silk cloak and hood. The costume helped to hide her swollen belly but it was pretty obvious nonetheless. Her black eyes were looking at me with complete indifference.

A Turkish religious master was present, a khoja. He was just there to see that nobody messed up his mosque.

Nurse Bildirjin's father had two copies of a contract. This was an exchange of a promise to be faithful and all that.

Somebody was pushing a pen into my hand. I lifted it to sign. Then I saw the sum on it! The mahri, or dowry to the wife, was specified.

"A HUNDRED MILLION LIRA!" I screamed. That was a million U. S. bucks!

"Of course you'll want your child to have the best of care," said Prahd. "And a nice villa for Nurse Bildir­jin to vacation in. You're founding a family, remember."

"As a matter of fact," said Nurse Bildirjin's father, shifting his shotgun to the other arm, "I have the bank orders right here. You have to pay the dowry at the ceremony, you know."

I hesitated.

The crowd ran out to get the rocks they had dropped.

I signed the contract and the orders on the Piastre National Bank of Istanbul. Gods, what would Mudur Zengin think and do now?

I was aware of Ters and Ahmed at my side. They were signing the marriage contract as witnesses!

"Now, that was easy, wasn't it?" said Prahd. "That's all there is to it."

He might think it was nothing. I felt like I had just been wrapped around and around with heavy chains.

"Now put your bride in your car," said Prahd.

I didn't want to touch her. I was afraid she would bite. I walked out of the mosque. As I glanced back, I saw that she was following me. The khoja was shooing the crowd out. They came to gather around the car again.

My feet were killing me. I felt a fever burning through me. But I carried on. I got into the car.

Madison was sitting there writing in a notebook. Big as she was with child, there wouldn't be room for Nurse Bildirjin if the bunk remained raised. I clicked the latches to lower it.

Half the rear seat cushion was out of position. I took hold of it to adjust it.

My fingers touched something.

Fevered as I was, I went cold as ice.

Under that cushion, exactly where I had put it months ago, was THE BOMB!

I lifted the cushion.

There it lay.

The latch which should have clicked over at the end of the time limit had not moved to connect and fire it!

Something had blocked it from thrusting home. It must be being held suspended by a piece of dirt or lint!

I had been bouncing over rotten roads all night sitting on a defective bomb that could go off any minute!

A thin scream surged into my throat.

I picked it up.

I could not toss it out the window. It had enough explosive to blow this car to bits.

I slowly backed out of the car holding it, not knowing if the last thing I would see in this universe would be its lethal flash.

"A BOMB!" cried Prahd. "Run for your lives! He's going to blow us all up!"

There was the wind of sudden passage as the crowd fled. The thunder of feet died away.

I kept backing. Oh, Gods, I better not stumble. The time delay was all run out. There was just that little lever left to fall in place. It could not be reversed.

I did not know what to do with it. The standard action would be to throw it into a bunker and run.

I didn't have a bunker.

Yes, I did!

The mosque door was open. Its walls were thick.

I backed toward the door.

Carefully I turned.

I measured the width of the door.

I threw with all my might!

The bomb flew into the door.

I turned to sprint away.

My lacerated feet betrayed me. I only ran ten paces before I fell.

WHOOOM!

The walls of the mosque flew outward like a suddenly inflated balloon!

The minaret toppled sideways and fell.

Rubble started to patter down as clouds of smoke rose into the sky.

I had been skidded by concussion another twenty feet.

Finally, a voice. Prahd's. He was picking me up. "I don't know why you have to do these things," he said. "It's good nobody was in there. They could have been killed. I thought when I gave you new equipment you would get too interested in other things to have time to blow things up. But I see I was wrong."

People were coming back, staring at the ruin and glaring at me. Then I noticed something very odd. The khoja was smiling broadly. It alarmed me.

"What's he so happy about?" I said. "I just blew up his mosque!"

Prahd was getting me over to the car which Ahmed seemed to have moved some distance away before the blast. "You see," said Prahd, "they know you here. When I arranged this and said who the husband would be, he wouldn't let you enter the holy place. He said the roof would fall in. But I persuaded him that if it did, you would build him a new mosque. And sure enough, the roof fell in. He's happy because he has been wanting to build a much more ornate one for years."

The world was spinning. What did a mosque cost?

I got into the car. Nurse Bildirjin pulled her white silk cape sideways away from me. I wondered why. I looked down. My feet!

"I'm bleeding," I told Prahd. "You'll have to take me to the hospital."

"That's right where we're going," said Prahd.

We drove off and came at length to the World United Charities Mercy and Benevolent Hospital. It was amazingly groomed up: it was all landscaped and even now volunteer peasants were at work cutting the grass of their establishment. They saw who it was and stopped work to stare at me as I got out and limped up the steps. They were completely silent. What ingrates! If it hadn't been for my brilliant idea to alter the identities of criminals these peasants would have no hospital at all! Riffraff!

I went through the lobby, thinking I was going to an operating room. But Prahd was simply taking me to his office.

I sank down in a chair. "I'm in terribly bad shape," I said. "This horizontal scar on my forehead needs attention, too."

He looked at it. Then he got out a bottle of antiseptic and swabbed my feet. It really stung! He picked up some rolls of Earth-type bandage, sprinkled some reddish powder on them and wound them around my lacerations. He evidently was not going to do anything extensive. When he had finished that he stood back.

"Hey," I said, "what about this forehead scar?"

"It makes you look like you have a ferocious scowl," he said.

"I know," I said.

"Well, people need some kind of warning. I think we'll just leave it that way."

I was about to protest. He could get rid of it without half trying. The door opened. Nurse Bildirjin walked in. I blinked.

She was dressed in her usual hospital uniform, let out a bit to accommodate the swollen belly.

"You just married me," I said. "Aren't you going home with me?"

"And break up the beautiful relationship I have with Doktor Muhammed?" she said. "Don't be silly. We were just making sure the baby had a legal father."

"And a million bucks," I grated.

"Of course," she said, smiling sweetly.

It was really from that moment that I began to suspect that I was being had by the young Doctor Prahd Bit­tlestiffender.

"I am going home," I said.

Little did I know that my travail had barely begun!

The villa was sitting there against the mountain in the spring sun. It was a sort of shock to see it so peaceful and serene. But then, in its history it had witnessed three thousand years of the agonies of men. From Phrygia, through Rome and up to now, more than one pair of bloody feet had walked through its gate.