There was minor grumbling, but the more responsible quieted their colleagues. In ten minutes they were alone.

In twenty minutes Ben Caxton arrived. The S.S. officer commanding the courier car silently accepted Harshaw's signature and thumb print on a prepared receipt, then left at once while Jill continued to sob on Ben's shoulder.

Jubal looked him over in the light from the pool. "Ben, you're a mess. I hear you've been drunk for a week - and you look it."

Ben cursed, fluently and well, while continuing to pat Jill's back.

"'M drunk, awri' - but haven' had a drink."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I don't know!"

An hour later Ben's stomach had been pumped out (alcohol and gastric juices, no food); Jubal had given him shots to offset alcohol and barbiturates; he was bathed, shaved, dressed in clean clothes that did not fit him, had met the Man from Mars, and was sketchily brought up to date, while ingesting milk and bland food.

But he was unable to bring them up to date. For Ben, the past week had not happened - he had become unconscious in a taxicab in Washington; he had been shaken into drunken wakefulness two hours earlier. "Of course I know what happened. They kept me doped and in a completely dark room� and wrung rue out. I vaguely remember some of it. But I can't prove anything. And there's the village Jefe and the madam of this dive they took me to - plus, I'm sure, plenty of other witnesses - 'to swear just how this gringo spent his time. And there's nothing I can do about it."

"Then don't fight it," Jubal advised. "Relax and be happy."

"The hell I will! I'll get that-"

"Tut, tut! You've won, Ben. And you're alive� which I would have given long odds against, earlier today. Douglas is going to do exactly what we want him to - and smile and like it."

"I want to talk about that. I think-"

"I think you're going to bed. Now. With a glass of warm milk to conceal Old Doe Harshaw's Secret Ingredient for secret drinkers."

Shortly thereafter Caxton was in bed and beginning to snore. Jubal was puttering around, heading for bed himself, and encountered Anne in the upper hall. He shook his head tiredly. "Quite a day, lass."

"Yes, quite. I wouldn't have missed it� and I don't want to repeat it. You go to bed, Boss."

"In a moment. Anne, tell me something. What's so special about the way that lad kisses?"

Anne looked dreamy and then dimpled. "You should have tried it when he invited you to."

"I'm too old to change my ways. But I'm interested in everything about the boy. Is this actually something different, too?"

Anne pondered it. "Yes."

"How?"

"Mike gives a kiss his whole attention."

"Oh, rats! I do myself. Or did."

Anne shook her head. "No. Some men try to. I've been kissed by men who did a very good job of it indeed. But they don't really give kissing a woman their whole attention. They can't No matter how hard they try, some parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus, maybe- Or how their chances are for making the gal- Or their own techniques in kissing- Or maybe worry about their jobs, or money, or will husband or papa or the neighbors catch on. Or something. Now Mike doesn't have any technique� but when Mike kisses you he isn't doing anything else. Not anything. You're his whole universe for that moment and the moment is eternal because he doesn't have any plans and he isn't going anywhere. Just kissing you." She shivered. "A woman notices. It's overwhelming."

"Hmm-"

"Don't 'Hmm' at me, you old lecher! You don't understand."

"No. And I'm sorry to say I probably never will. Well, goodnight - and, oh, by the way� I told Mike to bolt his door tonight."

She made a face at him. "Spoilsport!"

"He's learning quite fast enough. Mustn't rush him."

THE CONFERENCE WAS POSTPONED to the afternoon, then quickly re-postponed to the following morning, which gave Caxton an extra twenty-four hours of badly needed recuperation, a chance to hear in detail about his missing week, a chance to "grow closer" with the Man from Mars - for Mike grokked at once that Jill and Ben were "water brothers," consulted Jill about it, and solemnly offered water to Ben.

Ben had been adequately briefed by Jill. He accepted it just as solemnly and without mental reservations� after soul searching in which he decided that his own destiny was, in truth, interwoven with that of the Man from Mars - through his own initiative before he ever met Mike.

Ben had had to chase down, in the crannies of his soul, one uneasy feeling before he was able to do this. He at last decided that it was simple jealousy, and, being such, had to be cauterized. He had discovered that he felt irked at the closeness between Mike and Jill. His own bachelor persona, he learned, had been changed by a week of undead oblivion; he found that he wanted to be married, and to Jill. He proposed to her again, without a trace of joking about it, as soon as he got her alone.

Jill had looked away. "Please, Ben."

"Why not? I'm solvent, I've got a fairly good job, I'm in good health - or I will be, as soon as I get their condemned 'truth' drugs washed out of my system� and since I haven't, quite, I feel an overpowering compulsion to tell the truth right now. I love you. I want you to marry me and let me rub your poor tired feet. So why not? I don't have any vices that you don't share with me and we get along together better than most married couples. Am I too old for you? I'm not that old! Or are you planning to marry somebody else?"

"No, neither one! Dear Ben� Ben, I love you. But don't ask me to marry you now. I have� responsibilities."

He could not shake her firmness. Admittedly, Mike was more nearly Jill's age - almost exactly her age, in fact, which made Ben slightly more than ten years older than they were. But he believed Jill when she denied that age was a factor; the age difference wasn't too great and it helped, all things considered, for a husband to be older than his wife.

But he finally realized that the Man from Mars couldn't be a rival - he was simply Jill's patient. And at that point Ben accepted that a man who marries a nurse must live with the fact that nurses feel maternal toward their charges - live with it and like it, he added, for if Gillian had not had the character that made her a nurse, he would not love her. It was not the delightful figure-eight in which her pert fanny waggled when she walked, nor even the still pleasanter and very mammalian view from the other direction - he was not, thank God, the permanently infantile type, interested solely in the size of the mammary glands! No, it was Jill herself he loved.

Since what she was would make it necessary for him to take second place from time to time to patients who needed her (unless she retired, of course, and he could not be sure it would stop completely even then, Jill being Jill), then he was bloody-be-damned not going to start by being jealous of the patient she had now! Mike was a nice kid-just as innocent and guileless as Jill had described him to be.

And besides, he wasn't offering Jill any bed of roses; the wife of a working newspaperman had things to put up with, too. He might be - he would be - gone for weeks at times and his hours were always irregular. He wouldn't like it if Jill bitched about it. But Jill wouldn't. Not Jill.

Having reached this summing up, Ben accepted the water ceremony from Mike whole-heartedly.

Jubal needed the extra day to plan tactics. "Ben, when you dumped this hot potato in my lap I told Gililan that I would not lift a finger to get this boy his so-called 'rights.' But I've changed my mind. We're not going to let the government have the swag."