It had never appealed to me. I wasn't fifty-five, I didn't want to retire, and I hadn't seen anything wrong with 1970.

Until recently, that is to say. Now I was retired whether I liked it or not (I didn't); instead of being on my honeymoon I was sitting in a second-rate bar drinking Scotch purely for anesthesia; instead of a wife I had one much-scarred tomcat with a neurotic taste for ginger ale; and as for liking right now, I would have swapped it for a case of gin and then busted every bottle.

But I wasn't broke.

I reached into my coat and took out an envelope, opened it. It had two items in it. One was a certified check for more money than I had ever had before at one time; the other was a stock certificate in Hired Girl, Inc. They were both getting a little mussed; I had been carrying them ever since they were handed to me.

Why not?

Why not duck out and sleep my troubles away? Pleasanter than joining the Foreign Legion, less messy than suicide, and it would divorce me completely from the events and the people who had made my life go sour. So why not?

I wasn't terribly interested in the chance to get rich. Oh, I had read H. G. Wells's When The Sleeper Wakes, not only when the insurance companies started giving away free copies, but before that, when it was just another classic novel; I knew what compound interest and stock appreciation could do. But I was not sure that I had enough money both to buy the Long Sleep and to set up a trust large enough to be worth while. The other argument appealed to me more: go beddy-bye and wake up in a different world. Maybe a lot better world, the way the insurance companies would have you believe... or maybe worse. But certainly different.

I could make sure of one important difference: I could doze long enough to be certain that it was a world without Belle Darkin-or Miles Gentry, either, but Belle especially. If Belle was dead and buried I could forget her, forget what she had done to me, cancel her out...nstead of gnawing my heart with the knowledge that she was only a few miles away.

Let's see, how long would that have to be? Belle was twenty-three-or claimed to be (I recalled that once she had seemed to let slip that she remembered Roosevelt as President). Well, in her twenties anyhow. If I slept seventy years, she'd be an obituary. Make it seventy-five and be safe.

Then I remembered the strides they were making in geriatrics; they were talking about a hundred and twenty years as an attainable "normal" life span. Maybe I would have to sleep a hundred years. I wasn't certain that any insurance company offered that much.

Then I had a gently fiendish idea, inspired by the warm glow of Scotch. It wasn't necessary to sleep until Belie was dead; it was enough, more than enough, and just the fitting revenge on a female to be young when she was old. Just enough younger to rub her nose in it-say about thirty years.

I felt a paw, gentle as a snowflake, on my arm. "Mooorrre!" announced Pete.

"Greedy gut," I told him, and poured him another saucer of ginger ale. He thanked me with a polite wait, then started lapping it.

But he had interrupted my pleasantly nasty chain of thought. What the devil could I do about Pete?

You can't give away a cat the way you can a dog; they won't stand for it. Sometimes they go with the house, but not in Pete's case; to him I had been the one stable thing in a changing world ever since he was taken from his mother nine years earlier... I had even managed to keep him near me in the Army and that takes real wangling.

He was in good health and likely to stay that way even though he was held together with scar tissue. If he could just correct a tendency to lead with his right he would be winning battles and siring kittens for another five years at least.

I could pay to have him kept in a kennel until he died (unthinkable!) or I could have him chloroformed (equally unthinkable)-or I could abandon him. That is what it boils down to with a cat: you either carry out the Chinese obligation you have assumed-or you abandon the poor thing, let him go wild, destroy its faith in the eternal rightness.

The way Belle had destroyed mine.

So, Danny Boy, you might as well forget it. Your own life may have gone as sour as dill pickles; that did not excuse you in the slightest from your obligation to carry out your contract to this super-spoiled cat.

Just as I reached that philosophical truth Pete sneezed; the bubbles had gone up his nose. "Gesundheit," I answered, "and quit trying to drink it so fast."

Pete ignored me. His table manners averaged better than mine and he knew it. Our waiter had been hanging around the cash register, talking with the cashier. It was the after-lunch slump and the only other customers were at the bar. The waiter looked up when I said "Gesundheit," and spoke to the cashier. They both looked our way, then the cashier lifted the flap gate in the bar and headed toward us.

I said quietly, "MPs, Pete."

He glanced around and ducked down into the bag; I pushed the top together. The cashier came over and leaned on my table, giving the seats on both sides of the booth a quick double-O. "Sony, friend," he said flatly, "but you'll have to get that cat out of here."

"What cat?"

"The one you were feeding out of that saucer."

"I don't see any cat."

This time he bent down and looked under the table. "You've got him in that bag," he accused.

"Bag? Cat?" I said wonderingly. "My friend, I think you've come down with an acute figure of speech."

"Huh? Don't give me any fancy language. You've got a cat in that bag. Open it up."

"Do you have a search warrant?"

"What? Don't be silly."

"You're the one talking silly, demanding to see the inside of my bag without a search warrant. Fourth Amendment-and the war has been over for years. Now that we've settled that, please tell my waiter to make it the same all around-or fetch it yourself."

He looked pained. "Brother, this isn't anything personal, but I've got a license to consider. `No dogs, no cats-it says so right up there on the wall. We aim to run a sanitary establishment."

"Then your aim is poor." I picked up my glass. "See the lipstick marks? You ought to be checking your dishwasher, not searching your customers."

"I don't see no lipstick."

"I wiped most of it off. But let's take it down to the Board of Health and get the bacteria count checked."

He sighed. "You got a badge?"

"No."

"Then we're even. I don't search your bag and you don't take me down to the Board of Health. Now if you want another drink, step up to the bar and have it... on the house. But not here." He turned and headed up front.

I shrugged. "We were just leaving anyhow."

As I started to pass the cashier's desk on my way out he looked up. "No hard feelings?"

"Nope. But I was planning to bring my horse in here for a drink later. Now I won't."

"Suit yourself. The ordinance doesn't say a word about horses. But just one more thing-does that cat really drink ginger ale?"

"Fourth Amendment, remember?"

"I don't want to see the animal; I just want to know."

"Well," I admitted, "he prefers it with a dash of bitters, but he'll drink it straight if he has to."

"It'll ruin his kidneys. Look here a moment, friend."

"At what?"

"Lean back so that your head is close to where mine is. Now look up at the ceiling over each booth... the mirrors up in the decorations. I knew there was a cat there-because I saw it."

I leaned back and looked. The ceiling of the joint had a lot of junky decoration, including many mirrors; I saw now that a number of them, camouflaged by the design, were so angled as to permit the cashier to use them as periscopes without leaving his station. "We need that," he said apologetically. "You'd be shocked at what goes on in those booths... if we didn't keep an eye on `em. It's a sad world."