"I don't know, man. It just came to me. So, like, where do I come in?"

Tach studied the tabletop. In the background forks clove tofu and thunked against earthenware cushioned by soggy romaine lettuce. It had been as much for the tonic effect Mark had on his spirits that he'd come here from the Tombs. But still…

He was out of his depth; he was, as he'd assured Sara, no detective. Now, Mark Meadows, the Last Hippie, didn't on the surface appear a much more promising candidate for sleuth, but he happened also to be Marcus Aurelius Meadows, PhD, the most brilliant biochemist alive. Before dropping out he'd been responsible for a number of breakthroughs, laid the groundwork for many more. He was trained to observe and trained to think. He was a genius.

Also, Tach liked the cut of his coat, which in itself was about enough for a Takisian.

"You've already helped me, Mark. This is your world, after all. You understand its ways better than L" Though I've been on it longer, he realized. "And there are your friends. You do have, ah, others than the two we met on my cousin's ship?" Mark nodded. "Three others, so far."

"Good. I hope these prove more tractable than the others." He hoped one or the other of the Captain's alter egos would have skills that might fall handy; fortunately he could imagine no purpose the surly were-porpoise Aquarius might serve, but the vainglorious coward Cosmic Traveler was another matter. And, even to save poor Doughboy from death in life, he wasn't ready to endure the Traveler again so soon.

He scraped his chair back and rose. "Let us go play detective together, you and L"

The kid had cammie pants and a Rambo rag, standing there on the corner of Hester and the Bowery trying to hold down magazine pages against the wind's tugging. Tach glanced over his shoulder. The article was slugged, "Dr. Death: Selfmade Cyborg Soldier of Fortune Battles Commies in Salvo." The kid looked up as the two men took their places beside him at the newsstand, truculence tightening lean Puerto Rican features. His expression flowed like wax into awe.

He was looking at the center button of a yellow paisley vest. Out over his forehead an immense green bow tie with yellow polka dots blossomed from a pink shirt collar. To either side hung a purple tailcoat. A purple stovepipe hat, its green band embossed in gold peace signs, threatened the wateredmilk overcast.

Yellow-gloved fingers flashed a V "Peace," said the beaky norteamericano face hovering up there amid all that color. The kid tossed the magazine at the proprietor and fled. Captain Trips stood blinking after him, wounded. "What'd I say, man?"

"Never mind," chortled the being behind the counter. "He wouldn't have bought it anyway. What can I do you for, Doctor? And your colorful friend here?"

"Mm," said Mark, sniffing, nostrils wide, "fresh popcorn."

"That's me," Jube said. "That's how I smell." Tachyon winced.

"Far out!"

For a moment glass-bead eyes stared, blue-black skin rumpled up Jubal's forehead: orogenic surprise. Then he laughed.

"I get it! You're a hippie."

The Cap'n beamed. "That's right, man."

Blubber shook. "Goo-goo-goo-Jube," he bellowed. "I am the Walrus. Pleased to meetcha."

He did look like a walrus, five foot nothing, hanging fat, a big smooth skull. with random hair-tufts sticking out from it here and there like rusty shaving brushes, flowing into the collar of his green and black and yellow Hawaiian shirt without the intervention of a neck. He had little white tusks stuck at either end of his grin. He pushed out a Warner Brothers cartoon hand, three fingers and a thumb, which the Captain eagerly shook.

"This is Captain Trips. An ace, a new associate of mine. Captain, meet Jubal Benson. Jube, we need from you some information."

"Shoot." He made a pistol gesture with his right hand, rolled his eyes at Trips.

"What do you know about the joker called Doughboy?" Jube scowled tectonically. "That's a bum rap. Boy wouldn't hurt a fly. He even lives in the same rooming house I do. See him most every day-used to, before this came down."

"He didn't, like, hear people talking about an asteroid crashing into the Earth and get real worked up about it, did he?" Trips asked. A vagrant piece of newsprint had washed up against the backs of his calves on a wind that hadn't yet realized it was spring. He ignored it and the chill alike.

"If he'd heard anything like that, he'd hide under his cot and you'd never get him out till you convinced him it was a joke. IS that what they're claiming?"

Trips nodded.

"The one to talk to is Shiner. He rents the place, feeds Doughboy, and lets him stay there. He's got a shoeshine stand up Bowery almost to Delancey, up where Jokertown's more touristy."

"Would he be there now?" Tach asked.

Jube consulted a Mickey Mouse watch whose band all but vanished into his rubbery wrist. "Lunch hour's over, which means he's prob'ly knocking off himself to eat lunch right now. He should be home. Apartment Six."

Tachyon thanked him. Solemn, Trips tipped his hat. They started off.

"Doc."

"Yes, Jubal."

"Better get this cleared up quick. Things could get very heavy around here this summer if Doughboy gets a railroad job. They say Gimli's back on the streets."

An eyebrow rose. "Tom Miller? But I thought he was in Russia."

The Walrus laid a finger along his broad flat nose. "That's what I mean, Doc. That's what I mean."

"I found him, oh, fifteen, sixteen year ago it was." The man called Shiner sat on his cot in the single room of the apartment on Eldridge Street, rocking to and fro with his hands clasped between skinny knees. "Back in 1970. Wintertime it was. He was sitting there next to a dumpster in a alley behind this mask shop, bawling his eyes out. Mama just took him there and left him."

"That's terrible, man," said Trips. He and Tach were standing on the meticulously swept hardwood floor of the apartment. Shiner's cot and a big mattress with stained ticking were the only furniture.

"Oh, I guess maybe I can understand. He was eleven or twelve, already twice as big as me, stronger'n most men. Must have been powerful hard to take care of."

He was small for an Earther, shorter than Tach. From a distance he looked to be an unexceptional black man in his fifties, with gray-dusted hair and a gold right incisor. Up close you noticed that he shone with an unnatural luster, more like obsidian than skin. "I do my own advertisin', like," he'd explained to Trips when Tachyon introduced them. "Drum up business for my `shine stand."

"How well could Doughboy find his way around the city unaided?" Tachyon asked.

"He couln'nt. Find his way around Jokertown all right, always be jokers looking out for him, you know, seeing he didn't wander off." For a moment he sat and stared at a spill of sunlight in which a tiny metal Ferrari lay on its side. "They say he killed this scientist dude up by the Park. He never even been to the Park but twice. He don't know nothin' about no astronomy."

He squeezed his eyes shut. Tears leaked through. "Oh, Doctor, you got to do something. He's my boy, he's like my son, and he's hurtin'. And there nothing I can do."

Tachyon shifted weight from boot to boot. The Captain plucked a daisy, rather the worse for wear, from his lapel, squatted down and held it out to Shiner.

Sobbing, the black man opened his eyes. They narrowed at once, in suspicion, confusion. Trips just hunkered there with flower proffered. After a moment Shiner took it.

Trips squeezed his hand. A tear fell on his own. He and Tachyon quietly left.

"Dr. Warren was not just a scientist," Martha Quinlan said as she guided them back through the apartment, "he was a saint. The quest to get the truth before the people was never ending for him. He is a martyr to man's quest for Knowledge."