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stand to be a failure at what we agreed was the most important thing in our lives.” Panting, he mopped at his forehead with his handkerchief, his hands trembling.
    “I don’t even have my jug any more,” Al said presently.
    “You must. Well, we could each record our parts separately on my jug and then synthesize them on one tape, and present that to the White House. This trapped feeling, I don’t know if I can go on living with it. I have to get back to playing. If we started practicing right now on the ‘Goldberg Variations’ in two months we—”
    Al broke in, “You still live at that place? That big Abraham Lincoln establishment?”
    Ian nodded.
    “And you still have that job with that Bavarian cartel? You’re still a gear inspector?” He could not understand why Ian Duncan was so upset. “Hell, if worst comes to worst you can emigrate. Jug-playing is out of the question. I haven’t played for years, since I last saw you, in fact. Just a minute.” He dialed the knobs of the mechanism which controlled the papoola; near the sidewalk the creature responded and began to return slowly to its spot beneath the sign.
    Seeing it, Ian said, “I thought they were all dead.”
    “They are,” Al said.
    “But that one out there moves and—”
    “It’s a fake,” Al said, “a simulacrum, like those things they use for colonizing. I control it.” He showed his old-time buddy the control box. “It brings in people off the sidewalk. Actually, Luke is supposed to have a genuine one on which these are modeled. Nobody knows for sure and the law can’t touch Luke. The NP can’t make him cough up the real one, if he does have it.” Al seated himself and lit his pipe. “Fail your relpol test,” he said to Ian. “Lose your apartment and get back your original deposit. Bring me the money and I’ll see that you get a damn fine jalopy that’ll take you to Mars. How about it?”
    “I tried to fail my test,” Ian said, “but they won’t let me. They doctored the results. They don’t want me to get away. They won’t let me go.”
    “Who’s ‘they’?”
    “The man in the next apartment at The Abraham Lincoln. Edgar Stone, his name is—I think. He did it deliberately. I saw the expression on his face. Maybe he imagined he was doing me a favor. . . . I don’t know.” He glanced around him. “This is a nice little office you have here. You sleep in it, don’t you? And when it moves, you move with it.”
    “Yes,” Al said, “we’re always prepared to take off.” The NP had almost gotten him a number of times, even though the lot could obtain orbital velocity in six minutes. The papoola had detected their approach, but not sufficiently far in advance for a comfortable escape; generally it was hurried and disorganized, with part of his inventory of jalopies being left behind.
    “You’re barely one jump ahead of them,” Ian mused. “And yet it doesn’t bother you. I guess it’s all in your attitude.”
    “If they get me,” Al said, “Luke will bail me out.” So what did he have to worry about? His employer was a powerful man; the Thibodeaux clan limited their attacks on him to deepthink articles in popular magazines harping on Luke’s vulgarity and the shoddiness of his jalopies.
    “I envy you,” Ian said. “Your poise. Your calmness.”
    “Doesn’t your building have a skypilot? Go talk with him.”
    Ian said bitterly, “That’s no good. Right now it’s Patrick Doyle and he’s as bad off as I am. And Don Tishman, our chairman, is even worse off; he’s a bundle of nerves. In fact our whole building is shot through with anxiety. Maybe it has to do with Nicole’s sinus headaches.”
    Glancing at him, Al saw that he was actually serious. The White House and all it stood for meant that much to him; it still dominated his life, as it had years ago when they had been buddies in the Service. “For your sake,” Al said quietly. “I’ll get my jug out and practice. We’ll make one more