“Don’t be silly,” I said. “How can I recognize you at midper—” My eyes suddenly caught a glimpse of the clock past her shoulder, and it was a clock and not a funeral wreath or a cuckoo’s nest, and I realized suddenly that everything else in the room was back to normal. And that meant midperiod was over, and I wasn’t seeing things.
My eyes went back to the redhead. She must be real, I realized. And suddenly I knew her, although she’d changed, changed plenty. All changes were improvements, although Michaelina Witt had been a very pretty girl when she’d been in my Extraterrestrial Botany III class at Earth City Polytech four… no, five years ago.
She’d been pretty, then. Now she was beautiful. She was stunning. How had the teletalkies missed her? Or had they? What was she doing here? She must have just got off the Ark, but— I realized I was still gawking at her. I stood up so fast I almost fell across the desk.
“Of course I remember you, Miss Witt,” I stammered. “Won’t you sit down? How did you come here? Have they relaxed the no visitors rule?”
She shook her head, smiling. “I’m not a visitor, Mr. Rand. Center advertised for a technician-secretary for you, and I tried for the job and got it, subject to your approval, of course. I’m on probation for a month, that is.”
“Wonderful,” I said. It was a masterpiece of understatement. I started to elaborate on it: “Marvelous—”
There was the sound of someone clearing his throat. I looked around; Reagan was in the doorway. This time not as a blue skeleton or a two-headed monster. Just plain Reagan.
He said, “Answer to your radiotype just came.” He crossed over and dropped it on my desk. I looked at it. “O.K. August 19th,” it read. My momentary wild hope that they’d failed to accept my resignation went down among the widgie birds. They’d been as brief about it as I’d been.
August 19th—the next arrival of the Ark. They certainly weren’t wasting any time—mine or theirs. Four days!
Reagan said, “I thought you’d want to know right away, Phil.”