At that instant, the door dilated and two blue detective engines hustled a struggling young man into the office. He was slim, rather handsome, had a bushy head of hair that had somehow survived evolution and radioactive fallout, and across the chest and back of his paper singlet was neatly stamped: "Richard Rowe."
When he saw the two men, he stopped struggling and straightened up. "Excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "but these police machines must have made a mistake. I've committed no crime."
Then his gaze fell on the hand-addressed envelope on Krumbine's desk and he turned pale.
Krumbine laughed harshly. "No crime! No, not at all. Merely using the mails to communicate. Ha!"
The young man shrank back. "I'm sorry, sir."
"Sorry, he says! Do you realize that your insane prank has resulted in the destruction of perhaps a half-billion pieces of first-class advertising?—in the strangulation of a postal station and the paralysis of Lower Manhattan?—in the mobilization of SBI reserves, the de-mothballing of two divisions of G. I. machines and the redeployment of the Solar Battle Fleet? Good Lord, boy, why did you do it?"
