“I feel like singing.”
“So what?”
“Well, I feel like singing ‘St. James Infirmary.’ ”
“Go right ahead,” Smeith invited.
“But not alone,” Gallegher amplified. “I always like to sing that when I get tight, but I figure it sounds best as a duet. Only I was alone when I was working on that machine.”
“Ah?”
“I must have built hi a recording play-back,” Gallegher said, lost in a vast wonder at the mad resources and curious deviations of Gallegher Plus. “My goodness. A machine that performs four operations at once. It eats dirt, turns out a spaceship manual control, makes a stereoscopic nondistorting projection screen, and sings a duet with me. How strange it all seems.”
Smeith considered. “You’re a genius.”
“That, of course. Hm-m-m.” Gallegher got up, turned on the machine, and returned to perch atop Bubbles. Smeith, fascinated by the spectacle, went to hang on the window sill and watch the flashing tentacles eat dirt. Invisible wire spun out along the grooved wheel. The calm of the night was shattered by the more or less melodious tones of the “St. James Infirmary.”
Above the lugubrious voice of the machine rose a deeper bass, passionately exhorting someone unnamed to search the wild world over.