Thirty-six minutes and twenty seconds after Woodard's cerebral disintegration came his impalpabilization.
"Three hours, forty-one minutes, twenty-one seconds," Nodus intoned, and Russ jotted down the melancholy figures. The girl emitted a small shriek of joy and started impetuously for the chair that had been Woodard's. But Nodus raised a preventive arm. "Not yet," he warned. "Not for a few minutes. There may be anarchic sonic residuum. We don't know. And anyway—what's there to see this time? Absolutely nothing left."
"Except his car," said Russ. He spoke with a lisping dreaminess.
"You'll park it by one of the fishing piers. Woodard said as he left here that he'd stop for a late swim."
"Just lovely," sighed the girl. And Russ nodded in slow motion.
Nodus smiled almost reluctantly. Perfectionist that he was, it would be long before he was wholly satisfied. He turned to the girl. "Your idea of substituting the partitas for the Mahler 'Farewell' was very sound. I'm interested in the reasoning."
Her nostrils flaring at the heady draught of his praise, she giggled shyly. "I hoped the partitas would work, because Mahler really fractures me. That 'Farewell' would have finished me—even where I was sitting."
His glance rested on her as if he would bear this in mind. Then he said "It should be safe to look closely now," and he led his technicians to the vacant chair.
"No nasty mess to clean up!" raved the girl. "Nothing like that Ward, with his dreadful post-distillation residuum!" And as Nodus and Russ exchanged smiles at her woman's viewpoint—"Who's next?" she demanded.
Russ was inspired. "That frightful old woman at the hotel!"