Minnn was shocked to find that, almost the opposite of Sally, Perfesser Frye was a complete liar. He was not a professor, and the knowledge he impressed people with was mostly a collection of long, mispronounced words and memorized facts of which the Perfesser did not know the meaning. His landlady believed he was coming into an immense inheritance based on platinum on Vega, and she allowed him a familiarity which Minnn found amusing and which included rent exemption. The man was a collection of lies. Even his rheumatism was not genuine, but psychosomatic.
That evening the Perfesser had the unpleasant experience of seeing his own face on the landlady's show-visor set, with the information that there was a price on his head. This was the last he remembered for some time, although to the landlady he appeared to retain full consciousness. He leaped to his feet most unrheumatically, tied her up, bashed in the visor, and pattered out into the streets, which were deserted.
The Perfesser had good eyes for distance use, Minnn found. He swung the Perfesser's hook-beaked head about searchingly. At the end of the street men were coming, in mento-insulation. Minnn swung the lanky frame about, almost capsizing it, and sprinted long-leggedly in the opposite direction.
In a few blocks the heart was pounding and the face was hot and the lungs could not suck enough oxygen. The Perfesser was not feeling anything consciously, but his parasympathetic nervous system was giving Minnn the horrors.
The cops could not be seen. Minnn withdrew to rest. The Perfesser came to an abrupt halt, and gazed about him glassily. He remembered the nightmarish moment watching the visor; now he found himself in the street panting like a horse and raining sweat. He stood getting his breath and trying to think, then moved off purposefully....
Chester's eyes felt like they would drop out on his desk at any moment. He had had no sleep. He was entertaining a plan to visit the Ravians, in disguise, as a tourist, and make things miserable for them, when two buzzers rang at once.
He answered his chief's buzzer first. Had Minnn been caught? No? Well, the governor had called and the heat was on. The chief was forced to give Forge a choice of producing Minnn in 24 hours or being sent as supercargo to the Mars-deserts. That was all.
The second buzzer was Monnn, speaking through "a talking-attendant."
"Your two days are up this evening," said the Ravian. "Any progress?"