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Krumbine blanched as his eyes slowly traced the uneven lines in the upper left-hand corner:

from Richard Rowe

215 West 10th St. (horizontal)

2837 Rocket Court (vertical)

Hive 37, NewNew York 319, N. Y.

Columbia, Terra

“Ugh!” Krumbine said, shivering. “Those crawling characters, those letters, as you call them, those things barely enough like print to be readable—they seem to be on the verge of awakening all sorts of horrid racial memories. I find myself thinking of fur-clad witch-doctors dipping long pointed sticks in bubbling black cauldrons. No wonder Pink Wastebasket couldn’t take it, brave girl.”

Firming himself behind his desk, he pushed a number of buttons and spoke long numbers and meaningful alphabetical syllables into several microphones. Banks of colored lights around the desk began to blink like a theatre marquee sending Morse Code, while phosphorescent arrows crawled purposefully across maps and space-charts and through three-dimensional street diagrams.

“There!” he said at last. “The sender of the letter is being apprehended and will be brought directly here. We’ll see what sort of man this Richard Rowe is—if we can assume he’s human. Seven precautionary cordons are being drawn around his population station: three composed of machines, two of SBI agents, and two consisting of human and mechanical medical-combat teams. Same goes for the intended recipient of the letter. Meanwhile, a destroyer squadron of the Solar Fleet has been detached to orbit over NewNew York.”