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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?”

Richard Rowe continued to shrink but he squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry, sir, but I just had to. I just had to get in touch with Jane Dough.”

“A girl from another hive? A girl you’d merely gazed at because a guide happened to blow a fuse?” Krumbine stood up, shaking an angry finger. “Great Scott, boy, where was Your Girl Next Door?”