As the court was breaking up I spoke to Lear with my voice lowered. "That was probably the most unique murder weapon in history."
He whispered, "If you said that in company I could sue for slander."
"Yeah? Really? Are you going to explain to a jury what you think I implied happened?"
"No, I'll let you get away with it this time."
"Hell, you didn't get away scot-free yourself. What are you going to study now?
The only known black hole in the universe, and you let it drop through your fingers."
Lear frowned. "You're right. Partly right, anyway. But I knew as much about it as I was going to, the way I was going. Now... I stopped it vibrating in there, then took the mass of the entire setup with the Forward Mass Sensor. Now the black hole isn't in there any more. I can get the mass of the black hole by taking the mass of the communicator alone."
"And I can cut the machine open, see what's inside. How they controlled it. Damn it, I wish I were six years old."
"What? Why?"
"Well... I don't have the times straightened out. The math is chancy. Either a few years from now, or a few centuries, there's going to be a black hole between Earth and Jupiter. It'll be big enough to study. I think about forty years."
When I realized what he was implying, I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. "Lear, you can't think that something that small could absorb Mars!"
"Well, remember that it absorbs everything it comes near. A nucleus here, an electron there... and it's not just waiting for atoms to fall into it. Its gravity is ferocious, and it's falling back and forth through the center of the planet, sweeping up matter. The more it eats, the bigger it gets, with its volume going up as the cube of the mass. Sooner or later, yes, it'll absorb Mars. By then it'll be just less than a millimeter across—big enough to see."
"Could it happen within thirteen months?"
"Before we leave? Hmm." Lear's eyes took on a faraway look. "I don't think so. I'll have to work it out. The math is chancy...
The Fourth Profession
The doorbell rang around noon on Wednesday.
I sat up in bed and—it was the oddest of hangovers. My head didn't spin. My sense of balance was quiveringly alert. At the same time my mind was clogged with the things I knew: facts that wouldn't relate, churning in my head.
It was like walking the high wire while simultaneously trying to solve an Agatha Christie mystery. Yet I was doing neither. I was just sitting up in bed, blinking.
I remembered the Monk, and the pills. How many pills?
The bell rang again.
Walking to the door was an eerie sensation. Most people pay no attention to their somesthetic senses. Mine were clamoring for attention, begging to be tested—by a backflip, for instance. I resisted. I don't have the muscles for doing backflips.
I couldn't remember taking any acrobatics pills.
The man outside my door was big and blond and blocky. He was holding an unfamiliar badge up to the lens of my spy-eye, in a wide hand with short, thick fingers. He had candid blue eyes, a square, honest face—a face I recognized. He'd been in the Long Spoon last night, at a single table in a corner.
Last night he had looked morose, introspective, like a man whose girl had left him for Mr. Wrong. A face guaranteed to get him left alone. I'd noticed him only because he wasn't drinking enough to match the face.
Today he looked patient, endlessly patient, with the patience of a dead man.
And he had a badge. I let him in.
"William Morris," he said, identifying himself. "Secret Service. Are you Edward Harley Frazer, owner of the Long Spoor Bar?"
"Part-owner."
"Yes, that's right. Sony to bother you, Mr. Frazer. I see you keep bartender's hours." He was looking at the wrinkled pair of underpants I had on.
"Sit down," I said, waving at the chair. I badly needed to sit down myself. Standing, I couldn't think about anything but standing. My balance was all-conscious. My heels would not rest solidly on the floor. They barely touched. My weight was all on my toes; my body insisted on standing that way.
So I dropped onto the edge of the bed, but it felt like I was giving a trampoline performance. The poise, the grace, the polished ease! Hell. "What do you want from me, Mr. Morris? Doesn't the Secret Service guard the President?"
His answer sounded like rote-memory. "Among other concerns, such as counterfeiting, we do guard the President and his immediate family and the President-elect, and the Vice President if he asks us to." He paused. "We used to guard foreign dignitaries too."
That connected. "You're here about the Monk."
"Right." Morris looked down at his hands. He should have had an air of professional self-assurance to go with the badge. It wasn't there. "This is an odd case, Frazer. We took it because it used to be our job to protect foreign visitors, and because nobody else would touch it."
"So last night you were in the Long Spoon guarding a visitor from outer space."
"Just so."
"V/here were you night before last?"
"Was that when he first appeared?"
"Yah," I said, remembering. "Monday night..."
He came in an hour after opening time. He seemed to glide, with the hem of his robe just brushing the floor. By his gait he might have been, moving on wheels. His shape was wrong, in a way that made your eyes want to twist around to straighten it out.
There is something queer about the garment that gives a Monk his name. The hood is open in front, as if eyes might hide within its shadow, and the front of the robe is open too. But the loose cloth hides more than it ought to. There is too much shadow.
Once I thought the robe parted as he walked toward me. But there seemed to be nothing inside.
In the Long Spoon was utter silence. Every eye was on the Monk as he took a stool at one end of the bar, and ordered.
He looked alien, and was. But he seemed supernatural.
He used the oddest of drinking systems. I keep my house brands on three long shelves, more or less in order of type. The Monk moved down the top row of bottles, right to left, ordering a shot from each bottle. He took his liquor straight, at room temperature. He drank quietly, steadily, and with what seemed to be total concentration.
He spoke only to order.
He showed nothing of himself but one hand. That hand looked like a chicken's foot, but bigger, with lumpy-looking, very flexible joints, and with five toes instead of four.
At closing time the Monk was four bottles from the end of the row. He paid me in one dollar bills, and left, moving steadily, the hem of his robe just brushing the floor. I testify as an expert: he was sober. The alcohol had not affected him at all.
"Monday night," I said. "He shocked the hell out of us. Morris, what was a Monk doing in a bar in Hollywood? I thought all the Monks were in New York."
"So did we."
"Oh?"
‘We didn't know he was on the West Coast until it hit the newspapers yesterday morning. That's why you didn't see more reporters yesterday. We kept them off your back. I came in last night to question you, Frazer. I changed my mind when I saw that the Monk was already here."
"Question me. Why? All I did was serve him drinks."
"Okay, let's start there. Weren't you afraid the alcohol might kill a Monk?"
‘It occurred to me."
"Well?"
"I served him what he asked for. It's the Monks' own doing that nobody knows anything about Monks. We don't even know what shape they are, let alone how they're put together. If liquor does things to a Monk, it's his own lookout. Let him check the chemistry."