“Oh, Lord, yes!  I’ve just about had it for today.”

He guided her toward one of the bartending machines, inserted his credit key, and put a four-portion jug under the spout, dialing the cocktail they always had when they drank together.  As he did, he noticed what she was wearing:  short black jacket, lavender neckerchief, light gray skirt.  Not her usual vacation get-up.

“School department drag you back?” he asked as the jug filled.

“Juvenile court.”  She got a couple of glasses from the shelf under the machine as he picked up the jug.  “A fifteen-year-old burglar.”

They found a table at the rear of the room, out of the worst of the cocktail-hour uproar.  As soon as he filled her glass, she drank half of it, then lit a cigarette.

“Junktown?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Only twenty-five years since this planet was discovered, and we have slums already.  I was over there most of the afternoon, with a pair of city police.”  She didn’t seem to want to talk about it.  “What were you doing today?”

“Ruth, you ought to ask Doc Mallin to drop in on Leonard Kellogg sometime, and give him an unobstusive going over.”

“You haven’t been having trouble with him again?” she asked anxiously.

He made a face, and then tasted his drink.  “It’s trouble just being around that character.  Ruth, to use one of those expressions your profession deplores, Len Kellogg is just plain nuts!” He drank some more of his cocktail and helped himself to one of her cigarettes.  “Here,” he continued, after lighting it.  “A couple of days ago, he told me he’d been getting inquiries about this plague of land-prawns they’re having over on Beta.  He wanted me to set up a research project to find out why and what to do about it.”

“Well?”

“I did.  I made two screen calls, and then I wrote a report and sent it up to him.  That was where I jerked my trigger; I ought to have taken a couple of weeks and made a real production out of it.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The facts.  The limiting factor on land-prawn increase is the weather.  The eggs hatch underground and the immature prawns dig their way out in the spring.  If there’s been a lot of rain, most of them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge.  According to growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta Piedmont in centuries, so most of them survived, and as they’re parthenogenetic females, they all laid eggs.  This spring, it was even drier, so now they have land prawns all over central Beta.  And I don’t know that anything can be done about them.”

“Well, did he think you were just guessing?”

He shook his head in exasperation.  “I don’t know what he thinks.  You’re the psychologist, you try to figure it.  I sent him that report yesterday morning.  He seemed quite satisfied with it at the time.  Today, just after noon, he sent for me and told me it wouldn’t do at all.  Tried to insist that the rainfall on Beta had been normal.  That was silly; I referred him to his meteorologists and climatologists, where I’d gotten my information.  He complained that the news services were after him for an explanation.  I told him I’d given him the only explanation there was.  He said he simply couldn’t use it.  There had to be some other explanation.”