“Really? You know why I like it better? More chicks in little short outfits. At least in the original one. The Next Generation, they toned it down a bit. Until that Voyager show, and the Borg chick, with the really tight costume. Man.”

Suddenly, as if he’d forgotten something, he went back into the study. A moment later he returned to the kitchen holding a model of the saucerlike spacecraft from Lost in Space, the Jupiter 2. Actually, he was flying it more than holding it, carrying it a couple of inches away from his eyes. One was closed, the other squinting, like he was picturing the craft zooming through the galaxy.

“Okay, I’m taking this, too, but there’s a part that’s broken off it.”

“It’s the door,” I said. “It needs to be glued back on. It’s on the shelf right where the model was.”

And then he was gone, looking for it. He returned with the model ship, the door, and a small container of liquid plastic cement he’d found on my modeling table.

“I want you to fix it,” he said. “I was never very good at this sort of thing. I always put on too much glue and ruin it.”

“I’m kind of tied up at the moment.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to let you use your right hand.” He began to unwind the duct tape that held my right wrist to my chair.

“I’m gonna need both hands,” I said. “If I’m going to glue it and then hold the door in place.”

“I look stupid to you? You can do it with one hand. I’ll help you, and then we’re going to talk about finding that ledger for Mr. Greenway.”

He unscrewed the cap on the liquid cement. With my free hand I set the door on its back side so I could apply cement to the parts that would come in contact with the ship.

“How about this,” I said to Rick as I dabbed a bit of glue onto the door. “I’ll tell you more about that ledger, but you have to let me tell you about another story I’m working on first.”

“What? Like another science fiction book?”

“No, this one’s a bit different. It’s sort of a mystery, about a double-cross.”

“Oh yeah? I always like those. Like you think the guy is your friend, but then you find out he’s your enemy.”

“This one’s about a guy who does all the dirty work for his boss, takes all the risks, but gets shafted in the end.”

Rick eyed me warily. “Go on.”

“He even kills for his boss, that way the boss is protected, you know? There’s some distance between him and the crime, so that if he has to, he can deny knowing anything about it.”

Rick frowned. “Doesn’t sound like something that would interest me.”