“Where’ve you been all your life?” he grinned. But not offensively.

Some football game or other, the house dick supposed. Personally a crackling good super-science story still had the edge on twenty-two huskies squabbling over a pig’s inflated hide, as far as he was concerned.

Hastings came back from the game still sober. Or if he’d had a drink it didn’t show. “We lost,” he said casually at the desk on his way up, but it didn’t seem to depress him any. His phone, the operator reported later, rang six times in the next quarter of an hour, all feminine voices. He was apparently getting booked up solid for the rest of the weekend.

Two girls and a fellow, in evening clothes, called for him about nine. Striker saw them sitting waiting for him in the lobby, chirping and laughing their heads off. He came down in about five minutes, all rigged up for the merry-merry, even down to a white carnation in his lapel.

Striker watched them go, half wistfully. “That’s the life,” he said to the man behind the desk.

“May as well enjoy it while you can,” said Dennison philosophically. “Here today and gone tomorrow.”

Hastings hadn’t come back yet by the time Striker went up and turned in. Not that Striker was thinking about him particularly, but he just hadn’t seen him. He read a swell story about mermaids kidnaping a deep-sea diver, and dropped off to sleep.

The call came through to his room at about four thirty in the morning. It took him a minute or two to come out of the deep sleep he’d been in.

“Hurry it up, will you, Strike?” Maxon was whining impatiently. “The young guy in 913 has taken a flier out his window.”

Striker hung up, thinking blurredly, “Where’ve I heard that before—913?” Then he remembered—last year, from the very same room.

He filled the hollow of his hand with cold water from the wash-stand, dashed it into his eyes, shrugged into some clothing, and ran down the fire stairs at one side of the elevator shaft. That was quicker than waiting for the venerable mechanism to crawl up for him, then limp down again.

Maxon, who was a reformed drunk, gave him a look eloquent of disgust as Striker chased by the desk. “I’m getting off the wagon again if this keeps up—then I’ll have some fun out of all these bum jolts.”

There was more of a crowd this time. The weather was milder and there were more night-owls in the vicinity to collect around him and gape morbidly. The kid had fallen farther out into the street than Hopper—he didn’t weigh as much, maybe. He was lying there face down in the shape of a Greek cross. He hadn’t undressed yet, either. Only his shoes and dinner jacket had been taken off. One strap of his black suspenders had torn off, due to the bodily contortion of the descent or from the impact itself. The white of his shirt was pretty badly changed by now, except the sleeves. He’d had a good-looking face; that was all gone too. They were turning him over as Striker came up.