"When will you be back?"

"I'm not sure. A week or two. Maybe longer."

She tried to keep her voice low, but she couldn't help it, she was upset. "What is it?" she said. "Are you under arrest?"

"No," he said, with a slight smile. "It's nothing like that. Make my apologies to everyone, will you?"

"But the guns—"

"Mrs. Stone," the military man said, "it's our job to protect your husband. From now on, nothing must be allowed to happen to him."

"That's right," Stone said. "You see, I'm suddenly an important person. " He smiled again, an odd, crooked smile, and gave her a kiss.

And then, almost before she knew what was happening, he was walking out the door, with Captain Morton on one side of him and the other man on the other. The man with the rifle wordlessly fell into place behind them; the man by the car saluted and opened the door.

Then the car lights came on, and the doors slammed shut, and the car backed down the drive and drove off into the night. She was still standing by the door when one of her guests came up behind her and said, "Allison, are you all right?"

And she turned, and found she was able to smile and say, "Yes, it's nothing. Jeremy had to leave. The lab called him: another one of his late-night experiments going wrong."

The guest nodded and said, "Shame. It's a delightful party."

In the car, Stone sat back and stared at the men. He recalled that their faces were blank and expressionless. He said, "What have you got for me?"

"Got, sir?"

"Yes, dammit. What did they give you for me? They must have given you something."

"Oh. Yes sir."

He was handed a slim file. Stenciled on the brown cardboard cover was PROJECT SUMMARY: SCOOP.

"Nothing else?" Stone said.

"No sir."

Stone sighed. He had never heard of Project Scoop before; the file would have to be read carefully. But it was too dark in the car to read; there would be time for that later, on the airplane. He found himself thinking back over the last five years, back to the rather odd symposium on Long Island, and the rather odd little speaker from England who had, in his own way, begun it all.

In the summer of 1962, J. J. Merrick, the English biophysicist, presented a paper to the Tenth Biological Symposium at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. The paper was entitled "Frequencies of Biologic Contact According to Speciation Probabilities." Merrick was a rebellious, unorthodox scientist whose reputation for clear thinking was not enhanced by his recent divorce or the presence of the handsome blond secretary he had brought with him to the symposium. Following the presentation of his paper, there was little serious discussion of Merrick's ideas, which were summarized at the end of the paper.