"Oh?" said Mrs. Dorne. "Which one is that?"

"It ain't on no more," said the super, "but, boy, while it lasted the kids sure got a kick out of it. That little Charlotte of mine, she's going to be a real egghead."

"Well what kind of a show was it?"

"Reading," said the super. "Just reading. I ain't sure what they called it, but I know there wasn't no sponsor. Maybe that's why it lasted only two weeks or so. Some kind of test show I guess it was."

"I guess we missed it listening to something else. What channel was it on?"

"Now that you mention it I'm darned if I remember," Chuck Seely said.

"The kids just come home from school one night and parked in front of the TV like always and instead of the westerns and like that here's this guy, just reading. It lasted about an hour every night, we couldn't drag the kids away. Me and the wife got in the habit watching it too."

"Was it Charles Laughton? He has a reading program."

"It wasn't him. I never saw the guy before, but what a voice! No commercials, no scenery, no nothin' except this guy reading. Something different every night, too. Stuff like d.i.c.kens and famous writers like that. I never heard a voice like this guy had, you couldn't stop listening. Then you know what he'd do at the end of the show?"

"What?"

"He'd tell the kids to go get a pencil and write down the names of more books to get at the library. And you know what? The kids _do_ it.

That Charlotte, the other night she brings home some Shakespeare stories for kids by a guy named Lamb. She makes me read 'em to her, too. Get a load o' me reading Shakespeare. I got to admit they're pretty good stories. That Charlotte's going to be a real egghead."

"We usually have our TV on around supper time. It's funny we missed it."

"I checked TV Guide but it was not listed," said the super. "It was some kind of test show. I guess this guy couldn't find a sponsor."

A week after this incident Betty Randolph picked up the telephone and said, "h.e.l.lo?" It was Dot on the ground floor. Ed had phoned earlier and said he'd be a little late. Betty felt relaxed and just in the mood for some woman talk.

"Dot, you'll never guess where we were last night," she said. "We saw My Fair Lady, imagine! Don't you envy me?"

There was a gasp at the other end of the line. "Betty Randolph, you didn't! We've been on the waiting list for six months. Where in the world did you get tickets?"

"That's the weird part of it. A messenger just delivered them to Ed in the office one morning. They were in a plain envelope marked 'Mr.

Randolph' and a card inside said 'Hope you enjoy them--George.' Ed thinks the messenger made a mistake and got the wrong building or something because Ed's the only Randolph there. Anyway, by the time Ed opened the envelope the messenger was gone. There wasn't anything to do but use the tickets of course."

"Of all the luck! Maybe you and Ed've got a fairy G.o.dmother or something. What'd you do for a sitter?"

"Oh, we were nearly insane finding one. Jane and Tina were busy and we knew you were away for the weekend. Fortunately we phoned this Mrs.

Mimms and she was available. Kenneth _loved_ her."

"Isn't she _nice_? That woman's a wonder with children. d.i.c.ky and Sue are as good as gold when she's around and she always seems to be free when you want her. She's so cheap, too, I don't see how the woman lives."

"Glory we had a good time!" sighed Betty. "We had drinks and filet mignon at a nice little place near the theater and forgot all about kids for a while. It was like going on a date again. I had on my red-and-gold dress I haven't worn for months and Ed kept telling me how cute I looked...."

"Zoom, zoom," the captain kept saying. The s.p.a.ceship swooped in for a landing on the crimson Martian sands. Captain Bobby Taylor took up a position before the air-lock and briefed his second-in-command, Ronnie Smith. "We're surrounded by enemy aliens, Smith," announced Captain Taylor. "Better break out the death-ray pistols. Our mission is to destroy every metal monster on this planet. Look at 'em come! They got eight legs and sixteen wire arms...."

"Ah, cut it out, Bobby. I ain't playing science-fiction with you any more. It ain't like you say at all."

"What's it like then, wise guy? I suppose _you_ been to Mars."

"Maybe I ain't," said Lt. Smith. "Anyways I know somebody that _has_."

"Yeah? Who?"

"Mrs. Mimms. She babysits with me when Mom and Dad go out. She's been all over in s.p.a.ce. Venus and all them other planets. She says there ain't any monsters on any of 'em. There ain't _nuthin_ on Mars except a little bitty gra.s.s and a lot of scientists from Earth."

"Mad scientists?" asked Captain Taylor hopefully.

"Nah, just scientists. She says we oughta forget about monsters and play the right way. You know, like with atomic reactors and radar communication and growing new kinds of food for Earth colonies."

"Ah I don't believe it. She'd hafta be from someplace in the future.

She'd hafta come here by time machine or something, wouldn't she?"

"That's what she did," Lt. Smith informed the captain. "She showed me pictures to prove it. Pictures of her last vacation on the moon. You oughta see what they done to the place. She's from the future, all right."

"Then she ain't supposed to tell anybody about it, is she?"

Lt. Smith waved his hand airily. "She says it's OK to tell kids because grownups wouldn't believe it anyway. Get your mother to let her sit for you next time. She'll show you the pictures if you ask her. Heck, it's no fun playing monsters now."

"Well, look," said Captain Taylor magnanimously, "supposing I let you be Captain today. You can pretend any kind of stuff you want."

"OK," said the new Captain, and immediately postulated a gigantic atomic reactor on the planet Pluto.

The doctor had said Julie should not, but she had another cup of coffee anyway. She drank it and then lit a cigarette. Immediately she felt a twinge of the morning sickness and wisely snubbed it out in the ashtray. She was so happy it almost didn't hurt at all. I'm pregnant again, she thought, that's the important thing. Julie hugged herself and thought again of Mrs. Mimms and her tea leaves. It was the silliest thing, she told herself, you didn't base important decisions on tea leaves. Not _tea_ leaves. It was right after the week Bill had been having those queer dreams that they'd decided, well, to go ahead.

Julie remembered Bill's face as he sat on the edge of her bed describing one of the dreams to her as she laid there.

"It was vivid as h.e.l.l, honey," Bill had said. "Maybe I ought to give up eating cheese sandwiches at night or something. It's like dreaming on the installment plan. Every time I'm someplace different and some guy in a weird suit is showing me around. Last night I could swear it was somewhere in New York, only the buildings were a lot taller and there were kind of triple-decker ramp things with nutty-looking cars on them and the people all wore tight-fitting clothes. Then all of a sudden we were down on what looked like the Battery and the guy showed me a big cookie-shaped thing out in the harbor with planes that looked like flying saucers landing and taking off from it. h.e.l.l, maybe it's going to be George Humphry's kind of world after all a couple of hundred years from now."

Then a night or two later they'd gone out to a movie. She'd been lucky to get Mrs. Mimms to sit with Georgie. After they got back Mrs. Mimms had made some tea--_real_ tea she'd brought from her own apartment.

When she offered to tell their fortunes in the leaves, Julie began to giggle ... until she saw Bill was taking it perfectly seriously. Maybe it was the quiet way Mrs. Mimms had discussed their futures over the brown leaves, as if she'd been there herself. Funny old duck.

Wonderful with Georgie, though; and the other girls swore by her. Bill hadn't batted an eye when she predicted it would be a girl this time, and perfectly healthy and all right.

Julie peeked into the bedroom where Georgie was sleeping and pulled the blanket up under his chin. "According to Mrs. Mimms, my lad, you'll be getting a baby sister soon," she whispered. Bill _had_ changed lately. Not so gloomy somehow, nicer. But _tea_ leaves, for Heaven's sake, they couldn't have anything to do with....

She stopped trying to figure it out because the nausea returned. This time it was bad and she had to run for the bathroom.

The crisp directive--Zonally disguised as a contemporary telegram--was forwarded to Mrs. Mimms on a Monday night. Although it bore the Resident Destinyworker's address, it had come of course directly from the Chief's office for the code word DESTWORK headed the message.

Decoded, it read: