Gone Fishing Part 9

message."

For a moment McAllen couldn't see clearly through the scanner.

Fredericks was still laughing; Simms was saying in a rapid voice, "It's quite all right, doctor! Quite all right. Your man's sane, quite sane. In fact you've made, one might guess, a one hundred per cent convert to the McAllen approach to life. Can't you _see_ it?"

"No," gasped McAllen. He had a vague impression of the top of the desk in the main room of the cabin, of something white--a white card--taped to it, of blurred printing on the card. "Nothing's getting _that_ boy unduly excited any more," Simms' voice went on beside him. "Not even the prospect of seeing visitors from Earth for the first time in five years. But he's letting you know it's perfectly all right to make yourself at home in his cabin until he gets back. Here, let me--"

He reached past McAllen, adjusted the scanner. The printing on the card swam suddenly into focus before McAllen's eyes.

The message was terse, self-explanatory, to the point:

GONE FISHING,

Regards,

_B. Chard._

THE END