The Beachcomber

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Maxwell and the girl started their weekend on Thursday, in Venice. Friday they went to Paris, Saturday to Nice, and on Sunday they were bored. Alice pouted at him across the breakfast table. "Vernon, let's go someplace else," she said.

"Sure," said Maxwell, not too graciously. "Don't you want your bug eggs?"

Alice pushed them away. If I ever did, I don't now. Why do you have to be so unpleasant in the morning?"

The eggs were insect eggs, all right, but they were on the menu as oeufs Procyon Thibault, and three of the half-inch brown spheres cost about one thousand times their value in calories. Maxwell was well paid as a script-writer for the North American Unit Ministry of Information—he bossed a gang of six gagmen on the Cosmic Cocktail show—but he was beginning to hate to think about what these five days were costing him.

"Where do you want to go?" asked Maxwell. Their coffee came out of the conveyer, steaming and fragrant, and he sipped his moodily. "Want to run over to Algiers? Or up to Stockholm?"

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