It only took him an hour to ask his first question."Are there other places where you can do this?" I think so. I haven't tried. This is the strongest....There are a couple other strong ones, and I see weak ones everywhere." What assumptions are we starting with?" Good, Dad was slipping into his engineer mode. I had seen this before."Its still Earth. Its the same place on Earth," I said. "It feels like the season hasn't changed, this is still early autumn." Agreed."We tossed questions and ideas. You may call me now Kalogakhing, that is first mother, because I am first here."Igwanda could see Meiersdottir react to that with a start. The Edenites worshiped no gods and generally gave little thought to their ancestors by individual name, but both knew that "Kalogakhing" was an exception to that rule, perhaps their only one. It was the name they gave to the first female in whom the telepathic mutation had manifested itself, the one who had started their entire species some hundreds of their. The bottle was still there, luring him, calling to him. He was fighting with himself, loosing, loosing every second a little bit more. Soon, he knew, he would fetch himself a glass and then the next morning he would be lying totally drunk in the kitchen. But who cares? It would be Saturday anyway. No need to go to the office. No need to face the pitying glances of his colleagues. His hand reached out for the bottle. The sharp sound of the door bell interrupted his move. His glance fell at the. I figured that the whole thing had fallen through, and I found that I was very disappointed at that thought.We arrived at Joe's office and were ushered in immediately. Joe stood up to greet us, and the first thing he said was, "Howdy, Sheriff, how was the trip to Johnson?"The old saying, "You could have knocked me over with a feather," would have fit me exactly. I had no idea that the appointment could have gone through so quickly. I just stared at Joe with my jaw down around my knees.He.