"You young fool," said the fat man, with feeble violence, "there's notimefor all that! Ask me questions—I can prove I know your father!"

"What was my mother's name?"

"Oh, God," Briscoe said, "I never saw her. I knew your father long before you were born. Until he told me, I never knew he'd married or had a son. I'd never have known you, except that you're the living image—" He shook his head helplessly, and his breathing sounded hoarse.

"Bart, I'm a sick man, I'm going to die. I want to do what I came here to do, because your father saved my life once when I was young and healthy, and gave me twenty good years before I got old and fat and sick. Win or lose, I won't live to see you hunted down like a dog, like my own son—"

"Don't talk like that," Bart said, a creepy feeling coming over him. "If you're sick, let me take you to a doctor."

Briscoe did not even hear. "Wait, there is something else. Your father said, 'Tell Bart I've gone looking for the Eighth Color. Bart will know what I mean.'"

"That's crazy. I don't know—"

He broke off, for the memory had come, full-blown: