ID this Silver Age sci-fi story, please...

[Andy_L]

@Trinopus

Just did! Loved it! I like the flip, hip, sassy dialogue, ripe with allusions and double entendres. It’s like everyone in the story wants to be Oscar Wilde! Real people don’t talk that way…doggone it! More fun if we did!

The slow build-up of the menace is elegant. It’s eerie, given that it is a kind of parallel to the far more dangerous menace of WWIII – Soviet bombs and other cataclysmic weapons – which is merely taken for granted and relegated to the background.

And, of course, the cute clever twist at the ending is a delight. He knew how to set 'em up…and he knew how to knock 'em down.

Leiber was one hell of a genius! I hoist a mug of Gahveh to his memory.

Yeah, it was fun, wasn’t it…