W. W. Skupeldyckle

“ She's more alive than you are. Why don't you step out a little? First thing you know, you'll be getting old, and it'll be too late."
"Leave the match-making to the women. I may be old, but I'm not an old fool. It's fall, not spring."
"Yeah? All you need to be an old fool is just a little more time."
orm ignored him, and took a card from his desk. It seemed to be an extra, not with the pack. He put it in the machine. The curve-tracer began to draw a rather abrupt curve, which meandered half across the sheet before Norm realized what it was. ”

“ Norm inquired, whimsically. "Is he able to get about?"
The girl smiled politely at this obvious badinage and left.
He checked the problems against cards as he came to them. He knew the punch code well enough to do this in his head, since the kind of operation indicated was quite obvious. But the problems ended with F-151, and the "handsome devil" card was F-152. He got on the phone again.
"Vic? What's your next card number?"
"F-153." One expected a little guy to have a high voice; this one was quite deep, but soft.
"Are the cards numbered very far ahead?" ”

“ How could a man have a voice like that? And why should he care if one did? Why even notice it? Instead of going to the cafeteria for lunch, he drove downtown and consulted the family doctor, who laughed at him. ”

“ They're nearly as big as yachts, and cost more, but can calculate a million times faster than any human.
Norm's machine was of the analogue type, which is less flexible, less complex, and vastly smaller and cheaper. He called it the ICWEA (ICK-wee-ah) , which stood for "I Can Work 'Em All!" It could, too! It was especially good at deriving equations from curves, which was really something.
Charley Oglethorpe burst into the office one morning, catching Norm in a brown study. "Hi, Genius. How is she perking now?"
"All right, except the pen skips a little sometimes and makes a messy curve." ”

“ She turned ICWEA on and let her warm up, meanwhile fastening a large sheet of paper on the bed of the curve-tracer with tape. She put a blank card in the punching head, opened the door of the patching-panel cabinet and rearranged the patch-cords there.
What a lab assistant she would make! Wasted in Set-up; anyone could punch cards, with a little practice. Well, not anyone, but any mathematician could. How thoroughly she knew this machine! Charley must have told her, or her brother, plenty! ”

“ She turned, with demurely downcast lashes and looked up at him with her violet eyes, and Norm came out of his trance with a start.
He removed the last curve—a simple hyperbolic curve, probably a problem in attenuation or decay of some kind—and put in the last punch-card. The machine started up immediately; the curve was elliptical. Then a vertical down-stroke, retraced and with a gentle half-loop added. It was writing! P-r-o-p-i-n-q.... What might this be? He watched, fascinated, as the letters continued. "Propinquity is the mother of love," it said, and stopped. ”

“ Norm liked several men, but he didn't dream about any of them; if he was off his rocker, it was in some other manner. Visual delusions, for instance.
The thing to do was to see Vic face to face. He called the office manager. "Henry? Send Vic Hermosa up there, will you? I want to talk to him."
"Vic Hermosa? He's in the Army. Didn't you know?"
"No, I didn't. Who is the guy that answers the phone in that fruity voice?"
Henry lowered his voice. "Guy? That's Vic's sister Virginia. She took Vic's place when he left. Simplified the security investigation, and she's good, too. ”

“ She's just a child."
"A pretty one, though."
"Yes, she is."
"You sure don't know anything about women. If anyone made eyes at me that way, I'd do something about it."
"What, for instance?" Norm inquired dryly.
"Well, of course, I'm married. But I'd find out who she was, anyhow. Sometimes I think you're dead and don't know it."
"Sometimes I agree with you," Norm said. He fed one of the punch cards into the transmitter head, which fingered the holes and told ICWEA what the problem was. ICWEA began drawing a curve on the curve tracer. ”

“ The paper in the curve-tracer was perfectly blank, and there was no punch-card in the transmitter head. It might still be an elaborate joke, but the chances were small. He might be cracking up, or may have imagined the whole thing. The best thing to do would be to put it entirely out of his mind.
He succeeded in this until mid-morning, when ICWEA called him a "handsome devil." He jerked the punch-card out of the transmitter and called Vic.
"Hermosa."
That voice! It made chills run up and down his backbone. A man had no right to a voice like that. "Vic? ”