Free More Tales of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov Page B

board as a lecturer, and I gave eight lectures on the history of astronomy, to say nothing of the time it took to be charming and suave to all twelve hundred women on board. (You should see me being charming and suave. Some of them have trouble getting away.)
    Just the same, I did find time to hide out in my cabin now and then to write “The Iron Gem” in longhand. What puzzles me now that I look back on it, however, is why the story didn't have anything to do with a solar eclipse when that (and the twelve hundred women) was all I was thinking of on the cruise.

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4    The Three Numbers

    When Tom Trumbull arrived—late, of course—to the Black Widowers' banquet, and called for his scotch and soda, he was met by James Drake, who was wearing a rather hangdog expression on his face.
    Drake's head made a gentle gesture to one side.
    Trumbull followed him, unpeeling his coat as he went, his tanned and furrowed face asking the question before his voice did. “What's up?” he said.
    Drake held his cigarette to one side and let the smoke curl bluely upward. 'Tom, I've brought a physicist as my guest”
    “So?”
    “Well, he has a problem and I think it's up your alley.”
    “A code?”
    “Something like that Numbers, anyway. I don't have all the details. I suppose we'll get those after the dinner. But that's not the point Will you help me if it becomes necessary to hold down Jeff Avalon?”
    Trumbull looked across the room to where Avalon was standing in staid conversation with the man who was clearly the guest of the evening since he was the only stranger present.
    “What's wrong with Jeff?” said Trumbull. There didn't seem anything wrong with Avalon, who was standing straight and tall as always, looking as though he might splinter if he relaxed. His graying mustache and small beard were as neat and trim as ever and he wore that careful smile on his face that he insisted on using for strangers. “He looks all right.”
    Drake said, “You weren't here last time. Jeff has the idea that the Black Widowers is becoming too nearly a puzzle session each month.”
    “What's wrong with that?” asked Trumbull as he passed his hands over his tightly waved off-white hair to press down the slight disarray produced by the wind outside.
    “Jeff thinks we ought to be a purely social organization. Convivial conversation and all that.”
    “We have that anyway.”
    “So when the puzzle comes up, help me sit on him if he gets grouchy. You have a loud voice and I don't.”
    “No problem. Have you talked to Manny?”
    “Hell, no. He'd take up the other side to be contrary.”
    “You may be right —Henry!” Trumbull waved his arm. “Henry, do me a favor. This scotch and soda won't be enough. It's cold outside and it took me a long time to get a taxi so—”
    Henry smiled discreetly, his unlined face looking twenty years younger than his actual sixtyishness. “I had assumed that might be so, Mr. Trumbull. Your second is ready.”
    “Henry, you're a diamond of the first water” —which, to be sure, was a judgment concurred in by all the Black Widowers.
    “I’ll give you a demonstration,” said Emmanuel Rubin. He had quarreled with the soup which, he maintained, had had just a shade too much leek to make it fit for human consumption, and the fact that he was in a clear minority of one rendered him all the more emphatic in his remaining views. “I'll show you that any language is really a complex of languages. —I'll write a word on each of these two pieces of paper. The same word. I'll give one to you, Mario— and one to you, sir.”
    The second went to Dr. Samuel Puntsch, who had, as was usually the case with guests of the Black Widowers, maintained a discreet silence during the preliminaries.
    Puntsch was a small, slim man, dressed in a funereal color scheme that would have done credit to Avalon. He looked at the paper and lifted his unobtrusive eyebrows.
    Rubin said, “Now neither of you say