they saw Hoag during the day. They only encountered the real Hoag in their home and office. The sons were an early artistic mistake, hurriedly "painted over" rather than eliminated in the rush to complete the work, but still holding power. Now they are to be expunged completely. Hoag was recruited to report on them; the substance under his fingernails is their ichor, placed there to make them fearful. Hoag tells the couple to leave the city, not stopping to talk to anyone on the way. He places one last grape in his mouth, and then becomes still. Leaving his inert body, the two drive through town, but finally yield to the urge to tell someone about Hoag's body. When they roll down their car windows, however, all that is outside their automobile is a pulsing, luminous mist, though all the other windows show an apparently normal scene. They drive on in a state of shock. In the epilogue, the Randalls now live in an unnamed remote rural area by the sea. They do everything together, have no mirrors in their home, and every night before going to sleep "he handcuffs one of his wrists to one of hers". Reception Alexei and Cory Panshin described the novella as "the last and strangest of the stories that Robert Heinlein contributed to the Golden Age before he ceased to write during World War II." Galaxy's Floyd C. Gale in 1961 found it "a brand of fantasy-mystery [that] would shock-present-day Heinlein lovers", while the SF Site's Dale Darlage stated in 2011 that it seemed more like the work of Philip K. Dick than of Heinlein, and that although not all the aspects of the story have aged well, "the underlying story overcomes all of that window dressing." In 1996, Jonathan Lethem published the short story "The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Hornebom (Hommage à Heinlein)", which the SF Site's Neil Walsh called "an overt parody" of Heinlein's original, while conceding that it is "parody-tribute-homage (...) rather than outright mockery". The cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek has had occasion to ruminate on this story. He asserted that the luminous mist which confronts Ted and Cynthia as they drive out of town could only represent the Lacanian Real, "the pulsing of the presymbolic substance in its abhorrent vitality." References External links A Heinlein Concordance, The Heinlein Society 1942 science fiction novels Works by Robert A. Heinlein Works