The control board had buckled back against the pilot's chair; something beyond it, some ponderously heavy piece of machinery in the space between central room and shell, had knifed through wall and board as sharp and deadly as the blade of a guillotine. The metal had sliced the center of the pilot's seat to within six inches of the back. No man could have sat there at the moment of the crash, as the pilot averred he had done. He would never have lived. He would have been cut in two.... CHAPTER IV That night Alan and Brave rode across Project Star to the women's building, where Alan's fiancee, Win Gilmore had a small apartment. Win--short for Winifred, and God help the man who called her _that_--opened the door before the sound of the diacoustic bell had died away. The first thing that struck you about Win was color: she looked as though she had been put together by a Bergdorf Goodman display artist with a genius for analogous chromas. Her hair was washed in a pale aquamarine and dusted over with luminous flecks of mauve; it was drawn back to the crown and clasped there by an abstract spiral of silver, from which it fell in darkening waves down her naked back. Her nylon jersey lounging outfit, cut with almost severe simplicity, was graduated from pink to a deep violet hue. Her finger and toe nails were lacquered with phosphorescent sapphire, and the lashes of her blue eyes were dyed with mascara of the same glowing shade. Her skin was a soft golden color, thanks to half an hour a day under the sun lamps of the colony's gymnasium. "How, oh squaw of rainbow brilliance," said Brave, holding up a hand in grave salute. "I leave this warrior in your keeping, whilst I shuffle down to the recroom and squander a few bucks on the pinball machines." "How, oh mountain that walks. Will you have a slug of Scotch first?" "The noble red man, pampering his internal workin's, drinks only rum this week. No thanks, Win. The gambling fever's got me. See you." Alan closed the door behind him and took Win into his arms. He kissed her, gently at first, then hard, their lips parted, warm on each other as their bodies warmed, his hands strong and taut on her back; he smoothed his fingers down the hollow of her spine, ran them up into her soft hair. She said against his mouth, "You demolish that toilsomely-wrought thatch, boy, and I'll demolish you." He laughed and pushed her away and lit a cigarette, stray flecks of mauve from her hair glittering on his fingers. She went to the low cocktail table and picked up an already filled glass. He took it from her. "Here's atomic dust in yer eye, Winniefred," he toasted, and drank long and thirstily. "Whoa, Nellie. Haven't you drunk anything today?" "Only the dregs of woe," he said lightly, and then his lean face changed and his eyes looked into a remote place which they did not like. At once she touched his arm.