The band chased off the dancing girl with growls. I handed my companion a straw and we sipped our drinks. "You wanted me to help you about something," I said. "Incidentally, I think you're lovely." She nodded quick thanks, looked around, leaned forward. "Would it be hard for me to get to England?" "No," I replied, a bit taken aback. "Provided you have an American passport." "Are they difficult to get?" "Rather," I said, surprised at her lack of information. "Your country doesn't like its nationals to travel, though it isn't quite as stringent as Russia." "Could the British Consulate help me get a passport?" "It's hardly their...." "Could you?" I realized we were being inspected. A man and two girls had paused opposite our table. The girls were tall and wolfish-looking, with spangled masks. The man stood jauntily between them like a fox on its hind legs. My companion didn't glance at them, but she sat back. I noticed that one of the girls had a big yellow bruise on her forearm. After a moment they walked to a booth in the deep shadows. "Know them?" I asked. She didn't reply. I finished my drink. "I'm not sure you'd like England," I said. "The austerity's altogether different from your American brand of misery." She leaned forward again. "But I must get away," she whispered. "Why?" I was getting impatient. "Because I'm so frightened." There were chimes. I opened the panel and handed her the fried shrimps. The sauce on my breast of chicken was a delicious steaming compound of almonds, soy and ginger. But something must have been wrong with the radionic oven that had thawed and heated it, for at the first bite I crunched a kernel of ice in the meat. These delicate mechanisms need constant repair and there aren't enough mechanics. I put down my fork. "What are you really scared of?" I asked her. For once her mask didn't waver away from my face. As I waited I could feel the fears gathering without her naming them, tiny dark shapes swarming through the curved night outside, converging on the radioactive pest spot of New York, dipping into the margins of the purple. I felt a sudden rush of sympathy, a desire to protect the girl opposite me. The warm feeling added itself to the infatuation engendered in the cab. "Everything," she said finally. I nodded and touched her hand. "I'm afraid of the Moon," she began, her voice going dreamy and brittle as it had in the cab. "You can't look at it and not think of guided bombs." "It's the same Moon over England," I reminded her. "But it's not England's Moon any more. It's ours and Russia's. You're not responsible." I pressed her hand. "Oh, and then," she said with a tilt of her mask, "I'm afraid of the cars and the gangs and the loneliness and Inferno. I'm afraid of the lust that undresses your face. And--" her voice hushed--"I'm afraid of the wrestlers." "Yes?" I prompted softly after a moment. * * * * *