Maybe, I thought, I've been too conservative. Maybe _I'd_ better get on the baaaalll, too. Or else. I shrugged the thought aside just as Thais slipped through the door--exactly on time. I watched her strip off her smog mask and cinder cape--on office time--and place them carefully in the sterilizer. She was very careful not to smear the paint that was most of what she wore. I tapped a NoKanse alight and inhaled deeply. "Good morning, Thais," I said. "Whap!" she said in return. "I heard the TV all the way down the hall." She pulled a Lowfer out of the wall and settled down with her lap-desk across her knees. The tip of one sandal was just brushing my shin. The office, unfortunately, could have been bigger, but with sixteen million people living in the city, space was rather costly even for a man with a better than average prot account. "New paint?" I asked. She smiled brilliantly at me. "Nice of you to notice, boss." She fumbled in the pockets of the belt around her naked, cerise-painted middle and took out her pad and stylus. "On time and ready for work," she said. "A calorie saved is a calorie earned." But now, somehow, I didn't feel like attacking the day's schedule. Not quite yet. Pancho's commercial had disturbed me. "Thais," I said. "I wonder if I'm--well, slowing down--" "You, boss?" She fluffed her green-tinted hair provocatively and raised an eyebrow at me. "I wouldn't say so." "I don't mean that way," I said. "I mean professionally. I wonder if I shouldn't seek wider horizons." "New cases? _Different_ cases? Give up divorce work? Oh, _Boss_!" "Not give it up, Thais. Not that. I couldn't. Divorce is my life. Could a doctor give up healing? Could a Freudist give up lobotomy? No, I didn't mean that. Frankly, I meant should I get more aggressive. Go out and get cases that would have a certain advertising value." I didn't want to say I didn't feel like spending good protein on the sort of advertising Pancho and some of the other Legal Eagles, an unethical lot really, were buying. Besides, we Obanions have always been rather frugal. Thais' face had come radiantly alive. "Oh, _Joe_--" Now, that should have been a tip-off, because she _never_ called me anything but boss. But I blundered right ahead because she was looking at me as though I were Clarence Darrow or somebody. "I have a case. A _real_ case. If you would--if you only _would_ take it, you'd be famous. More famous, that is. You'd be _really_ famous." I knew that Thais had some rather questionable friends, being a Franklinist and all. And I knew too that some of them were spacegooks. But the combination of Lyra singing for Pancho and the way Thais was looking at me made me get careless. "Tell me about it," I said in my best legal manner.