She would not admit even to herself that she was disappointed with Haron Gorka. It was not that he was homely and unimpressive; it was just that he was so _ordinary_-looking. She almost would have preferred the monster of her dreams. * * * * * He wore a white linen suit and he had mousy hair, drab eyes, an almost-Roman nose, a petulant mouth with the slight arch of the egotist at each corner. He said, "Greetings. You have come--" "In response to your ad. How do you do, Mr. Gorka?" She hoped she wasn't being too formal. But, then, there was no sense in assuming that he would like informality. She could only wait and see and adjust her own actions to suit him. Meanwhile, it would be best to keep on the middle of the road. "I am fine. Are you ready?" "Ready?" "Certainly. You came in response to my ad. You want to hear me talk, do you not?" "I--do." Matilda had had visions of her prince charming sitting back and relaxing with her, telling her of the many things he had done and seen. But first she certainly would have liked to get to _know_ the man. Well, Haron Gorka obviously had more experience along these lines than she did. He waited, however, as if wondering what to say, and Matilda, accustomed to social chatter, gave him a gambit. "I must admit I was surprised when I got exactly what I wanted for dinner," she told him brightly. "Eh? What say? Oh, yes, naturally. A combination of telepathy and teleportation. The synthetic cookery is attuned to your mind when you press the buzzer, and the strength of your psychic impulses determines how closely the meal will adjust to your desires. The fact that the adjustment here was near perfect is commendable. It means either that you have a high psi-quotient, or that you were very hungry." "Yes," said Matilda vaguely. Perhaps it might be better, after all, if Haron Gorka were to talk to her as he saw fit. "Ready?" "Uh--ready." "Well?" "Well, what, Mr. Gorka?" "What would you like me to talk about?" "Oh, anything." "Please. As the ad read, my universal experience--is universal. Literally. You'll have to be more specific." "Well, why don't you tell me about some of your far travels? Unfortunately, while I've done a lot of reading, I haven't been to all the places I would have liked--" "Good enough. You know, of course, how frigid Deneb VII is?" Matilda said, "Beg pardon?" "Well, there was the time our crew--before I had retired, of course--made a crash landing there. We could survive in the vac-suits, of course, but the _thlomots_ were after us almost at once. They go mad over plastic. They will eat absolutely any sort of plastic. Our vac-suits--" "--were made of plastic," Matilda suggested. She did not understand a thing he was talking about, but she felt she had better act bright.