"Oh, that lousy headdress! It weighed twenty pounds, and they put it on with hatpins." He caressed her absently. He had figured out that she was talking about the night New York was bombed. "I was in the middle of the big first-act curtain number when--" her face was strained, even after years, even now that she was herself one of the godlike ones--"when something took hold of me. I ran off the stage and right out through the front door. There was a cab waiting. As soon as I got in I was free, and the driver took off like a lunatic through the tunnel, out to Newark Airport. I tell you, I was scared! At the toll booth I screamed but my--friend--let go of the driver for a minute, smashed a trailer-truck into a police car, and in the confusion we got away. He took me over again at the airport. I ran bare as a bird into a plane that was just ready to take off. The pilot was under control.... We flew eleven hours, and I wore that damn feather headdress all the way." She held out her glass for a refill. Chandler busied himself slicing a lime for her drink. Now she was talking about her friend. "I hadn't seen him in six years. I was just a kid, living in Islip. He was with a Russian trade commission next door, in an old mansion. Well, he was one of the ones, back in Russia, that came up with these." She touched her coronet. "So," she said brightly, "he put me up for membership and by and by they gave me one. You see? It's all very simple, except the waiting." Chandler pulled her down on the couch beside him and made a toast. "Your friend." "He's a nice guy," she said moodily, sipping her drink. "You know how careful I am about getting exercise and so on? It's partly because of him. You would have liked him, love, only--well, it turned out that he liked me well enough, but he began to like what he could get through the coronet a lot more. He got fat. A lot of them are awfully fat, love," she said seriously. "That's why they need people like me. And you. Replacements. Heart trouble, liver trouble, what can they expect when they lie in bed day in and day out, taking their lives through other people's bodies? I won't let myself go that way.... It's a temptation. You know, almost every day I find some poor woman on a diet and spend a solid hour eating creampuffs and gravies. How they must hate me!" She grinned, leaned back and kissed him. Chandler put his arms around the girl and returned the kiss, hard. She did not draw away. She clung to him, and he could feel in the warmth of her body, the sound of her breath that she was responding. The drink made him reckless; the last two weeks made him doubtful; he was torn. He could tell that there was no resistance in her body, but the coronet made it in doubt; she could fling him away from her with one touch of the mind. Yet she didn't do it-- "_Vi myenya zvali?_" his own voice demanded, harsh and mocking. * * * * *