I had forgotten the silver sphere which bobbed beside him as a monstrous toy might. It began to glow and expand into a great bulb of incandescence, and it caught me immediately and paralyzed me, and sucked me into realms of cosmology beyond the wildest imaginings of all the Einsteins. I actually felt the sensation of melting. Of melting and flowing as an integral part of space-time, for want of a better phrase. I was an atomic drop of liquid poured into a river without beginning, end or embankments. Perfection was an empty, archaic word to me. I had never thought it could be intellectually employed, and I was especially careful not to apply it to that shifting abstract--woman. I was looking at it now. A perfect woman. A creation molded from centuries of perfection; a creation of symmetric loveliness that was literally and figuratively out of this world. My last day on Earth was ended. I had opened my eyes. I saw first that some miracle of science had reconstructed the burned away half of my right arm. Then I noticed the woman. I was sitting bolt upright in an instant on the smooth metal table. The little man with his strange "Buck Rogers" dress was looking quietly at me. And she was looking at me, too, out of slitted lids that veiled all the women of the ages in subtly yet violently burning eyes. She lifted a jeweled hand. Her sensual lips trembled a little before they parted, and strong white teeth gleamed provocatively between the red lines. I started, and gripped hard at the edges of the table. Was this the way a woman scientist studied coldly and objectively a prospective laboratory subject? I looked questioningly at the little wizened man who had kidnaped me from my own world. His blank face showed me nothing. Then, when she spoke.... I don't want to take unnecessary time at this point or any other to explain or describe this woman, Jokan. I doubt if you could visualize her anyway, even if I occupied this entire narrative describing her, because she was too strangely lovely. She was perfection, as I've said, and that's all. Her voice was music, and I involuntarily started toward her as she spoke. * * * * * "Withdraw the brain recorder, Draken," she said softly, not taking those icy eyes from mine. The little man, Draken, complied. She pointed to a great three-dimensional chart extending across the laboratory. It was made up of shifting convolutions and numerical graphs and complicated combinations of shadings corresponding to brain patterns. "That is your brain, Ivan," she said. Her voice was cold, completely frozen, and yet--"We know all about you." I felt a little disappointment along with the relief. She turned toward Draken. "You made a great mistake, Draken. Bringing in an Intellectual was a foolish thing to do." Draken objected. "But you said you wanted a good physical specimen. This man is. You defined your requested specimen in no greater detail."