The door opened and closed and Maria Bergozza was with them. She said, "Apparently this is necessary." She was holding a glass-pellet gun in her hand, pointing it at Lindsay. He said, "Why, you--!" and moved toward her. Promptly the Secretary General's daughter pointed the gun at Nina's tanned midriff. He stopped. Maria said evenly, "It's _you_ that have done this to me, Nina. You've had all the fun while I've had to pour tea for papa at his damned functions. You've fouled up our plans with your meddling down in New Orleans. And now you've taken Zale, as you take everything else you take a fancy to." "But you tried to kill him," said Nina. "Why should you care?" "He would have been a martyr--and _you_ wouldn't have had him," said Maria, her gun hand steady. "I know it's going to ruin me to kill you--but my whole life is ruined anyway. And this way at least I can sacrifice it for the cause." "The cause of interplanetary war?" said Lindsay, in his turn incredulous. Hot rage rose within him, "You third-rate tramp!" He stepped squarely into the line of fire, thrust his left breast in front of the muzzle of her gun. Behind him Nina screamed. But Maria didn't fire. Instead she sneezed--sneezed and sneezed again. Her gun hand gyrated wildly as she doubled in a paroxysm and Nina moved past Lindsay to pluck the weapon from her. "Don't call me--krrrra_shew_!--third-rate," she managed to gasp before the blonde sent her sprawling with a very efficient right cross to the chin. Nina turned on Lindsay angrily. "You damned fool!" she almost shouted. "You might have been killed." He looked down, felt his knees turn to water. He said, "Omigod--I thought I was still wearing the star. I remembered how you saved my life in New Orleans with your diamond evening bag!" He sat down--hard. From the floor Maria whimpered, "What are you going to do to me?" Nina said, "I ought to kill you, you know, but it would cause too much of a stink. So beat it and let us think. You'll be hearing from me later. What you hear will depend on how you handle yourself from now on. Understand?" When she had slunk out Lindsay said, "What broke her up?" Nina dropped the gun into her bag casually, said, "Now I know you're lucky, you thin slob. You happened to stumble right onto her allergy. She can't stand being thought of as a third-rate lover. That's why she's always been jealous of me--because I have top-model rating and she could never make it. She's too damned concerned with pleasing herself to please anyone else. She flunked out at fourteen." "Then why didn't _you_ pull it?" Lindsay asked her, astonished. "Because," Nina said thoughtfully, "I'm not conditioned to think that way. It's horribly rude here on Earth to stir up other people's allergies. As you reminded me last night, you rat, we're all people in glass houses." "But I didn't even know...." muttered Lindsay.