"Check. She'd have to be strong enough and hard enough not to be afraid of me, by any trace. Able and eager to stand up to me and slug it out. To pin my ears back flat against my skull whenever she thinks I'm off the beam. Do it with skill and precision and nicety, with power and control; yet without doing herself any damage and without changing her basic feeling for me. In short, a female Jim James Nine." "Huh? Hell's blowtorches! You think _I'm_ like Belle Bellamy?" "Not by nine thousand megacycles. Like Belle Bellamy could be and should be. Like I hope she will be. I'd have to give, too, of course--maybe we can make Christians out of each other. It's quite a dream, I admit, but it'll be Belle or nobody. But I'm not used to slopping over this way--let's go." "I'm glad you did, big fellow--once in a lifetime is good for the soul. I'd say you were in love with her right now--except that if you were, you couldn't possibly dissect her like a specimen on the table, the way you've just been doing. Are you or aren't you?" "I'll be damned if I know. You and Brownie believe that the poets' concept of love is valid. In fact, you make a case for its validity. I never have, and don't now ... but under certain conditions ... I simply don't know. Ask me again sometime; say in about a month?" "That's the surest thing you know. Oh, _brother! This_ is a thing I'm going to watch with my eyes out on stalks!" * * * For the next week, Belle locked her door every night. For another few nights, she did not lock it. Then, one night, she left it ajar. The following evening, the two again walked together to their doors. "I left my door open last night." "I know you did." "Well?" "And have you scream to high heaven that I opened it? And put me on a tape for willful inurbanity? For deliberate intersexual invasion of privacy?" * * * "Blast and damn! You know perfectly well, Clee Garlock, I wouldn't pull such a dirty, lousy trick as that." "Maybe I should apologize, then, but as a matter of fact I have no idea whatever as to what you wouldn't do." He stared at her, his face hard in thought. "As you probably know, I have had very little to do with women. That little has always been on a logical level. You are such a completely new experience that I can't figure out what makes you tick." "So you're afraid of me," she sneered. "Is that it?" "Close enough." "And I suppose it's you that cartoonist what's-his-name is using as a model for 'Timorous Timmy'?" "Since you've guessed it, yes." "You ... you _weasel_!" She took three quick steps up the corridor, then back. "You say my logic is cockeyed. What system are you using now?" "I'm trying to develop one to match yours."