Then, at last, he stepped into the dim, silent living room and dumped the space-sack to the floor. Tossing the leave cap into a corner, he swabbed the sweat from his forehead, shoved shut the door and bolted it, and slid a lamp-switch to the first notch. The room brightened. A voice came through the silence also: "You frightened me, Thigpen. I was beginning to be afraid you weren't coming." A woman's voice, low and husky and seductive. Ross spun round, eyes distending. Astrell reclined on the divan across the room in studied grace. The soft light smoothed her features so that when her lips curved in a slow smile she might have been younger by twenty years. "Didn't you expect me, Thigpen?" she murmured. "I told you I'd come, you know." Ross shrugged, not speaking. His face now had taken on a wooden look. Picking up the space-sack, he carried it to the bedroom, closing the door after him as he returned. Still smiling, Astrell patted the seat beside her with a somewhat pudgy hand. "Come sit down, Thigpen." Ross met her gaze coldly. "I don't think that's necessary, Astrell." "Oh, but it is!" The woman rose from the couch as she spoke, and came to him. "It's not just the catalyst, my dear. I want to get to know you better." "Do you?" "Of course I do!" Astrell traced fluttery designs on the front of Ross' tunic with a long-nailed forefinger. Close up, her knuckles showed deep wrinkles. The skin along the backs of her hands was creping, too, and the flesh along her throat, beneath her eyes, and at the corners of her mouth was sagging visibly. But still she preened, and fluffed her halo of determinedly auburn hair, and threw Ross the coy, flirtatious, low-lashed glances of a woman two decades younger. "You know, darling, you'll be glad, too." "Oh?" Ross stood unbending. "Just what is it I'll be glad of?" "Why, that you helped me, of course." Astrell laughed, just a bit too shrilly. "It's not as if I were asking you to give it to me, you know. I'm more than willing to pay for it, and I've the money, too--more money than you can even dream of, all my savings from those years when no one from here to the Belt even thought of giving a social affair top rating, if Astrell didn't attend." * * * * * The woman seemed to grow taller as she spoke. Head high, she moved to and fro with slow, graceful steps--a queen in bearing, however caricatured, living for the moment in her dreams of glory-radiant days gone by. Then, once more, she paused close to Ross. "Besides, my dear, once I've the catalyst, I'll be young again--and very, very grateful to you." An insinuating laugh. "Darling, have you any idea how delightful it can be to hold the gratitude of a girl whose talents were such that she was able to marry the seven richest men in all the outer planets, one after the other?"