who is beautiful. Then she turned around, and I gave my instincts an A plus. Her eyes were the deepest of blues, actually a purple tone, and they were wide, serious and shining. There was a certain determination about the set of her jaw that I liked, and her lips were like soft red velvet. A man could kiss those lips and sink slowly into warm crimson seas; lose himself in the heated softness of their gentlest pressures. "Delvin!" Baxter's voice shattered my reverie, and I tore my eyes from the girl, though the after-effects of dreaming left my mind in confused fragments. "Huh?" I said, looking at his face and almost failing to recognize it."I said--" Baxter's voice was impatient and over loud, "--that you had best, in the interests of open-space safety, not flash that Amnesty while you're aboard the _Valkyrie_. Passengers have a way of working themselves into a panic that is almost an uncanny gift! They'll all start suspecting their neighbors of treason, or worse, and--" But I wasn't hearing his diatribe any more. As he'd spoken that first sentence, the girl with the shimmering cornsilk hair had been passing within a few feet of us, and I'd felt, rather than actually seen, her slender shoulders stiffen beneath the blue silken fabric of her blouse. And she'd hesitated for a moment in midstep, as though she were going to turn about and see which man in the universe was the one to whom the Amnesty had been given. I watched her move out into the sunlight, crossing the field in brisk but dainty strides. Any second now, I told myself. She thinks she hasn't been seen. She's getting far enough away so that-- Aha! Now! Halfway to the ship, the girl turned, apparently busily concerned about the clasp of her handbag, as though it had come open without warning. I kept my head turned, to look as though I were watching Baxter. But my eyes were still on her. She looked at me. Then she turned and went on toward the ship. "Had to see who I was!" I said to myself. "So now she knows I've got the Amnesty. And so--And so, _what_?" Since antigravity, artificial gravity, and low-thrust take-offs were still in the realm of science-fiction, even the luxury liners like the _Valkyrie_ had to bed their passengers down in shock-absorbing couches until the ship was free of gravitation. So it wasn't until
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