a heavy shovel and thick clay. "What are our plans?"

"Sil-ly. I understand your custom now. We are going to be married, of course. Then we shall see. There is no hurry. I have, by your standards, plenty of time. I must assimilate and learn to understand you and your fascinating life-form. We shall live together and be man and wife. As I have said, your species and mine may derive much benefit from this intermingling."

That, if I understood her correctly, sounded fine to me. It was the best proposal I'd had yet. And surely it would have been poor hospitality to a lonely little girl some light-years away from home for me to have refused. "This is terribly sudden," I told her. "Uf! That ought to be enough of a hole for as wizened up a little old body as that ... yes, darling, I will marry you. Who's going to earn us a living?"

III

I climbed out of the hole and kissed her and, in time, we did manage to get the old woman buried.

The next day we applied for our license. Three days later we were married—so far as I know, an interstellar first. The job or money problem, as it turned out, was no problem. Her first thought was the direct, female approach to the problem. She could simply make it out of old newspapers whenever we needed some, as she had the body. She made some to show me.

"Well now," I told her, "it does seem the simplest way, I admit. But the government is pretty jealous of its ability to print money. It likes to think that nobody else can do the job just right."

I was afraid this might be one of her stubborn points but it wasn't. Government restrictions, bureaucracy and red tape were things she had no trouble understanding. "It is the same way back home with power and energy rations," she told me. "You have no idea the difficulty we had in building up the capital supply necessary for my trip here. So I suppose we must find another way. Don't you already have some of this money? Or couldn't you manage to borrow some?"

I had $37.62 in my checking account, but the house was in my name. I borrowed five grand. I invested. I was probably the most successful investor since old King Midas developed his touch. If I sank a buck in land, oil would turn up within the week, and if it turned out to be a geologically inexplicable tiny pocket the next week—that would be after I had unloaded. Stocks, commodities, it made no difference. The money rolled in. We had the touch. Paid our 

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