women with considerable money, of course. A round trip ticket cost just under twelve thousand dollars, and high living, on Venus, came high indeed.

Their poor sisters had recourse only to special lamps and lotions to simulate the pallor of the movie stars and the debutantes. It was not the same. Not in their own minds. It was the dream of every woman to make the pilgrimage, and not a few spent their life savings, embezzled, stowed away, or even sold themselves to Venusian white slavers for the chance of that elusive glamour.

Sukey's skin was of a wonderful, delicate olive shade, and she hated it. Whenever one of the female travelers would come in to eat, looking ghostly pale and opulent in their Martian lizard-skin coats, Sukey Jones would sigh. I could tell that in her small body there was a man-sized inferiority complex building up, but I didn't mention it to Harry. He would only have worried about her.

He was thoughtful of Sukey, and many a time when we got in, and he had business with Customs or the Port Authority, he would say to me, "Chuck, go and see Sukey for me, and tell her I'll be along."

And as for Sukey Jones, she may not have been overly bright, but that kind of treatment had been a rare thing in her twenty-three years of hard knocks. She worshipped Harry Thurbley.

That night in March we had set the Altair down on the field just after dusk. Harry had business at the Office, and I was to drop in and see Sukey first and let her know that he'd be in later. I didn't mind. I was always glad to do it.

I went into the restaurant, and the place was crowded with passengers for the 2200 Marsflight. I couldn't find Sukey. There was a strange girl behind the cash register. I asked her about it, and she said she didn't know anything; she had just been hired.

So I finally got Linda, one of the waitresses, aside, and got the story from her.

Seemed there had been a couple of women—society dames in from Venus on the Saturday run—and Sukey had heard one of them make a remark about her complexion. It was nothing much, just a whispered knife of criticism, but Sukey had flared up. Then the woman got really insulting, and Sukey had reached over the cash register and pulled out a big handful of her platinum locks.

That grab had cost her her job.

I went to her apartment, in a ramshackle tenement a couple of blocks 

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