"No wonder they go mad out here," I breathed.

"Mad?" said Radwick. "No, not over that. The more alien a sensation, the less dangerous it is to sanity. With the unknown there is the fear symptom, perhaps, but there is no identity with the alien. The things that drive men crazy are the known, normal things which are just one beat off. Things that ought to be normal but aren't."

"Like the Ideals."

Radwick nodded his silver head. "Like the Ideals."

"How come you never met your Ideal, Radwick?"

He sighed. He played with the blocks. "I did. She was destroyed."

"You killed her?"

"She was destroyed."

In the red time there were suggestive mists that whispered. Radwick watched me with amusement. I had never seen a mist-woman before, and I forgot about the Ideals when I saw these graceful, half-solid creatures that drifted past the ship. In the distance they were alien forms but as they divined our own forms and wants they shifted into reasonable facsimilies of earth-women and smiled and whispered as we drew alongside.

"Sirens," I breathed, feeling cold fear inside.

Radwick concealed a smile as one of them materialized inside the ship. She balanced on the cabin table and fell towards me, whispering sounds that almost made words. The sensation was one of almost-solid and yet a yielding that gave way to the touch. There was a wetness and a warmness with just the suggestion of glossy, mist hair, dainty-brushing, lip-kissing. She formed herself around my body and nibbled my ear and teased me to open my pores and admit her.

"I don't know how!" I gasped, almost overwhelmed by the not-quite-solidity of her.

"And never will," laughed Radwick. "You aren't sex-oriented or you would be at the end of your run on the Overdrive right this moment, spirited away into the ideal of orgiastic perfection. The Company loses a lot of men to these mists and they go drifting in love forever, but she can't hurt you."

Then the delicious mist got mad and slapped my face and floated daintily off. Then came the jarring sensation and we were back in the daylight of our own time and heading again towards the next layer of blue time. Only by then I could marvel no more.

I saw Kelly on Scolaris while they were loading the 

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