"What's that?"

"Just a compact. A lighter. A torch. One of those things. But Hal gave it to me. And I'm just mystic enough to think it'll help me think. He had his hands on it. Didn't you know that all women—even modern women—are witches?" She closed her eyes, clutching the compact, frowning in concentration.

Staring at her, Jeremy frowned too, and thought harder than ever in his life before. Something about memory without brains. Something—and then a line in the letter swam before his mind's eye.

I'd like you to meet her when the rocket-ship docks. She really has what it takes.

"Give me that," he spat, and snatched it roughly out of her grasp. Instinctively, she reached for it. He batted her hand out of the way, hard. She sat on the edge of her chair, her nostrils dilated, rubbing her hand and watching him like a cat.

He turned it over and over, shook it, smelled it, felt it. He opened it, shook out the tinted powders, cracked the mirror retainer with his thumb and slid the glass out. There was nothing unusual about the compact. A little expensive, perhaps, but not unique at all. There was no trademark.

"Where did Hal get this?"

"He didn't say. Bought it, perhaps. Maybe he made it. He has a little outfit. Give it back to me!"

"I will not." Jeremy fell to studying it again.

"Jereee," she said sweetly.

He looked up. She was her old self. She was erect and beautiful and the color was back in her cheeks. Somewhere in a side corner of his mind, he deeply regretted the fact that he admired her so much. She put out her hand. "Give."

"Nope."

She glanced around. "It's evidence. I've been robbed. The property was forcibly taken from me by that man, officer," she said, mimicking a sweet, wronged young thing. "There we were, sitting peacefully over a drink and a snack, when he went berserk and took it away from me and began tearing it apart." Her face went cold and direct again. "Would you tell the nice policeman exactly why you wanted to keep it, Jeremy?"

"Not while Genex and the police get along so nicely," he said grudgingly. "Okay. I'm open to compromise. You don't know the significance of this piece of plastic. You just might 

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