Lancaster with the sun behind her.

Her errand had been shopping. The overworn cocktail dress was gone and in its place was a white, silky number that did a lot of fetching things to her figure. She had also taken the complete course at some primpmill. She was another woman. Not even Farradyne, who had seen her for days, could have been convinced that this beautiful perfection was not Norma's usual appearance.

Farradyne was silent. But as Brenner caught sight of her coming around the sunlit tail of the ship, with enough sun shining through her to make the pulses jump he made a throaty discord.

"Hello," she said brightly, as though she and Farradyne were reasonably close acquaintances, but in a tone that indicated that she was paid passenger and he the driver of the spacer. "I've some parcels being delivered in a bit. We'll wait, of course?"

Farradyne agreed dumbly.

Norma nodded coolly to Brenner and said, "I'm going on in," as though she did not want to interfere with any business that might be going on between the two men. She went up the ramp displaying a quantity of well-filled nylon at every step.

The roar of the jeep's engine snapped Farradyne's attention back to Brenner—or where Brenner had been standing. The jeep was taking Brenner away in a cloud of spaceport dust.

Farradyne shrugged. That was not the man he really wanted. Call it close but no cigar. Farradyne did not want a man to buy love lotus, he wanted a seller of the things, a shipper, a character from the upper echelon. There might be an avenue through Brenner, but he doubted it.

With a sigh, Farradyne went into the Lancaster. Norma rose from the divan along the end of the salon and whirled like a mannequin, her silken skirt floating. She stopped and let the skirt wrap itself around her thighs. "Like it?" she asked.

"It's very neat," he replied flatly. "But where did you get the wherewithal?"

"I figured you owed me something so I took it out of the locker in the control room. You left the key dangling conveniently in the lock."

Clevis had left Farradyne quite a bit of operating money but far from enough to go cutting a silken swath across the average fashion mart. "What's the grand idea?" he asked.

"You're a cold-blooded bird. You don't give a hoot that you and 

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