Back on the set ready to shoot at one-thirty." He turned to Sheba. "Okay?"

"Okay," she said. "You're so very considerate, Frank. It's a genuine pleasure to work with you." The tone of her voice indicated exactly the opposite meaning. She lifted her hands and tugged at the bug eyes.

"No, don't, please," Vinn said, putting his hands atop hers. "Let me do it."

The sable smoothness of the fur garment was sensuous, the knowledge that it was her hands under the fur caused him to take a deep breath. He sprayed a neutrally balanced enzyme dissolver around the multifaceted artificial organs and caught them as they fell. Sheba's own huge emerald eyes teared from the residue of the spray. He produced a clean cloth, touched the corners of her eyes delicately.

"Thank you, Vinn," she said.

"You'd better go along with her, Stern," the director ordered as Shebaswayed away through the pleele trees. "Be sure they do it right this time."

Vinn caught up with Sheba as she stepped off the holostage. "I've been told to supervise makeup," he said.

"Good for you." She turned aside, headed toward a cubicle that had her name on the door.

"Ah, that's not the way to makeup, Miss Webster," Vinn said.

"Come in, I'll need your help," she said.

Sheba's dressing room smelled of girl—perfumes and powders. She stopped just inside the door. "The zipper is just under here." She lifted her long blonde hair away from her neck.

"Miss Webster, I don't think there's time," he protested.

"I'm being slowly boiled," she said. "The zipper, please."

He pulled the tab.

"We have to be very careful of the wings," he said. The zipper made a tiny noise. Girl skin emerged from under the fur. His fingers pulled the tab down the ridge of her spine, over the outward flow of her rump.

"Thank you," she said. She skinned out of the fur and bent over a wash basin to splash cooling water into her face, thereby destroying an hour's work in the makeup room. Her position emphasized the womanly outthrust of hip, the taut roundness of buttock. She wore only the briefest of undergarments. She was so beautiful that Vinn had trouble breathing.

"Would you please hand me the robe hanging behind the door?"

She turned her back to him and lifted her arms. He held the robe for her. She shrugged to nestle it on her shoulders and turned to face him. "If I invite you to lunch, would you be kind enough to fetch it for us?"

"My pleasure," he said.

He was back quickly with two hotpacks. Sheba pulled a small table out from the wall and they sat facing each other. When the lids of the hotpacks were removed, delicious smells joined the feminine scents of thedressing room. Sheba said, "Ummm," and attacked the food hungrily.

Vinn, fascinated, could only watch.

"If you're not going to eat your meat—" she said, looking up at him with her green eyes. Her lips were glossy.

"No, no," he said. "If you want it—"

"Thank you," she said, spearing his filet with her fork. She smiled radiantly. "Don't let it bother you. You're not the first to be amazed by my metabolism."

"You do enjoy your food, don't you?"

"I was my mother's despair," she said. "She was always telling me that it wasn't ladylike to eat like an outworld mine worker."

"Well, you certainly don't have a weight problem."

"Never," she said. "I can eat my weight and not gain an ounce."

"You're fortunate."

"You're not going to eat anything?"

He flushed. She said nothing more. He was not the first young man to be stupefied by her beauty. She never could fully understand it, but she accepted it. In her mind she was just Sheba, the youngest Webster girl.

She liked her body well enough because it was lithe and healthy and sturdy, because it was capable of doing fun things like rock climbing and soaring. After a period of trying to hide her developing body with baggy clothes and a slump of her shoulders when she was a teenager she had learned to be thankful that others found it pleasant to look at her. All of her life she had liked pleasing people and she had developed that skill into a precision art. She had only to walk into a room to be the center of attention. Her beauty and charisma had made a place for her in holofilms, and then she had accepted another challenge and had set out to learn the craft of the actor.

Now, in the full bloom of womanhood, she stood at the pinnacle of her profession, ranked among the top dozen performers, male and female, who were familiar to viewers on hundreds of worlds. She had come to love thelifestyle that was made possible by her looks and by an acting ability that had been developed carefully from nothing more than a small kernel of talent.

"How did you happen to end up out here in the wilderness?" she asked, in an effort to put Vinn more at ease.

"Just luck," he said. "I was working at the Verbolt works on Xanthos—"

"You're one of those?" she asked, widening her eyes.

"Big brain, that's me," he said with a self-conscious laugh.

She was vaguely aware that Vinn, in addition to his other duties, was charged with keeping the film unit's computer in operational order.

"I'm impressed," she said. "I barely managed to fake my way through computer proficiency in school. I could never understand how data can be stored on molecules of liquid." She smiled. "But you were telling me how you came to be a part of our merry company."

"My old computer logic professor at Xanthos University was offered the job of scientific adviser for this film of yours," he went on. "His health wouldn't permit his coming, so he recommended me. I have to confess that I gave the proposition every bit of two seconds thought before I said yes."

"Didn't like it on Xanthos?"

"Yes and no," he said. "All my life I thought that there'd be nothing better than having my own laboratory with limitless access to equipment and funds. I knew that given the chance I could make giant strides in computer science."

"And?"

"And I spent eleven years in my beautifully equipped lab at Verbolt and the only discovery I made was that everything had already been discovered."

"Surely not."

"That's what I told myself as a sop to my ego," he confessed. "I wasalways the bright one in my class, Miss Webster. I was always tops. I was the great hope of my family and my instructors and when it came right down to it I discovered that I was, as our friend Frank says, just a Big Brain. I have an excellent memory. I'm a quick study. And I don't think I've ever had an original thought in my life."

"That's being rather hard on yourself. After all, you're young."

"Thirty-five."

"Young." She gave him her best smile. "Younger than I."

"No."

"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm quite ancient."

"You're beautiful," he whispered.

"Thank you." She winked at him as she lifted a spoonful of a quite delicious pudding, spoke with her mouth full as she put down the spoon and dish. "And now, sir, I think you'd better help me get back into my butterfly suit."

It was necessary for him to adjust the small bulge of the fake wing muscles that blended into the mounds of her breasts. He felt the softness and the heat. For a moment she was irritated as she saw his hands tremble, but the moment passed. He was, after all, not to be blamed for being affected by the fortunate blending of genes that had made her—so one fan magazine had said—the peak product of a million years of selective evolution. She walked beside him. He carried Miaree's eyes carefully. Just before they reached the makeup cubicle he said, "I have the use of an aircar. Have you had a chance to see the desert wilderness from the air?"

"No."

"If you're care to—"

"I'd like that," she said.

"After work, then," he said. "If Frank knocks off in time to leave us some daylight. I can have a picnic packed."