rest of us, the only one, in fact, who was born that way, it would be
easy to hate her--she's so disgustingly normal."

Normal? True and yet not true. Surgical techniques that could take a
body apart and put it back together again with a skill once reserved
for the repair of machines had made beauty commonplace. No more
sagging muscles, wrinkles; even the aged were attractive and
youthful-seeming until the day they died. No more ill-formed limbs,
misshapen bodies. Everyone was handsome or beautiful. No exceptions.

None to speak of, at least.

The accidentals didn't belong, of course. In another day most of them
would have been candidates for a waxworks or the formaldehyde of a
specimen bottle.

Nona fitted neither category; she wasn't a repair job. Looking at her
closely--and why not?--she was an original work as far from the normal
in one direction as Anti, for example, was in the other.

"Why is she staring at the little dial?" asked Anti as the others
slipped past her and came into the compartment. "Is there something
wrong with it?" She shrugged. "I would be interested in the big dials.
The ones with colored lights."

"That's Nona." Docchi smiled. "I'm sure she's never been in the
control room of a rocket before, and yet she went straight to the most
curious thing in it. She's looking at the gravital indicator. Directly
behind it is the gravital unit."

"How do you know? Does it say so?"

"It doesn't. You have to be trained to recognize it, or else be Nona."

Anti dismissed that intellectual feat. "What are you waiting for? You
know she can't hear us. Go stand in front of her."

"How do I get there?" Docchi had risen a few inches from the floor,
now that Jordan had released him from his grip.

"A good engineer would have enough sense to put on magneslippers. Nona
did." Anti grasped his jacket. How she was able to move was uncertain.
The tissues that surrounded the woman were too vast to permit the
perception of individual motions. Nevertheless, she proceeded to the
center of the compartment, and with her came Docchi.

Nona turned before they reached her.

"My poor boy," sighed Anti. "You do a very bad job of concealing your
emotions, if that's what you're trying to do. Anyway, stop glowing
like a rainbow and say something."

"Hello," said Docchi.

Nona smiled at him, though it was Anti that she came to.

"No, not too close, child. Don't touch the surgery robe unless you
want your pretty face t