o peel off like a plastiwrapper."

Nona stopped; she said nothing.

Anti shook her head hopelessly. "I wish you would learn to read lips
or at least recognize written words. It's so difficult to communicate
with you."

"She knows facial expressions and actions, I think," said Docchi.
"She's good at emotions. Words are a foreign concept to her."

"What other concepts does anyone think with?" asked Anti dubiously.

"Maybe mathematical relationships," answered Docchi. "Though she
doesn't. They've tested her for that." He frowned. "I don't know what
concepts she does think with. I wish I did."

"Save some of that worry and apply it to our present situation," said
Anti. "The object of your concern doesn't seem to be interested in
it."

That was true. Nona had wandered back and was staring at the gravital
indicator again. What she saw to hold her attention was a puzzle.

In some ways she seemed irresponsible and childlike. That was an
elusive thought, though: whose child? Not really, of course. Her
parents were obscure technicians and mechanics, descendants of a long
line of mechanics and technicians. The question he had asked himself
was this: where and how does she belong? He couldn't answer.

With an effort Docchi came back to reality. "We appealed to the
Medicouncil," he said. "We asked for a ship to go to the nearest star.
It would have to be a rocket, naturally. Even allowing for a better
design than any we now have, the journey would take a long time, forty
or fifty years going and the same length of time back. That's entirely
too long for a normal, but it wouldn't matter to a biocompensator."

"Why a rocket?" interrupted Jordan. "Why not some form of gravity
drive?"

"An attractive idea," admitted Docchi. "Theoretically, there's no
limit to gravity drive except light speed, and even that's not
certain. If it would work, the time element could be cut to a
fraction. But the last twenty years have proved that gravity drives
won't work at all outside the Solar System. They function very poorly
even when the ship is as far out as Jupiter's orbit."

"I thought the gravity drive on a ship was nearly the same as the
gravital unit on the asteroid," said Jordan. "Why won't they
function?"

"I don't know why," answered Docchi impatiently. "If I did, I wouldn't
be marooned on Handicap Haven. Arms or no arms, biocompensator or not,
I'd be the most important scientist on Earth."

"With a multitude of pretty women