sweetheart?"

"I know, but ... but I know just how close Tuly came to killing you. And
that wasn't _anything_ compared to such a radical transformation as
this. I'm afraid it'll kill you, darling. And I just simply couldn't
_stand_ it!"

She threw herself into his arms, and he comforted her in the ages-old
fashion of man with maid.

"Steady, hon," he said, as soon as he could lift her tear-streaked face
from his shoulder. "I'll live through it. I thought you were getting the
howling howpers about having to live for six thousand years and never
getting back to Terra except for a Q strictly T visit now and then."

She pulled away from him, flung back her wheaten mop and glared. "So
_that's_ what you thought! What do I care how long I live, or how, or
where, as long as it's with you? But what makes you think we can
possibly live through such a horrible conversion as that?"

"Larry wouldn't do it if there was any question whatever. He didn't say
it would be painless. But he did say I'd live."

"Well, he knows, I guess ... I hope." Temple's natural fine color began
to come back. "But it's understood that just the second you come out of
the vat, I go right in."

"I hadn't ought to let you, of course. But I don't think I could take it
alone."

That statement required a special type of conference, which consumed
some little time. Eventually, however, Temple answered it in words.

"Of course you couldn't, sweetheart, and I wouldn't let you, even if you
could."

There were a few things that had to be done before those two secret
conversions could be made. There was the matter of the wedding, which
was now to be in quadruplicate. Arrangements had to be made so that
eight Big Wheels of the Project could all be away on honeymoon at once.

All these things were done.

* * * * *

Of the conversion operations themselves, nothing more need be said. The
honeymooners, having left ship and town on a Friday afternoon, came back
one week from the following Monday[1] morning. The eight met joyously in
Bachelors' Hall; the girls kissing each other and the men
indiscriminately and enthusiastically; the men cooperating zestfully.

[1] While it took some time to recompute the exact Ardrian calendar,
Terran day names and Terran weeks were used from the first. The Omans
manufactured watches, clocks, and chronometers which divided the Ardrian
day into twenty-four Ardrian hours, with minutes and second