yself go for a second--I don't
think I will, but I might--don't wait until you're really hurt to start
screaming. Promise?"

"I promise." Her eyes went wide. "But _tell_ me!"

He told her. She was in turn surprised, amazed, apprehensive, frightened
and finally eager; and she became more and more eager right up to the
end.

"You mean that we ... that I'll stay just as I am--for thousands of
_years_?"

"Just as you are. Or different, if you like. If you really mean any of
this yelling you've been doing about being too big in the hips--I think
you're exactly right, myself--you can rebuild yourself any way you
please. Or change your shape every hour on the hour. But you haven't
accepted my invitation yet."

"Don't be silly." She went into his arms again and nibbled on his left
ear. "I'd go anywhere with you, of course, any time, but _this_--but
you're positively _sure_ Sammy Small will be all right?"

"Positively sure."

"Okay, I'll call mother...." Her face fell. "I _can't_ tell her that
we'll never see them again and that we'll live ..."

"You don't need to. She and Pop--Fern and Sally, too, and their
boy-friends--are on the list. Not this time, but in a month or so,
probably."

Doris brightened like a sunburst. "And your folks, too, of course?" she
asked.

"Yes, all the close ones."

"Marvelous! How soon are we leaving?"

* * * * *

At six o'clock next morning, two hundred thirty-five days after leaving
Earth, Hilton and Sawtelle set out to make the Ardans' official call
upon Terra's Advisory Board. Both were wearing prodigiously heavy lead
armor, the inside of which was furiously radioactive. They did not need
it, of course. But it would make all Ardans monstrous in Terran eyes and
would conceal the fact that any other Ardans were landing.

Their gig was met at the spaceport; not by a limousine, but by a
five-ton truck, into which they were loaded one at a time by a hydraulic
lift. Cameras clicked, reporters scurried, and tri-di scanners whirred.
One of those scanners, both men knew, was reporting directly and only to
the Advisory Board--which, of course, never took anything either for
granted or at its face value.

Their first stop was at a truck-scale, where each visitor was weighed.
Hilton tipped the beam at four thousand six hundred fifteen pounds;
Sawtelle, a smaller man, weighed in at four thousand one hundred ninety.
Thence to the Radiation Laboratory, where it