round for everything; and all garbage is best kept in the can. Oh
yes, our talking would have gained us a few more days of infatuation, of
phantom security, but those we could have--almost as many of them, at
any rate--without talking.

For instance things were smoothing over already between her and me again
and I no longer felt quite so irked. She'd replaced the comb with an
inoffensive-looking pair of light pliers and was doing up her hair with
the metal shavings. And I was acting as if content to watch her, as in a
way I was. I'd still made no move to get dressed.

She looked real sweet, you know, primping herself that way. Her face was
a little flat, but it was young, and the scar gave it just the fillip it
needed.

But what was going on behind that forehead right now, I asked myself? I
felt real psychic this morning, my mind as clear as a bottle of White
Rock you find miraculously unbroken in a blasted tavern, and the answers
to the question I'd asked myself came effortlessly.

* * * * *

She was telling herself she'd got herself a man again, a man who was
adequate in the primal clutch (I gave myself that pat on the back), and
that she wouldn't have to be plagued and have her safety endangered by
_that_ kind of mind-dulling restlessness and yearning for a while.

She was lightly playing around with ideas about how she'd found a home
and a protector, knowing she was kidding herself, that it was the most
gimcracky feminine make-believe, but enjoying it just the same.

She was sizing me up, deciding in detail just what I went for in a
woman, what whetted my interest, so she could keep that roused as long
as seemed desirable or prudent to her to continue our relation.

She was kicking herself, only lightly to begin with, because she hadn't
taken any precautions--because we who've escaped hot death against all
reasonable expectations by virtue of some incalculable resistance to the
ills of radioactivity, quite often find we've escaped sterility too. If
she should become pregnant, she was telling herself, then she had a real
sticky business ahead of her where no man could be trusted for a second.

And because she was thinking of this and because she was obviously a
realistic Deathlander, she was reminding herself that a woman is
basically less impulsive and daring and resourceful than a man and so
had always better be sure she gets in the first blow. She would be
thinking that I wa