might be right. At least he'd warned her, and as long as she had the
facts straight, the decision was hers to make.

Jadiver peeled off his jacket and slid into a protective smock. "Ask
Burlingame to come in. This is going to be delicate, you know."

The gamin grinned. "I've never been overly concerned about Vicon, and he
knows I can take care of myself." She stepped behind a screen and
presently came out again, nude. "Where do you want me to stand?"

"On the pedestal, under the light." He looked at her closely. He had
thought she was a little girl, a tired little girl who hadn't slept much
recently. It was the pert face that had fooled him, with the upturned
nose, because she wasn't young. Forty he would say, maybe more, nearly
as old as Burlingame.

Her body was slight, but not much was wrong with it. Here and there were
a few wrinkles, though in general her figure appeared youthful. It would
require all his skill to make her as spectacular in a low-cut gown as
she wanted to be. And her legs, though well shaped, were slightly
bowed, a sure sign of Venusian rickets. Early settlers hadn't realized
that the soil was deficient in some essential trace elements.

He would have to straighten her legs if she expected to mingle with
society. It was beyond his power to change the bones, but he could add
pseudo-flesh to give the same effect.

He slipped on the mask, attached the various containers, thrust his hand
into the glovelike control valve, and began to work.

She winced involuntarily as the spray tingled against her body and
adhered with constrictive force. He blocked out the areas he had to
alter and then began to fill in and build up.

"I don't see it," said Emily. "I know you must be good. That's why
Burlingame wanted you. But it seems to me this is out of your line."

He brought the spray up in a straight line along the edge of her shin.
"How good I am is a matter of opinion. Mine and the places I've worked."

"What places, for instance?"

"Mostly Earth."

"I've never been there," she said wistfully.

"You haven't missed much." He knew that, while he believed that with
part of his mind, essentially he was wrong. As the spray was drying on
her legs, he started filling out her breasts. "However, this isn't as
much out of my line as you think. Engineers specialize, you know. Mine's
industrial design. We don't usually monkey with the internal mechanism
of a machine, though we're able to. Mostly, we design h