ousings for the
machines, robots as a rule."

He proceeded to her face and changed the upturned nose to a straight
one. "The ideal external appearance of a machine ought to establish the
function of that machine, and do so with the most efficient distribution
of space and material."

He stood back and eyed the total effect. She was coming along. "The
human body is a good design--for a human. It doesn't belong on a robot.
That, for most purposes, should be a squat container with three wheels
or treads, with eye-stalks and tentacles on top. I designed one like
that, but it was never built. Robots always look like beautiful girls or
handsome men, and the mechanism is twice as clumsy as it should be, in
order to fit in with that conception."

He squinted at the spray. "In other words, I design robot bodies and
faces. Why should it be strange I can do the same with humans?"

The spray was neither a liquid nor a dustlike jet. She shivered under
it. "Why don't you like robots? I don't see anything wrong with them.
They're so beautiful."

He laughed. "I'll give you an idea. I got tired of the meaningless
perfection of the bodies I was turning out. Why shouldn't the bodies be
beautiful, considering how they're made? Anyway, I put a pimple on one
model. Not on her face. Her shoulder."

She extended her hands and he took off the fine wrinkles with a sweeping
motion of the spray. "What happened?"

"I had to start looking for another job. But somebody higher up began to
think about what I'd done. Now, on Earth, all robots that model clothing
have some perceptible skin defects. More lifelike, they say."

"Is that why you came to Venus?"

"I'd been considering it for some time. It seemed to me that there ought
to be a place for a good designer, even if I did have to work on
robots." He smiled wryly. "A lot of other engineers had the same idea."

"Too much competition?"

"Sort of." He grimaced. "My first job here was designing female bodies
for so-called social clubs."

"Oh, those," she said scornfully.

"It's legitimate on Venus. Anyway, I tried out that idea again.
Customers didn't like it. Said they could get women with blemishes any
time. When they got a robot, they wanted perfection."

"Don't blame them," Emily said practically. She looked at him with
sudden suspicion. "Don't give _me_ pimples."

"Not a one," he assured her. "You're flawless."

And she was--with only one item missing. He flexed his fingers in t