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Her touch made him queasy with anticipation, but she remained calm. He admired her tranquility. She must be far older than he. When he put his arm around her waist and she gave him a hug in return, they kissed one another so softly that he felt the warmth of her lips but no pressure. She moved to the next step, still looking right at him.

"Will you go with me?" she asked, extending her hand.

Clark took it and followed. His nervousness seemed to surround him like a fog, one that condensed in droplets on his skin. Questions like "Go where? How long? Tonight, tomorrow, a year?" appeared in the fog and went away again. She continued to walk calmly, turning now and then to smile at him or address tactful questions about his home planet, his family and life on Reshebora, where she had never been though she was raised on a planet in the system. Clark's unease gradually evaporated.

"Did you ever teach?" she was asking as they turned a residential corner to face the beautiful giant moon.

"I helped run a students' laboratory once, with six other advanced students." He laughed. "That course made me decide against teaching. There were twelve professors--every president professor in the department. So we did twelve experiments, one designed by each. They did have some good ones. And the seven of us took turns overseeing. There were a hundred students."

"A hundred? It must have been madness."

"Actually, there was only one fight. It was during my stint. I'd given out rats that were--fitted with a device in the brain to stimulate certain kinds of brain activity. You might use it to control siezures or mood disorders. Anyhow, they were supposed to divide into pairs, take a rat, watch it and turn the device on and off and figure out where in the brain the device was. But when one pair turned the thing on, their rat went into convulsions and they panicked."

"Why?" Teresa asked.

"Well, the device gave a signal like a--like a radio wave. It just happened that when the signal echoed back from the rat's skull, it was at the right distance so the echo and the signal added together so it just got stronger and stronger. At least, that was the only explanation we could think of."

"I mean, why did they panic? And why did they fight over it?"

Clark shrugged. "I guess they were worried about doing well. They thought they'd get in trouble. One of them turned the thing off and the other yelled for me. I guess the first one told him to shut up and...things got out of hand. Meantime the rat was lying on its back, having asymmetric convulsions. I didn't know what to do, either."

"What did you do?"

"I called in the professor. She was excited, called everybody around to watch, called some other instructors. It was a rare event, after all. Her reaction...bothered me. Not that it was wrong, but that mine was so different. I thought I had..."

"Fallen short?" Teresa suggested.

"I guess. I had been shown something and failed to see it."

"Well, behold." Teresa turned up a short walk to a sheet-metal house. A string of small flowers around the doorframe provided its only outside adornment.

Inside, the house was stark. An unlit hallway led to the kitchen, where Teresa stopped to water a spindly plant on the windowsill above the sink. The kitchen had been washed so often that the orange flowers on the countertop were fading, but the light that came through a layer of dirty water between the windowpanes made the room look dingy anyhow. A counter set at right angles to the wall divided kitchen from parlor. An enclosed set of shelves ran between the wall and a post at the end of the counter. Walking into the living room, Clark noticed that the shelves' back had been painted to look like cupboard doors, but the doorknobs had fallen off.

The living room walls were paneled with something woodlike that bowed out slightly at eye level. Clark sat down in a blue stuffed chair, then got up to look at two drawings on the long wall above the couch. One showed an old man teaching a girl to read, the other a man and woman seated back to back in a garden. Teresa watched him.

"These are nice," he said.

"My brother took them from photographs. Let's not talk about the house. How about if I get some dinner?" She went into the kitchen.

"Sure. Can I help?"

"No, never mind. Just sit down. We have municipal food lines here, so I'll just--they don't have this on Reshebora, do they?"

"No, they don't."

"It's pretty expensive, but I use it because it's simple and nutritionally balanced."

Clark went into the kitchen and found her spooning out some of the same food he ate reluctantly at the Words of Love. In fact, this was worse. He watched Teresa take a pair of candles down from the shelves, her blouse lying close on her shoulder and back. A rush of friendly feeling he could not have explained made him put his arms around her, setting his fingers along the lines of her ribs, and kiss her.

She seemed amused, but only said, "Would you like some tea?"

"Please." He backed away until he was almost in the hall, while she lifted down a shiny metal pot.

"I thought you might. I usually do." She measured the tea from a yellow cannister, added a pinch of spice, and put the pot in the sink. "Didn't always, though," she muttered, looking out the window. "I was married once."

"You were?"

"He died. An accident."

Clark glanced into the living room. There was no portrait. "Long ago?" he asked.

"A while." She picked up the dinner bowls. "Take these in, will you?"

Dinner was short. Clark swallowed his food without chewing, trying to pretend it wasn't there. It's pre-digested anyway, he thought, for people without teeth or stomachs. For dessert she gave him something tough, apparently for dental health alone, since it had no taste. He was almost afraid to try the tea, but found it pleasant and faintly invigorating.

"Good tea," he said, pouring himself another cup.

She blushed. He sat watching her. In the orange candlelight she was pretty, her eyes large and dark. He noticed that her neck was very long. When she turned her head, the muscle running from ear to collarbone stood out, almost as long as his hand. She sat up and her hair shifted to fall behind her shoulders.

She picked up the teapot. Her fingers were not long as her neck was, but smooth and powerful. He thought her hands must be sensitive, and wondered how the teapot's handle felt to her palm. It must be warm. How would his skin feel to her?

"More tea?"

"What? Oh--yes. Please."

She filled his cup and carried the pot into the kitchen. He watched her hips move right and left, now one side and now the other outlined by her trousers. He stood up to follow her at the same time she came into the hallway.

"Do you mind if I decorate myself?" she asked, walking away.

"Not at all." He hurried after her, into the bedroom. The walls were hung with royal-blue curtains that felt silky between his fingers. Their gold hems swished against the carpet. Teresa sat at a vanity table before a multicolored collection of paints, powders and creams. Clark sat among lacy pillows on a corner of the bed to watch.

Teresa wiped her hands with a cloth soaked in alcohol. She cleaned her face the same way and began to apply a pale brown foundation cream. When her face and throat were one color from hairline to sternum, she brought out a box of pressed powders in various shades of pink and tan, selected a deep rose to brush carefully on her cheeks, then put a dab of glistening white paste under each eye and rubbed it in with a forefinger. Another box held grey, green, blue and purple powders for the eyelids. She brushed on the purple, studied it in the mirror, wiped it off, and put on the blue. Black paint for the lashes and finally pencil for the brows finished the eyes.

"Which do you like?" she asked Clark, holding out a fistful of sunny-colored lipsticks.

He touched one at random and she put it on, licking the end to moisten it and drawing it evenly along her lips. She took a fingernail polish from a drawer. "This is a new color. I bought it yesterday," she said.

Clark leaned forward.

"Would you like to try?" She laid her hand flat on the desk.

Clark dabbed cautiously at a nail, going with the grain, trying not to paint the cuticle. The stuff dried almost at once. His tentative dabs overlapped and made the surface uneven. He tried another with the same effect. She was so close that he could feel her breath on his head. Looking up, he saw dark curls and an earlobe. Looking down, he saw the outline of her thigh against the chair. He picked up her hand, the fingertips brushing his palm, and tried to think of something vaguely audacious that might speed things along.

"Teresa, let me wash all this off."

"What? All of it?"

"Yes. Then we'll both be naked."

"But I haven't put on my jumper. And my necklace and bracelets."

"Oh. Go ahead. Put them on. I'd like to see."

She went into a closet, leaving Clark to listen while the drapery caressed the floor. There was a mirror in the canopy over the bed. Looking at himself, he saw that his face was flushed and, when he stood up, that his pupils had dilated. The closet door opened with a startling creak.

Teresa stepped out, in a bright red silken jumper and vest edged with black. A small pendant hung between her breasts from a thin golden chain. Slender bracelets jingled on her forearms. Her hair, now richly curled, fell in a wave along her arms. To Clark, she seemed untouchably beautiful.

"Well?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow.

It was hard to speak. "Do you believe in omens? Seeing you, I almost think I'll never die."

She looked at his hands. "Do you still want me to wash it off?"

"Whatever you like."

She threw her arms around him, laughing. Soon it was easy to touch her. Clark's hands scampered over her body and he kissed the warm flesh everywhere he could find a way through the silken costume, pulling her almost close enough to sense through his pores things about her that could not be spoken. When he kissed her face and neck, he expected the makeup to come off on his mouth, but it didn't. He took off pieces of jewelry as he discovered them and let them fall in glittering heaps on the carpet.

"It's like making love in the heavens, isn't it?" she murmured. "On the dreaming moon." She collapsed backward and he tumbled atop her. "But you're a dimworlder," he heard her say. Somehow in the falling and tumbling she managed to put out the light.

Their lovemaking seemed to take eons. Clark imagined that time went faster when he entered Teresa, so that hours and days and years passed without effort, but when he withdrew time slowed and nearly stopped so that each instant was distended almost unendurably. Somewhere between the acceleration and the deceleration must fall the point where time flowed normally but with the same magic that let it speed and slow. He sought that point, his body trembling. Teresa groaned in deep harmony to his shudderings. He thought those sounds cast into the darkness between them more human and more articulate than speech. Later, he fell as close to her as he could. A square of light appeared on one of the curtains. He guessed it must be morning.

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CONTINUE.....................

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INDEX