The fixer

Illustrated by Kramer
Sandra Drake sat in her perfect apartment on Telfu, and cursed in an unladylike manner. She was plying a needle with some difficulty, and the results of her work were decidedly amateurish. But her clothing was slowly going to pieces, and there was not a good tailor in nine light-years of Sandra Drake.
The Telfan tailors didn't understand Solarian tailoring; Sandra was forced to admit that they were good—for Telfans. But for Solarians, they didn't come up to the accepted standards.
They had tried, she gave them credit for that. But the Telfan figure did not match the Solarian, especially the four-breasted female Telfan woman did not match Sandra's thin-waisted, high breasted figure. Her total lack of the Telfan skin; part feathers, part hair, but actually classifiable as neither, caused a different hang to the clothing. Telfans wore practically nothing because of the pelt and though Sandra's figure was one of those that should have been adorned in practically nothing, Telfu was not sufficiently warm to go running around in a sunsuit.
And making over Telfan clothing to fit her was out of the question. She stood half a head above their tallest women, and the only clothing that would have fit was clothing made in outsizes for extremely huge Telfan women. Needless to say this size of garment was shapeless.
Sandra finished her mending, tried on the garment and made a wry face. I used to curse the lack of humans here, she told her image in the mirror, but now I'm glad I'm the only one. I'd sure hate to have any of my old friends see me looking like this.
The image that repeated silently was not too far a cry from the Sandra Drake that had called the Haywire Queen in for a landing on Telfu some months ago. But they hadn't waited, and she now knew why. Well, she was forced to admit that her try at either trapping them here or getting off with them had failed, and therefore she had been outguessed.
That made her burn. Being outguessed by a man was something that Sandra didn't care to have happen. She could live through it; but it was the aftermath that really hurt. The Telfans came to understand her too well after that incident. They no longer looked upon her as a leading figure in her system. They knew that her knowledge of Solarian science was sketchy and incomplete. Therefore she had lost her hold upon Telfu, and was now forced to do her own mending.