"Hofner, from Coordination," he corrected. "May I see the Commissioner? I believe he's expecting me."
"The Commissioner is in conference at the moment with some of the men he wants you to talk to. If you could wait in the lobby a few minutes, I'm sure he'll be ready to see you soon."
"Can't I wait in here?"
"I'm afraid not," she replied reluctantly. "It's a rule that no one can wait in the offices. They'd be filling the place to the ceiling if we let them get in this far. Not," she added with what she seemed to think was a fascinating smile, "that you'd try to get in ahead of your turn ... but some would."
Herl retreated with his case of papers to the lobby and took the nearest of two vacant chairs about fifteen feet from Crawford's door. He sat down and pulled a stilo and permanote pad from his breast pocket. Using his case as a writing desk he noted down several questions he wanted to ask somebody. There were vacant planets in his catalogue: maybe he had a market for one of those: and while there wasn't any commission on such a 'sale', there was usually a lot of kudos.
He glanced up at Crawford's door again, and a motion on his left drew his eye. There was someone in the chair next to him only ten feet away ... a woman, no, a girl. The thought flitted through his mind that she was a quiet one to slip into the chair without his noticing. She was looking at him, and he turned his head to look directly at her.
Shock like a heavy charge of electricity gripped and tingled in him. This was no girl, it was a ... a ... a ... who knows what. Wrapped in a thin golden haze, she sat, as if in the midst of an incandescent cloud, through which her face shone as if it, too, were illumined from inside. One bare arm lay along the upholstered arm of the chair, but not quite touching it, as though the cloud gave a little support; but the perfect arm was merely the lower frame for the exquisitely lovely face with its blue eyes that seemed to penetrate his awareness to its depths and the smile that smoothed his irritation at another tedious wait into nothingness.
Herl sat and regarded her a long instant, a foreverness of perhaps ten seconds. Then he came fumblingly to himself and smiled back at her. "Waiting for Crawford, too?" he asked lamely.
The tones of her voice were rippling water, a chord on a stringed instrument. "No."