They were ushered into a private room and Kinnison wriggled as mannequins began to appear before them in various degrees of enclothement.
"This is no place for me," he declared. "I'll see you later, Chris. How long—half an hour or so?"
"Half an hour!" The nurse giggled, and:
"She will be here all the rest of today, and most of the time for a week," the couturier informed him severely—and she was.
"Oh, Kim, I'm having the most marvelous time!" she told him excitedly, a few days later. "But it makes me feel sick to think of how much of the Patrol's money I'm spending."
"You may think that you're spending money, but you aren't," he informed her, cryptically.
"Huh? What do you mean?" she demanded, but he would not talk.
She found out, however, after the long-drawn-out business of selecting and matching and designing and fitting was over.
"You have seen me in civvies only a couple of times, and I got myself all prettied up in the beauty shop." She posed provocatively. "Do you like me, Kim?"
"Like you!" The man could scarcely speak. She had been a seven-sector call-out in faded moleskin breeches and a patched shirt. She had been a thionite dream in uniform. But now—radiantly, vibrantly beautiful, a symphony in her favorite dark green. "Words fail, ace. Thoughts, too. They fold up and quit. The universe's best, is all I can say—"