"Um. Poor technique, but typically Boskonian. Your trip to Tellus was more or less accidental, then?"
"Yes. I wanted her to take me back to Lonabar, but she wouldn't. She learned about Tellus and the Patrol from our minds—none of them could believe at first that there were any inhabited worlds except their own—and wanted to study them at first hand. So she took our ship and used me as ... as a sort of blind, I think."
"I see. I'm not surprised. I thought that there was something remarkably screwy about those activities—they seemed so aimless and so barren of results—but I couldn't put my finger on it. And we crowded her so close that she decided to flit for home. You drove the ship and picked her up. You could see her, but nobody else could—that she didn't want to."
"That was it. She said that she was being hampered by a mind of power. That was you, of course?"
"And others. Well, that's that, for a while."
He called the tailor in. No, he didn't have a thing to make a girl's dress out of, especially not a girl like that. She should wear glamorette, and sheer—very sheer. He didn't know a thing about ladies' tailoring, either; he hadn't made a gown since he was knee-high to a duck. All he had in the shop was coat linings. Perhaps nylon would do, after a fashion. He remembered now, he did have a bolt of gray nylon that wasn't any good for linings—not stiff enough. Far too heavy, of course, but it would drape well.
It did. She came swaggering back, an hour or so later, the hem of her skirt swishing against the tops of her high-laced boots.
"Do you like it?" she asked, pirouetting gayly.
"Fine!" he applauded, and it was. The tailor had understated tremendously both his ability and the resources of his shop.
"Now what? I don't have to stay in my room all the time now, please?"