She smiled quietly. "I've got legs and a figure," she chuckled. "I've been cheesecaked all over town as the Star Girl and there's talk of my getting a part in the Jack Vandal series over at Cosmic Studios."
"How so? Seems to me that we're both sort of washed up."
Barbara shook her head. "Jack Vandal is a sort of cheerful villain, you know. He takes delight in bumping off the well-protected crook who can't be touched by the law. He's hunted by the police and hated by the underworld—"
"Spare the gruesome details. They haven't changed in a couple of thousand years. How come you're not in the dog house?"
Barbara smiled. "Because the woman in that kind of opus is always a sort of shady lady herself. It wouldn't do to have an innocent virgin for the companion of a buccaneer. So with my slightly tarnished reputation I'm a natural. What happened to you?"
"The lie detector test."
Barbara blinked. "Then didn't that prove your point?"
"I thought it did. But I forgot one thing. Seems that the lie detector, no matter how good, is capable only of showing whether the character is telling a falsehood or not."
Barbara smiled confidently. "So you were telling the truth. Weren't you?"
"Sure," grunted Dusty. "Sure I was. But, quoting what's-his-name in the Bible: 'What is Truth?' One of the court psychologists pointed it out very clearly. If I firmly believe that the moon turned bright purple at ten o'clock last night, under a lie detector I'd be credited with a 'Truth' when I said so. In fact, the damned thing would say that I was telling a lie if I believed that the moon was purple and tried to cover up by saying that it hadn't changed. Follow?"