He didn't know. However, there seemed to be no help for it now; he would have to wait until they reached the next town, unless the girl, seeing him reappear in the same guise, would guess what had happened and tell her husband. He himself had been a fool to admit to her that the hulk he inhabited was a sick one; he still couldn't understand how he could so casually have entrusted her with so vital a piece of information.
The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they detached, and the first approached the man once more. "There is, as it happens, a body available for a private game," he lisped. "No questions to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good health."
The man hesitated. "But unable to pass the screening?" he murmured aloud. "A criminal then."
The green one's face—if you could call it a face—remained impassive.
"Male?"
"Of course," the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had also never been a recorded instance of humans and extraterrestrials exchanging identities, but whether that was the result of tabu or biological impossibility, no one could tell.
It might merely be prudence on the Vinzz' part—if it had ever been proved that an alien life-form had "desecrated" a human body, Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had been undoubtedly some rabid member of the anti-alien groups active on Terra who had started the rumor that the planetary slogan of Vinau was, "Don't beat 'em; cheat 'em."
"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take such a risk." The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How much?"
"Thirty thousand credits."