he bedrooms in the
center.

"This house is just too much to take in all at once," she declared.
"Besides, let's put on our swimsuits and get over to the Nat."

In the room, she closed the door firmly in the faces of the Omans and
grinned. "Maybe, sometime, I'll get used to having somebody besides you
in my bedroom, but I haven't, yet.... Oh, do you itch, too?"

Hilton had peeled to the waist and was scratching vigorously all around
his waistline, under his belt. "Like the very devil," he admitted, and
stared at her. For she, three-quarters stripped, was scratching, too!

"It started the minute we left the _Orion_," he said, thoughtfully. "I
see. These new skins of ours like hard radiation, but don't like to be
smothered while they're enjoying it. By about tomorrow, we'll be a
nudist colony, I think."

"I could stand it, I suppose. What makes you think so?"

"Just what I know about radiation. Frank would be the one to ask. My
hunch is, though, that we're going to be nudists whether we want to or
not. Let's go."

* * * * *

They went in a two-seater, leaving the Omans at home. Three-quarters of
the staff were lolling on the sand or were seated on benches beside the
immense pool. As they watched, Beverly ran out along the line of
springboards; testing each one and selecting the stiffest. She then
climbed up to the top platform--a good twelve feet above the board--and
plummeted down upon the board's heavily padded take-off. Legs and back
bending stubbornly to take the strain, she and the board reached
low-point together, and, still in sync with it, she put every muscle she
had into the effort to hurl herself upward.

She had intended to go up thirty feet. But she had no idea whatever as
to her present strength, or of what that Oman board, in perfect
synchronization with that tremendous strength, would do. Thus, instead
of thirty feet, she went up very nearly two hundred; which of course
spoiled completely her proposed graceful two-and-a-half.

In midair she struggled madly to get into some acceptable position.
Failing, she curled up into a tight ball just before she struck water.

_What_ a splash!

"It won't hurt her--you couldn't hurt her with a club!" Hilton snapped.
He seized Temple's hand as everyone else rushed to the pool's edge.
"Look--Bernadine--that's what I was thinking about."

Temple stopped and looked. The platinum-haired twins had been basking on
the sand, and whe