n
some real person until you've got the knack of improvisation."

"Like unto this?" The stranger's outline shimmered and blurred into an
amorphous cloud, which then coalesced into the shape of a tall,
beautiful young man with the face of an ingenuous demon. "Behold, is
that superior?"

"Oh, far superior!" Paul reached up to adjust a stray lock of hair, then
realized he was not looking into a mirror. "Trouble is--well, I'd rather
you chose someone else to model yourself on. You see, in my profession,
it's important to look as unique as possible; helps people remember you.
I'm an actor, you know. Currently I happen to be at liberty, but the
year before last--"

"Well, whom should I appear like? Should I perhaps pick some fine
upstanding figure from your public prints to emulate? Like your
President, perhaply?"

"I--hardly think so. It wouldn't do to model yourself on someone well
known--or even someone obscure whom you might just happen to run into
someday." Being a kind-hearted young man, Paul added, "Come up to my
room. I have some British film magazines and there are lots of
relatively obscure English actors who are very decent-looking chaps."

* * * * *

So they climbed up to Paul's hot little room under the eaves and, after
leafing through several magazines, Paul chose one Ivo Darcy as a likely
candidate. Whereupon the stranger deliquesced and reformed into the
personable simulacrum of young Mr. Darcy.

"That's quite a trick," Paul observed as it finally got through to him
what the other had done. "It would come in handy in the profession--for
character parts, you know."

"I fear you would never be able to acquisition it," the stranger said,
surveying his new self in the mirror complacently. "It is not a trick
but a racial ableness. You see, I feel I can trust you--"

"--Of course I'm not really a character actor; I'm a leading man, but I
believe one should be versatile, because there are times when a really
good character part comes along--"

"--I am not a human being. I am a native of the fifth planet circulating
around the star you call Sirius, and we Sirians have the ableness to
change ourselves into the apparition of any other livid form--"

"I thought that might be a near-Eastern accent!" Paul exclaimed,
diverted. "Is Lebanese anything like it? Because I understand there's a
really juicy part coming up in--"

"I said _Sirian_, not _Syrian_; I do not come from Minor