ll ready now?"

Kathy looked up at him brightly. "Lord Dionysus, it's so dark I can't
even see for sure what's going on. How can we do any judging, if we
can't see?"

Forrester cursed Kathy for pointing out the flaw in his arrangements.
Then, making a nice impartial job of it, he cursed himself for
forgetting that what was perfectly visible to him was dark night to
mortals.

"We can clear that up," he said quickly. "As a matter of fact, I was
just getting around to it. We will now proceed to shed a little light on
the subject--said subject being our old friend Mr. Bottle."

The trick had been taught to him by Venus, but he'd never had a chance
to practice it. This was his first real experience with it, and he could
only hope that it went off as it was supposed to.

He stepped into the middle of the circle, near Ed Symes's stiff body and
held his right hand above his head, thumb and forefinger spread an inch
apart and the other three fingers folded into his palm.

Then he concentrated.

A long second ticked by, while Forrester tried to apply even more neural
pressure. Then ...

A small ball of light appeared between his thumb and forefinger, a
yellow, cold sphere of fire that shed its radiance over the whole group.
Carefully, he withdrew his hand, not daring to breathe. The ball of
yellow fire remained in position, hanging in mid-air.

The muffled gasp from the circle of girls was, Forrester told himself, a
definite tribute.

"Now don't worry about it, girls," he said. "That light's only visible
to the eight of us. Nobody else can see it."

There was another little series of gasps.

Forrester grinned. "Can everybody see each other?"

A murmur of agreement.

"Can everybody see Mr. Bottle here?"

Another murmur.

"In that case, let's go." He stepped outside the circle of girls,
reached in again for Ed Symes's foot, and set the gentleman spinning
once more.

Symes spun with a blinding speed, making a low, whistling noise.
Forrester watched the body spin dizzily, just as anxious as the girls
were to find out who the first winner was going to be. He thought of
Millicent, who chewed gum and made it pop. He thought of Bette, the
inveterate explainer and double-take expert. He tried to think of
Dorothy and Jayne and Beverly and Judy, but the thought of Kathy,
irritating and uncomfortable and too damned bright for her own good, got
annoyingly in the way.

He was rather glad he had promised not to use his