s taking you home," he said, his face red with anger.

She didn't bother to reply and he put his hand on her arm. I told him to
let go and he let go. Then he swung around and hit me on the jaw with
all his might. I grabbed his arm with one hand and his throat with the
other and threw him into the middle of the pool.

* * * * *

Things were going better than I expected. As we walked along, she seemed
quite interested in me. I told her my name and she told me that she was
Beth Copperd, the daughter of a professor at the university. I pretended
that I had not known those things.

When we got to her home, which was on a tree lined street, we paused for
a moment. Across the street there was a car with a man sitting in it,
pretending to read a newspaper.

I knew all about that man. I knew there was another man who was watching
the back of the house. If not for that I would not have had to go
through this lengthy affair with Beth Copperd.

"I regret very much this trouble with your friend," I said.

"You needn't. He's had it coming for a long time." She stared at me
thoughtfully. "You know, Marko, I'm a little afraid of you."

"Of me? But why?"

"Well," she hesitated, "it's hard to say. But when a man jumps into a
pool and swims so much faster than one of our country's best swimmers,
and then picks up that swimmer and throws him fifty feet without the
slightest effort ... well, that man is slightly unusual, to say the
least."

"Oh, the swimming...."

I hadn't thought that what was quite ordinary for me might seem exactly
the opposite to these people. I had blundered. So I tried to shrug it
off, as though such things were common among my people. Which they were.
But that line only dragged me deeper. This girl was no fool.

"That's what I meant, Marko. You aren't being modest. You're acting as
though you're used to such feats, and take them as a matter of course.
And there's your accent. I can't quite place it."

"Some day I'll tell you all about it," I said lightly. "When we know
each other better."

"That's going pretty fast, isn't it?"

"Some of us have found that we don't have all the time we should like.
We must go fast, or not at all."

It was a platitude, slightly jumbled, but none the less true. Beth was
looking up at me. There were things she might have noticed; that my skin
was uncommonly smooth, and that I hadn't even the faintest trace of
whiskers.

She didn't noti