made by
starting at the top and coming around in a sweeping, graceful curve like
this--"

It didn't come around in any curve. As the lead point hit the paper it
bore down in, flicked off the tip, and then crunched down, breaking off
the point and splintering the thin, whittled wood for about an eighth of
an inch. The fact that I could not control it bothered me inside and I
instinctively clutched at the shaft of the pencil. It cracked in three
places in my hand; the top end with the eraser fell down over my wrist
to the bureau top and rolled in a rapid rattle to the edge where it fell
to the floor.

"See?" asked Farrow softly.

"But--?" I blundered uncertainly.

"Steve, your muscles and your nervous system have been stepped up
proportionately. You've got to re-learn the coordination between the
muscle-stimulus and the feedback information from the work you are
doing."

I began to see what she meant. I remembered long years ago at school,
when we'd been studying some of the new alloys and there had been a
sample of a magnesium-lithium-something alloy that was machined into a
smooth cylinder about four inches in diameter and a foot long. It looked
like hard steel. People who picked it up for the first time invariably
braced their muscles and set both hands on it. But it was so light that
their initial effort almost tossed the bar through the ceiling, and even
long after we all knew, it was hard not to attack the bar without using
the experience of our mind and sense that told us that any bar of metal
_that_ big had to be _that_ heavy.

I went to a chair. Farrow said, "Be careful," and I was. But it was no
trick at all to take the chair by one leg at the bottom and lift it chin
high.

"Now, go take your shower," she told me. "But Steve, please be careful
of the plumbing. You can twist off the faucet handles, you know."

I nodded and turned to her, holding out a hand. "Farrow, you're a
brick!"

She took my hand. It was not steel hard. It was warm and firm and
pleasant. It was--holding hands with a woman.

Farrow stepped back. "One thing you'll have to remember," she said
cheerfully, "is only to mix with your own kind from now on. Now go get
that shower and shave. I'll be getting breakfast."

Showering was not hard and I remembered not to twist off the water-tap
handles. Shaving was easy although I had to change razor blades three
times in the process. I broke all the teeth out of the comb because it
was nev