me see," Juli coaxed, and he brought it out, slowly, still
suspicious. It was an angled prism of crystal, star-shaped, set in a
frame which could get the star spinning like a solidopic. But it
displayed a new and comical face every time it was turned.

Mickey turned it round and round, charmed at being the center of
attention. There seemed to be dozens of faces, shifting with each spin
of the prism, human and nonhuman, all dim and slightly distorted. My own
face, Juli's, Joanna's came out of the crystal surface, not a reflection
but a caricature.

A choked sound from Juli made me turn in dismay. She had let herself
drop to the floor and was sitting there, white as death, supporting
herself with her two hands.

"Race! Find out where he got that--that _thing_!"

I bent and shook her. "What's the matter with you?" I demanded. She had
lapsed into the dazed, sleepwalking horror of this morning. She
whispered, "It's not a toy. Rindy had one. Joanna, _where did he get
it_?" She pointed at the shining thing with an expression of horror
which would have been laughable had it been less real, less filled with
terror.

Joanna cocked her head to one side and wrinkled her forehead,
reflectively. "Why, I don't know, now you come to ask me. I thought
maybe one of the _chaks_ had given it to Mickey. Bought it in the
bazaar, maybe. He loves it. Do get up off the floor, Juli!"

Juli scrambled to her feet. She said, "Rindy had one. It--it terrified
me. She would sit and look at it by the hour, and--I told you about it,
Race. I threw it out once, and she woke up and screamed. She shrieked
for hours and hours and she ran out in the dark and dug for it in the
trash pile, where I'd buried it. She went out in the dark, broke all her
fingernails, but she dug it out again." She checked herself, staring at
Joanna, her eyes wide in appeal.

"Well, dear," said Joanna with mild, rebuking kindness, "you needn't be
so upset. I don't think Mickey's so attached to it as all that, and
anyhow I'm not going to throw it away." She patted Juli reassuringly on
the shoulder, then gave Mickey a little shove toward the door and turned
to follow him. "You'll want to talk alone before Race leaves. Good luck,
wherever you're going, Race." She held out her hand forthrightly.

"And don't worry about Juli," she added in an undertone. "We'll take
good care of her."

When I came back to Juli she was standing by the window, looking through
the oddly filtered g