a pity she had that third eye
in her forehead.

She stood beside him while he ran through the letters and signed them.
"Meeting of the regional vice-chancellors tomorrow, eh?" he said as he
handed them back to her.

"Right, chancellor," she said crisply. "Ten o'clock. You may have to
take another whirlwind trip to tell them the situation is well in hand."

He grunted and glanced at the messages, scanned them quickly, tossed
them into the disposal vent beside his desk. Myra looked moderately
disapproving. "What about that possible ship from Mars?" she asked.
"Shouldn't you look into it?"

He grunted again, looked up at her, said, "If I'd looked into every
'ship from Mars' astronomy has come up with in the nine years I've held
this office, I'd never have had time for anything else. You can lay odds
it's a wild asteroid or something like that."

"They sound pretty sure this time," Myra said doubtfully.

"Don't they always?" he countered. "Come on, Myra, wrap it up. Time to
go home."

"Roger, boss," she said, blinking all three eyes at him.

Bliss turned on the autopi and napped while the gyrojet carried him to
his villa outside Dakar. Safely down on the roof of the comfortable,
automatic white house, he took the lift down to his second-floor suite,
where he showered and changed into evening sandals and clout. He
redonned his gloves, then rode down another two flights to the terrace,
where Elise was waiting for him in a gossamer-thin iridescent eggshell
sari. They kissed and she patted the place on the love-seat beside her.
She had a book--an old-fashioned book of colored reproductions of
long-since-destroyed old masters on her lap. The artist was a man named
Peter Paul Rubens.

Eyeing the opulent nudes, she giggled and said, "Don't they look
awfully--plain? I mean, women with only two breasts!"

"Well--yes," he said. "If you want to take that angle."

"Idiot!" she said. "Honestly, darling, you're the strangest sort of man
to be a World Chancellor."

"These are strange times," he told her, smiling without mirth, though
with genuine affection.

"Suppose--just suppose," she said, turning the pages slowly, "biology
should be successful in stabilizing the species again. Would they _have_
to set it back that far? I mean, either we or _they_ would feel awfully
out of style."

"What would you suggest?" he asked her solemnly.

"Don't be nasty," she said loftily. Then she giggled again and ruffled
his hair. "I wi