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"Thanks, that helps. It wouldn't be so bad except for Arekkhi, you know. They want the Interrelator on planet as soon as they can get us--and I'm going to be forever in here, doing regen."
    "Not that long, surely. And not nearly as long as you'd be trying to heal without it," Magdalena reminded her.
    "Well, no, I'm exaggerating. But the Emperor and his council have been fussing because everything is taking so long."
    "I didn't know that."
    "Well, but you know how they feel about even probationary status, don't you?"
    She nodded. "They want full status. Period."
    "Pride will do that to you," the girl agreed. "Scratch my nose again?"
    "Maybe Dr. Rob can lend you Bast until you can use your hands,"
    Magdalena suggested, straight-faced.
    Ladessa laughed briefly. "Don't think so, her claws are a little too sharp for my tastes, and besides, I'm allergic to cats,
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    remember? Even if she'd let anyone but Dr. Rob close to her." She frowned.
    "I hope that..."
    Magdalena waited; Ladessa shook her head. "What?"
    "Nothing. I think Dr. Rob wanted to---never mind." A tap at the door brought the visitor around as Dr. Mysuki came in.
    "Five minutes and a little more," she announced crisply. Magdalena turned back to smile at her friend.
    "All right, I'll go now. Ladessa--"
    "I'll be just fine," the girl said. "And I'll--ah--I'll see you when I get out of regen."
    "Shoo," the doctor added firmly. Magdalena went.
    The waiting room was empty as she left, this immediate end of the hall deserted. But the general vicinity of Dr. Rob Gable's office was so crowded with students moving from one class to the next that it took her a long time to get from one side of the corridor to the other, to tap on his door.
    Khyriz, she thought with a sudden inner warmth as he called out, "Come in!"
    I have a message from Khyriz She was smiling as she went in.
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    CHAPTER 2

    ***
Robert Gable was heading for the door just as Magdalena walked in. She jumped, then grinned. "Gee, Dr. Rob, didn't even occur to me to wonder how I heard you all the way through the waiting room!" The school's psychologist was short and slender; and the barely lined face that made him look younger than the gray hairs in his beard suggested, was on a level with Magdalena's.
    "A little too wrapped up in last night maybe?" he replied with a warm smile as he gestured for her to precede him through the small, currently unoccupied room into his large inner sanctum.
    Automatically, she checked the holos on the far wall as she headed for the comfortable, human-shaped chair currently in front of his desk. One never knew what old movie posters would be displayed in here, but Magdalena privately figured they were changed frequently, and according to whatever was on his mind when an individual student came in to see him. A holo-tank occupied the other empty wall--Rob's communication screen for the outside world, as well as where his "movies" were shown on a weekly basis. Only five days ago, she'd been part of a raucous crowd watching several black-and-white Marx Brothers films; by the time The Cocoanuts finished the session, she'd been laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
    "But I thought," Rob added from behind her, "that we'd both agreed you'd call me Rob. Since I don't call you Prima
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    Bal erina Magdalena." She laughed, then dropped bonelessly into one of the visitors' chairs, slid down on her tailbone until the back of her head rested against the back of the chair, and stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankles.
    To her surprise, there was no poster from any of Madame's impressive collection of ballet vids: No Swan Lake, no Romeo. No Kiss of the Spider Woman. There was a very small, dark picture that she couldn't quite make out, neatly centered among four large holo-posters: The Scarlet Pimpernel (there were several versions, but this was the very old, crackly black-and-white version from the early days of "talkies" that was her favorite of those she'd seen); Scaramouche (the