Introduction from the Editor ...

Science-fiction resembles the detective story in many ways: the deepening mystery, the adventure, the chase, and-only too often-the corpse, all building toward the finally revealed ending. Here these elements are combined with another famous-or rather infamous-theme, that of the lady and the Tiger. Piers Anthony presents us with a tiger-lady and asks us to solve the problem before he reveals the solution.

Story Synopsis ...

For a million-dollar payment, Leo MacHenry is tasked with guarding a remote system in space, alone for over a year. He is protecting it from the Deb, an alien race that can look and act like humans. When a woman shows up with the story that she is escaping involuntary conscripture, Leo hopes that she would make a good companion. But how does he prove she is human? There in lies the tale...

Story Excerpt ...

Unfortunately, the impersonal military regulations said, multiple-manned stations were not feasible at this time. Numerous learned articles had been published refuting the validity of this policy, but they were under civilian bylines and therefore ignored. That was why Leo MacHenry was lonely man.

He had been warned that his imagination might conjure company from the vacuum, just to break the monotony of fourteen months of isolation. Such cautions were unnecessary; he knew better than to yield to hallucination. One million dollars was good pay even in the face of rampant cold-war inflation, for a single tour-but it would do him little good in the psycho word. Thus he was cautious about crediting what he saw.

Still, it did looked like a man. A live one.

The figured drifted directly toward the station, brightly illuminated by the system's nameless sun. Behind it were the stars, clear even in this seeming day because of the absence of obscuring atmosphere. An intermittent jet of gas shot out of the suit, suggesting the trail of comet as the light caught it momentarily. Braking action; weightlessness was a far cry from masslessness, and a collision at speed with a station would flatten the visitor in ugly fashion.

Leo watched it through the small scope. What he's saw was a standard UN space suit of the type suitable for survival-of-wearer up to four days in deep space, conditions permitting, and somewhat longer in a semiprotected situation. That was sufficient margin for rescue in most cases-if rescue were, according to the manual, feasible at all. Evidently there had been a rack in space, and this survivor had been close enough.

And that was suspicious....