Chapter I

The man at the bar was exceptionally handsome, and he knew it. So did the light-haired girl at his side, and so did the nondescript man in the gray suit who was watching them from a booth in the corner.

Everyone in the room was aware of the big young man, and most of the humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and arrogantly, as if his appearance alone were enough to make him superior to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was accustomed to adulation herself, and next to Gabriel Lockard she was almost ordinary-looking.

As for the extraterrestrials--it was a free bar--they were merely amused, since to them all men were pathetically and irredeemably hideous.

Gabe threw his arm wide in one of his expansive gestures. There was a short man standing next to the pair--young, as most men and women were in that time, thanks to the science which could stave off decay, though not death--but with no other apparent physical virtue, for plastic surgery had not fulfilled its bright promise of the twentieth century.

The drink he had been raising to his lips splashed all over his clothing; the glass shattered at his feet. Now he was not only a rather ugly little man, but also a rather ridiculous one--or at least he felt he was, which was what mattered.

“Sorry, colleague,” Gabe said lazily. “All my fault. You must let me buy you a replacement.” He gestured to the bartender. “Another of the same for my fellow-man here.”

The ugly man dabbed futilely at his dripping trousers with a cloth hastily supplied by the management.

“You must allow me to pay your cleaning bill,” Gabe said, taking out his wallet and extracting several credit notes without seeming to look at them. “Here, have yourself a new suit on me.” You could use one was implied.

And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard’s spectacular appearance, was too much. The ugly man picked up the drink the bartender had just set before him and started to hurl it, glass and all, into Lockard’s handsome face.

Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. “Don’t do that,” the nondescript man who had been sitting in the corner advised. He removed the glass from the little man’s slackening grasp. “You wouldn’t want to go to jail because of him.”

The ugly man gave him a bewildered stare. Then, seeing the forces now ranged against him--including his own belated prudence--were too strong, he stumbled off. He hadn’t really wanted to fight, only to smash back, and now it was too late for that.

Gabe studied the newcomer curiously. “So, it’s you again?”

The man in the gray suit smiled. “Who else in any world would stand up for you?”

“I should think you’d have given up by now. Not that I mind having you around, of course,” Gabriel added too quickly. “You do come in useful at times, you know.”

“So you don’t mind having me around?” The nondescript man smiled again. “Then what are you running from, if not me? You can’t be running from yourself--you lost yourself a while back, remember?”