The place was a strange-looking lab at that. It was designed something like an amphitheater, with a circular raised pedestal about forty centimeters above the plain flooring that served as the stage. Above the stage was a device hanging like a great cannon but terminating in a small mirror with a tiny point coming out from it.

A balcony surrounded the apparatus; here, along the walls, were thousands of blinking lights, dials and switches, and central consoles, four of them, evenly spaced around the circle below. Zinder sat at one; directly across from him a much younger man in shiny protective lab clothing sat at another. Zinder’s lab suit looked as if it had been made in the last century.

The woman standing on the raised disk was an ordinary-looking sort, late thirties and a little dumpy and saggy, the kind that looks far better with proper clothes than nude as she now was.

Only she had a horse’s tail, long and bushy.

She looked up at the two men with puzzlement and some impatience.

“Well, come on,” she called to them, “aren’t you going to do anything? It’s cold down here.”

Ben Yulin, the younger man, smiled and leaned over the rail.

“Swish your tail awhile, Zetta. We’re working as fast as we can!” he called down good-naturedly.

And she was swishing the tail, slowly back and forth, routinely, echoing her frustration.

“You really don’t notice any difference, Zetta?” Zinder’s thin, reedy voice asked her.

She looked puzzled, then down at herself, running her hands along her body, including the tail, as if to find out what they did.

“No, Dr. Zinder, I don’t. Why? Is something about me—different?” she responded hesitantly.

“Do you know you have a tail?” Zinder prompted.