Jason said crisply, “I’ll be dead before the residuals on this show pay off. Thank God.”

“You’ll probably be dead tonight,” Heather said, “with all those fans of yours packed in outside there. Just waiting to rip you into little tiny squares like so many postage stamps.”

“Some of them are your fans, Miss Hart,” Al Bliss said, in his doglike panting voice.

“God damn them,” Heather said harshly. “Why don’t they go away? Aren’t they breaking some law, loitering or something?”

Jason took hold of her hand and squeezed it forcefully, attracting her frowning attention. He had never understood her dislike for fans; to him they were the lifeblood of his public existence. And to him his public existence, his role as worldwide entertainer, was existence itself, period. “You shouldn’t be an entertainer,” he said to Heather, “feeling the way you do. Get out of the business. Become a social worker in a forced-labor camp.”

“There’re people there, too,” Heather said grimly.

Two special police guards shouldered their way up to Jason Taverner and Heather. “We’ve got the corridor as clear as we’re going to get it,” the fatter of the two cops wheezed. “Let’s go now, Mr. Taverner. Before the studio audience can trickle around to the side exits.” He signaled to three other special police guards, who at once advanced toward the hot, packed passageway that led, eventually, to the nocturnal street. And out there the parked Rolls flyship in all its costly splendor, its tail rocket idling throbbingly. Like, Jason thought, a mechanical heart. A heart that beat for him alone, for him the star. Well, by extension, it throbbed in response to the needs of Heather, too.

She deserved it: she had sung well, tonight. Almost as well as—Jason grinned inwardly, to himself. Hell, let’s face it, he thought. They don’t turn on all those 3-D color TV sets to see the special guest star. There are a thousand special guest stars scattered over the surface of earth, and a few in the Martian colonies.