"Well, then we heard my parents car in the drive and he got up and ran, holding his pants up. Out the back door and he saw another girl and tried to rape her right out in the street but someone hit him with a rock. He ended in the insane asylum. Well, my parents had run out to see the noise was all about, so I dragged myself back to the bathroom and washed again and said I had taken a fall while jogging."

"But you see, after that I wanted nothing to do with men, ever. And I heard some of girl friends saying men are vile and women don't need them to, you know, get their rocks off. Meaning they were lesbians, and pretty soon they were breaking me in."

"Well, I stopped believing that all men are vile, and right now I don't know where I stand. But I know I'll try it with another woman sometime."

"Well, what I wanted to know," said the forlorn girl, twisting her hands together, "is whether you'll take a lesbian for a hostess on Wanderlust."

He evaded the truth. He wanted to see this girl again. Anyway, everyone knew that lesbians got into hostessing because they often found lesbian friends that way. But it was all under cover.

"It's your right not to state your sexual preference," Hank Hastings said. "And I hope to see you on my plane. I'll know you, Helen."

"Watch for me, Captain… Hank."

And so it had worked out.

And she had gone to bed with him from time to time and they had gotten along very well together. But he sensed her unsureness. She still didn't know if she was a man's woman or a woman's woman.

Now here stood Helen in great trouble. She had been enticed into lesbian cunnylapping by Cleo Prentice, who herself had been fired as a lesbian hostess. Then, out of inward hate or something, Cleo had become Wanderlust Security's undercover woman. And she knew how to do her job.

Hank wondered what Cleo was doing right then. Might be going to the short-wave phone to call Security in Chicago and tell what she had proved about Helen Troy.