duties."

"Let me give you some professional advice, though. Be more careful when you take off your makeup. There's still some grease paint in the roots of your hair."

"Sloppy of me," Ivo agreed, getting to work with a towel.

"I can't understand why you bother to put on the stuff at all," Paul grinned, "when all you need to do is just change a little more."

"I know." Ivo rubbed his temples vigorously. "I suppose I just like the—smell of the stuff."

"Ivo," Paul laughed, "there's no use trying to kid me; you are stagestruck. I'm sure I have enough pull now to get you a bit part somewhere, when I'm up and around again, and then you can get yourself an Equity card. Maybe," he added amusedly, "I can even have you replace Gregory as my understudy."

Later, in retrospect, Paul thought perhaps there had been a curious expression in Ivo's eyes, but right then he'd had no inkling that anything untoward was up. He did not find out what had been at the back of Ivo's mind until the Sunday before the Tuesday on which he was planning to resume his role.

"Lord, it's going to be good to feel that stage under my feet again," he said as he went through a series of complicated limbering-up exercises of his own devisement, which he had sometimes thought of publishing as The Lambrequin Time and Motion Studies. It seemed unfair to keep them from other actors.

Ivo turned around from the mirror in which he had been contemplating their mutual beauty, "Paul," he said quietly, "you're never going to feel that stage under your feet again."

Paul sat on the floor and stared at him.

"You see, Paul," Ivo said, "I am Paul Lambrequin now. I am more Paul Lambrequin than I was—whoever I was on my native planet. I am more Paul Lambrequin than you ever were. You learned the part superficially, Paul, but I really feel it."

"It's not a part," Paul said querulously. "It's me. I've always been Paul Lambrequin."

"How can you be sure of that? You've had so many identities, why should this be the true one? No, you only think you're Paul Lambrequin. I know I am."

"Dammit," Paul said, "that's the identity in which I've taken out Equity membership. And be reasonable, Ivo—there can't be two Paul Lambrequins."

Ivo smiled sadly. "No, Paul, you're right. There can't."

Of course Paul had known all along that Ivo was not a human being. It was only now, however, that full realization came to him of what a ruthless alien monster the other was, existing only to gratify his own purposes, unaware that others had a right to exist.

"Are—are you going to—dispose of me, then?" Paul asked faintly.

"To dispose of you, yes, Paul. But not to kill you. My kind has killed enough, conquered enough. We have no real population problem; that was just an excuse we made to salve our own consciences."

"You have consciences, do you?" Paul's face twisted in a sneer that he himself sensed right away was overly melodramatic and utterly unconvincing. Somehow, he could never be really genuine offstage.

Ivo made a sweeping gesture. "Don't be bitter, Paul. Of course we do. All intelligent life-forms do. It's one of the penalties of sentience!"

For a moment, Paul forgot himself. "Watch it, Ivo. You're beginning to ham up your lines."

"We can institute birth control," Ivo went on, his manner subdued. "We can build taller buildings. Oh, there are many ways we can cope with the population increase. That's not the problem. The problem is how to divert our creative energies from destruction to construction. And I think I have solved it."

"How will your people know you have," Paul asked cunningly, "since you say you're not going back?"

"I am not going back to Sirius, Paul—you are. It is you who are going to teach my people the art of peace to replace the art of war."

Paul felt himself turn what was probably a very effective white. "But—but I can't even speak the