The newsmen must have had orders to ignore me, but I could hear plenty of comments from the crowd. And to finish things up, there was Claire Avery, a lot prettier than she looked on the television screens, but with the same unmistakable cobalt-blue eyes, and hair closer to the actual shade of metallic gold than any I'd ever seen. The "Golden Flash," the newsmen called her. Blah!
She accepted her introduction to me with the coolest possible nod, as if to say to the scanners and cameras that it wasn't her choice she was teamed with yellow Jack Sands. But for that matter, Coretti's black Latin eyes were not especially cordial either, nor were Gogrol's broad features. I'd met Gogrol somewhere before, but couldn't place him at the moment.
Well, at last the speeches were over, and the photogra
