"I fear so, Robinette, yes. Her daughter Lois is on plus time. They have had much sorrow in that family."

I looked at him. He said, "No, not Willa or the father; they are out, but not overdue. There was a son."

"I know. Henry, I think. They called him Hat."

"He died just before they came here. And now Lois." He inclined his head, then flapped politely over and picked up the empty tea flask on a downstroke of his wing. "I must go to work now, Rob."

"How's the ivy planting?"

He said ruefully, "I no longer have that position, I'm afraid. Emma did not consider me executive material."

"Oh? What are you doing?"

"I keep Gateway esthetically attractive," he said. "I think you would call it 'garbage collector."

I didn't know what to say. Gateway was kind of a trashy place; because of the low gravity, any scrap of paper or bit of featherweight plastic that was thrown away was likely to float anywhere inside the asteroid. You couldn't sweep the floor. The first stroke set everything flying. I had seen the garbage men chasing scraps of newsprint and fluffs of cigarette ash with little hand-pumped vacuum cleaners, and I had even thought about becoming one if I had to. But I didn't like Shicky doing it.

He was following what I was thinking about him without difficulty. "It's all right, Rob. Really, I enjoy the work. But-- please; if you do need a crewman, think of me."

I took my bonus and paid up my per capita for three weeks in advance. I bought a few items I needed -- new clothes, and some music tapes to get the sound of Mozart and Palestrina out of my ears. That left me about two hundred dollars in money.

Two hundred dollars was a lot like nothing at all. It meant twenty drinks at the Blue Hell, or one chip at the blackjack table, or maybe half a dozen decent meals outside the prospectors' commissary.

So I had three choices. I could get another job and stall indefinitely. Or I could ship out within the three weeks. Or I could give up and go home. None of the choices was attractive. But, provided I didn't spend any money on anything much, I didn't have to decide for, oh, a long time -- as long as twenty days. I resolved to give up smoking and boughten meals; that way I could budget myself to a maximum spending of nine dollars a day, so that my per capita and my cash would run out at the same time.