There weren’t any ships in, and no tourists. There weren't all that many prospectors, either, with so many shiploads going out in the past few weeks. Half the tables at the casino were closed down, with the green cloth hoods over them. Klara found a seat at the blackjack table, signed for a stack of hundred-dollar markers, and the dealer let me sit next to her without playing. "I told you this was my lucky night," she said when, after ten minutes, she was more than two thousand dollars ahead of the house.

"You're doing fine," I encouraged her, but actually it wasn't that much fun for me. I got up and roamed around a little bit. Dane Metchnikov was cautiously feeding five-dollar coins into the slots, but he didn't seem to want to talk to me. Nobody was playing baccarat. I told Klara I was going to get a cup of coffee at the Blue Hell (five dollars, but in slow times like this they would keep filling the cup for nothing). She flashed me a quarter-profile smile without ever taking her eyes off the cards.

In the Blue Hell Louise Forehand was sipping a rocket-fuel-and-water. . . well, it wasn't really rocket fuel, just old-fashioned white whisky made out of whatever happened to be growing well that week in the hydroponics tanks. She looked up with a welcoming smile, and I sat down next to her.

She had, it suddenly occurred to me, a rather lonely time of it. No reason she had to. She was -- well, I don't know exactly what there was about her, but she seemed like the only nonthreatening, nonreproachful, nondemanding person on Gateway. Everybody else either wanted something I didn't want to give, or refused to take what I was offering. Louise was something else. She was at least a dozen years older than I, and really very good-looking. Like me, she wore only the Corporation standard clothes, short coveralls in a choice of three unattractive colors. But she had remade them for herself, converting the jumpsuit into a two-piece outfit with tight shorts, bare midriff, and a loose, open sort of top. I discovered that she was watching me take inventory, and I suddenly felt embarrassed. "You're looking good," I said.

"Thanks, Rob. All original equipment, too," she bragged, and smiled. "I never could afford anything else."

"You don't need anything you haven't had all along," I told her sincerely, and she changed the subject.

"There's a ship coming in," she said. "Been a long time out, they say."

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MISSION REPORT

Vessel A3-7, Voyage 022D55. Crew S.Rigney, E. Tsien, M. Sindler.

Transit time 18 days 0 hours. Position vicinity Xi Pegasi A.