"But there is another term, isn't there, Rob?"

"There are thousands of them! Which one do you want?"

"I want the expression you were going to use and didn't, Rob. Please try to say it. That term means something special to you, so that you can't say the words without trouble."

I crumple over onto the mat, and now I'm really crying.

"Please say it, Rob. What's the term?"

"Damn you, Sigfrid! Going down! That's it. Going down, going down, going down!"

8

"Good morning," said somebody, speaking right into the middle of a dream about getting stuck in a sort of quicksand in the middle of the Orion Nebula. "I have brought you some tea."

I opened an eye. I looked over the edge of the hammock into a nearby pair of coalsack-black eyes set into a sand-colored face. I was fully dressed and hung over; something smelled very bad, and I realized it was me.

"My name," said the person with the tea, "is Shikitei Baldu. Please drink this tea. It will help rehydrate your tissues."

I looked a little further and saw that he ended at the waist; he was the legless man with the strap-on wings whom I had seen in the tunnel the day before. "Uh," I said, and tried a little harder and got as far as, "Good morning." The Orion Nebula was fading back into the dream, and so was the sensation of having to push through rapidly solidifying gas clouds. The bad smell remained. The room smelled excessively foul, even by Gateway standards, and I realized I had thrown up on the floor. I was only millimeters from doing it again. Bakin, slowly stroking the air with his wings, dexterously dropped a stoppered flask next to me on the hammock at the end of one stroke. Then he propelled himself to the top of my chest of drawers, sat there, and said:…..

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WHO OWNS GATEWAY?

Gateway is unique In the history of humanity, and it was quickly realized that it was too valuable a resource to be given to any one group of persons, or any one government. Therefore Gateway Enterprises, Inc., was formed.

Gateway Enterprises (usually referred to as "the Corporation") is a multinational corporation whose general partners are the governments of the United States of America, the Soviet Union, the United States of Brazil, the Venusian Confederation, and New People's Asia, and whose limited partners are all those persons who, like yourself, have signed the attached Memorandum of Agreement.

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…"I believe you have a medical examination this morning at oh eight hundred hours."

"Do I?" I managed to get the cap off the tea and took a sip. It was very hot, sugarless, and almost tasteless, but it did seem to tip the scales inside my gut in the direction opposite to throwing up again.

"Yes. I think so. It's customary. And in addition, your P-phone has rung several times."

I went back to, "Uh?"

"I presume it was your proctor calling you to remind you. It is now seven-fifteen, Mr.--"