"I will have one of my own." She leaned back, pulling me with her. "I wish I knew when, that's all. I need a lot more money than I have to give a kid a decent life. And younger."

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A NOTE ON THE HEECHEE RUMP

Professor Hegramet. We have no idea what the Heechee looked like except for inferences. Probably they were bipeds. Their tools fit human hands tolerably well, so probably they had hands. Or something like them. They seem to have seen pretty much the same spectrum as we do. They must have been smaller than us -- say, a hundred and fifty centimeters, or less. And they had funny-looking rumps.

Question. What do you mean, funny-looking rumps?

Professor Hegramet. Well, did you ever look at the pilot's seat in a Heechee ship? It's two flat pieces of metal joined in a V shape. You couldn't sit in it for ten minutes without pinching your bottom off. So what we have to do, we stretch a webbing seat across them. But that's a human addition. The Heechee didn't have anything like that.

So their bodies must have looked more or less like a wasp's, with this big abdomen hanging down, actually extending below the hips, between the legs.

Question. Do you mean they might have had stingers like wasps?

Professor Hegramet. Stingers. No. I don't think so. But maybe. Or maybe they had hell's own set of sex organs.

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We lay there for a moment, and then I said into her hair, "That's what I want, too, Klara."

She sighed. "Do you think I don't know that?" Then she tensed and sat up. "Who's that?"

Somebody was scrabbling at the door. It wasn't locked; we never did that. But nobody ever came in without being invited, either, and this time someone did.

"Sterling!" Klara said, surprised. She remembered her manners: "Rob, this is Sterling Francis, Kathy's father. Rob Broadhead."

"Hello," he said. He was much older than I'd thought that little girl's father would be, at least fifty, and looking very much older and more weary than seemed natural. "Klara," he said, "I'm taking Kathy back home on the next ship. I think I'll take her tonight, if you don't mind. I don't want her to hear from somebody else."

Klara reached out for my hand without looking at me. "Hear what?"