There was always a great deal of ham radio activity in the Jovian system. The conditions were good for it, since there was plenty of power available, few impeding atmosphere layers and those thin, no Heaviside layers, and few official and no commercial channels with which the hams could interfere.

And there were plenty of people scattered about the satellites who needed the sound of a voice anybody know whether or not the senators are coming here? Doc Barth put in a report a while back on a fossil plant he found here, at least he thinks it was a plant. Maybe they'd like a look at it."

"It's the Bridge team they're coming to see." A strong voice, and the impression of a strong transmitter wavering in and out to the currents of an atmosphere; that would be Sweeney, on Ganymede. "Sorry to throw the wet blanket, boys, but I don't think the senators'll be interested in our rockballs for their own lumpy selves. They're only scheduled to stay here three days."

Helmuth thought grayly: Then they'll stay on Callisto only one.

"Is that you, Sweeney? Where's the Bridge tonight?"

"Dillon's on duty," a very distant transmitter said. "Try to raise Helmuth, Sweeney."

"Helmuth, Helmuth, you gloomy beetlegooser! Come in, Helmuth1"

"Sure, Bob, come in and dampen us a little. We're feeling cheerful."

Sluggishly, Helmuth reached out to take the mike, from where it lay clipped to one arm of the chair. But before he had completed the gesture, the door to his room swung open.

Eva came in.

She said: "Bob, I want to tell you something."

"His voice is changing!" the voice of the Callisto operator said. "Sweeney, ask him what he's drinking!"

Helmuth cut the radio out. The girl was freshly dressed in so far as anybody dressed in anything on Jupiter V and Helmuth wondered why she was prowling the decks at this hour, halfway between her sleep period and her trick. Her hair was hazy against the light from the corridor, and she looked less mannish than usual. She reminded him a little of the way she had looked when they had been lovers, before the Bridge had come to bestride his bed instead. He put the memory aside.

"All right," he said. "I owe you a ruin, I guess. Citric, sugar and the other stuff are in the locker ... you know where it is. Shotcans are there, too."

The girl shut the door and sat down on the bunk, with a free litheness that was almost grace, but with a determination which, Helmuth knew, meant that she had just decided to do something silly for all the right reasons.

"I don't need a drink," she said. "As a matter-of-fact, I've been turning my luxR's back to the common pool. I suppose you did that for me by showing me what a mind looks like that's hiding from itself."

"Evita, stop sounding like a tract. Obviously you're advanced to a higher, more Jovian plane of existence, but won't you still need your metabolism? Or have you decided that vitamins are all-in-the-mind?"