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known better. They put her back in with only four hours’ rest.”
    BenRabi kept his mouth shut. What could he say? He had been introduced to Contact during the battle at Stars’ End. The main Contact room had been a shambles. Dozens of mindtechs had given everything to save Danion.
    He never would have seen Contact, or even have discovered its existence, had those linker casualties not been cruel. In those days he had been a distrusted landsman, a convicted enemy spy who was screened from all Seiner secrets. They had drafted him into Contact only because he might give Danion a millimeter’s better chance of surviving.
    He had made his decision to cross over after Stars’ End, virtually in the hatch of the ship designated to return the landsmen contractees to Confederation.
    He had waited too long. Half of his personal possessions had departed with the ship. He had not recovered them. The service ship crew had gotten into a row with Customs. The bureaucrats had retaliated, seizing everything not bolted to the ship’s frames.
    BenRabi took Amy’s thin, cool hand. “How’ve you been, darling? You look tired. How long has it been?” She felt so cold . . . She was a spooky woman. Why had he fallen in love with her?
    He always fell for the strange ones, the neurotic and just plain rotten ones. Alyce, in Academy . . . What a loser she had turned out to be. And the Sangaree woman, Marya, who had been a vampire in the midst of his last two missions.
    “I’m all right now that I know you’ll be okay. Moyshe, please be more careful.”
    She seemed unusually remote. BenRabi glanced at her, at Mouse, and back again. More problems with Mouse? Her dislike for his friend had taken a quantum leap recently.
    Mouse did not talk much. The inevitable chess board had accompanied him, but he did not offer to play. Amy’s presence restrained him. Chess was one of his great passions, rivaling his passion for seducing a parade of beautiful women.
    “Hey, Mouse. Ever wonder what Max is doing these days?” Referring to someone they had known before coming out here was the only way he could think of to pull his friend into the conversation.
    “Probably getting richer and wondering why we don’t come into her shop anymore. I don’t think Beckhart will bother giving her our new address.”
    “Yeah.” BenRabi laughed. “He should have heard the news by now, don’t you think? Or pretty soon. He’ll foam at the mouth.” For Amy’s benefit, he explained, “Max was a friend of ours in Luna Command. She ran a stamp store.”
    “Best hobby shop in the moon,” Mouse said.
    Amy did not respond. She simply could not comprehend what these two got out of accumulating small bits of paper that were ages old and required jeweler’s grade care.
    And stamps were not the only thing. Between them they seemed to collect everything. Coins. Stamps. All kinds of ancient miscellania. Mouse had little wrought-iron trivets and other old-time dohickeys all over his quarters. The one collection she could appreciate was Moyshe’s butterflies. He had a frame of exotics on his wall. They were incredibly beautiful.
    The Seiner ships were ecologically sterile. Only their zoos contained nonhuman life, and that the large, well-known mammals.
    Amy had no hobbies of her own. She read for relaxation. She had acquired the habit from her mother.
    Mouse even managed passably with a clarinet, an antique woodwind seldom seen anymore. He claimed to have learned from his father.
    “What about Greta?” Mouse asked. “You think the Department will take care of her?”
    Amy jumped at the name. “You never did tell me about Greta, Moyshe.”
    “That was in another life.”
    They were lovers, but they did not know one another well. BenRabi did not like stirring up the snake pit of people’s pasts. There was too much chance of finding something nasty. It was there in every life.
    But he answered Amy’s question. “I told you before. She’s a kid I met the last