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out at people that way, Greta, but at times I am just a jealous old man,” which is not entirely true, as he isn’t a day over thirty-three, although his hair is nearly white.
    Our lovers had drifted on a few steps until they were almost fading into the Surgery screen. It was the last spot I would have picked for the formal preliminaries to a little British smootching, but Lili probably didn’t share my prejudices, though I reruembered she’d told me she’d served a brief hitch in an Arachnoid Field Hospital before transferred to the Place.
    But she couldn’t have had anything like the experience I’d bad during my short and sour career as a Spider nurse, when I’d acquired. my best-hated nightmare and flopped completely (jobwise, but on the floor, too) at seeing a doctor flick a switch and a being, badly injured but human, turn into a long cluster of glistening strange fruit—ugh, it always makes me want to toss my cookies and my buttons. And to think that dear old Daddy Anton wanted his Greta chile to be a doctor.
    Well, I could see this wasn’t getting me anywhere I wanted to go, and alter all there was a party going on.
    Doc was babbling something at a great rate to Sid—I just hoped Doc wouldn’t get inspired to go into his animal imitations, which sound pretty fierce and once seriously offended some recuperating ETs.
    Maud was demonstrating to Mark a 23rd Century two-step and Beau sat down at the piano and improvised softly on her rhythm.
    As the deep-thrumming relaxing notes hit us, Erich’s face brightened and he dragged me over. Pleasantly soon I had my feet off the diamondrough floor, which we don’t carpet because most of the ETs, the dear boys, like it hard, and I was shouldering back deep into the couch nearest the piano, with cushions around me and a fresh drink in my hand, while my
    Nazi boy friend was getting ready to discharge his Weltschmerz as song, which didn’t alarm me too much, as his baritone is passable.
    Things felt real good, like the Maintainer was just idling to keep the Place in existence and moored to the cosmos, not exerting itself at all or at most taking an occasional lazy paddle stroke. At times the Place’s loneliness can be happy and comfortable.
    Then Beau raised an eyebrow at Erich, who nodded, and next thing they were launched into a song we all know, though I’ve never found out where it originally came from.
    This time it made me think of Lili, and I wondered why—and why it’s a tradition at
    Recuperation Stations to call the new Lili, though in this case it happened to be her real name.
    _Standing in the Doorway just outside of space, Winds of Change blow ‘round you but don’t touch your face;
    You smile as you whisper
     
    tenderly, “Please cross to me, Recuperee;
    “The operation’s over, come in and close the Door_.”

4
    De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammell, whirled
    Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
    In fractured atoms.
    —Eliot
    SOS FROM NOWHERE
    I realized the piano had deserted Erich and I cranked my head up and saw Beau, Maud and Sid streaking for the control divan. The Major Maintainer was blinking emergency-green and fast, but the mode was plain enough for even me to recognize the
    Spider distress call and for a second I felt just sick. Then Erich blew out his reserve breath in the middle of “Door” and I gave myself another of those helpful mental boots at the base of the spine and we hurried after them toward the center of the Place along with Mark.
    The blinks faded as we got there and Sid told us not to move because we were making shadows. He glued an eye to the telltale and we held still as statues as he caressed the dials like he was making love.
    One sensitive hand flicked out past the Introversion switch over to the Minor
    Maintainer and right away the Place was dark as your soul and there was nothing for me but
    Erich’s arm and the knowledge that Sid was nursing a green light I couldn’t even see, although my eyes had plenty