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government identity numbers, no one (they explained), had ever bothered to suggest any before which they particularly liked (“Which,” said Lawrence, “is merely a comment on the narrowness of the worldlets we live among.”).
    “Now if you two want to watch,” Lawrence said, “you go over there and sit down. Standing up close like that and leaning over our shoulders will just make me nervous.”
    Flossie put a glittering hand on Freddie’s shoulder: they went, sat, and stared. Looking back at the board, Bron tried to remember what it was he had been about to answer ‘yes’—
    “No—!”
    Bron and Lawrence looked up.
    “Here I am, running my tail off to get to this Snake Pit in time, and there you two are, already frozen in!” From the balcony, Sam leered hugely, jovially, and blackly over the rail. “Well! What can you do?
    Anybody winning?” Sam came down the narrow, iron steps, slapping the bannister with a broad, black hand. It rang across the common room.
    Half a dozen men sitting about in reading cubicles, tape niches, or discussion corners looked up, smiled. Three called out greetings.
    “Hey there ... !” Sam nodded back to the others and swung around the newel. He had a large, magnificent body which he always wore (rather pretentiously, Bron thought) naked. “How’ve you been going along since I left?” He came over to stand at the table’s edge and, with black fists on narrow, black hips, gazed down over the arrayed pieces.
    Bron hated Sam.
    At least, of the three people in the co-op he considered, from time to time, his friends, Sam was the one who annoyed him most.
    “He’s getting pretty good,” Lawrence said. “Bron’s got quite a feel for vlet, I think. You’ll have to try some to catch up with him from where you were last time.”
    “I’m still not in the same league with Lawrence there.” Bron had once actually traced the development of his dislike. Sam was handsome, expansive, friendly with everyone (including Bron), even though his work kept him away eleven days out of every two weeks. All that bluster and backslapping?
    Just a standard, annoying type, Bron had decided; but it was mitigated somewhat because, after all, Sam was just your average hail-fellow-well-met, trying to get along (and, besides, he was friendly to Bron). About a month and a half later—revelation came slowly because Sam was away so much—Bron began to realize Sam was not so average. Under all that joviality, there was a rather amazing mind. Bron had already noticed, from time to time, that Sam had a great deal of exact information about a range of subjects which, with each new example of it, had grown, imperceptibly, astonishing. Then once, when Bron had been absently complaining about one of the more tricky metalogical programs at work, Sam had made a rather quiet, rather brilliant suggestion. (Well, no—Bron reminded himself; it wasn’t brilliant. But it was damned clever.) Bron had asked: Was Sam at one time into metalogics? Sam had explained: No, but he had known that Bron was, so a few weeks back he’d picked up a couple of tapes on the subject, a few books; and he’d found a programmed text in General Info that he’d flipped through a few frames of. That’s all. Bron did not like that. But then, Sam was just a good-looking, friendly, intelligent guy doing his bit as some overworked salesman/consultant that took him racketing back and forth from Tethys to Lux on Titan to Lux on Iapetus to Callisto Port, or even to the seedy hotels and dormitories clustering on the cheaper sides of the city centers of Bellona, Port Luna, and Rio. Bron had once even asked Sam what he did; the answer, with a sad smile and a shaking head, had been: “I troubleshoot after some really low-grade crap.” Sam, Bron had decided, was as oppressed by the system as anyone else. Bron had been saying something of the sort to Lawrence when Lawrence had explained that “oppressed by the system” was just not Sam at all: