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scared Gateway prospector to hide himself and his funk in any-
more. Now it belonged to some feeble old geriatric case who had come to
Wrinide Rock because that was where he had the best chance of clinging to his
worn-out meat body a while longer. It looked different. They'd fixed it up
with a real bed, if a narrow one, instead of my old hammock. There was a shiny
new PV comxnset mounted on the wall, and a foldaway sink with actual running
water, and about a million other luxuries I hadn't had. The geriatrics case
had tottered off somewhere else to join the party, no doubt. Anyway, he wasn't
there. I had it all to myself, all the closet-sized claustrophobic luxury of
it.
I took a deep "breath."
That was another big difference. The smell was gone. They'd got rid of the old
Gateway lug that soaked into your clothes and skin, the well-used air that
everybody else had been breathing-and sweating into, and farting into-for
years and years. Now it only smelled a little of green, growing things, no
doubt from the plantings that helped the oxygen-replenishment system along.
The wails still glimmered with the Heechee-metal shine-blu~ only; Gateway had
never had any of the other colors.
Changes? Sure there had been changes. But it was the same room. And what a
world of misery and worriment I had crammed into it.
I'd lived the way every Gateway prospector lived-counting up the minutes until
I would have to take a ifight, any flight, or be kicked off the asteroid
because my money was gone. Poring over the lists of expeditions that were
seeking crew members, trying to guess which one might make me rich-or, really,
trying to decide which one might at least not make me dead. I had bedded
GelleKlara Moynlin in that room, when we weren't doing it in her own. I had
cried myself crazy in it when I came back from the last mission I had shared
with her .
without her.
It seemed to me that I had lived a longer life right there, in those few lousy
months I had spent on Gateway, than in all the decades since.
I don't know how many milliseconds I spent there, in maudlin nostalgia time,
before I heard a voice behind me say, "Well, Robin! You know, I had an idea I
might find you mooning around here."
Her name was Sheri Loffat.
I have to confess that, glad as I was to see Sheri again, I was also glad that
Essie was busy hoisting a few with her old drinking buddy just then.
Essie is not a jealous woman at all. But she might have made an exception for
Sheri Loffat.
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Sheri was peering in at me through the narrow doorway. She looked not a minute
older than the last time I'd seen her, more than half a century back. She was
looking a whole lot better than she had then, in fact, because then she was
just out of the hospital after a mission that had gone sour in every way but
financial. Now she was looking one other thing besides "good." She was looking
extremely appetizing because what she was wearing, apart from a broad grin,
was nothing but a knitted shirt and a pair of underwear panties.
I recognized the outfit immediately. "Like it?" she asked, leaning in to kiss
me. "I put it on just for you. Remember?"
I answered indirectly. I said, "I'm a married man now." That was to set the
record straight, but it didn't keep me from kissing her back as I said it.
"Well, who isn't married?" she asked reasonably. "I've got four kids, you
know. Not to mention three grandchildren and a great-grand."
I said, "My God."
I leaned back to look at her. She wriggled her way in the doorway and hooked
herself by the scruff of her tee shirt to a hook on the wail. That was just
what we used to do sometimes, when we were still meat and Gateway was the
doorway to the universe, because the asteroid's rotational "gravity" was so
light that hanging was more comfortable than sitting. I did like the outfit. I
was not likely to forget it. It was exactly what Sheri had been wearing the
first time she came into my bed.
"I didn't even know you were dead," I said, to welcome her.
She looked uncomfortable with the subject, as though she hadn't quite got used
to it. "It only happened last year. Of course, I didn't look quite this young
then. So being dead isn't a total loss." She put her fingers on her chin,
studying me up and down. She commented, "I keep seeing you on the news, Robin.
You've done well."
"So did you," I said, remembering. "You went home with five or six million
dollars, didn't you? From that Heechee toolbox you found?"
"More like ten million, when you counted in the royalties." She smiled.
"Rich lady!"
She shrugged. "I had a lot of fun with it. Bought myself a couple of counties
of ranchland on Peggys Planet, got married, raised a family, died . .
. it was pretty nice, all right. Not counting the last part. But I wasn't just
talking about money, though you've obviously got plenty of that. What do they
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