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Estrella shook her head. "Divided among the three of us, not all that good, either," she said practically.
"Are you willing to settle for alittle money?"
"A little money would be enough for me to go home and buy my own van, so I could go into business for
myself," Tan said stiffly.
"If that is what you wish. It isn't, for me. I didn't come all this way to spend the rest of my life struggling
to stay alive in a one-room condo with Basic Medical and no future. Anyway, Hector says there will
surely be more missions soon. Missions of a different kind, where we will know where we will be going."
Stan gave her a thoughtful look. "How do you know what Hector says?" he asked, surprising himself by
the tone of his own voice. He almost soundedjealous.
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Estrella shrugged. "He likes me,"she said, as though that explained everything.
"He likes everybody," Tan sneered. "Boys, girls, sheep, he doesn't care, as long as it has a hole in it."
Estrella gazed at him for a moment in silence. "He has not got into any of mine," she said finally. "Let's
talk sensibly. What do you want to do? Take your share and go home? Or wait for something
worthwhile?"
They waited. While they waited they watched the unfolding story of what Robinette Broadhead had
discovered on the news.
And what had he not! Strange, semi-human creatures that at first everyone thought, heart-stoppingly,
might actually be Heechee, but were not. (They were, it seemed, relatives of primitive pre-humans called
australopithecines, captured by the Heechee on Earth millennia ago and transported to one of their space
outposts for study.) There were a clutch of surviving well, sort of surviving lost Gateway prospectors,
too, their ships taken to this place by the luck of the draw and unable to leave. Now the marooned
prospectors were more or less dead, but also more or less still alive, preserved in some bizarre sort of
Heechee machinery. There was the half-wild living human boy named Wan, descendant of other
Gateway castaways and now, somehow, through some Heechee wizardry that broadcast his yearnings
and hatreds to the entire solar system, the source of the Wrath of God. (A boy's wet dreams, costing so
many lives!) And the final secret Broadhead had learned now he even knew where the Heechee had
fled to! They had holed up inside an immense black hole in the Galaxy's Core, and they were still there,
all of them!
It was one wonder after another. Everyone was talking about it well, everyone but Estrella, it seemed
to Stan. For whatever reason, she was spending more and more time with the permanent party and less
with her old shipmates. Stan didn't approve. "She shouldn't do that," he told Tan seriously. "They mean
her no good."
Tan laughed coarsely. "Depends on what you think 'good' is. Montefiore has his own ideas. But don't
worry about Estrella," he advised. "That one'll take good care of her maidenhead."
Stan did worry, though. He told himself that what Estrella did was none of his business, but he thought
about her a lot as the days passed.
The nine-bangle Englishwoman came back safe and sound in her One, having earned not only a tenth
bangle but, at last, a stake. She had roamed a tunnel on a world not much kindlier than Mercury, wearing
a space suit that kept her in air but didn't keep out the blazing heat that radiated from the tunnel walls.
Pushed to the limit she had scoured the empty corridors until she found something; no one was sure
what. Possibly it was a game, something like a 3-D version of Go. Or it might have been some sort of
computing machine, like an abacus, or even a musical instrument. At any rate her bonus was enough to
pay her way back to a decent retirement in the little village in Sussex she had come from. She even
bought coffees for the boys before she left, listening to them tell her about all the amazing things that had
happened while she was gone. "Heigh-ho," she said, grinning the grin of someone who no longer had to
worry about such things, "sounds like fun and games, doesn't it? Well, good luck to you! Don't give up.
You never know, you might hit a good one yet."
Tan looked sourly after her as she made the payback rounds, buying drinks for everyone who had
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bought them for her. "I doubt it," he said, half under his breath.
"You've been doubting it ever since we got here," Stan said in irritation, though the fact was that he was
beginning to doubt it, too. It might have turned into a really serious argument, but that was when Estrella
appeared in the entrance, looking around for them.
Estrella didn't hesitate. As soon as she saw the two of them she launched herself in their direction with a
great, accurate kick against the door frame. Tan caught her as she came in range, but she grabbed a
holdfast and freed herself. Her twisted face looked grim, but the news she brought was great. She looked
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