as she doing with Manning?

He passed a waiter on his way to the table and ordered a drink. Malhomme
saw him as he passed: "Lee Rynason! Come and join me in repentance! Give
your soul to God and your money to the barman, for as the prophet
sayeth, lo, I am dry! Join us!"

Rynason grinned and shook his head, walking past. He grabbed one of the
light-metal chairs and sat down next to Mara.

"You wanted to see me," he said to Manning.

Manning looked up at him to apparent surprise. "Lee! Yes, yes--sit down.
Wait, we'll get you a drink."

So he was in that kind of a mood. "I've got one coming," Rynason said.
"What's our problem today?"

Manning smiled broadly. "No problem, Lee; no problem at all. Not unless
you want to make one." He chuckled goodnaturedly, a tacit statement that
he was expecting no such thing. "I've got good news today, by god. You
tell him, Mara."

Rynason turned to the girl, who smiled briefly. "It just came over the
telecom," she said. "Manning has a good chance for the governorship
here. The Council is supposed to announce its decision in two weeks."

Rynason looked over at Manning, his face expressionless.
"Congratulations. How did this happen?"

"I've got an inside track; friend of mine knows several of the big guys.
Throws parties, things like that. He's been putting in a word for me,
here and there."

"Isn't this a bit out of your line?" Rynason said.

Manning sat back, a large man with close-cropped dark hair and heavy
features. His beard was trimmed to a thin line along the ridge of his
jaw--a style that was popular on the inner worlds, but rarely seen here
on the Edge. "This _is_ my line," he said. "God, this is what I was
after when I took this damned job. Survey teams are a dime a dozen out
here, Lee; it's no job for a man."

"We've got sort of a special case here," Rynason said evenly, glancing
at Mara. She smiled at him. "We haven't run into any alien races before
that were intelligent."

Manning laughed, and took a long swallow of his drink. "Twenty-six lousy
horsefaces--now there's an important discovery for you. No, Lee, this is
peanuts. For that matter, they may be running into intelligent aliens
all over the Edge by now--communication isn't so reliable out here that
we'd necessarily know about it. What we've found here isn't any more
important than all the rubble and trash the Outsiders left behind."

"Still, it _is_ unique so far," Mara said.

"I'll tell you exactly h