when nothing else
remains.

"If I've got a soul, I made it myself," he told the gray nun at the foot
of his bed.

The nun held out a pie pan, rattled a few coins in it. "Contribute to
the Radiation Victims' Relief?" the nun purred softly.

"I know you," he said. "You're my conscience. You hang around the
officers' mess, and when we get back from a sortie, you make us pay for
the damage we did. But that was forty years ago."

The nun smiled, and her luminous eyes were on him softly. "Mother of
God!" he breathed, and reached for the whiskey. His arm obeyed. The last
drink had done him good. He had to watch his hand to see where it was
going, and squeezed the neck until his fingers whitened so that he knew
that he had it, but he got it off the table and onto his chest, and he
got the cork out with his teeth. He had a long pull at the bottle, and
it made his eyes water and his hands grow weak. But he got it back to
the table without spilling a bit, and he was proud of himself.

The room was spinning like the cabin of a gyro-gravved ship. By the time
he wrestled it to a standstill, the nun was gone. The blare of music
from the Keith terrace was louder, and laughing voices blended with it.
Chairs scraping and glasses rattling. A fine party, Keith, I'm glad you
picked today. This shebang would be the younger Keith's affair. Ronald
Tonwyler Keith, III, scion of Orbital Engineering and Construction
Company--builders of the moon-shuttle ships that made the run from the
satellite station to Luna and back.

It's good to have such important neighbors, he thought. He wished he had
been able to meet them while he was still up and about. But the Keiths'
place was walled-in, and when a Keith came out, he charged out in a
limousine with a chauffeur at the wheel, and the iron gate closed again.
The Keiths built the wall when the surrounding neighborhood began to
grow shabby with age. It had once been the best of neighborhoods, but
that was before Old Donegal lived in it. Now it consisted of sooty old
houses and rented flats, and the Keith place was really not a part of it
anymore. Nevertheless, it was really something when a pensioned blastman
could say, "I live out close to the Keiths--you know, the _Ronald_
Keiths." At least, that's what Martha always told him.

The music was so loud that he never heard the doorbell ring, but when a
lull came, he heard Nora's voice downstairs, and listened hopefully for
Ken's. But when they came