smooth for another
couple of years, that the hunch of Big Trouble building up, became a
gnawing certainty in his nerves.

Of course there were always the Jolly Lads to watch out for--the extreme
individualists, space-twisted and wild. Robbing and murdering could seem
easier than digging. Take your loot into Pallastown--who knew you hadn't
grubbed it, yourself? Sell it. Get the stink blown off you--forget some
terrible things that had happened to you. Have yourself a time. Strike
Out again. Repeat...

Nelsen knew that, through the months, he had killed defensively at least
twice. Once, with a long-range homing bullet--weapons sanctioned by
pious and cautious international agreement, were more lethal, now, to
match the weapons of the predatory. Once by splitting a helmet with a
rifle barrel. When he was out alone, exploring a new post site on a
small asteroid, a starved Tovie runaway had jumped him. Maybe he should
regret the end of that incident.

Trips to Pallastown were increasingly infrequent. But there was one time
when he almost had come specially to see Ramos' new bubb, still under
wraps, supposedly. Well--that erratic character had it out on a long
test run. Damn him! As usual, time was crowding Nelsen. He had to get
back on the job. He had just a couple of hours left.

He wrote a letter to Nance Codiss, answering one of hers--funny, he'd
never yet tried to contact her vocally. Being busy, being cautious about
using a beam--these were good reasons. Now there was hardly enough spare
time to reach twice across the light-minutes. Maybe the real truth was
that men got strangely shy in the silences of the Belt.

"Dear Nance: You seem to be making fine headway in your new courses. All
the good words, for that..."

There were plenty of good words, but he didn't put many of them down. He
didn't know if the impulse to write _Darling_, was just his own
loneliness, which any girl with a kind word would have filled. He didn't
know her, or that part of himself, very well. He kept remembering her as
she had been. Then he'd realize that memory wasn't a stable thing to
hang onto. Everything changed--how well he had learned that! She was
older, now, intelligent, and at school again, studying some kind of
medical laboratory technology. Certainly she had become more
sophisticated and elusive--her gay letters were just a superficial part
of what she must be. And certainly there were dates and boyfriends, and
all the usual pha