to her dwelling. She paused at the door.
"I have a feeling I should know who you are, but I just can't recall.
Isn't that terrible?"

It was--frightening. Her identity was apparently incompletely
established; it kept slipping backward to a time she hadn't met him.
He couldn't build anything enduring on that; each meeting with her
would begin as if nothing had happened before.

Would the same be true of him?

He looked at her. The torn dress hadn't been repaired, as he'd thought
at first; it had been replaced by the robots that came out of the wall
at night. They'd done a good job fitting her, but with her body that
was easy.

It was frightening and it wasn't. At least this time he didn't have a
handicap. He opened his mouth to tell her his name, and then closed
it. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. "I haven't decided on
a name," he said.

"It was that way with me too." She gazed at him and he could feel his
insides sloshing around. "Well, man with no name, do you want to come
in? We can have dinner together."

He entered. But dinner was late that night. He had known it would be.

* * * * *

In the morning light, he sat up and put his hand on her. She smiled in
her sleep and squirmed closer. There were compensations for being
nobody, he supposed, and this was one of them. He got up quietly and
dressed without waking her. There were a number of things he wanted to
discuss, but somehow there hadn't been time last night. He would have
to talk to her later today.

He slipped out of the house and went across the court into his own.
The screen he had ripped apart had been repaired and put back in
place. A voice chimed out as he entered: "A call came while you were
gone."

"Let's have it."

The voice descended the scale and became that of the store manager.
"The gun you brought in was sold six months ago to Dorn Starret,
resident of Ceres and proprietor of a small gallium mine there. That's
all the information on record. I trust it will be satisfactory."

Luis sat down. It was. He could trace the man or have him traced,
though the last might not be necessary.

The name meant something to him--just what he couldn't say. Dorn
Starret, owner of a gallium mine on Ceres. The mine might or might not
be of consequence; gallium was used in a number of industrial
processes, but beyond that was not particularly valuable.

He closed his eyes to concentrate. The name slid into va