The men, though, conformed to the spacer stereotype. Their hair was cropped to a centimeter's length. "Like induction day at boot camp," Moyshe muttered.

These people would be his new employers. The ones he had been sent to betray.

Mouse passed, small and brown, with a wink. Why he had that name benRabi did not know. He had carried it for years, and seemed to like it, though for lookalikes Weasel would have done better.

A weird one, my partner, benRabi thought. But we get along. Because of commensality of obsession. In some areas.

Mouse was a mad collector too: postage stamps from the days when they had been used, coins, bottles, mugs, wrought-iron, almost anything old. But the ends they were after varied.

BenRabi collected for escape, for relaxation, as a means of learning. Mouse had gone mad Archaicist during his recent stay in Luna Command. His collecting had become a means of slipping into the gestalt of departed life styles. He had fallen in love with the twentieth century, the last with a real spectrum of class, ethnic, and cultural differentiations.

BenRabi did not comprehend Archaicists at all. His opinion of them was, to use Mouse's words, lower than a snake's butt.

The old distinctions had changed. Race, sex, wealth, style, and manner of speech no longer set a person apart. Prejudices pivoted round origins and profession, with Old Earthers the niggers of the age, and Service personnel the aristocracy.

BenRabi, under his other names, had known Mouse a long time. But he just did not know the man. Professional acquaintance and even a budding friendship had done nothing to break down Mouse's defenses. BenRabi was Old Earther. Mouse was Outworlds and third generation Service. That was a barrier across which little could trickle.