'Oh, thanks. She's not regular. Can you believe it, I've been here three bloody weeks.'

He rubbed his nose.

'Three weeks. Can you imagine that?'

He helped himself to some of Truck's unfinished treat.

'I don't understand how I can have done it. Outside being arrested, which I wasn't. I've been careful since I had that finger broken on Barfield Eight. Three weeks in this dump!'

'If you want to lift out of here,' offered Truck.

'You've still got Ella Speed. What a name. I never could get over that.'

He chuckled.

'I'll be around when you finish this gig,' Truck told him. 'Or you could find her at the dock. I had her painted up about a year ago. Fix the bos'n is aboard, I hope.'

Tiny got up. He did a little energetic shuffle, nodded, and went back to his band. He and Truck hadn't met much since his teenage prodigy days, when he'd been playing the circuits on Gloam. Between riots, that had been a lot of laughs, Truck recollected. He smiled to himself and worked some THC grit from between two of his teeth with his tongue. And he laughed out loud when Tiny leaned down from the poky Rave stage and whispered something to the girl with the coppery hair.

He didn't understand how she could be so pleased to see him. How could he? He only knew that spaceport women sometimes have metaphysical hungers hard to describe riding tandem with their more common appetites. They represent a different function of space, a significance of loneliness lost on their male counterparts. They are the true aliens. So he regarded her with a certain wariness.

'Mr. Truck, I have been searching the port for you.'

'Go on,' said Truck. 'You say that to all the spacers. It's "Captain." Is there something I can do for you?'