He got out, pulled a towel out of the dispenser, dried himself, and put the towel down the chute as well. In the delivery-side hatch was his other shipsuit, rigorously clean and a little too stiff for his tastes. Gabriel shook it out, slipped into it, stroked the seam closed, and did a couple of deep knee-flexes to let the fabric remember where he bent. He paused before the minor to make sure the nap of his hair was lying in the right direction before walking out. The place smelled of hot food—something Helm had brought over from Longshot with him. "I swear," Gabriel said as he came up the hall, pausing by one of the storage cabinets to get out a tumbler, "I don't know where you get that stuff from. It's not like you don't shop in the same places we do. Why does your food always smell so terrific?" "It doesn't dare do otherwise," said the rough gravelly voice in the sitting room. There was Helm Ragnarsson, sitting immense in the foldout guest chair, which had extended itself valiantly to its full extent in both dimensions but was sagging under Helm's massive and muscular bulk, originally engineered for heavy-planet and high-pressure work. "Here you are finally," Helm said. "Still wet behind the ears." "Yeah, thanks loads," Gabriel said. "I'm going to have to fix that thing again, you know that? We should make you bring your own chair." He turned to Enda, picked up the kalwine bottle sitting by the steaming covered casserole on the table, which was now folded down between the chairs. "Refill?" "Yes, thank you, Gabriel," she said, and held out her glass. Gabriel poured for them both, then lifted the lid of the casserole. "What is this?"


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