Do lady kangaroos have pockets? Dar carefully noted that she had avoided the direct answer. "What've I got that he hasn't got?"

"Me," Lona answered. "All my clients have are my order forms. After all, I don't feel toward them the way I feel toward you."

"Oh? And how do you feel toward me?"

"I'm in love with you," she murmured as her lips met his, and her body curved into his.

Dar shook his head with a sigh—it had been a wonderful way to say "good-bye." He couldn't understand his luck—her clients had status, wealth, influence, sophistication, looks—but, true to her word, he had her.

On the other hand, two hours later, she'd been space-borne again, heading for Terra—and he'd stayed here to watch the factory, with her discarded robot. It still rankled.

But not too much—it had been very lonely whenever she had taken off for the fleshpots of Terra, and Fess was good company.

Fleshpots—the thought sent a shiver through Dar. What was she up to, down there in Sin City? Which, as far as he was concerned, meant the whole planet. What was she up to, and how many times had she been unfaithful to him?

Not that it mattered. Or at least, he knew it wouldn't when he saw her again, live and vibrant, before him. She always came home with stars in her eyes and contracts in her hands. So who was he to criticize?

"Her husband, that's who," he muttered.

"Not officially," Fess corrected.

"Does it matter?"

"Certainly. Your current status is only that of business partners."

"Yeah, business partners who've been living together for seven years!"

"Still, that is only a matter of convenience and mutual pleasure," Fess said primly. "Neither of you is legally bound to the other."

"Well, fine. You talk about the legalities, but I have to live with the actualities."

"You are free to leave, Dar."

"Yeah, and she keeps all the patents." But Dar knew that was only the smallest part of it.

"You have become so skilled an engineer that you could earn a living anywhere in inhabited space, Dar."

"Yeah, but she wouldn't be there." Fess wouldn't say it, but Dar knew he had a problem with his self-image. It resembled nothing so much as a large, multicolored lollipop. "Come on. If I'm such a hotshot engineer, I gotta be able to figure out how to make a simple little housecleaner deliver breakfast, don't I?"

"Yes, Dar. After that we can move on to the really interesting program—enabling it to wash windows."

Dar thought of the chipped enamel and shuddered. He glanced at the skylight. "Well, we've got time—a good two hours till the next sunrise. Come on, X-HB-9." He headed for the shop.

They finished the next (successful) test just as the first ray of sunrise fingered the skylight dome. Dar looked up at it, swallowed his toast (well, it had been time for tea), and said, "Go stand in the corner, X-HB-9."

"Yes, sir." The little canister turned, rolled over to the corner, plugged itself in to recharge, and went immobile.

"I'll meet you at the airlock," Dar called. He took a last swallow of tea, wiped the cup, dropped it into the dishwasher, and headed for his pressure suit.

He suited up, checked his seals, stepped into the airlock, and floated. The hatch closed automatically behind him, but he had to grab a handhold with his right while he spun the locking wheel with his left, or he would have gone spinning away in the other direction. As the air hissed back into its storage tank, he allowed himself a glow of self-satisfaction; he'd been wise to insist on not having artificial gravity under the airlock, so that he could get used to weightlessness before he stepped out onto the surface. Dar's enduring nightmare was a breakdown in the gravity plates.

On the other hand, he wouldn't have to worry about falling. No, strike that—in weightlessness, he was always falling. He just didn't have to worry about the sudden stop at the end. Of course, he was good at landing—he tripped a lot, and had learned how to hit safely, if not softly—but he didn't like it much.

Fess was waiting for him just outside the airlock, one more sharp-angled piece of rock in a surreal landscape of glaring light and total shadow. "Visual inspection, please," Dar requested.

"No leaks in evidence," the robot answered as Dar turned slowly, changing hands on the grab-handle next to the hatch. "All seals appear intact. Good manners are not necessary when dealing with a robot, Dar."

"Yeah, but if I neglect them, I'll get out of the habit of using them, and I'll start being rude to people. Can't afford that, Fess—I need every friend I've got, especially when there are only two hundred fifty-six of us on Maxima. Come on, let's see how the cutter's been doing the last three hours." He clipped his safety lead to the guide wire and pushed off toward the north side.

The robot rock-cutter had produced another forty blocks during the three-hour night.

"Well, production's up to standard." Dar looked back over the cutter's trail. "Just wish we could afford another one."

"That would be desirable, Dar, but it would push the limits of our power output. Slagging requires sixty percent of our reactor's capacity, and the crane and factory require the rest."

"So we could buy a bigger power plant." Dar glanced at the cable running from the crane off to the reactor, dug into the foot of an outcrop a hundred meters from the house. "Then we wouldn't have to depend on the solar-cell screens for the household."

"You should be able to afford one in the not too distant future, Dar."

"How far is 'not too distant'?" Dar growled.

"Only four years now," Lona had answered. "Our ship will come in, Dar. You'll see."

"Yeah, but will it be a tug or a freighter?"

"A freighter." Lona raised a hand as though she were being sworn in. "Cross my heart."

"Okay." Dar reached for her.

"Not yet, naughty." Lona slapped his hand away. "I have work to do first.''

"I take a lot of doing," Dar suggested.

"Braggart. Next thing I know, you'll tell me you do a lot of taking."

"Well, as a matter of fact…"

"Don't try." She pressed a finger over his lips. "Any teacher who really does his job, doesn't qualify as a taker."

"I stopped teaching six years ago."

"Only because the sheriff was after you. You'd open school here, if there were any children."

"That's a vile canard; there are fourteen children."

"Yes, but the oldest is only four."

"Well, I specialized in adult education, anyway. Is it my fault nobody here has less than a B.S.? Except me…"

"A B.A. will do quite well, thank you. Especially since you've learned enough about engineering to qualify for the other bachelor's anyway."

"Yeah, but I was only interested in the bachelor girl."

"So I was a great motivational device." Lona shrugged impatiently. "You're the one who did the learning."

"Yeah, but you did the teaching."

"Me and a small library. You've even learned enough not to be afraid of the reactor."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Dar turned to look out the port at the outcrop where he had just finished burying the power plant. "Intellectually, I know no radiation can get out of that plasma bottle—but emotionally, I still want it as far away from me as I can get it."

"Well, you're only human." Lona came up behind him, slipped her arms under his, and began to trace geometrical figures on his chest.

"Of course, five hundred meters wouldn't do any good if it blew. We'd still be right inside the fireball."

Her hands stilled. "You know it can't blow up, though."

"Yeah, my mind knows it, but my stomach doesn't."

"If anything did go wrong enough to make the plasma bottle collapse, there wouldn't be anything to hold the hydrogen in, so the fusion reaction would stop."