Some of the people who lurked in the dim light knew better.  They were the ones in the corners who drank less than they appeared to, smoked less, talked less.  Pushing their mugs around in the condensation which oozed off the plastic because the air processing in DelSec was never as good as it should be and nobody could sit in Mallorys without sweating, these men knew how to listen, how to ask questions, how to interpret what they saw - and when to go somewhere else for information.

Most of them were a bit older, a bit less self-absorbed; perhaps a bit more profound in their cynicism.  If they were pilots, they were here because this was the life they could afford and understand, not because drink or drugs, incompetence or misjudgment, had cost them their careers.  If they were miners who couldn't get or no longer wanted work, they were here to stay near the taste and dreams of prospecting, the vision of a strike so vast and pure that it was better than being rich.  If they were born or naturalized inhabitants of the Station, they were here to keep company with the clientele for their particular goods or services - or perhaps to keep tabs on the market for the whispers and hints they purveyed.

Such people looked at what they saw with more discerning eyes.

When Morn Hyland and Angus Thermopyle came into Mallorys, the men in the corners noticed the way her whole body seemed to twist away even when she sat close beside him.  They heard the dull, almost lifeless sound of her voice when she spoke - a tone of suppression unexpected from someone who had presumably spent weeks or months away from people and drink.  And they observed that he kept one hand constantly fisted in the pocket of his grease-stained shipsuit.

After Angus took her out, some of these men also left - but not to follow.  Instead, they went to have unassuming, apparently casual conversations with people who had access to the id files in Com-Mine Station's computers.

The story they gleaned concerned something more interesting than animal passion and common sense.

By one means or another, they learned that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact that Morn Hyland wasn't known in DelSec.  She'd never been there before.  During her one previous layover on Com-Mine, she'd stayed in AlSec.

She'd come out from Earth on one of the really wealthy independent oreliners, a family operation so successful that she and all her relatives did everything first class because they could afford it.  Crossing the gap, the Hybrids had docked at Com-Mine Station, not to pick up company ore for the orbiting smelters around Earth, but to buy supplies: they were headed for the belt themselves.  And since they weren't experienced miners and had never been out to the belt before, there could only be one explanation for what they were doing.  Somewhere they had bought or stolen the location of an asteroid rich enough to tempt them away from their usual runs.  They had caught the dream themselves and were on their way to test it against the bitter rock of the belt.

A common tale, as far as it went.  Back on Earth, civilization and political power required ore.  Without the resources which stations like Com-Mine supplied, no government could maintain itself in office.  By some standards, the United Mining Companies, Com-Mine's corporate founder, was the only effective government in human space.  As a natural consequence, every city or station of any size spawned at least one earnest, spurious, or reprobate dealer in belt charts, the treasure maps of space.  Men and women with some kind of hunger in their bellies were forever buying "accurate," "secret" charts and then risking everything to cross the gap and go prospecting.

But not a successful outfit like the Hyland family.  If they left a profitable ore-transportation business and converted their liner for mining, two things were certain.

They had a chart.

The chart was good.