was because of this that I had felt duty bound to answer his call for help.

I'd not felt duty bound to take all the opportunities he'd tried to force on me when I got out of school. Mining the semi-solid seas of Alphard kappa. Fur trading on Procyon beta. And a hundred others, all obviously doomed to failure unless there was one lucky chance.

"But I'm happy here with my little room and my little job," I kept telling Uncle Isadore.

"You only think you're happy because you don't know any better," he kept telling me.

Only, now that he was dead, he seemed to have me where he wanted me. Now that nothing could matter to him any longer.

"Maybe he was getting senile," Rene suggested.

"Uncle Izzy always said he'd rather die than—he did die," I replied, suddenly recalling myself to the present and the open outside port of the ship. I realized how reluctant I was to go in. It was one thing to admit Uncle Izzy was dead—I cherished no great affection for him—but it was something else to have to face his dead body.

"Would you mind going in first?" I asked Rene.

He shrugged and shouldered the inside door open.

He came out, his face a study in perplexity. "Not here!" he said. "This is the first time I've been wrong in fifteen years!"

"That's because it's the first time you've been up against Uncle Izzy. He must have closed the port behind him the same way I opened it."

I climbed through the door, feeling immensely relieved. I realized then what had really been worrying me. If the gods had abandoned Isadore at the last, what did they have in mind for the rest of us mere mortals?

I kicked at my mind irritably, knowing these were young thoughts. But then I am young, I explained to myself.

The inside of the ship was neat and empty. Stuck on the instrument panel with a vaccup was a note, in Uncle Izzy's flowery script.

My boy. I have died of boredom. Do not look for the remains. I have hidden my body to avoid the banality of a decent burial. I bequeath you my entire fortune. Find it.

Rene groaned. "I suppose now you want to look for the body."

"No. If he says it's hidden, it's 

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