"Approximately."

The woman uncoiled herself and lay flat. Through the tangle of bronzed hair, one ear shone whitely. She brushed the hair from her eyes and her scarlet mouth opened in a feline yawn. The woman was pink and white; she quivered in voluptuous ecstasy and slithered on the satin with her own satiny, round and naked flesh.

"I didn't hear the alarm," she said, her voice thick with the residue of sleep. Her body pressed warm to his as she slid his cigarette from his fingers.

He shared the cigarette, thinking of the distance between the bed and the bathroom. The clock told him he had eight minutes to wait for maximum emission. His physiological chart showed a tolerance of nine and one-third hours.

Eight minutes to wait. Then he would have twenty minutes in which to shower, and fifteen to clothe himself in the shimmering, clinging opaque that, like the casing on a sausage, would cover him, leaving only his eyes, ears and mouth. These the neurologist would take care of before the mechanics fitted him into his machine for his next tour of duty.

There was a time for eating, time for a last cigarette, time for briefing and a long, long time for the Galbth II.

Time for everything but living.

Gently he kissed the woman's soft neck. "What's your name?" he asked wistfully, his attention divided between the short gold hairs at the base of her head and the all-important clock.

The woman chuckled chidingly and toyed with his hands, tracing the veins that stood rigid on their backs where the tortured nerves had forced them to the surface like a maze of pale blue pipes.

She did not answer. He could no more know her name than he could know her face behind the silver opaque--than he could know her voice behind the vocal distorter--no more than he could know anyone, or that anyone could know him.

Three times a week the Sex-Dispatcher sent him a woman. For all he knew it could be the same woman, or three different women.

"Can I tell the dispatcher that I pleased you?" The voice distorter had shifted and made her sound as though she had a cold. It was, of course, impossible. That scourge hadn't attacked the fortress in thirty years. In all probability it would never attack it again.

He nodded, 

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