the hotelman said, and backed out the door.

"A greasy customer," Kesley commented when he was gone.

"No more so than usual," said van Alen. "They seem to be a breed. He means well, though." The Antarctican shrugged out of his cloak and draped it over a chair. Casually he unfolded the screen, dividing the room in half.

"Economy calls for a single room," he explained. "But privacy is still a fine thing."

Kesley shrugged. He had no intention of violating any of van Alen's personal crotchets. Approaching his own bed, he turned down the sheet, slipped off his clothing, and climbed in.

He discovered he had no desire to sleep. After tossing restlessly for a while, he rolled over on his back and sat up. "Van Alen?"

"What is it, Kesley?"

"How big is Galveston?"

"About a hundred thousand people," van Alen said. "It's a very big city."

"Oh." After a pause: "Bet New York was much bigger, wasn't it?"

"Cities were bigger in the old days. Too big. It drove people mad to live in them. That's why the cities were destroyed. Your Dukes make sure the same thing doesn't happen again by building walls around the cities. Galveston won't ever get any bigger than it is."

"Is that the way things are in Antarctica, too?"

"You'll find out about Antarctica when you get there. Go to sleep—or at least let me sleep."

Van Alen sounded irritated. The Antarctican was a queer duck, Kesley thought, as he lay awake in the silence. Van Alen was a slick operator, calm and self-assured, but there were strange chinks in his armor. He blew up, occasionally, lost his temper—not often, but sometimes. And there were many questions he would not answer, and others that seemed to disturb him more than they should.

He conducted himself strangely, too—doing things almost without motivation, it seemed, though Kesley felt that deep calculations lay behind the seemingly gratuitous acts. Such things as picking the first hotel they saw, or tipping the proprietor a needless half dollar. They stood out sharply 

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