"Sounds like a tyrant." Brack uncovered the phone. "What's the closest
thing you have to beefsteak?"
"Why don't you try some of our roasted pradolan? It's quite good," she
added for the boss's benefit. "Specialty of the house."
"There's just one thing I want to know," said Brack. "Is it synthetic?"
The girl smiled sadly. "I'd do anything for some real food myself. I
haven't left Corbie in seven years."
"What makes you stick around a place like this? Married?"
"No. My father owns the Eros."
"You're free, brown and twenty-one," said Brack somewhat inaccurately.
"He can't make you stay if you want to leave."
Esther waved warningly at the table phone and Brack again covered it
with his hand.
"Maybe he can't legally, but there's only one passenger ship between
here and the planets every year, and they've refused me a ticket twice
now."
"Sounds pretty rotten to me," said the trucker. "Well, what if you got
married to some guy? Then he couldn't--"
A heavy-set white man, bald and bullet-headed, strode out of the
kitchen and seized the girl roughly by the arm.
"Now I told you not to gab with the customers and I meant it!" he
snarled. "You get back there in the kitchen where you belong!"