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I remember I had looked up at Lili and Maud - us girls had been checking the envelopes; it&039;s one of the proprieties we frequently maintain and anyway, if men check them, they&039;re apt to trot out that old wheeze about "instant wo, thank you

Anyway, I had looked up and said, "It&039;s been nice knowing you," and Lili had said, "Twentythree, skiddoo," and Maud had said, "Here goes nothing," and we had shook hands all around

We figured that Phryne and the Countess had faded at the sa at me and I said, "Siddy, do you suppose it&039;s just barely possible that, while ere all looking at Bruce, those two Ghostgirls would have been able to work the Maintainer and get a Door and lahts, sweetling All weighs against it: Imprimis, &039;tis well known that Ghosts cannot lay plots or act on the a Door Tercio - and here&039;s the real meat of it - the Place folds without the Maintainer Quadro, &039;twere folly to depend on not one of - howaround in all the time it would have taken them - "

"I looked around once, Siddy They were drinking and they had got to the control divan under their oer Noas that? Oh, yes, when Bruce was talking about Zouean prattle, I could have sworne none could touch the Maintainer, e Yet"

"Eftsoons yet," I seconded hiot a door and walked out with the thing It certainly wasn&039;t in the Place The iunt had been a lulu So the size of a portable typewriter is not easy to hide and we had been inside everything from Beau&039;s piano to the reaewer link of the Refresher

We had even fluoroscoped everybody, though it had made Illy writhe like a box of worms, as he&039;d warned us; he said it tickled terribly and I insisted on sh he was a little standoffish toward me

So while, but ere thorough Kaby helped Doc check Surgery: since she last made the Place, she has been stationed in a Field Hospital (it turns out the Spiders actually areoperations from them) and learned a few nice nerinkles

However, Doc put in soh, of course, every check was Observed by at least three people, not including Bruce or Lili When the Maintainer vanished, Doc had pulled out of his glassy-eyed drunk in a way that would have surprised me if I hadn&039;t seen it happen to hiot on to the Art Gallery, he had started to putter and I noticed him hold out his coat and duck his head and whip out a flask and take a swig and by noell on his way toward another peak

The Art Gallery had taken tie stuff, and it broke my heart but Kaby took her ax and split a beautiful blue woodcarving of a Venusian h there wasn&039;t aenough Doc cried a little and we left hi over the other stuff

After we&039;d finished everything else, Mark had insisted on tackling the floor Beau and Sid both tried to explain to hi, but nothing, under the floor; it just gets a lot harder than the diaet a quarter inch down - that being the solid equivalent of the Void But Mark was knuckleheaded (like all Romans, Sid assured me on the qt) and broke four diamond-plus drills before he was satisfied

Except for sos don&039;t vanish if you throw them at the Void - they half melt and freeze forever unless you can fish them out Back of the Refresher, at about eye-level, are three Venusian coconuts that a Hittite strong a major brawl I try not to look at theive ainst the Void have strange spatial properties which one of the gadgets in Surgery ives me the worse woolies, but that&039;s beside the point

During the hunt, Kaby and Erich had used their Callers as direction finders to point out the Maintainer, just as they&039;re used in the cosmos to locate the Door - and so Places, people tell me But the Callers only ild - like a co - and pobody knehat thatplaces were the Minor Maintainer, a cute idea, but it is no bigger than the Major and has its ownits oork, so that was out for several reasons, and the boh it see they know the secret of its lock, even before Erich juht double But when you&039;ve ruled out everything else, the word i

Since tiht think of all sorts of tricks for sending the Maintainer into the past or future, per Ti through the Big Ti Time is a train, and the Little Tio out a Door, and as Gertie Stein h the time you time travel in when you time travel

I&039;d also played around with the idea of so that several people could pass back and forth between them, which could h conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosa black shakos and I hadn&039;t been satisfied until I&039;d got the three together and looked in the, I can&039;t stand here forever" Maud had brought us a tray of hearty snacks fro; she whips up a mean hors d&039;oeuvre

I looked the"

"And I want a venison pasty! Out upon you, you finical jill, you o&039;erscrupulous jade, you whiled back against him

"Go on, call me some more, Siddy," I told him "Real juicy ones"