He walked cumbrously over to a storage cubicle without looking back. He stripped off his heat suit and checked it with a stout man in Pluto-city green.
It was time to plan his next move. There was a pilot's hangout, he remembered, a saloon called the Golden Ray. He took a worn notebook from his shirt pocket, thumbed it to the forgotten address and held the page up for the checking attendant to see.
"How do I get there?"
The man's eyes widened a fraction as he took the address in. He shrugged imperceptibly. "Any slidewalk going north," he said. "Get off at the Hub and you'll be within a couple blocks of it."
Nolan nodded and headed for a moving sidewalk. The notebook went back into the pocket of his open-necked black shirt, and the hand that put it there paused a second to touch reassuringly the weight of a slim-barreled pyro that swung beneath his armpit, out of sight. It was nice to know it was there, even though he didn't need it—yet.
He paused in a robot restaurant to eat. Saloons like the Golden Ray don't sell much food—particularly to those who have tasted it once. It was getting on toward night.
The slidewalks were fast, and the first man he stopped at the Hub told him all he needed to know to find the saloon. Once he got within a block of it, it all began to come back. It had been years since he'd been there, but the place hadn't changed.
A blast of sound struck him as he clawed his way through thick tobacco smoke and sweet Martian hop-incense fumes to the bar. He nodded his head, and the short motion yanked a fat bartender to him.
The man's slitted eyes peeped surprisedly through the surrounding tallow.