"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.