The _Seven Sisters_ is one of the most elaborate dining clubs on Ceres. It caters strictly to the moneyed class, and is positively drenched in snob appeal. The food is good, the liquor is good, and the entertainment is adequate. Since all three have to be imported from Earth, the first two are expensive and the last one is the best they can get, because most of the top-flight entertainers of Earth don't feel that it's worth their while to go asteroid-hopping. It is one of the few public places in the Belt where you will be expected to "dress" for dinner. That means a jacket and Bermuda shorts over your union suit. As far as decoration goes, the _Seven Sisters_ is the lushest place in the Belt. The walls of the main dining room, which is about sixty by sixty feet in floor area, are paneled with white oak up to a height of eight feet. Wood is expensive in the Belt; forests on the asteroids share the null class with snowflakes on the sunward side of Mercury. Above the paneling, the ceiling is domed and black, and a pattern of bright pinlights representing the Pleiades--greatly enlarged--glitters against the blackness. The floor is decorative traction tile, white and pale blue, with rust-red geometric designs on it. In the middle of the floor, there is a hollow, transparent column, brightly illuminated from below. Four feet in diameter, it rises a dozen feet above the floor to a flat, truncated top that is opaque to prevent the light from hitting the dome overhead and ruining the pseudo-sky effect, and mirrored on the underside to reflect the light back down the column. Inside, thousands of tiny, faceted, plastic gems are kept constantly in motion by forced air currents, swirling up and down the inside of the transparent column--easy enough to do under Cerean gravity. Each spinning gem, scarcely larger than a pinhead, catches the light and scatters it around the room. It's a sort of macroscopic Tyndall effect that is quite impressive. I told the headwaiter that I wanted Mr. Venuccio's table, and was escorted straight to it. Venuccio was waiting for me. He stood up as I approached and gave me his stiff smile. He was short--not more than five foot six--and rather lean. I got the impression that his jacket was padded to make his shoulders appear wider than they were. "Sit down, Mr. Oak," he said in that oddly forced voice of his. "Would you care for something to eat? Or a drink, perhaps?" He already had a drink, still three-quarters full. "Not just yet. Later, maybe." I had watched him as he stood up, and I went right on watching him while we sat down. For a man who was just in from Earth, he handled himself remarkably well under low gee. "We may order later," he said to the waiter. As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, Venuccio leaned toward me, and suddenly he was all business. One hand slid a banknote across the table. "Here is the hundred we agreed upon, Mr. Oak. I can state my proposition very quickly; you have only to listen."