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The Hub, a cluster of bubbles in a web of metal, hung in empty space, in that region known to Earthmen as Hither Sagittarius. The owner was Pan Pascoglu, a man short, dark and energetic, almost bald, with restless brown eyes and a thick mustache. A man of ambition, Pascoglu hoped to develop the Hub into a fashionable resort, a glamor-island among the stars — something more than a mere stopover depot and junction point. Working to this end, he added two dozen bright new bubbles — “cottages”, as he called them — around the outer meshes of the Hub, which already resembled the model of an extremely complex molecule.
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