I had let impulse lure me into a predicament in which Llita was temporarily my dependent; I had no intention of making matters worse by marrying her, I didn't owe her that. Minerva, long-lifers should never marry ephemerals; it is not fair to the ephemeral or to the long-lifer.

Nevertheless, once you pick up a stray cat and feed it, you cannot abandon it. Self-love forbids it. The cat's welfare becomes essential to your own peace of mind-even when it's a bloody nuisance not to break faith with the cat. Having bought these kids I could not shuck them off by manumission; I had to plan their future because they did not know how. They were stray cats.

Early next "morning" (by ship's routine) Captain Sheffield got up, unlocked the freedwoman's stateroom, found her asleep. He called her and told her to get up, wash quickly, then get breakfast for three. He left to wake her brother-found his stateroom empty, found him in the galley. "Good morning, Joe."

The freedman jumped. "Oh! Good morning, Master." He ducked and bent his knee.

"Joe, the correct answer is: 'Good morning, Captain.' It amounts to the same thing at present, for I am indeed master of this ship and everyone in it. But when you leave my ship on Valhalla, you will have no master of any sort. None, as I explained yesterday. Meanwhile, call me 'Captain.'"

Captain." The young man repeated obeisance.

"Don't bow! When you speak to me, stand tall and straight and proud, and look me in the eye. The correct answer to an order is 'Aye aye, Captain.' What are you doing there?"

"Why, I don't know-Captain."

"I don't think you do, either. That's enough coffee for a dozen people." Sheffield elbowed Joe aside, salvaged most of the coffee crystals the lad had poured into a bowl, measured enough for nine cups, made note to teach the girl how if she did not know, then have her keep coffee ready during working hours.

As he sat down with his first cup of coffee, she appeared. Her eyes were red and had circles under them; he suspected that she had wept some more that morning. But he made no comment other than a morning greeting and let her cope with the galley unassisted, she having seen what he had done the morning before.

Shortly he was recalling fondly the scratch lunch and supper-sandwiches he had made himself-of the day before. But he said nothing other than to order them to sit down and eat with him, rather than hovering over him. Breakfast was mostly coffee, cold ship's bread, tinned butter. Reconstituted accra eggs with mushrooms were an inedible mess, and she had managed to do something to heavenfruit juice. To spoil that took talent; all it needed was eight parts of cold water for each part of concentrate, and the instructions were on the container.

"Llita, can you read?"

"No, Master."

"Make that 'Captain,' instead. How about you, Joe?"

"No, Captain."

"Arithmetic? Numbers?"

"Oh, yes, Captain, I know numbers. Two and two is four, two and three makes five, and three and five is nine-"

His sister corrected him. "Seven, Josie-not nine."

"That's enough," Sheffield said. "I can see we'll be busy." He thought, while he hummed: "So it's well to...Have a sister...Or even an old captain-" He added aloud: "When you have finished breakfast, take care of your personal needs, then tidy your rooms-shipshape and neatly, I'll inspect later-and make the bed in my cabin, but don't touch anything else there, especially my desk. Then each of you take a bath. Yes, that's what I said: Bathe. Aboard ship everyone bathes every day, oftener if you wish. There is plenty of pure water; we recycle it and we'll finish the voyage with thousands of liters more than we started with. Don't ask why; that's the way it works and I'll explain later." (Several months later, at least-to youngsters unsure about three plus five.) "When you're through, say, an hour and a half from now-Joe, can you read a clock?"

Joe stared at the old-fashioned ship's clock mounted on a bulkhead. "I'm not sure, Captain. That one has too many numbers."

"Oh, yes, of course; Blessed is on another system. Try to be back here when the little hand is straight out to the left and the big hand is straight up. But this time it doesn't matter if you are late; it takes awhile to shake down. Don't neglect your baths to be on time. Joe, shampoo your head. Llita, lean toward me, dear; let me sniff your hair. Yes, you shampoo, too." (Were there hair nets aboard? If he cut the pseudogravity and let them go free-fall, they would need hair nets-or haircuts. A haircut would not hurt Joe, but his sister's long black hair was her best feature-would help her catch a husband on Valhalla. Oh, well, if there were no hair nets-he didn't think there were, as he kept his own hair free-fall short-the girl could braid her hair and tie something around it. Could he spare power to maintain an eighth gee all 'the way? People not used to free-fall got flabby, could even damage their bodies. (Don't worry about it now.) "Get our quarters tidy, get clean yourselves, come back here. Git."

He made a list: Set up a schedule of duties-N.B.: Teach them to cook!

Start school: What subjects?

Basic arithmetic, obviously-but don't bother to teach them to read that jargon spoken on Blessed; they were never going back there-never! But that jargon would have to be ship's language until he had them speaking Galacta, and they must learn to read and write in it-and English, too: Many books he would have to use for their hurry-up education were in English. Did he have tapes for the variation of Galacta spoken on Valhalla? Well, kids their age quickly picked up local accent and idiom and vocabulary.

What was far more Important was how to heal their stunted, uh, "souls." Their personalities- How could he take full-grown domestic animals and turn them into able, happy human beings, educated in every needful way and capable of competing in a free society? Willing to compete, undismayed by it-He was just beginning to see the size of the "stray cat" problem he had taken on. Was he going to have to keep them as pets for fifty or sixty years or whatever, until they died naturally?

Long, long before that, the boy Woodie Smith had found a half-dead fox kit in the woods, apparently lost by its mother, or perhaps the vixen was dead. He took it home, nursed it with a bottle, raised it in a cage through one winter. In the spring he took it back where he had found it, left it there in the cage with the door latched-open.

He checked a few days later, intending to salvage the cage. He found the creature cowering in the cage, half starved and horribly dehydrated-with the door still latched open. He took it home, again nursed it back to health, built a chicken-wire run for it, and never again tried to turn it loose. In the words of his grandfather, "The poor critter had never had a chance to learn how to be a fox."

Could he teach these cowed and ignorant animals how to be human?

They returned to his wardroom when "the little hand was straight out and the big hand was straight up'-they waited outside the door until this was so, and Captain Sheffield pretended not to notice.

But when they came in, he glanced at the clock and said, "Right on time-good! You've certainly shampooed, but remind me to find combs for you." (What other toilet articles did they need? Would he have to teach them how to use them? And-oh, damn it!-was there anything in the ship for a woman's menstrual needs? What could be improvised? Well, with luck that problem would hold off a few days. No point in asking her; she couldn't add. Tarnation, the ship was not equipped for passengers.)

"Sit down. No, wait a moment. Come here, dear." It seemed to the Captain that the garment she wore was clinging suspiciously; he felt it, it was wet. "Did you leave that on when you bathed?"