"That’s more like it," Prope murmured, as the room fell darker than candlelight. She leaned in and laid her hand lightly on my chest. "Now let’s just find out…"

Her voice broke off. I’d pulled away from her and stepped toward the bed. That was definitely where the smell came from. With a quick yank, I whipped the top blankets and sheets all the way off the mattress.

On the bottom sheet, low down where your feet would go, where you’d never look before you got into bed, the white linen was dusted with a sprinkle of glowing red specks.

"Ooo," Prope whispered, "very nice. But if I were you, I would have put that up where people could see it. Splash some on the pillow. On the walls. Dribble it up and down our bodies, then lick it off. How much of it do you have?"

I stared at her in disbelief. Was she drunk or something, that she didn’t recognize the Balrog? But then, she’d only seen it as a big mossy clump on Kaisho’s legs, not as single spores; and her mind was definitely distracted, focused on other things.

She reached toward the glimmering spores, like a little kid trying to touch the pretties. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her away. "You’d be sorry if you did that," I told her. I kept hold of her arm as I backed out of the room into the bright lights of the corridor.

"What’s wrong?" she asked. "Aren’t we going to—"

"No," I said. "Not in there."

"My room then? I’m captain. I’ve got a great big room. And a great big bed." She was still talking like a drunk with a one-track mind; I wondered if she’d popped some aphrodisiac drug when I wasn’t looking.

"Not tonight," I told her. "There’s something I have to report to the admiral."

"To Festina?" the captain asked, her voice turning shrill. "You’re dumping me and going to that freak-faced bitch?"

Then Prope screamed. It was the most amazing noise: just a shriek of pure outrage. It scarcely even sounded real — more like some eight-year-old who’d been challenged to a dare by her friends, and was wailing out this ear-piercing screech to prove she had the nerve. But there was nothing childish about the look on Prope’s face; it was fierce and furious, not aimed at me or anyone, just exploding out at the universe along with the scream. A primal venting of absolute rage, neither long nor short.

It happened, it shattered the silence of the empty corridor, and then it was over. Prope closed her mouth with a little clopping sound as her lips came together. She shuffled off without even looking at me, like a sleepwalker moving onto some new part of her dream.

Above my head, the ship-soul spoke through one of its speakers. "Is there a problem? Do you need help? Is there a problem? Do you need help?"

"Ship-soul," I said, "get a robot to take all the linen off my bed. I don’t care if it’s a cleaning robot or one of those that handle toxic substances — whatever you have handy. Take the sheets and leave them in Kaisho’s room; break down her door if you have to."

"I am afraid that is not—"

"Just do it," I snapped. "My father is Admiral of the Gold, Alexander York, and he doesn’t appreciate lippy AIs who don’t follow orders. Give me results, not excuses."

I wheeled around and stormed off down the corridor… as if the ship-soul was somebody I could stomp away from. Every two seconds I walked under another of the computer’s speakers, but I didn’t hear any more protests. Apparently, whoever programmed the ship’s system must have anticipated getting bullied by an admiral’s retard son.

Festina wasn’t in her room… even though it was almost midnight, Jacaranda time. I found her alone in the gym, already sopping with sweat from pounding the heavy bag. And I mean pounding it hard. Not one of those controlled sessions where you try the same combination twenty times, or see how many roundhouse kicks you can do in two minutes. She was throwing elbows and knees and head-high jump kicks, plus all kinds of palm heels, knife-hands, snake-strikes, that thing where you clap your opponent’s eardrums… even some plain old body checks, whomping into the bag with her shoulder and yelling something bloodthirsty. That didn’t look like a real martial-arts move to me, but maybe it was okay if you just wanted to smash something with all the strength you had.

I didn’t say anything — just waited for her to notice me. Festina was moving around the bag, hitting it from lots of different angles; eventually she got to the far side, facing the bag, facing my direction. When she saw me, she stiffened a little and stopped, panting lightly.

She looked good, puffing and sweating. For the workout, she’d put on a plain old T-shirt and loose cotton pants… both colored admiral’s gray, but very simple. You don’t see simple clothes very much in navy gyms — people are always wearing smart fibers that keep the body at perfect temperature, or chemical paints that make fat burn faster. Not Festina; but then, she made a point of being different from regular navy folks.

"I thought you were with Prope," Festina said, not quite meeting my eye.

"Prope was with me. Not vice versa. She was acting kind of funny."

Festina glanced at the clock on the gym’s wall. All of a sudden, I got the strangest feeling: that she was figuring out how long I’d been with Prope, and trying to decide if we’d had time to… you know.

Embarrassed, I said, "There were more Balrog spores in my cabin. Like a booby trap. I was lucky I smelled something odd."

"Oh?" She gave her arms a bit of a stretch across her chest. She must have been starting to cool down. "I’ve never noticed the Balrog had a smell." She still wasn’t meeting my eye. "Maybe you’ve got a better nose than I do."

I shrugged. "Being three percent Mandasar has to be good for something."

"Does that bother you?"

"I like Mandasars," I said. "It’s just weird, thinking I’m not all human."

"You’ll get used to it," she replied. "Feeling not all human is an Explorer’s natural state."

"You’re human," I told her. "One hundred percent."

She looked up at me for the first time since I’d come in — met my gaze no more than half a second, then shied away and slammed a fist into the bag in front of her. "Christ," she muttered, "there must be something in the water."

"What do you mean?"

She hit the bag with another punch. "At this second, Edward, I want to chew your clothes off. It’s so amazingly powerful…" She leaned forward and planted her face against the bag’s hard leather. "Maybe you should go away before I embarrass myself completely. If I haven’t already."

I just stared at her. After a few seconds, she said, "I notice you aren’t going away." Her voice was muffled up against the bag; from that position she couldn’t notice anything.

"Do you really want me to go?" I asked.

"Of course not. I want you to throw me onto the nearest judo mat and fuck my brains out. Which is so entirely unlike me, I don’t…" She stopped and shook her head. "I can barely speak in completely sentences. I’ve been horny plenty of times before, but I have never…" She broke off laughing — the sort of laugh when you’re afraid that otherwise you might cry. "This is so completely pathetic," she said. "Do you know how blind-raging jealous I was when I thought you and Prope were going to—"

"We didn’t," I put in quickly.

"Good for you," she answered, "and tough on Prope. God, the woman was ready to undress you right at the dinner table. Like it was the first time in her life she’d ever truly wanted to get naked and rub up against every beautiful dimple on your…" Festina gave another strangled laugh. "And I dearly wanted to smash her face so I could have you all to myself. If it hadn’t been for the Mandasars going catatonic… and I wanted to tell them, ‘Friends, I know what you’re going through, I’m a basket case myself.’ " She broke off. "Am I babbling? I’m babbling, aren’t I? I’m truly babbling. I have never talked to a man like this. And the appalling thing is, I’m only doing it because I desperately hope you’ll get aroused. A man wants women to throw themselves at his feet, right? Right? Because if you want something different, just tell me and I’ll probably do it. I lost all shame three minutes ago."