Tach pulled a handerchief from his pocket, and knelt beside the strange captive. "You are?" he asked as he gently wiped at the blood flowing sluggishly from a sword wound.

The man glared up at him then reluctantly growled, "Aquarius."

"How do you do. I am Tisianne brant Ts'ara sek Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian, otherwise known as Dr. Tachyon."

"I know." He stared coldly past Tachyon's left shoulder. He bent in low and whispered. "Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve? Something that might help us take out-" he jerked his chin toward the door, and the two rigid guards, "them?"

Aquarius stared rancorously up at him. "I turn into a dolphin, and I swim real fast."

The expression, together with his harsh, angry tone, snapped the thin thread of patience to which Tachyon was still managing to cling.

"You will forgive my bluntness, but that does us very little good in our present predicament."

"I did not ask to be here, land-dweller." And closing his eyes Aquarius proceeded to ignore both his fellow prisoner and his captors.

Tach unlimbered his hip flask, and while he paced made. substantial inroads on the brandy. Twenty minutes later he noticed that Aquarius's skin was starting to crack and peel. "Are you all right?"

"No. I must remain moist, or I am damaged."

"Well, why didn't you say so fifteen minutes ago?" Aquarius did not answer, and with a snort of aggravation Tach went trotting into the lavatory, and emerged with a glass of water. It didn't make much of an impression on the large form on the floor.

"Andami, could you bring me a pitcher or a bucket?" The younger man worried his lower lip between his teeth. "My orders are to stay here."

"There are two of you."

"You'll try something."

"Am I your prince?"

"Yes. But you'll still try something, and I'm not about to get another reprimand from Zabb."

"May your line wither," he gritted, and resumed his harried trotting.

The next thirty minutes passed slowly as Tach tried to keep ahead of the rapid drying of the merman's skin. He was pouring a glass of water onto Aquarius's face when suddenly the form wavered and shifted, and there was Captain Trips, coughing and sputtering as the water ran up his nose. Startled by the abrupt transformation, Tach yelled, dropped the glass, and backed off.

Trips stared fuzzily about the cabin, then down at his long, lanky form still festooned with loosely wrapped tangler ropes. He had lost a lot of bulk with Aquarius's departure, and as he rose the ropes sloughed off him, landing in a tangled heap on the floor around his feet.

He removed his glasses, and furiously polished them, all the while blinking myopically at Tachyon. The glasses were replaced, and he muttered.

"Oh, bummer, man."

Andami hurried over, and quickly riffled through Trips's pockets. He located the leather pouch with three unused vials. Tachyon craned to see, but the brightly colored powders looked singularly innocuous. He itched to get his hands on the substances, and do a full analysis. Something that could transmute a human form… and then it hit him. Captain Trips was not a nut-he was an ace.

"Captain." He thrust out his hand. "I owe you an apology."

"Uh… me, man?"

"Yes." Tach seized the man's limp hand, and gave it a hearty shake. "I doubted your story. In fact, I thought you a harmless lunatic. But you are an ace. And a most unusual one at that. These potions?"

"Help me call my friends."

He stepped in close, and lowered his voice. "And I don't suppose you have any more…" He winked, and Trips stared blankly down at him. Tach sighed. Nice, the man might be, but he wasn't precisely quick on the uptake. "Have you any more secreted about your person?"

"Oh no, man. It takes a long time to make this stuff, and I didn't think I'd be running into aliens. I mean, we beat the Swarm, and I didn't expect… I'm really sorry, man. I didn't mean to let you down…"

"No, no. You couldn't have known, and you did very well." The Captain beamed, and Tach realized, with an overwhelming sense of failure and unworthiness, that this man adored and admired him.

And I'm going to fail him.

Tach crossed to the bed, and slumped down, his hands hanging limply between his thighs. Trips, with a sensitivity that the alien hadn't expected, crossed to the other side of the room, and left him alone with his miserable thoughts. Sometime later there was a tentative touch on his shoulder. "Excuse me, man, I'm sorry to bother you, but I was wondering, like, how much longer until you got us.. ." He broke off, and splotches of red suffused his long face. "See, I got this little girl, and she's probably home from school by now, and the shop will be closing, and I'm afraid Susan won't stay with her, and Sprout's, like, not able to take care of herself " His long fingers twisted desperately through each other.

"I'm sorry. I wish I could do something. I wish I was the leader everyone thinks I am. But I'm not. I'm a fraud, Trips, both among my own people and among yours." The gangling hippie laid an arm across Tach's shoulders, and he leaned his head against the bony support of Trips's shoulder.

Trips gave a mournful shake of his head. "It's not like it is in the comics. In the comics the good guys always win. They've always, like, got the right power at the right time."

"Unfortunately life doesn't work that way. I'm very tired."

"Why don't you sleep awhile. I'll keep watch."

Tach wanted to ask him "Against what?" but he appreciated the generosity that had sparked the offer, and remained quiet. He kicked off his shoes, and Trips tenderly pulled a coverlet up to his chin.

He realized muzzily, as sleep claimed him, that he had always used bed and booze as an escape, and today he had used both. The right power at the right time. The thought nagged at the edges of his consciousness. The right power"By the Ideal!" He shot bolt upright, and kicked away the coverlet.

"Hey, what, man?"

He clutched feverishly at the lapels of Trips's coat. "I'm an idiot. An idiot. The answer's been right in front of me, and I missed it."

"What?"

"The Network device."

"Huh?"

Andami was regarding him curiously, and Tach quickly dropped to a whisper. "It's not a bowling ball. It's a singularity shifter." He hurriedly slipped his feet into his pumps. "Years ago, before I left home, one of the Master Traders discussed the possibility of selling my clan a new experimental teleporting device. He demonstrated one, and said they might become readily available after a few more tests. This has to be one of those devices. And it's in the main: hold."

Trips was completely bewildered by his babblings. He grabbed for the only remark he had understood. "Yeah, but we're, like, not in the main hold."

"How to get us all there?" Tach's fingers scrabbled in his hair. "If we're all together, I think I could trigger the device and send us home. The greater the telepathic ability, the greater accuracy, and the size of. what can be carried. That was the theory. Of course the Master Trader could have just been puffing. Hard to tell with the Network. They have the souls of greedy tradesmen."

"Uh.. what's the Network?"

"Another spacefaring race, actually a number of spacefaring races, but we don't have to concern ourselves with that. The point is that a singularity shifter is here, on this ship, and it can get us home. Of course if Turtle had the device, that means the Network is present on Earth, and that could mean trouble." He scrubbed at his face. "No, one problem at a time. How to get to the hold."

"Like, what goes on there?"

"Well, obviously it's used for cargo storage, and when there's no cargo-which is 'most of the time, on a ship of this class-it's used for recreation. Dances and so forth."

Trips looked dubious. " I don't suppose we can invite everybody to a dance."