To mask his staring, Bier said, "Well, I'm glad to see you're alive, but are you sure you're going to stay that way?"

Talbert answered before Klairon could take a breath. "He'll live, but he needs to sleep and heal. He is badly damaged, but he insisted on examining the selyn banks before sleep."

Feeling better now, Klairon saw Bier, Welch, and Cobb seated under the single lighted panel as he had left them ... he checked the clock ... three hours ago. He staggered over to sit with them.Talbert stood close over his right shoulder.

"Captain," Klairon began and then had to breathe deeply before he could continue, "if you can start ferrying up selyn-packed batteries from the Beakon while I sleep, Lowell and I can rig the essential circuits in a few hours. We might still make it to In Brim in time to do some good."

Talbert cut in, "Impossible." He obviously thought Klairon's mind was still foggy. "We might connect enough batteries, but half the orgonics conductors in the ship must be burned out."

Klairon turned to look up at him and instantly regretted disturbing his head. He fixed his gaze on Welch. "No, they're not. I've spent some of my spare time installing the surge-safes to protect the essential functions. If they worked, nothing vital was damaged."

Talbert laid a soothing hand on the back of Klairon's neck. It helped. For a moment he leaned his head against the cool, Gen arm and closed his eyes to let the ache drain out of his backbone. Then he continued explaining to Welch.

"Twenty years ago when this ship was designed, they hadn't invented surge-safes. You see, all of our selyn-conductors are organic substances encased in plastic tubing, warmed during operation by an air bath. I installed larger tubing around the originals and placed surge-safes to flood the large tubes with a cold oil if there was a sudden selyn-current surge. At the lower temperature, the orgonics lose all resistance to selyn flow, and so it can't be damaged.

"It should take about half an hour to pump out the oil and warm up the circuits. How long it will take to get going again depends on how much of the selyn banks we have to rebuild. That's why I wanted to take a look now, and tell you how many batteries of what types to bring."

Welch answered trying hard not to stare at Talbert's hand. "That's the problem we were just discussing. The LEAP FROG is ready to shuttle supplies from the Beakon, but I don't know who to send. There's no grid down there, so we can only land the tender. It would be better to wait until you're ready to go down, since none of us is competent to handle live batteries."

Klairon berated himself silently. He was worse off than he felt to forget that!

"Captain," again Talbert spoke up, "I would like to volunteer. I can read a battery field to ten percent. I also know enough about selyn bank mechanics to pick out what we need."

Welch's eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. "I thought only Simes could read selyn fields!"

Daring to glance at Bier and Cobb, but only by moving his eyes, Klairon answered, "Some TN-1s develop a slight ability to read gradients, though apparently a Gen does it differently than a Sime. We teach TN-1s who can read fields how to handle the batteries without getting hurt."

Talbert nodded, "Caution have I not forgotten." He almost sang it.

Welch eyed Klairon calculatingly. "All right, give the wreckage a quick check and tell Lowell what to bring, then go sleep off your ..." he looked at Talbert and then back to Klairon,"... 'damage'."

"And, Mr. Cobb, you'll go down with Mr. Talbert. Inventory is your department. Meanwhile, everyone off-watch will get some sleep." He punctuated that decision with a slap of the table as he rose.

Fifteen hours later, Klairon woke to visions of the decimated selyn banks. The meteor had taken a swath out of the middle of the pie-shaped wedge, and what hadn't been destroyed had fallen into the center when the supports were removed. After twenty minutes exposure to hard vacuum, nothing was left functional. Only the aft air purification unit was untouched in its air-tight housing.

When he'd satisfied himself that there wasn't a spark of selyn in the wreckage, he'd authorized Lieman and Iskin to set up the main stack again with conventional welding, and told Talbert what replacements to bring. That was surprisingly easy. Talbert had been way ahead of him most of the time.

Rolling to a sitting position, Klairon kneaded the back of his neck and groaned. He'd never had such a headache. From his eyebrows to his tail-bone, he was one solid ache that even crawled around to bore into his stomach with a sick, burning throb.

Somehow, he got to his feet, took a fosebine packet from his pharmacy, made a mental note to have the lock fixed, and dragged himself into the bathroom.

He had to sit down to wait for the powder to dissolve, but when he'd choked down the opalescent mixture, he felt better almost immediately. Due to Talbert's unusually deft assistance in creating the semi-trance, the Sleep had done its job and a brisk shower topped it off nicely.

Twenty minutes later, he felt well enough to go in search of breakfast.

He found Bier and Talbert in the galley; Talbert had just finished eating breakfast. Klairon laid his hand on Talbert's shoulder in silent greeting.

Bier inspected Klairon minutely. "You look a little better, but still, I've seen healthier corpses. Sit. You're having eggs and quasi-steak, and you'll eat it all before I let you go to work. With potatoes." He busied himself with hydrators, defrosters, and fry pans.

There was no arguing with that tone so Klairon sat down opposite Talbert and asked, "Did you get everything, Lowell?" His eye fell on Talbert's right ring finger. The elegant embossed gold band with the brilliant diamond of the TN-1 identity ring dented the flesh long unused to it.

Talbert nodded. "And I found myself a set of tools you don't need tentacles to operate. That was a bonus I didn't expect."

Klairon sat back revising his estimate of the time they'd need. "Then it shouldn't take more than three hours to connect the batteries. We'll have lost one full day. I wonder if there's still a chance we'll make it?"

Bier answered from the stove without pausing in his preparations. "According to Dr. Thorson, it'll be close ... a matter of hours ... if we get moving by midnight, ship's time."

Frowning deeply, Klairon leaned his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers, lacing his dorsal and ventral tentacles around them thoughtfully. "Maybe I can cut the travel time with longer skips."

Bier presented him with a plate of steaming omelet, fried potatoes, and the highly proteinacious bean pattie called quasi-steak. "So we'll make it if nothing goes wrong. What I want to know is, what happens to Lowell when we get to In Brim? Will the Sime Controller snatch him back and put him to work in some Dispensary, or will we be allowed to keep him?"

The savory aroma induced Klairon to taste the eggs, which Bier had expertly doctored with a Sime's idea of spices, before objecting, "Wait a minute! You can't go around deciding other people's futures. Why don't you ask Lowell what he wants?"

Talbert leaned away from the, to him, bitter smell of Klairon's eggs. "I've been thinking about it very much ... what I want to do. Truly, there is no choice that is my own. The Chief Controller, Freihaupt, knows me personally, and I assure you that he did not approve the quitting that I chose. Gleefully will he assign me to the most unpleasant Dispensary available."

He took a breath and stared dejectedly at the empty coffee mug before him. As his right thumb began to worry that invisible glue on his right forefinger, his speech became clearer, "I have come to a crossroads of life and I must take a new direction. Were the choice mine to make, I would stay with the Pebble Beach.