Klairon collected his papers, glanced through them quickly and then, satisfied that he was cleared of all suspicion that he might be violating a Principle, he signed the Articles. Technically, he worked for the Astrogators' Union which had a contract with Welch, so he signed on as a new individual after every leave. Finally, he picked up his case and regarded Welch soberly. "I wasn't joking," he said and left the Captain with a worried frown.

After a momentary pause to stow his emergency supplies in his quarters, Klairon went back out to the B deck landing and stepped onto the spiral stairs that occupied the well that was the long axis of the ship. With typical Sime precision, he caught a foot and hand hold on the selyn-powered lift, the endless belt that moved up and down the center of the well.

He reflected that being a predator had advantages, even though centuries had passed since any Sime had killed a Gen. Simes never stumbled and never fumbled. He had seen groundling Gens quail before the lift he now rode and gape enthralled as a Gen spaceman stepped aboard to ride it with all the sure-footed grace of a Sime. And he'd seen overconfident Gens showing off for groundling lose their hold and float helplessly stationary in the safety field, fumbling for a hold to get moving again.

Holding firmly to the thought that being Sime had advantages as well as disadvantages, Klairon stepped off onto F deck, which housed the selyn banks, aft support systems and selyn equipment storage area. As only selyn-powered equipment operated during Interlude, the whole ship ran on selyn-power all the time, and the maintenance of those systems was one of Klairon's extra duties. But F deck was the closest to the phase engines Klairon ever had to go. G deck was the first cargo area, Phil Cobb's responsibility,and aft of cargo there was only the engineers' quarters and the four engineering decks, Lieman's territory.

The selyn banks were Klairon's private domain, for here lurked hazards both numerous and deadly for the uninitiate. One pie-shaped wedge of the circular deck was a three dimensional array of cubical selyn batteries in their white safety boxes and bright red trefoil warnings, bolted to floor-to-ceiling racks and interconnected with green, blue, yellow and purple translucent tubes filled with a gelatinous substance.

The wedge was enclosed in a fine, red fiber mesh with a selyn-locked gate. Here was the heart of the ship's power, the pulsating "live"c ircuits, and here Klairon came to do that which was, at this moment, most repulsive to him.

Locking the gate behind him, he penetrated deep into the wedge, searching for one battery which was full and didn't need to be. He found it, of course, right where he'd put it, detached the purple leads, and, taking a deep breath, extended his laterals and placed himself across the terminals.

Then, with a deep shudder, he made the necessary fifth contact with his lips to the red node on the battery that was there for both packing and discharge by Simes. It was not anything like the lip to lip contact of live transfer, but the sterile, canned stuff coursed into him. It was selyn; it was living time, a reprieve from death; it was also detestable.

He replaced the purpled leads with great care, and then stood for a long minute, face buried in his hands, waiting for the post-transfer emotionalism to wash through him. Here in this most private world, he allowed himself a few quiet sobs over a precious opportunity lost.

The next few hours were packed with the well-oiled routines of spacing out and taking that first hop and then the skip which put them beyond effective communication range and on their own. Klairon took his readings very carefully and then double-checked them before looking his own peculiar way. He was in a nervous sweat when he set up the jump and had to take a deep breath before ordering the commitment. Then they were in the Interlude and would be for three subjective hours. He could "see" nothing wrong with their course; square to Beakon-orbit. Phase-over to normal space would be automatic, his job done for the day.

It was five in the morning by his biological clock when he hit his bunk fully intending to sleep the twelve hours until it was time to hop again. But it was only seven hours later when he woke to a nightmare of suffocating, not so much refreshed as nervous and puzzled. Simes never had nightmares, nor trouble sleeping the full time they decided on.

He lay staring around his quarters.

The Astrogator's quarters were spacious because an ordinary Sime wouldn't mix too freely with the Gens. There were cabinets filled with book and music tapes, musical instruments, and a small refrigerator. In the middle of the room was the big comfortable couch–burgundy to the taste of one of his predecessors–facing a viewscreen that could display any artwork he happened to fancy. In the corner near the door, his desk overflowed with back issues of The Astrogator so that the Inter-view control console was barely visible.

Finally, hunger drove him to roll out and dress his lanky, two meter frame in his maroon space merchant's uniform with the graceful Astrogator's trefoil embroidered in silver on the left shoulder. He observed himself in his bathroom mirror as he tried vainly to iron the nervousness out of his sensitive lips and the cowlick out of his jet black hair. An officer was required to maintain certain standards of dignity.

Klairon rode the lift down to E deck, the dining commons, just forward of the selyn banks, focusing his increasing nervousness by wondering if he'd made any mistakes in servicing the selyn bank that powered their support systems.

The familiar, square shape of the eight shiny black tables was welcome after his days among green, skew-shaped Terwhoolin artifacts, but the tables were deserted. He followed the aromas emanating from the galley. The shutter of the serving windows was down.The glowing clock over the window indicated 1400 hours, so Klairon pushed open the swinging door.

Peter Bier, his trim, athletic form clad in whites, multi-herb dispenser in one hand, his latest copy of The Galactic Linguist in the other, presided over a burbling soup cauldron.

Klairon quavered in his best panhandler's voice, "Got a handout for a poor overworked Sime?"

Bier turned with a start, "Klairon!" He set down his reader and took a closer look. "Boy, you look beat." Though not an M.D., Bier had filled in as medic ever since the crew discovered his extraordinary steadiness in disaster. His main diagnostic tool was general appearance, and occasionally he could be astonishingly perceptive. "Sit down, I'll find something. Anything special you want? I owe you a favor for all those Sime ballads you've been teaching me."

"Breakfast, if you've got any. Haven't eaten since noon yesterday."

"How's orange juice, omelet, and toast sound?"

"Splendid. Sure it's not too much trouble?"

"For you? Never. You worked all night while I was sound asleep. Can't send you back to work hungry, can I?" While he talked, he assembled breakfast on the small galley table with economic efficiency. "When do we hop?"

"It'll be nineteen hundred. Just give you time to clear away dinner. And we'll have to work all night again. Be sure you leave us some coffee."

"Sure thing." Bier presented the omelet and sat down opposite to study Klairon with concern. "Yeah, how about that. How're you feeling?"

Parking his knife in a handling tentacle, Klairon regarded Bier levelly, knowing that Bier understood his situation better than any of the others and that he would certainly discuss it with them. Well, they had a right to know. His personal policy had always been frankness with Gens and it had paid off, integrating him into this close-knit group so well he'd been the first Astrogator to stay with them more than six months.