"You know the address, I could drop you off, Lieutenant."

"That's all right. They said ask the Guards. Somebody will pick me up. Right here is fine. Thanks for the lift."

"Suit yourself." He gave me a long look after I dropped into the anpaved street. "Lieutenant....

You've got balls. Climbers. Good luck." He slammed the hatch and lurched away. The last I saw, he was a streak heading toward Tur-beyville like a moth to flame.

Good luck, he said. Like I'd damned well need it. Well, good luck to you too, courier. May you become wealthy on the Canaan run.

That was when I started wondering if maybe I hadn't wangled my way into a hexenkessel.

I spoke with a Guards woman. She made a call. Ten minutes later a woman eased a strange, rattling contraption up to me. It was a locally produced vehicle of venerable years, propelled by internal combustion. My nose couldn't decide if the fuel was alcohol or of petroleum derivation. We'd used both in the floater.

"Jump in, Lieutenant. I'm Marie. He was taking a shower, so I came. Be a nice surprise."

"Didn't they tell him I was coming?"

"He wasn't expecting you till tomorrow."

It took ten minutes to reach the house among the trees. Pines, I think they were. Imported and gene-spliced with something local so they could slide into the ecology. Marie never shut up, and never said a word that interested me. She must have decided I was a sullen, sour old fart.

My friend wasn't surprised. He ambushed me at the door, enveloped me in a huge bear hug. "Back in harness, eh? And looking good, too. See they bumped you to Lieutenant." He didn't mention my leg.

He sensed that that was verbo-ten.

I'm touchy about the injury. It destroyed my career.

"Boat get in early?"

"I don't know. The courier always went full out. Maybe so."

"Little private business on the side?" He grinned. He was older than I remembered him, and older than I expected. The grin took off ten years. "So let's have a drink and confound Marie with lies about Academy."

He meant what he said, and yet... There was a hollowness to his words, as though he had to strain to put them together in the acceptable forms. He acted like a man who'd been out of circulation so long he'd forgotten his social devices. I found that intriguing.

I grew more intrigued during the following few days. I was soon aware that an old friend had become a stranger, that this man only wore the weathered husk of the friend I'd known in Academy.

And he realized that he had few points of congruency left with me. Those were a sad few days. We tried hard, and the harder we tried the more obvious it became. was his homeworld. He'd requested duty there. His request had been granted, with an assignment to Climbers. He'd been home for slightly under two years, done seven Climber missions, and now had his own ship. He'd been executive officer aboard an attack destroyer before his transfer. He'd worked his way back up.

He wouldn't talk about that side of his life, and that disturbed me. He was never a talker but had always been willing to share his experiences if you asked the right questions. Now there were no right questions. He wanted to pretend that his military life didn't exist.

Just a few short years since we'd last met. And in the interim they'd peeled his skin and stuffed somebody else inside.

He and Marie fought like animals. I could detect no positive feelings between them. She'd screech and yell and throw things almost every time the both of them were out of sight. As if I had no ears. As if my not seeing kept it from being real. Sometimes the screeching lasted half the night.

He didn't fight back, insofar as I could tell. I never heard his voice raised. Once, in my presence, while we walked through the pines, he muttered, "She doesn't know any better. She's just an Old Earth whore."

I asked no questions and he didn't explain. I supposed she was one of the sluts they'd grabbed early and had scattered around for the morale of the men, and had found unnecessary in a mixed-sex service. All heart, our do-good leaders. They'd dropped the women where they were.

Maybe Marie had a right to be hostile.

Three days of unpleasantness. Then, well ahead of schedule, my friend told me, "Time to go. Pick the things you want to take. We'll leave after dark. West of here it's better to travel at night."

The quarreling had become too much for him. He wanted out.

He didn't admit that. He simply made his announcement. When Marie got the word, the gloves came off. She no longer kept the vitriol private.

I didn't blame him for running.

A young Guardswoman brought us a Navy floater after sundown. We boarded under Marie's fiercest barrage yet. My friend never looked back.

After we dropped the Guardswoman at her headquarters, I asked, "Why don't you throw her out? You don't owe her anything."

He didn't respond for a long time. Instead, he lit his pipe and puffed his way through. Midway, he said, "We'll pick up our First Watch Officer and a new kid. Going to start him off in Ship's Services. Academy boy. Don't get many of those anymore."

Later still, in snatches, he told me what he thought of our ship's officers. He didn't say a lot.

Thumbnail sketches. He didn't want to talk about his command. He responded to my earlier question just before we collected his First Watch Officer.

"Somebody owes her. They put the hose to her. She'll never get off this rock. Might as well use my place."

What can you say to that? Call him a sucker for strays? I don't think so. I'd call it a case of one man's using otherwise unimportant resources to rectify one of this universe's countless injustices. I think that's the way he pictured it. I don't think thumbscrews would have forced him to admit it.

The First Watch Officer was Stefan Yanevich. Lieutenant. Another Canaan native. A long, lanky man with ginger hair and eyes that sometimes looked gray, sometimes pale blue. Thin, sharp features and sleepy eyes. A soft drawl when he spoke, which was seldom. He was as reticent as my friend the Commander.

He was waiting outside his quarters, alone, and looked eager to go. But there was no eagerness in the way he slung his duffel aboard.

He had long, slim fingers that moved while he gave me his biography. Twenty-five. His Academy class had been two behind ours. He'd volunteered for Canaan because it was his homeworld. This would be his sixth mission.

The Commander thought well of him. He would have his own ship next mission.

He accepted me without question. I supposed the Commander had vouched for me. He didn't seem interested in why I was here, or who I used to be. Again, I assumed the Commander had filled him in.

The Old Man said, "Next stop, the kid."

Yanevich became interested. "Met him yet? What's he like?"

"Came up last week. Squared away. Shows promise. We'll like him." There was an edge to his voice .

It said it didn't matter if anyone liked the new man, but it would be a nice bonus if he turned out okay.

Ensign Bradley was as quiet as the others, but more naturally so. He wasn't hiding from anything.

When he did speak, he successfully downplayed his own lack of experience. He drew both the Commander and First Watch Officer out more skillfully than I had. I pegged him as a very bright and personable young man—when he turned himself on. He wasn't a Ca-naanite. In an aside to me, he said, "I flipped a coin when I got my bars. Heads or tails, Fleet or Climbers. Came up heads. The Fleet." He smiled a broad, boyish smile, the kind to win a mother's love. "So I went best two out of three and three out of five. Voila! Here I am."

"Going to make Admiral in a year," the Old Man said.

"Might take longer than that." Bradley's grin weakened.

"What I don't understand is why they sent me out here instead of to Fleet Two. Admiral Tannian is self-sufficient."