In the dim light of the engine room, the dark blue scales on its back seemed to glint like oil on water. “Not me, ship. Hound of Difficulty sad.”

Nod backed out of the narrow gap, supporting its weight on all six of its twelve-fingered hands. The Druff didn’t stand in the same way that humans did. All their limbs functioned as both arms and legs, and each “hand” contained sense organs that allowed it to double as a face. They’d use two, three or four of these faces to brace against a wall or floor while they used the remainder to work on the task at hand, and they were equally happy upside down as they were upright. To the squeamish, it made them look like giant, scaly blue spiders, but it also gave them a hell of an advantage as starship engineers, being able to secure themselves in free fall or under thrust, and being able to bring to bear two, three or four hands, each sporting a dozen slender and opposable digits, and the senses of sight, smell and taste to supplement that of touch. This sensitivity and dexterity were why the Druff were employed to tend the power plants and jump engines of our space-going vessels—ours, and those of every other spacefaring race we knew of.

“What do you mean, the ship’s sad?”

Nod shrugged—a non-verbal signal learned from humans, but rendered complicated due to the involvement of at least four of its shoulders. “Ship sad.”

“What’s it got to be sad about?”

“All things.”

“George?”

“George and all things.” Nod pulled a screwdriver from its tool belt and began tightening the fastenings on a hatch in the floor.

I looked around the metal chamber, feeling that I stood in the heart of a wounded beast. How could a warship feel sad? It was supposed to be immune to grief and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“And how about you?”

The faces closest to me opened and closed like a flower—the Druff equivalent of a surprised blink. “Sad and not sad.”

“How so?”

Nod looked at me quizzically, the way it did when I failed to grasp an arcane technical detail in one of its reports. “George gone and not gone. Nothing ever lost.”

I looked at Nod questioningly. If it could have sighed, I got the impression it would have done.

“We serve.” The words were recited as if by rote. “Leave World Tree and serve. When we return, we find mate. We build nest for offspring, and tend World Tree. Serve Tree, then die. Serve ship, then serve Tree. Then die, and become dirt. And become one with Tree. George now one with Tree. Nothing ever lost, as long as we serve World Tree.”

* * *

I left Nod to its ceaseless labours and returned to my own cabin. The time, according to the clocks back on Camrose Station, was around four in the morning.