“My dear, don't look so miserably guilty. I know you don't wander on purpose. I just wish we could get to the bottom of why. It's not easy to form a perfect Web. We've all had to learn, even the Protector. Many times there have been messages so powerful that they broke through an individual's concentration. But there has always been a good reason: the call for a Healer, for instance. Your distractions seen so ...well, so trivial. Colours and sunshine and something buzzing! Do you remember what it was last time?”

“Oh, yes. I was lying on my back somewhere Outside, watching cloud patterns. Then a bird flew by and its shadow made me jump.”

“And the time before?”

“I was among trees, big dark ones, not like the trees we can see from the Dome. It was horribly spooky.”

“And in the last two years there has been no hint of your future strength? Do you see yourself as becoming a Healer? A Communicator? A Teacher?” Ruth shook her head dumbly. “Dear me, it is difficult, isn't it? I don't remember when we've had a student quite like you. When is your fifteenth birthday?”

“September the twenty-third, Teacher Jonson.”

“And less than five months to the New Year. Well, we'll have to try a little harder, won't we? Fight these distractions. Tell yourself that they are only your imagination, that they have nothing whatever to do with the Ark.”

“Yes, Teacher Jonson,” Ruth answered meekly, though she wanted to shout that they were real, that her daydreams were far more important to her than anything that happened in Ark Three.

“Off you go to lunch. Try not to worry. It'll come out right in the end. You'll probably grow out of it.”

But I don't really want to, thought Ruth. If only it didn't interfere with the Web. Oh, why docs life have to be so com- plica ted? She disentangled her long thin legs from her desk, tripped over her feet in the aisle and scurried out of the room. She was going to be late for lunch, but if she skipped washing and hair-tidying she might catch up. She pushed past a bunch of Grade Fivers in the main corridor and caught up with Grade Eight C at the door of the big dining room. How tidy they all were. She smoothed down her hair with her hands and noticed an ink mark on her finger. As she sucked at it guiltily she heard Angela's clear voice from the line ahead. “Our average is lower than any Grade Eight's since the beginning of the Ark, I bet. And it's all her fault. I wish she was in another class.”

“Have you thought about New Year's Day?” She heard Faith answer. “We won't be neophytes any more. We’ll be out of the dormitory and into our own rooms.”

“So.?”

“Three of us are going to have to room with her.”