HALI EKEL, moving with her usual sure-footed grace, leaped up one-handed to grasp the lift bar for the ceiling hatch leading to the software storage section of Records. Her pribox, suspended on its shoulder harness, slapped her hip as she jumped. She had discovered less than an hour earlier that Kerro Panille was headed groundside. He had done this without farewell, not even a note . . . or a poem.

Not that I have any special hold on him!

She opened the hatch and levered herself up into the service tube.

He refuses the breeding match with me, he . . .

She pushed such thoughts aside. But his leaving this way hurt. They had come to maturity in the same crèche section, were the same age (within days) and had remained friends. She had heard his stories of Earthside and he had heard her stories. Hali had no illusions about her own emotions. She thought Kerro the most attractive male shipside.

Why was he always so distant?

She crouched to scuttle up the curving oval of the tube. It was only one hundred and sixty centimeters in its longest diameter, eight centimeters short of her height, but she was used to moving around Ship through such little-known shortcuts.

It’s not as though I were ugly.

Her shipcloth singlesuit, she knew, revealed an attractive feminine figure. Her skin was dark, eyes brown and she wore her black hair cropped short as all technicians did. All of the med-techs were acutely aware of the sanitary advantages of hair shorn to a bristly cap. Not that she had ever wanted Kerro to clip his hair or beard. She found his style exciting. But he did not have to deal with medical problems.

She found the Records access hatch locked but she had memorized the code and it took only seconds to work the latch. Ship buzzed at her from the interior sensor-eye as she stooped and slipped through into the storage area.

“Hali, what are you doing?”

She stopped in shock. Vocal! Everyone knew the flat, metallic work-voice of Ship, the means of necessary contacts, but this was something different . . . a resonant voice full of emotional overtones. And Ship had used her name!

“I . . . I want a software reader station. There’s always one open in here.”

“You are very unconventional, Hali.”

“Have I done something wrong?” Her strong fingers worked to seal the hatchdogs as she spoke, and she hesitated there, fearful that she had offended Ship.

But Ship was talking to her! Really talking!

“Some would think your actions wrong.”

“I was just in a hurry. No one will tell me why Kerro has gone groundside.”

“Why did you not think to ask Me?”

“I was . . .” She glanced along the narrow passage between the rotary bins of software discs toward the reader station. Its keyboard and screen were blank, unoccupied as she had expected.

Ship would not leave it there. “I am never farther from you than the nearest monitor or com-console.”