“Yes,” he looked up at her, “it looked as though he had two eyebrows above it. And the nose . . .”

“Those were tattoos, hash marks. You get one for running the P.”

“Then this is his third? . . .”

“That’s right. His odds are still fifty-fifty. But there is a groundside saying: ‘You go once, you’ve had your flirt with death. You go twice, you live twice. Go three times and go for me.’”

“Charming.”

“It’s a good game.”

“You ever play it, TaoLini?”

She swallowed, and the glow faded out of her skin.

“No.”

“A friend?”

She nodded.

“Let’s get back to work,” he said, and walked her slowly back to the hangar.

Waela remembered this exchange with the odd feeling that she had missed something in Thomas’ responses.

Thomas would not even pause for WorShip. He permitted a grudging rest, hardly a hesitation, only when fatigue had them dropping programs and forgetting coordinates. During one of these rests he had started an odd conversation with her and it kept her awake now.

What was he trying to say to me?

They had been seated in the globe of plaz which would shield them in the depths of the sea. Workmen continued their activity all around the outside. She and Thomas sat so close to each other that they had been required to learn a special rhythm to keep from bumping elbows. Waela had missed the right sequence of keys for the dive train three times running.

“Take a rest.”

There was accusation in his tone, but she sank back into the sheltered contours of her seat, thankful for any relief, thankful even for the crash-harness which supported her. Muscles did not have to do what the harness did.

Presently, Thomas’ voice intruded on her consciousness.

“Once upon a time there was a fourteen-year-old girl. She lived on Earth, on a chicken farm.”

Lived on a chicken farm, Waela thought, then: He’s talking about me!

She opened her eyes.

“So, you’ve pried into my records.”

“That’s my job.”

A fourteen-year-old girl on a chicken farm. Her job!

She thought about that girl she had been—child of emigrants, grubbers in the dirt. Technopeasants. Gaulish middle-class.

I broke away from that.

No . . . to be honest, she had to admit that she had run away. A sun going nova meant little to a fourteen-year-old girl, a girl whose body had become a woman’s much earlier than her contemporaries.

I ran away to Ship.

She had held such conversations with herself many times. Waela closed her eyes. It was as though two people occupied her consciousness. One of them she called “Runaway,” and the other, “Honesty.” Runaway had objected to Shipman life and railed against groundside dangers.

Runaway asked, “Why was I chosen for this damned risky life, anyway?

Honesty replied, “As I recall it, you volunteered.”

“Then I must’ve parked my brains somewhere. What in hell was I thinking?”