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not? It is inconceivable that one of ours would do such damage with a shuttle.’
    ‘Is there no cabin craziness with you?’ I asked, in mockery. But they have no such irony in Senaar , and shook their heads with serious expressions. ‘I am indeed impressed.’
    ‘You can follow our way,’ said the officer. ‘You can begin to train your people as we are trained.’
    This was an insult, and nothing less. So I drained my vodjaa in one gulp and stood to leave. But the Captain, Barlei, held up his hands to usher me down again. ‘Must we quarrel, Technician?’ he growled. ‘Can we not remain allies and friends? You understand our concern. It is not for ourselves, but for the voyage as a whole.’
    ‘We have convened commune meetings, and . . . adjusted the shuttle rota,’ I said. ‘There will be no further jeopardy to the voyage from us.’
    ‘Sit down, please, Technician,’ he said. I sat then, but it was not the right thing to do. He nodded, and said, ‘We think it would help the voyage if your commune of command were made permanent.’
    ‘Permanent?’
    ‘A full-time body, charged with the duties of governance.’ He began, at this, to lecture me on the Senaar ian way, of politics and hierarchies, and I grew offended and spat on the floor.
    He pretended hurt at this, and said, ‘Can we not even offer you advice?’
    ‘To recast us in your image? I think not.’
    ‘Surely we are already part of the same federation? Surely we will all be living on the same world? Surely,’ (he said this last with a wheedling voice) ‘surely we all serve the same God?’
    I stood up again, and left. As I made my way back to the airlock in my ridiculous paper clothes, Barlei came after me, with all his junior officers scurrying after. He said, ‘Before the voyage began, we saw afree and fair interchange between our ships. Many of your people came and visited Senaar , and many of ours spent time upon the Als .’
    I stopped here, because I was uncertain what he meant.
    But then he said, ‘I believe several of my men’ (note possessive!) ‘fathered children aboard the Als .’ His voice was sterner now.
    ‘That,’ I said, ‘is a matter for the mothers. The child begins life with the mother, of course.’
    ‘The child belongs ,’ he said, stressing the possessive word, ‘to the family of the child. And the father is a part of the family.’ It was in this way that the whole question of the children of Senaarians was inaugurated between us.
    As I piloted the shuttle downcable with a parcel of software and some ‘traded’ foodstuffs, I thought little of this. I decided that we faced only five months of acceleration and then we would be cruising; these worries would fade away as we entered our trances. But this thing about the children, this was a seed planted.
    The craze for suicides burnt itself out, of course. As we neared the end of acceleration people became distracted by the possibilities of trance. We disbanded the commune, and society returned to normal. And finally we were travelling at the cruising speed. Our gravity dribbled away as the accelerators petered out; we walked with larger and larger strides. We jumped higher and higher. And now spirits were high, because we felt as if the back of the journey had been broken.
    When you go from full gravity to no gravity your blood pressure rises. You feel heavy-headed. But after a day or two the pressure comes back down, and then you are ready for trance. This is what you must do: you climb into a suit that pumps a cream in at the neck and out at the left foot, because you will be suspended for decades and you must keep the skin and upper derma softened and supplied with nutrient or you will age. Then you inject another pipe into the carotid, that allows the passage of a soup of hyper-oxygenated molecules contained in a nutrient fluid into and out of your blood stream. Now, these molecules are micro-crafted, and release oxygenslowly during their time in your body;