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he was able to identify it as a member of the insect family as he had seen insects in the hydroponics gardens, but none as beautiful as this.
    A strange lump came up in his throat, and all thoughts of his purpose for being there fled as he slowly turned over the pages, drinking in the sheer beauty of the illustrations and wishing these creatures were needed to pollinate the gardens on the ship.
    It took a while to go through to the end, and with a sigh he reluctantly replaced it on the shelf, and set about trying to find how he could identify the book he had come for.
    Set in the wall between the books was an oblong panel, with the word INDEX at its top. There didn’t appear to be any controls to work the index, no buttons or switches that he could see, so he laid his hand on the main panel to see if it would respond to his presence. There was a slight flicker of light, a hint of some lettering, and then it went blank and stayed that way, despite repeated touches and not a few thumps from a very frustrated Glyn.
    He gave up fiddling with the inoperative index after a while, and returned to the shelves of books, which he found to his amazement were in no special order that he could discern. They certainly were not filed by author or subject, and he supposed that over the years they had been put back in a random fashion by those who had used them.
    Selecting another book at random, he sat at the table and opened it. It appeared to be a condensed history of earth from the time of the Romans, who ever they were, up to the time of the smelting stations which had encircled earth. It seemed that raw materials were in very short supply, and the asteroid belt was being mined for anything useable in the way of minerals.
    The end of the book seemed to be contemporary with the period in which the Great Ship had been built, although there had been no mention of it that Glyn could find.
    He had only a scant knowledge of the history of the Great Ship, as it was referred to, and that was on a ‘hand me down’ basis from his forebears. His interest in the ship had been reawakened by the book, and he decided to find out as much about it as possible, but first he must locate the necessary data to stop the awful nightmares.
    Several random selections provided a mine of interesting things to study, but so far there was nothing about dreams.
    It was only when he began to feel hungry that he was aware of how long he had spent in the company of the books, and checking his time piece he realized that he would have to hurry if he was to get to the eating room before it was too late for the midday meal, and a panic ensued at his absence.
    The journey back to a familiar area of the ship took less time than he expected, and he began to wonder if he had accidentally taken a short cut, but later when he consulted the map of the area, he knew he hadn’t, he’d just been very hungry and in a hurry.
    During the meal Glyn explained to Mia what he had been doing, but although she listened intently, and asked the right questions, she showed little interest in joining him in his quest for knowledge.
    He now had a new interest in life, and impatiently waited for the rest of the ship’s members to finish eating so that he could get back to the books.
    The bowl of fruit had just been passed around the table, when the screen above the food hatch lit up, a gong sounded and the voice of the Captain echoed across the eating room, his words printed out on the screen as he spoke.
    ‘There has been a malfunction in hydroponics garden number H233, please attend at once and correct.’
    The Captain had never been seen, and rarely spoke except in an emergency, so everyone took what he had to say very seriously. It was rumoured that he was just an extension of the vast computer system which ran the ship, but no one was sure.
    For a moment Glyn forgot about his books as he and three others volunteered for the duty call, and went immediately to the equipment room to