And then he remembered. He was not home on Athena II. Nor was he in his quarters aboard the Mongoose, waiting sleeplessly for the approach of the Alliance fleet. He was alone and on a Czech destroyer, one of several, escorted by a Soviet cruiser. Heading into Belgian space. To search for the prisoners, taken from the colonies. Dubcek was dead. He cried softly, hugging his knees, hating himself for his weakness. "God damn the Americans for ever helping them. I wish I was dead." He pushed his forehead hard against his knees. It will be all right, he told himself. The Alliance has gone too far and now the Soviets will help us. The colonies will be retaken. Schiller is gone, but Athena remains. My wife is alive. I will find her and we can go home again. She is alive. She must be alive! He got up and checked the passage of time. It was still an hour yet before what men called dawn---little brackets put around life to give it meaning and a mean understanding. This was not what he wanted: four hours of sleep was not enough for him now, and his mind was dark again. Battle could come any day now---he was spoiling, and being eaten by the spoiling, for a fight. And yet his energies continued to desert him. His strength grew less each day: no sleep. Not enough sleep. No appetite. Anxiety. HE MUST PRESERVE HIS MENTAL ENDURANCE! He was the second officer of the first destroyer, and the man taken into the confidence of Soviet Colonel Joyce, Commander of the Leningrad. Leningrad. He was the go-between, the link between unlike and alien worlds, that now must work together. He lifted the picture of his wife from the bedstead, kissed the cold glass that kept him from her. His mind was calm again, his emotions flat and worn out. And he shivered, realizing unexpectedly that it was cold in the room. He felt his brow: burning, always burning. The wet underclothes he peeled off and flung away, went into the bathroom, released a stream of clear, watery urine, turned the heat on high and took a steaming shower. Dried and warm but already sweating and a little chilled he returned to the room and sat down at a desk, and touched a button, and began studying charts of that quadrant. TRANSPORTS HAD BEEN REPORTED MOVING..... A WEEK AFTER THE TRANSPORTS BEARING THE PRISONERS..... His wife was not on Athena. LATEST INTELLIGENCE. SOMETHING CALLED DRACUS..... It all ran together in his mind, into a crater-pool of formless gray mud, edged with hard dark flecks. They were making for the Morannon system. They would be there in seventy. . .eight hours. Others must do the thinking now, he was tired. Too tired. He lay down again and forced himself to remain there until he fell asleep.