Rugel looked across from his couch. Bart felt that the old, scarred Lhari could read his fear. Rugel said through a wheeze, "No matter how old you get, Bartol, you're still scared when you make a warp-shift. But relax, computers don't make mistakes." "Catalyst," Vorongil snapped, "Ready--_shift!_" At first there was no change; then Bart realized that the stars, through the viewport, had altered abruptly in size and shade and color. They were not sparks but strange streaks, like comets, crossing and recrossing long tails that grew, longer and longer, moment by moment. The dark night of space was filled with a crisscrossing blaze. They were moving faster than light, they saw the light left by the moving Universe as each star hurled in its own invisible orbit, while they tore incredibly through it, faster than light itself.... Bart felt a curious, tingling discomfort, deep in his flesh; almost an itching, a stinging in his very bones. _Lhari flesh is no different from ours...._ Space, through the viewport, was no longer space as he had come to know it, but a strange eerie limbo, the star-tracks lengthening, shifting color until they filled the whole viewport with shimmering, gray, recrossing light. The unbelievable reaction of warp-drive thrust them through space faster than the lights of the surrounding stars, faster than imagination could follow. The lights in the drive chamber began to dim--or was he blacking out? The stinging in his flesh was a clawed pain. Briscoe lived through it.... _They say._ The whirling star-tracks fogged, coiled, turned colorless worms of light, went into a single vast blur. Dimly Bart saw old Rugel slump forward, moaning softly; saw the old Lhari pillow his bald head on his veined arms. Then darkness took him; and thinking it was death, Bart felt only numb, regretful failure. _I've failed, we'll always fail. The Lhari were right all long._ _But we tried! By God, we tried!_ "Bartol?" A gentle hand, cat claws retracted, came down on his shoulder. Ringg bent over him. Good-natured rebuke was in his voice. "Why didn't you tell us you got a bad reaction, and ask to sign out for this shift?" he demanded. "Look, poor old Rugel's passed out again. He just won't admit he can't take it--but one idiot on a watch is enough! Some people just feel as if the bottom's dropped out of the ship, and that's all there is to it." Bart hauled his head upright, fighting a surge of stinging nausea. His bones itched inside and he was damnably uncomfortable, but he was alive. "I'm--fine." "You look it," Ringg said in derision. "Think you can help me get Rugel to his cabin?" Bart struggled to his feet, and found that when he was upright he felt better. "Wow!" he muttered, then clamped his mouth shut. He was supposed to be an experienced man, a Lhari hardened to space. He said woozily, "How long was I out?"