"So I've been gone for three days and three nights, Sammy?" _I couldn't have been unconscious that long_, his trammeled mind thought, conscious of the unfelt shackles of the Thing. He walked slowly to the porthole. His eyes traveled out past the greensward to the rocky plain. "Asteroid time?" he asked. That wouldn't be so bad but.... "Chron time," Sammy muttered. Three Earth days and nights! _Where have I been?_ His mind shuddered. _Its_ laughter was mocking. Kent Knight delved through his memory. _We were exploring, that was all, checking planets, planetoids and asteroids with an eye to colonization. We cracked up here. I went looking for lead to replace a burned-out rocket shield. I saw the pretty little beastie, a furry little ball. I touched it. And_ It _had me. I wonder if it got Sammy the same way?_ He started to put the question into words. But he didn't. The answer was there. A little butterball of fur came into view when Sammy shifted his seat on the floor. _Then where is mine?_ He looked around the floor, then turned to where he'd lain on the floor. It was there, still begging to be touched. He bent toward it, but the memory of pain rose up sharp. He looked at it instead. Sammy coughed. "You nervous, Kent? Want to participate in a little snort?" Sammy took a swig out of the bottle and offered it to Knight. "No, Sammy. That's what put me on this hellish little ship, remember? Five years of exile from Earth." Sammy nodded owlishly, and said, in the cruel honesty of men who have been broken by the same thing, "It's man's great curse, but women are worse, and you had them both." "Not women, Sammy, a woman--but she loved another guy so I just walked out." "Correction, please," Sammy said. "You floated out." Sammy looked sad. "That was the trouble, Kent. You should have never stopped floating. Look at me. I'm happy and I stay that way because of liquor. But you stopped, and now look at you. In the three years I've been on this ship with you, you never have smiled once. Come on, have a drink." Kent Knight shook his head. Sammy took an extra long snort. "Honest to gosh, Kent, there must be something wrong with this stuff. It's sobering me up." Knight looked at Sammy, thinking, _Just wait until_ It _starts talking to you_. He almost smiled at the thought. But his mind shuddered instead. Sammy was terror-stricken enough when the little D.T. imps talked to him. _It_ would drive him mad. _As_ It _is doing to me. Huh-uh_, his mind whispered cautiously, _you don't trap me that easily._ Knight strode toward the cubicle door.