If it was bait, Edri refused to take it. He laughed and said, "This is no time to worry about consequences. I'm going to find Trehearne a cabin and me a bottle, and put the two together for a small celebration. A man doesn't become a Vardda every day." He took Trehearne's elbow and started him toward the door. "Come on." Trehearne's new-found strength had not deserted him--it was, apparently, automatic when it was once started, like the heart-beat--but the ordinary kind was running out of him like water from a sieve. He made it out into the passageway without staggering, but a few steps farther on he clung to the bolt-heads in the wall and said unhappily, "I think I'm going to fall over." "Reaction," said Edri. "Don't let it bother you. We all get it, first time out. Here, hang on." The passage seemed a mile long, but eventually there was a cabin, small, compact, and functional, and there was a bunk, and Trehearne sat down on it. Edri went away somewhere, and came back again after a minute with a bottle. The stuff, whatever it was, went down like white fire, and Trehearne felt better. He set the cup aside and then began to look at his hands, turning them over as though he had never seen them before. "They seem like everybody else's," he said. "They're not. You're not. As Kerrel told you, you have no idea yet of what you've done, but as time goes by you will." "It's quite true, then--about the mutation?" "Oh, yes, quite. The form and structure of your body cells, and mine, are different from other people's. Due to that altered form and structure, your tissues, and mine, possess a tensile strength in their cell-walls that can withstand incredible acceleration pressure without collapse. And I hope you never know how lucky you were that the mutation was a recessive that finally bred true in you." He filled the glasses again, slowly, withdrawn for a moment into some brooding thought of his own. Then he added sombrely, "Some day I'll tell you the story of Orthis, who found the secret of the mutation. And a grand proud story it is, but with a shameful ending. He.... No. Forget it. The less you know about that, the better. Besides, we're celebrating. Drink up." Trehearne drank. His head was swimming, and he felt hollow inside. The glass was heavy in his hands. He said, "There'll be trouble when I get to--to Llyrdis?" "Sufficient unto the day, Trehearne. Worry about that when you come to it."