McFeen leaned against a bulkhead and pressed his fingers to his head. The pain in his frontal sinus was jumping again. Maybe he was still a little bit buzzed. He didn't think he was, but it was possible. That would account for a lot. He looked at the cage once more. Wait, now, he had it. The reason it looked so much emptier was that the Hyra (ugh, how he loathed them--he'd never let Alice see how much) were all jammed together at one end, heaped up on one another, like a pile of oozing, pupilless eyes. Naturally the cage looked bigger when the Hyra were piled up like that. McFeen almost laughed in his relief. He sealed the hole up carefully and went back to the cabin, his footfalls ringing unevenly. Alice was sitting up in her bunk. She had washed her face and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She nodded shortly at him when he came in. After a while she got up and began opening some soup. * * * * * They both felt better when they had eaten. Alice revived sufficiently to comb her hair and spray some make-up on. The pain began to die away in McFeen's head. He'd been a fool to get so excited over nothing. All the same, he was going into the hold and have another look at the Hyra. He pushed back his chair. "Where you going, Mac?" Alice asked. She was gathering up the remains of their meal and putting them in the disposer. "Two hold." "They aren't increasing again, are they?" she asked in quick alarm. "No, nothing like that." This time there was no possible doubt. The heap of Hyra was less than half the size it had been. In the time since he had left the hold--certainly not more than three-quarters of an hour--it had gone way, way down. He could count the Hyra without any difficulty now. There were either sixteen or seventeen. McFeen's heart began pounding wildly. His chest felt so constricted he could hardly breathe. For a moment he tried to fight his panic, to reason with himself. Then he turned and ran for Alice. She came rather unwillingly, understanding from his hoarse incoherence only that the Hyra were not increasing any more. Even when she saw the almost empty cage she was not alarmed. "Why, honey, there must be a hole there you haven't found," she said reasonably. "A hole or some--" she fell silent suddenly. "Mac," she said in a quite different voice. "Hunh?" McFeen had been trying to count the Hyra; it seemed to him that there was one less in the cage than there had been when he went to the cabin just now for Alice. "Mac, where's that shadow coming from?" The fear in her voice infected McFeen with instant irritability. "What shadow?" he demanded. "What are you talking about? Haven't we got trouble enough? Be quiet! What are you starting in on shadows for?" "Mac...." Alice had to swallow and lick her lips before she could go on. "Look at it. There. In the corner of the cage." She pointed with one hand.