the second ship-day Calhoun labored painstakingly and somewhat
distastefully at the little biological laboratory. Maril watched him
in a sort of brooding silence. Murgatroyd slept much of the time, with
his furry tail wrapped meticulously across his nose.

Toward the end of the day Calhoun finished his task. He had a matter
of six or seven cubic centimeters of clear liquid as the conclusion of
a long process of culturing, and examination by microscope, and again
culturing plus final filtration. He looked at a clock and calculated
time.

"Better wait until tomorrow," he observed, and put the bit of clear
liquid in a temperature-controlled place of safekeeping.

"What is it?" asked Maril. "What's it for?"

"It's part of a job I have on hand," said Calhoun. He considered. "How
about some music?"

She looked astonished. But he set up an instrument and fed microtape
into it and settled back to listen. Then there was music such as she
had never heard before. It was another device to counteract isolation
and monotonous between-planet voyages. To keep it from losing its
effectiveness, Calhoun rationed himself on music, as on other things.

Any indulgence frequently repeated would become a habit, in the sense
that it would give no special pleasure when indulged in, but would
make for stress if it were omitted. Calhoun deliberately went for
weeks between uses of his recordings, so that music was an event to be
looked forward to and cherished.

When he tapered off the stirring symphonies of Kun Gee with
tranquilizing, soothing melodies from the Rim School of composers,
Maril regarded him with a very peculiar gaze indeed.

"I think I understand now," she said slowly, "why you don't act like
other people. Toward me, for example. The way you live gives you what
other people have to get in crazy ways--making their work feed their
vanity, and justify pride, and make them feel significant. But you can
put your whole mind on your work."

He thought it over.

"Med Ship routine is designed to keep one healthy in his mind," he
admitted. "It works pretty well. It satisfies all my mental appetites.
But there are instincts...."

She waited. He did not finish.

"What do you do about the instincts that work and music and such
things can't satisfy?"

Calhoun grinned wryly, "I'm stern with them. I have to be."

He stood up and plainly expected her to go into the other cabin for
the night. She went.

It was after breakfast time