mur faded away and there was nothing but the dreams again.

But were they dreams? Nothing had form or meaning. Light, darkness,
sound, pain and not-pain, flowed over him. Flowed over--who? Who was he?
He did not even know that. He did not care.

But he came to care, the question vaguely nagged him. He should try to
remember. There was more than dreams and the whispering voice. There
was--what? If he had one real thing to cling to, to put his feet on and
climb back from-- One thing like his name.

He had no name. He was no one. Sleep and forget it. Sleep and dream and
listen--

"Kieran."

It went across his brain like a shattering bolt of lightning, that word.
He did not know what the word was or what it meant but it found an echo
somewhere and his brain screamed it.

"Kieran!"

Not his brain alone, his voice was gasping it, harshly and croakingly,
his lungs seeming on fire as they expelled the word.

He was shaking. He had a body that could shake, that could feel pain,
that was feeling pain now. He tried to move, to break the nightmare, to
get back again to the vague dreams, and the soothing whisper.

He moved. His limbs thrashed leadenly, his chest heaved and panted, his
eyes opened.

He lay in a narrow bunk in a very small metal room.

He looked slowly around. He did not know this place. The gleaming white
metal of walls and ceiling was unfamiliar. There was a slight,
persistent tingling vibration in everything that was unfamiliar, too.

He was not in Wheel Five. He had seen every cell in it and none of them
were like this. Also, there lacked the persistent susurrant sound of the
ventilation pumps. Where--

_You're in a ship, Kieran. A starship._

* * * * *

Something back in his mind told him that. But of course it was
ridiculous, a quirk of the imagination. There weren't any starships.

_You're all right, Kieran. You're in a starship, and you're all right._

The emphatic assurance came from somewhere back in his brain and it was
comforting. He didn't feel very good, he felt dopey and sore, but there
was no use worrying about it when he knew for sure he was all right--

The hell he was all right! He was in someplace new, someplace strange,
and he felt half sick and he was not all right at all. Instead of lying
here on his back listening to comforting lies from his imagination, he
should get up, find out what was going on, what had happened.

Of a sudden, memory be