ctory tugs at
shoulders and waist, tightened a buckle. "Karol son of Garin."

Bells rang in the ship, and Bart felt the odd, tonic touch of fear.
_This was it._

Vorongil strode through the door, his banded cloak sweeping behind him,
and took the control couch.

"Ready from fueling room, sir."

"Position," Vorongil snapped.

Bart heard himself reading off a string of figures in Lhari. His voice
sounded perfectly calm.

"Communication."

"Clear channels from Pylon Dispatch, sir." It was old Rugel's voice.

"Well," Vorongil said, slowly and almost reflectively, "let's take her
up then."

He touched some controls. The humming grew. Then, swift, hard and
crushing, weight mashed Bart against his couch.

"Position!" Vorongil's voice sounded harsh, and Bart fought the crushing
weight of it. Even his eyeballs ached as he struggled to turn the tiny
eye muscles from dial to dial, and his voice was a dim croak: "Fourteen
seven sidereal twelve point one one four nine...."

"Hold it to point one one four six," Vorongil said calmly.

"Point one one four six," Bart said, and his claws stabbed at dials.
Suddenly, in spite of the cold weight on his chest, the pain, the
struggle, he felt as if he were floating. He managed a long, luxurious
breath. He _could_ handle it. He knew what he was doing.

_He was an Astrogator...._

Later, when Acceleration One had reached its apex and the artificial
gravity made the ship a place of comfort again, he went down to the
dining hall with Ringg and met the crew of the _Swiftwing_. There were
twelve officers and twelve crewmen of various ratings like himself and
Ringg, but there seemed to be little social division between them, as
there would have been on a human ship; officers and crew joked and
argued without formality of any kind.

None of them gave him a second look. Later, in the Recreation Lounge,
Ringg challenged him to a game with one of the pinball machines. It
seemed fairly simple to Bart; he tried it, and to his own surprise, won.

Old Rugel touched a lever at the side of the room. With a tiny whishing
sound, shutters opened, the light of Procyon Alpha flooded them and he
looked out through a great viewport into bottomless space.

Procyon Alpha, Beta and Gamma hung at full, rings gently tilted. Beyond
them the stars burned, flaming through the shimmers of cosmic dust. The
colors, the never-ending colors of space!

And he stood here, in a room full of monsters--_he was