--" Tommy's voice died out. "Sorry, I'd have sworn you
were a friend of mine."

Bart wondered suddenly, had he done the wrong thing? He had a feeling he
might need a friend. Badly.

Well, it was too late now. He stared Tommy in the eye and said, "I've
never seen you before in my life."

Tommy looked deflated. He stepped back slightly, shaking his head.
"Never saw such a resemblance. Are you a Vegan?"

"No," Bart lied flatly. "Aldebaran. David Briscoe."

"Glad to know you, Dave." With undiscourageable friendliness, Tommy
stuck out a hand. "Say, that bell means dinner, why don't we go down
together? I don't know a soul on the ship, and it looks like
luck--running into a fellow who could be my best friend's twin brother."

Bart felt warmed and drawn, but sensibly he knew he could not keep up
the pretense. Sooner or later, he'd give himself away, use some habitual
phrase or gesture Tommy would recognize.

Should he take a chance--reveal himself to Tommy and ask him to keep
quiet? No. This wasn't a game. One man was already dead. He didn't want
Tommy to be next.

There was only one way out. He said coldly, "thank you, but I have other
things to attend to. I intend to be very busy all through the voyage."
He spun on his heel and walked away before he could see Tommy's eager,
friendly smile turn hurt and defensive.

Back in his cabin, he gloomily dialed some synthetic jellies, thinking
with annoyance of the anticipated good food of the dining room. He knew
he couldn't risk meeting Tommy again, and drearily resigned himself to
staying in his cabin. It looked like an awfully boring trip ahead.

It was. It was a week before the Lhari ship went into warp-drive, and
all that time Bart stayed in his cabin, not daring to go to the
observation Lounge or dining hall. He got tired of eating synthetics
(oh, they were nourishing enough, but they were altogether
uninteresting) and tired of listening to the tapes the room steward got
him from the ship's library. By the time they had been in space a week,
he was so bored with his own company that even the Mentorian medic was a
welcome sight when he came in to prepare him for cold-sleep.

Bart had had the best education on Earth, but he didn't know precisely
how the Lhari warp-drive worked. He'd been told that only a few of the
Lhari understood it, just as the man who flew a copter didn't need to
understand Newton's Three Laws of Motion in order to get himself back
and forth to w