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planets fill the screen. He didn’t feel very old at all, but then he couldn’t sense the breakdown of his cells either. Flexing his arms, stretching his legs to increase circulation, he felt like a young man, not at all ready to give up.
    Something dark blotted out the planet for the blink of an eye. Then a sharply defined scatter of chunks went past. A haze of dust made the ship tremble and buck.
    They were through. First passage.
    He returned to the lounge, practicing smiles and wiping them away as they inevitably approached fatuousness.
    â€œHey!” he said. “I’m going to tell you about Jerk, hm?”
    She nodded.
    â€œI picked him up from a dealer on Tau Ceti’s Myriadne. He—it—whatever, comes from a place where the air is so bad nothing can breath it, so he breaks down silicates for his oxygen. He eats plants that absorb his own kind when they’re dead, and the whole thing …” he indicated the ecological pattern with a circling finger, “…means that no animal kills another animal to survive. So he’s docile and smart …” He stopped and didn’t feel like saying anything more, but he finished the sentence, “because he absorbs from your own personality, so he’s as smart as his owner.”
    Karen was looking at the spot the solvent had made on the carpet.
    â€œHe, she, it, doesn’t matter,” Alista said. “Jerk doesn’t care.”
    â€œDid something happen to you?” she asked. “I mean, when you came near the ship.”
    Alista felt like a small child who wanted to say some­thing, but couldn’t. He was eighty years old and he felt so much like a child that he wanted to find a sympathetic breast and weep. But he was a man long used to death, and finding a frightened weakness in himself made him more reluctant to say or do anything.
    â€œYes,” he said.
    â€œBad?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou’re going to die?”
    â€œYes, dammit! Be quiet. Don’t say anything.”
    And he turned to walk out. A day, two days. That was all.
    How long did she have?
    The second passage through the belt went smoothly. Alista investigated the emergency shields to see what they could repel. They could absorb and transfer impacts from anything up to nine tons. But the shields required safeties to activate them and a guidance system to pinpoint their maximum force on the approaching object. Neither were in working order.
    Karen stayed to herself, read­ing fitfully or trying to sleep, and he stayed in the bridge cabin, idly searching all possible avenues of escape.
    If he didn’t tell her and she died by surprise, would that be less cruel than telling her? Alista wasn’t a religious man, but his Polynesian heritage still impressed him with the idea that dignity and a certain courage in facing one’s end led to better relations in the afterlife.
    Relations to what, he couldn’t say—he’d long since stopped speculating about things after death. Death was merely the final solving of mysteries, one way or another.
    Karen broke out of her pose of deep sorrow when the idea came to her that she wasn’t going to survive. She couldn’t shake it because she could visualize nothing beyond the walls of the crippled ship. She went to Alista on the bridge and again the uncomfortable waiting for words began.
    Alista spoke first, adjusting his seat and manufacturing an excuse to concentrate on the controls. “I thought you were asleep.”
    â€œCouldn’t.”
    â€œIt would be good if you could get some rest.”
    â€œI’ve been sleeping for hours,” she said. “I have more questions.”
    â€œAsk away,” Alista said.
    â€œWhat’s going to keep the rescue ship from getting here?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œDon’t lie to me!” she said, indignant. “I’m not a little girl.”
    â€œI see,” he said. He