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wane.
If she sat here long enough, would she be able to detect the real tides? Would
the same drifting plant-creatures pass before the window again, swept back and
forth by the forces of sun and moon?
    Her privacy was marred only slightly, by one man sleeping or
lying unconscious nearby. She did not recognize him, but he must be crew. His
dark, close-fitting clothes were unremarkably different enough, in design and
fabric, that he might be from another world. He must be new. Earth was the hub
of commerce; no ship flew long without orbiting it. New crew members always
visited earth at least once. New crew usually visited every world their ships
reached at first, even the ones that required quarantine and vaccinations, if
they had enough time. Laenea had done the same herself. The quarantine to
introduce null-strain bacteria, which could not contaminate exotic environments
because it could only reproduce inside the human body, was the most severe and
the most necessary, but no quarantine was pleasant. Laenea, like most other
veterans, eventually remained acclimated to one world, stayed on the ship
during other planetfalls, and arranged her pattern to intersect her home as
frequently as possible.
    The sleeping man was several years younger than Laenea. She
thought he must be as tall as she, but that estimation was difficult. He was
one of those uncommon people so beautifully proportioned that from any distance
at all their height can only be determined by comparison. Nothing about him was
exaggerated or attenuated; he gave the impression of strength, but it was the
strength of agility, not violence. Laenea decided he was neither drunk nor
drugged but asleep. His face, though relaxed, showed no dissipation. His hair
was dark blond and shaggy, a shade lighter than his heavy mustache. He was far
from handsome: His features were regular, distinctive, but without beauty.
Below the cheekbones his tanned skin was scarred and pitted, as though from
some virulent childhood disease. Some of the outer worlds had not yet conquered
their epidemics.
    Laenea looked away from the new young man. She stared at the
dark water at light’s end, letting her vision double and unfocus. She
touched her collarbone and slid her fingers to the tip of the smooth scar.
Sensation seemed refined across the tissue, as though a wound there would hurt
more sharply. Though Laenea was tired and getting hungry, she did not force
herself to outrun the distractions. For a while her energy should return slowly
and naturally. She had pushed herself far enough for one night.
    A month would be an eternity; the wait would seem equivalent
to all the years she had spent crewing. She was still angry at the other
pilots. She felt she had acted like a little puppy, bounding up to them to be
welcomed and patted, then, when they grew bored, they had kicked her away as
though she had piddled on the floor. And she was angry at herself: She felt a
fool, and she felt the need to prove herself.
    For the first time she appreciated the destruction of time
during transit. To sleep for a month: convenient, impossible. She first must
deal with her new existence, her new body; then she would deal with a new
environment.
    Perhaps she dozed. The deep sea admitted no time: The lights
pierced the same indigo darkness day or night. Time was the least real of all
dimensions to Laenea’s people, and she was free of its dictates, isolated
from its stabilities.
    When she opened her eyes again she had no idea how long they
had been closed, a second or an hour.
    The time must have been a few minutes, at least, for the
young man who had been sleeping was now sitting up, watching her. His eyes were
dark blue, flecked with black, a color like the sea. For a moment he did not
notice she was awake, then their gazes met and he glanced quickly away,
blushing, embarrassed to be caught staring.
    “I stared, too,” Laenea said.
    Startled, he turned slowly back, not quite sure Laenea was
speaking to him.