The Majority of Flower personnel were in for the night after the initial excitement of receiving the records. the labs were shut down again, the skeleton night crew on duty.  The ship had a different quality by night, a ghostly hush but for the whisper of machinery and ventilation, far different from the  frenetic activity in its narrow corridors by day.

Duncan found the prospect of a bed, a quiet night in his own safe quarters, a bath (even the chemical scrub allowable under rationing) utterly, utterly attractive, after a three-hour debriefing.  It was 0100 by the local clock, which was the time on which he lived.

The lateness of the hour did not stop him from descending to the medical section and pausing in Niun's room.  There was neither day, nor night for the mri, who lay, slack and deteriorating despite the therapy applied to his limbs, in the influence of sedation.  Luiz had promised to consider a lessening of sedation; Duncan had argued heatedly with Luiz on this point.

There was no response now when he spoke to the mri.  He touched Niun's shoulder, shook at him gently, hating to feel how thin the mri was becoming.

Tension returned to the muscles.  The mri drew a deeper breath, moved against the restraints that stayed on him constantly, and his golden eyes opened, half-covered by the membrane.  The membrane withdrew, but not entirely.  The fixation of the eyes was wild and confused.

"Niun," Duncan whispered, then aloud: "Niun!"

The struggle continued, and yet the mri seemed only slightly aware of his presence, despite the grip of his hand.  It was another thing, something inward, that occupied Niun, and the wide, golden eyes were dilated, terrified.

"Niun, stop it.  It's Duncan.  It's Duncan with you.  Be still and look at me."

"Duncan?"  The mri was suddenly without strength, chest heaving from exertion, as if he had run from some impossibly far place.  "The dusei are lost."

Such raving was pitiable.  Niun was a man of keen mind, of quick reflexes.  He looked utterly confused now.  Duncan held his arm, and, knowing the mri's pride, drew a corner of the sheet across the mri's lower face, a concealment behind which the mri would feel more secure.

Slowly, slowly, the sense came back to that alien gaze.  "Let me go, Duncan."

"I can't" he said miserably.  "I can't, Niun."

The eyes began to lose their focus again, to slip aside.  The muscles in the arm began to loosen.  "Melein," Niun said.

"She is all right."  Duncan clenched his hand until surely it hurt, trying to hold him to hear that.  But the mri was back in his own dream.  His breathing was rapid.  His head turned from side to side in delirium.

And finally he grew quiet again.

Duncan withdrew his hand from Niun's arm and left, walking slowly at first, then more rapidly.  The episode distressed him in the strangeness of it; but Niun was fighting the sedation, was coming out of it more and more strongly, had known him, spoken to him.  Perhaps it was alien metabolism, perhaps, the thought occurred to him, Luiz had adjusted the level of sedation, more reasonable than he had shown himself in argument on the subject.

He went to the main lock, to the guard post that watched the coming and going of all that entered and left the ship.  He signed the log and handed the stylus back.

"Hard session, sir?" the night guard asked, sympathy, not inquisitiveness.  Tereci knew him.

"Somewhat, somewhat," he said, blinked at Tereci from eyes he knew were red, felt of his chin, that was rough.  "Message for Luiz when he wakes: I want to talk with him at the earliest."

"Recorded, sir," said Tereci, scratching it into the message sheet.