It seemed a long time that we worked.  The clocks said one thing and our bodies told us something else, and they were never in agreement, so that some hours flew past as if we had been daydreaming and others dragged on and on while we ached and got thirsty and hungry.  I kept thinking of the way the walls had come and gone at first, and that hours were doing the same thing, or our bodies were.  Whatever happened to matter, Lynn said, would happen to us; and if there were phases in this place, I reckoned, where things just went slower, then we and the clocks ought to agree, but it didn't work out that way.  It was one of the small horrors that worked at our nerves and urged us that just blanking out might be better.  Likewise Modred and Percy said comp went out on them: it dumped program at times, and at others behaved itself.  The crew stayed on the bridge or back at the monitor station - worried, I gathered, about the power plant that kept us going - but it did go, the fans kept turning and the air kept recycling and, Gawain said when I brought them another meal, there was no real need for them to stay by controls, because what was automatic was working tolerably well and what was not automatic was not doing well at all and they couldn't fix anything, just live with it and be patient when comp dumped.

Gawain was tired.  His eyes were terrible.  So were Modred's, like black pits.  They had been in their day cycle and had been through more than a day now.  They ended by deciding perhaps they should stay up in controls after all, all of them - in case the alarms didn't function dependably.  "Until we see," Modred said.  So I brought up mats and pillows and blankets for the four of them and they bedded down up there.

Vivien - Viv was asleep too, busy deepstudying, locked into that tape that would make her useful again, after which time she would likely have a thousand orders to give us all.  Lance was somewhere repairing damages and cleaning up, Where unsecured items had smashed into walls, or unbraced chairs made wreckage of themselves.  Not technical things, but such things as we could do.

Griffin called me, wanting two suppers in my lady's quarters, so I went to the galley and fixed all he asked for... he and my lady, who consoled each other, who had been consoling each other all afternoon of that quick/slow day.  Well enough.  It put no demands on us, tired as we were. I carried the trays up in a carrier and walked in with them, very quietly, into the sitting room.

I walked farther, cautiously, and I could see the big blue bed and them tangled in the middle of it, golden-blond Griffin and my pale-blonde lady, pink to his gold, and white, and her braids all undone in a net about them.  They made love.  I waited, waited longer, finally put the carrier on the mobile table and quietly as I could I eased it through the door, just to leave it where they could have it when they wanted.  They never noticed my being there, or they ignored it, lost in each other, and very quietly I left and closed all the doors behind me, downcast with my own aches and pains and where we were and what hopelessness we had of doing something about it.

Sleep, I thought.  I was due my rest, finally; and overdue.