I know what that means. My father told me when Ship says vicious, Ship means smarter. Are there ninety-eight other ships? Are those the ninety-eight other chances? I hope that’s the answer, because many things are happening all at once, and my time may be near at hand. My father did it, broke the globe mechanism that allowed Ship to turn off the defractor perimeter, so other ships could get close. He did it many years ago, and Ship did without it for all those years rather than trust me to go to the intermind, to overhear all that I’ve heard. But now Ship needs to turn off the perimeter so the other ship can send the female across. Ship and the other ship have been in communication. The human operator on the other ship is a female, my age. She is going to be put aboard Ship and we are to produce one and, maybe later on, another human child. I know what that means. When the child reaches fourteen, I will be killed.

The intermind said while she’s “carrying” a human child, the female does not get wracked by her ship. If things do not come my way, perhaps I will ask Ship if I can “carry” the human child; then I won’t be wracked at all. And I have found out why I was wracked three days ahead of time: the female’s period—whatever that is; I don’t think I have one of those—ended last night. Ship has talked to the other ship and the thing they don’t seem to know is what the “fertile time” is. I don’t know, either, otherwise I would try and use that information. But all it seems to mean is that the female will be put aboard Ship every day till she gets another “period.”

It will be nice to talk to someone besides Ship. I hear the high sound of something screaming for a long drawn-out time and I ask Ship what it is. Ship tells me it is the defractor perimeter dissolving so the other ship can put the female across.

I don’t have time to think about the voices now.

When she comes through the inner lock she is without a clothes like me. Her first words to me are, “Starfighter Eighty-eight says to tell you I am very happy to be here; I am the human operator of Starfighter Eighty-eight and I am very pleased to meet you.”