What I do, he thought, is get the Bag Plague... probably that last damaged leady they sent down hadn't been 'cided properly. Or I've picked up the Stink of Shrink, and from that he physically cringed; imagine, he thought, having your head diminish in size, features included, to the circumference of a marble. "Okay," he said, reflexively, and began to unlace his work boots. He felt the need to be clean; he would shower, too, despite the severe water ration currently in force at the Tom Mix, and by his own edict. When you do not feel clean, he realized, you are doomed. Considering exactly what we could be made unclean by, the microscopic _things_ downfalling to us that some careless ambulatory metal hunk of handmade parts had failed to 'cide out of existence before yanking the drop switch, shooting three hundred pounds of contaminated matter to us, something both hot and dirty at the same time... hot with radioactivity and dirty with germs. Great combination, he thought.

And, in the back part of his mind, again he recalled: _Souza is dying_. What else matters? Because--how long can we last without that one grumpy old man?

Approximately two weeks. Because their quota came up for auditing in two weeks. And this time, if he knew his luck and his tank's, it would be one of the Minister of the Interior Stanton Brose's agents, not General Holt's. They rotated. It prevented, the image of Yancy on the big screen had once said, corruption.

Picking up the audphone he dialed the tank's clinic.

"How is he?"

On the other end Dr. Carol Tigh, their G.P. in charge of their small clinic, said, "No change. He's conscious. Come on down; he tells me he'd like to talk to you."

"Okay." Nicholas rang off, shouted--through the noise of running water--to Rita that he was going, and left their cubby; outside in the common corridor he bumped past other tankers on their ways from the shops and recreation rooms to their cubbies for bed: the clocks had been right, because he saw numerous bathrobes and standard issue synthetic wubfur-fuzz slippers. This really is bedtime, he decided. But he knew he still could not sleep.