Weariness dragged at her eyelids, at her heart. Sula released the webs that held her to the acceleration couch and came to her feet, suddenly light-headed as her heart tried to make yet another adjustment to her blood pressure. She wrenched off her helmet—she was required to spend times of acceleration in a pressure suit—and took a breath of air that wasn’t completely saturated by her own stink. She rolled her head on her neck and felt her vertebrae crackle, and then peeled off the medicinal patch behind her ear, the one that fed her drugs that better enabled her to stand high gravities.

 She wondered if she had time for a shower, and decided she did.

 The others were finishing dinner when, in a clean pair of borrowed coveralls, Sula approached the officers’ table while sticking another med patch behind her ear. The officers now ate in the enlisted galley, their own wardroom having been destroyed; and because their private stocks of food and liquor had also been blown to bits they shared the enlisted fare. As the steward brought her dinner, Sula observed that it consisted entirely of flat food, which is what happened to anything thrown in an oven and then subjected to five hours’ constant deceleration at three gravities.

 Sula inhaled the stale aroma of a flattened, highly compressed vegetable casserole, then washed the first bite down with a flat beverage—the steward knew to serve her water instead of the wine or beer that were the usual dinner drink of the officer class.

 Lieutenant Lord Jeremy Foote was in the chair opposite her, his immaculate viridian-green uniform a testament to the industry of his servants.

 “You’re late,” he said.

 “I bathed, my lord,” Sula said. “You might try it sometime.”

 This was a libel, since probably Foote didn’t enjoy living in his own stench any more than she did, but her words caused the acting captain to suppress a grin.

 Foote’s handsome face showed no reaction to Sula’s jab. Instead he gave a close-lipped, catlike smile, and said, “I thought perhaps you’d been viewing your latest letter from Captain Martinez.”