There are tales of whole ships' crews being wiped out by Thalois fever or muritan cholettia, and that's too much of a risk to take when you only need to give a man half a pint of juice a day to stave off the worst.

'Ever thought of trying to get out while on board?' Franx asks, using one of his little fingers to wipe the last bits of protein from the rim of his dish.

'I've heard it isn't impossible/ Gappo says, pushing his dish away before digging into his mouth with a fingernail to extract a fragment of protein chunk lodged somewhere.

'Some of the crew reckon there's places a man can hide for­ever/ I add before pouring the rest of the fruit juice in my mouth and swilling it around to remove the horrid texture left in there from the goop. This ship isn't that big, but there's still hundreds of places where no one goes any more, places between the decks, in the dueling and down by the engines. You can creep out and steal what you need to eat, it wouldn't be difficult/

Yeah/ Franx says with a curled lip, 'but it ain't exacdy bloody freedom, is it?'

'And what would you call freedom?' Gappo asks, lying back onto his elbows, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

'Not sure/ the sergeant says with a shrug. 'Guess I like to choose what I eat, where I go, who I know/

'I've never been able to do that/ I tell them. 'In the hive fac­tories it's just as much a matter of survival as it is here. Kill or be killed, win the trade wars or starve, it's that simple/

'None of us knows what freedom is/ Gappo says, rocking his head from side to side to work out a stiff muscle. ^Vhen I was a preacher, all I knew were the holy scriptures and the dogma of the Ecclesiarchy They told me exactly how I was supposed to act and feel in any kind of situation. They told me who was right and who was wrong. I realise now that I didn't really have any freedom/