"I don't like to run it that close." Vorongil's face was bitten deep with lines. He turned to Ramillis, head of Maintenance. "Do we need spare parts? Or just general repairs?"

"Just repairs, sir. We have plenty of shielding metal. It's a long job to get through the hulls, but there's nothing we can't fix."

Vorongil flexed his clawed hands nervously, stretching and retracting them. "Ringg, you're the fatigue expert. I'll take your word for it. Can we make thirty hours?"

Ringg looked pale and there was none of his usual boyish nonsense when he said, "Captain, I swear I wouldn't risk Cottman. You know what crystallization's like, sir. We can't get through that hull lining to repair it in space, if itdoesgo before we land. We wouldn't have the chance of a hydrogen atom in a tank of halogens."

Vorongil's slanted eyebrows made a single unbroken line. "That's the word then. Bartol, find us the closest star with a planet—spaceport or not."

Bart's hands were shaking with sudden fear. He checked each digit of their present position, fed it into the computer, waited, finally wet his lips and plunged, taking the strip from a computer.

"This small star, called Meristem. It's a—" he bit his lip, hard; he had almost saidgreen—"type Q, two planets with atmosphere within tolerable limits, not classified as inhabited."