He was observing, too, our silent, gallant Ship's Commander. Back when, that had always been his excuse for not partaking of our clique's conversational buffet.

It grew late. The mob thinned considerably. I shipped a bigger cargo than I thought. The room began to rock a little, and I to wonder if our friends upstairs had a drop on tonight. The Commander touched my elbow gently. "Eh?" At the moment that was the most intelligent thing I could say.

"Somebody you might remember." He nodded toward a tall, lean blonde doing a slow strip atop a nearby table.

I stared through misty eyes. At first I only wondered about her age. She looked older than most of the women.

"Got her own ship," the Commander said.

Fascination and horror, lust and loathing, gusted through my sodden soul. I recognized her.

She looked so old!

Sharon Parker. The Virgin Goddess. The Bitch Queen of Academy Battalion Tango Romeo. How I'd loved and lusted after her at a tender seventeen. How many nights had I lain with my good right hand and imagined those creamy thighs clamping me?

The memories were embarrassing. I'd been so much a fool that I'd declared my undying passion....

She'd been as cold and remote as the dark side of Old Earth's moon. She'd teased, taunted, promised forever afterward, and never had delivered. For me or anyone else, as far as I knew.

Torturing me became her pet project. I was more obvious and vulnerable than my classmates.

"No. Let it be."

Too late. The Commander waved. She recognized him. She left her little stage and came over. The Old Man kicked out an empty chair. She seemed slightly embarrassed as she settled into it. The Commander can have that effect. He seems so competent and solid, sometimes, that everyone around will feel second-rate and clumsy. I always do.

She gave me one indifferent glance while crossing the room. Just another Lieutenant. Navy is infested with Lieutenants.

"Good patrol?" the Commander asked.

"Shit. Two old tubs that belonged in a transport museum. One escort destroyer. Only one tub confirmed. One lousy baby convoy. Twelve ships. We got off our missile flight, then the hunterkillers hit us. Thought it was the Executioner for a while. Took us nine days to shake them."

"Rough?" I asked.

She shrugged, gave me another of those indifferent glances.

I watched the light dawn. She turned bright red, shed the drunken table-dancer avatar like a snake sloughs skin. For one long moment she looked like she had a hot steel splinter under her fingernail.

"You." Another moment of silence. "You've changed."

"Haven't we all?"

She wanted to run so bad I could smell it. But it was too late. She'd been seen. She'd been caught. She had to face the consequences.

I was both pleased and a little frightened. Could she value my good opinion that much?

"Civilian influence," I said. "I was out for a while. You've changed too." I wanted to bite my tongue immediately. Not only was that the wrong thing to say, it slipped out sounding bitter. My brain was on vacation. My hands had made too many connections with my mouth, carrying too many drinks.

"I heard about the accident." Bravely bearing up, that was her attitude. "You making it okay now?"

"Good enough," I lied. Twelve years of Academy had done nothing to ready me for a sudden shift to civilian life. I could have gone on, I suppose, in a desk job, buried in Luna Command, but my pride hadn't permitted it. I was Line, and by damn that was what I'd stay, or nothing. "I like the freedom. To bed when I want, up when I want. Go where I want. You know. Like that."

"Yeah. I know." She didn't believe a word.

"So. What've you been doing?"

"Climbing the ladder. Got my own ship now. Forty-seven Cee. Bravo Flight, Five Squadron. Seven patrols." I couldn't think of anything to say. After an embarrassed silence, she added, "And finding out what it's like to be on the dirty end."

The conversation lay there awhile, like a beached whale too exhausted to struggle.

"I'm sorry. For everything I did. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what you could do to somebody."

"Long ago and far away. Like it happened to somebody else. All forgotten now. We were just kids."

"No."

I'd lied again. And again she'd read me. It didn't hurt as much now, but the pain was still there.

There're those small places where you never grow up.

"Can we go someplace?"

The thrill again. My libido recalled antediluvian fantasies. "I don't think..."

"Just to talk. You were always the best listener in the battalion."

Yes. I'd listened a lot. To problems. Everybody had come to me. Especially Sharon.

It had been a way to be near her. Always, back then, there'd been the Plan. Move after carefully calculated move, to seduction. I hadn't found the nerve to make the most critical, daring end-game maneuvers.

There'd been nobody for me to cry on. Who confesses the confessor?

"I'll only be gone a minute." She scrambled after discarded clothing. I watched and was more baffled by her behavior than by anything else I'd seen.

"She's aged."

The Commander nodded. "It* s an eight year millennium since we graduated. Nothing left of those wide-eyed kids now. Except for you, most of them died the first year of the war."

I needed a moment to realize he meant figurative death. The lift of the alcohol had peaked long since. I was headed down the rough side.

Sharon returned trailing a belligerent Lieutenant. He was sober enough to remain civil during the introductions, drunk enough to contemplate violence when he learned she was leaving with me.

The Commander rose, scowled. The younger man backed down. The Old Man can intimidate anybody when he puts his mind to it.

The Lieutenant faded away. The Commander resumed his seat. He filled the pipe that, in deference to the rest of us, he'd ignored all evening. He was alone now.

I glanced back once. He sat there with his legs sprawled beneath the table, observing, and for an instant I sensed his loneliness.

Ours is a lonely profession. The pressures of war only exaggerate the alienation.

Sharon and I did more than talk. Of course. There was never any doubt of it. She tried to expiate the cruelties of the past. I stumbled, but managed my part.

There was really little point to it.

The dream had died. There was no magic left. Just a man and a woman, both frightened, sharing a brief communion, a feeble escape from thought.

Only I didn't escape. Not entirely. Not for one second did I forget the mission.

The incident taught me why there were places like the Pregnant Dragon. In liquor, drugs, sex, or self-loathing, it provided surcease from the endless fear. Fear those people knew far better than I, who knew Climbers only by what I'd read, heard, and seen on holovision.

I have this reflection on the incident. One of life's crudest pranks is to yield heart's desire only when the desire has been replaced by another. Rare is the man who recognizes and seizes the precise instant, like a perfectly ripened fruit, and enjoys it at its moment of ultimate fulfillment.

At least we parted friends.

The dawn came, and with it a message from the Commander saying it was time we moved on to the Pits. We were to lift for TerVeen in eighteen hours.

I looked at her one last time, as she slept, and I wondered, What drew me to this world where they execute dreams?