A quick series of emotions chased themselves across his face. I held his gaze, letting him come to the decision at his own speed. Eventually, he did.

"Because of a small problem I've got," he said with an almost-sigh. "Sort of qualifiesas a drug dependency."

"Which one?" I asked, mentally running through the various drug symptoms Iknew and trying without success to match them to Shawn's behavior patterns. Ixilhad suggested earlier that the kid's emotional swings might be drug-related, butas far as I knew he hadn't been able to nail down a specific type, either.

And Shawn's answer did indeed come as a complete surprise. "Borandis," hesaid.

"Also sometimes called jackalspit. I doubt you've ever heard of it."

"Actually, I think I have," I said carefully, the hairs rising unpleasantly onthe back of my neck even as I tried to put some innocent uncertainty into myvoice. I knew about borandis, all right. Knew it and its various charmingcousins all too well. "It's one of those semilegit drugs, as I recall.

Seriouslycontrolled but not flat-out prohibited."

"Oh, it's flat-out prohibited most places," he said, frowning slightly as hestudied me. Maybe my uncertainty act hadn't been enough; maybe he didn't think a

simple cargo hauler should even be aware of such sinful things, let alone knowany of the details. "But in most human areas it's available by prescription.

If you have one of the relevant diseases, that is."

"And?" I invited.

His lips tightened briefly. "I've got the disease. Just not the prescription."

"And why don't you have the prescription?"

He smiled tightly. "Because I had the misfortune to pick up the disease in aslightly illegal way. I—well, some friends and I went on a little private tripto Ephis a few years ago."

"Really," I said. That word wasn't the first thing that popped into my mind; the phrase criminal stupidity held that honor. "That one I've definitely heard of.

Interdicted world, right?"

His smile went from tight to bitter. "That's the place," he said. "And I cantell you right now that not a single thing you've heard about that hellhole ishyperbole." His mouth twitched. "But of course, sophisticated college kidslike us were too smart to be taken in by infantile governmental scare tactics. Andwe naturally didn't believe bureaucrats had any right to tell us where we couldor couldn't go—"

He broke off, a violent shiver running through him once before his bodysettled back down to its low-level trembling. "It's called Cole's disease," he said, his voice sounding suddenly very tired. "It's not much fun."

"I don't know many diseases that are," I said. "Are the rules for interdictedplanets really that strict? That you can't even get a prescription for yourmedicine, I mean?"

He snorted softly, and for a moment a flicker of the old Shawn pierced thefatigue and trembling, the arrogant kid who knew it all and looked down withcontempt on mere mortals like me who weren't smart or educated or enlightenedenough. "Strict enough that even admitting I'd been to Ephis would earn me anautomatic ten-year prison sentence," he bit out. "I don't think a guaranteedsupply of borandis is quite worth that, do you?"

"I guess not," I said, making sure to sound properly chastened. People likeShawn, I knew, could often be persuaded to offer up deep, dark secrets for nobetter reason than to prove they had them. "So how do you get by?"

He shrugged, a somewhat abbreviated gesture given the strictures of therestraints. "There are always dealers around—you just have to know how to findthem. Most of the time it's not too hard. Or too expensive."

"And what happens if you don't get it?" I asked. Drugs I knew, interdictedworlds I knew; but exotic diseases weren't part of my standard repertoire.

"It's a degenerative neurological disease," he said, his lip twitchingslightly.

"You can see the muscular trembling has already started."

"That's not just the borandis withdrawal?"

"The withdrawal is part of it," he said. "It's hard to tell—the symptoms kindof mix together. That's followed by irritability, severe mood swings, short-termmemory failure, and a generally high annoyance factor." Again, that bittersmile. "You may have noticed that last one when I first got to the ship onMeima. I'd just taken a dose, but I'd pushed the timing a little and it hadn'tkicked in yet."

I nodded, remembering how much calmer, even friendly, he'd been a few hourslater during Chort's ill-fated spacewalk. "Remind me never to go into aspaceport taverno with you before your pill," I said. "You'd get both ournecks broken within the first three minutes."

He shivered. "Sometimes I think that would be a better way to go," he saidquietly. "Anyway, if I still don't get a dose, I get louder and moreirrational and sometimes even violent."

"Is that still a mixture of withdrawal and disease?"

"That one's mostly withdrawal," he said. "After that, the disease takes overand we start edging into neural damage. First the reversible kind, later thenonreversible. Eventually, I die. From all reports, not especiallypleasantly."

Offhand, I couldn't think of many pleasant ways to die, except possibly inyoursleep of old age, which given my early choices in life wasn't an option I waslikely to face. If Shawn persisted in pulling stunts like sneaking ontointerdicted worlds, it wasn't likely to remain one of his options, either.

Still, there was no sense in letting the old man with the scythe get at any ofus too easily. "How long before the neural damage starts?" I asked.

He gave another of his abbreviated shrugs. "We've got a little time yet," hesaid. "Nine or ten hours at least. Maybe twelve."

"From right now?"

"Yes." He smiled. "Of course, you probably won't want to be anywhere around mewell before that. I'm not going to be very good company." The smile faded. "Wecan get to a supplier before then, can't we? I thought I heard Tera say it wasonly about six hours away to wherever the hell we're headed."

"Mintarius," I said, making a show of consulting my watch. In reality, I wasthinking hard. I'd originally picked Mintarius precisely because it was close, small, quiet, and unlikely to have the equipment to distinguish our latestship's ID from a genuine one. A perfect place to slip in, get the fuel ourunexpectedly quick exit from Dorscind's World had lost us, and slip out again.

Unfortunately, Mintarius's backwater status also meant that illegal drugsuppliers would be few and far between. And those who were there were likelyto concentrate on the lowest common denominators like happyjam, not the moreesoteric, semimedicinal ones.

I thought about that, and about the increasingly serious Patth search for us, and about the fact that Shawn's decision to go to Ephis had been a voluntarysigning of his own death certificate anyway. But no matter how I sorted themout in the balance, there really wasn't any choice.

"It's actually a little farther than that," I told Shawn, getting to my feet.

"Don't worry, though, we should make it in plenty of time. Assuming things goas planned—"

I broke off suddenly, turning my head and stretching out with all my ears.

Barely heard over my own voice had been a faint dull metallic thud. The sameunexplained sound, as near as I could tell, that I'd heard in the wraparoundjust after we'd left Xathru.

"What?" Shawn demanded, making no attempt to keep his voice down. "What's theproblem?"

"I thought I heard something," I told him, suppressing the exceptionallyimpolite word I wanted to say. There might have been a follow-up sound, oreven a lingering echo that could have given me a chance of figuring out itsapproximate direction. But both those chances were gone now, buried underShawn's inopportune and overly loudmouthed question.

"What, you mean that thunking sound?" he scoffed. "It's nothing. You hear itevery once in a while."