I learned much about the Ubbish. They are not tinkerers in their own right, but they are fascinated with any technology they encounter, and eventually come to understand it well enough to incorporate it into their ships. At first, Norebbi and Dush determined I should stay with their young, perhaps due to my size and demeanor. I didn't bother explaining I was actually many times older than a typical Ubbish lifespan. I hoped to find someone to play chess with.

My first day in the hatchery, I was instantly shunned, and the Ubbish pups, who don't have fully formed limbs or speech organs merely swam away or tried to bite me.

Dush was very doting of me, and let me stay in his chambers, since the hatchery didn't work out so well. He scolded Norebbi for wearing me out, and showing me to everyone on the ship. Norebbi was eager to tell everyone he knew that he had rescued me.

Dush insisted I stay in his chamber. "You'll be safe here, and if you want anything, just make it known!" he said, taking a magnanimous Ubbish bow. It was a display of kobitzi, though more subtle than Norebbi's. Dush's chamber was lavishly furnished with soft places to sit, and luminous tanks of iridescent muck where the Ubbish feed and mate. Dush was kind to many of the others on the ship, and while I was in his chamber, I met many Ubbish who came to visit him to ask his advice, or for his help fixing something. I computed that by his reputation of trustworthiness and his elevated status of kobitzi, Dush was the leader of sorts aboard the clanship.

It was fortunate to have his protection, but the chamber was not an ideal place for a Neb boy. The Ubbish need very little light to see, and Dush's chamber was deep within the belly of the asteroid. Very little starlight trickled through to me, and I was starting to feel cold. My thoughts were beginning to slow and stiffen.

Luckily, it didn't take much energy to entertain me. I still deeply enjoyed hearing Charging Tales for Pilot, and if it was quiet I'd play the light-beam game by myself in my thoughts. I'd relive the trips in the Neb starship that led me to where I was. Where was I exactly? I did sense the clanship was moving. Hopefully, we were on the way to the lunar outpost, where I might find other Neb children and I could warn them about mankind and Earth.

Worries wore me out. I realized that this had been the longest time I had ever gone without seeing the stars. My energy cell, for the first time, was critically low. I had been safe enough in Dush's palatial chamber, but I urgently needed to get to a bright place where I could get some real rest. Dush had left earlier, to help someone repair a tank in the hatchery. I estimated a repair like that could take quite some time, so this was as good a chance as I could ask for. Even just a few minutes of uninterrupted starlight would do me so much good. I left.

Maneuvering the halls of the asteroid clanship was difficult. The Ubbish have adhesive cells on their hands and feet that allow them to climb the rocky, cave-like corridors of the ship with ease. Norrebi had asked me to borrow the boots Captain had lent me. It dawned on me now that it had been foolish to lend him anything or to expect those back. I especially regretted it now as I bounced around the clanship halls in low gravity, banging against every wall.

Without stars as reference, my sense of direction was non-existent. All the halls of the asteroid ship looked the same, and the ship was too porous to orient myself with my gravity sensors. I must have drifted around for a long time, perhaps longer than I should have, before I saw a beam of warm, golden light flooding one of the ship's porous halls.

I was overwhelmed with relief. The sudden warmth flooded my mind with grateful thoughts, and I let myself drift to the end of the corridor, where a thick glass boundary was the only thing separating me and the bright openness of space.

The calm was interrupted. Before even my sensors would alert me of an approaching CBL, I heard the singular scritching of Ubbish scurrying on the walls and ceilings, up the spiraling caverns of the ship towards me. I quickly pushed off the wall towards a dark chamber at the end of the vertical hall where perhaps I could hide. I immediately crashed into a drifting pile of scrap metal now floating all around me.

All around me I saw, not junk, but hundreds of shiny little hands, arms, legs, and even lightless faces on the dismal blank heads of Neb boys and girls. Before I could assess the time it might take me to repair all those individuals by myself I was overtaken with the memory of the human in the spacesuit banging on the shuttle door. Was this what they were trying to tell me?

In moments, Dush and several other Ubbish warriors clambered into the morbid chamber. They held knives, long shiny knives, which I could easily verify were made of the same alloys I was. The warrior threw a net over me, and shoved me into a coarse sack, where I stayed for a long time.