He moved to a more comfortable position, still staring up at the blank inscrutability of the metal ceiling. A play of light and shadow caught his eye. Idly, he followed its shiftings—first slow, then suddenly abrupt, then slow again.
Little by little, an uneasiness crept over him. New tension began to crawl in his midriff.
He loosened his belt and pulled the wrinkles from his tunic; moved from side to side.
But the uneasiness grew. He could not make it go away.
Biting his lip, he lay back, still searching for the cause.
Overhead, the shadows on the ceiling slowly began to shift again.
It came to him, then: He was lying motionless, allegedly alone in this cramped room—yet the shadows were moving!
There could be only one answer: Someone else shared these quarters with him.
The hair on the back of his neck crawled. Grimly, he wondered what the odds on his life would be if it turned out that some Pervod guard had been trapped here when the carrier took off.