"What is it you want?" she asked.
"What is it I want!" he echoed with barely concealed anger. "This is Jason, remember me? We're friends. It is allowed for friends to talk without 'wanting' anything."
"What happened on the ship has nothing to do with what happens on Pyrrus." She started forward impatiently as she talked. "I have finished my reconditioning and must return to work. You'll be staying here in the sealed buildings so I won't be seeing you."
"Why don't you say 'with the rest of the children'—that's what your tone implies? And don't try walking out, there are some things we have to settle first—"
Jason made the mistake of putting out his hand to stop her. He didn't really know what happened next. One instant he was standing—the next he sprawled suddenly on the floor. His shoulder was badly bruised, and Meta had vanished down the corridor.
Limping back to his own room he cursed women in general and Meta in particular. Dropping onto his rock-hard bed he tried to remember the reasons that had brought him here in the first place. And weighed them against the perpetual torture of the gravity, the fear-filled dreams it inspired, the automatic contempt of these people for any outsider. He quickly checked the growing tendency to feel sorry for himself. By Pyrran standards he was soft and helpless. If he wanted them to think any better of him, he would have to change a good deal.
He sank into a fatigue-drugged sleep then, that was broken only by the screaming fear of his dreams.
VII.
In the morning Jason awoke with a bad headache and the feeling he had never been to sleep. As he took some of the carefully portioned stimulants that Brucco had given him, he wondered again about the combination of factors that filled his sleep with such horror.