"Don't absorb the cargo's superstitions about Witches and their Familiars. They have fogged, even dirty, ideas. They were just dogs to me. Like Lad."
"A dog, that's all he is," Gordus said in a manner designed to explain the thing patiently to Hammen.
"Lad is a dog."
"Why do you emphasize the point now?" Hammen demanded.
The Companion sat on a seat formed from a single S-shaped plastic surface. Hammen studied the bulk of Gordus, Coordinator of Transmatters, who sat hulked in his utility chair in the bubble office overhanging the City of the Sea, on the world of Lanole. Hammen was comfortable, cooled, relaxed, amused by a light play of sensory electron music, and aggressively unhappy.
Gordus sat in his great chair patting the hair on the back of his left hand with his right palm, as if the fist were a sleeping kitten. At Hammen's feet, Lad's neck muscles quivered uneasily.
"Your record, Hammen," Gordus said at last, "is a good one."
"How could it be better? I've never lost one member of a cargo."
"But you have lost three Companions."