Death in Transit

The weeks passed slowly, but they did pass, and Clifton busied himself with exhaustive checks throughout the entire ship, interested himself in the stereos (they weren't so bad now that he had nothing else to do), music tapes (he weeded out the ones he didn't like), massages (he was pleased to discover they left him with a glow), books (funny how hard it was to read after the ease of stereo), mathematics (how much he'd forgotten), a few languages (German was still his hardest), moods of writing (he just did not have the knack), painting (he was always drawing machinery and wondering why)—and found the image of Karen's laughing blue eyes still there at the edge of his mind, though curiously distant, as if it were one of the stereos he had seen.