Now in the bar alone, Tom stared down into the mixed water-and-booze drink he'd inherited from the man he was before. His eyes burned through with white letters and he ground a calloused finger into their lids to calm them as the other dusty patrons swirled around him unnoticed. Resting his tired face on a rough hand, his mind tumbled down into his gut while images and sounds from his last days overlapped on the to film of his mind.

When he was growing up, he'd had a favourite question; something he would ask someone after knowing them for a week or so. It was something that required a prior trust in that way, something that opened the doors to discussion and understanding. It was one of the things that had convinced him maybe he should be a lawyer instead of... well anyway it always came back to that.

The question was: Who are you? And never became any simpler or bigger. It was the question of a child posed to adults, man to god. Man to man. Only three times in his life had he ever been totally satisfied with an answer, and he'd asked it many more times than that.

Certainly he'd asked himself before; when he'd left home, when he'd gotten his first command in flight school, when he told Lis he loved her and she'd told him the same. Now it was different though, he was afraid to ask himself. He was undefined, just aman in a jacket in a bar. No certificate, no symbol, no money, or parents, or friends. Just a member of that black and grey and brown sea that had always formed the background of his world. The faces in the cockpits he'd shredded, on the news, in the little arrows of coloured light on glowing screens he'd wacthed and gambled on through pressure glass. He pictured himself striding through the front door of this room, light rising behind him like a hero, highlighting the blue of his uniform and the brown of his hair. Everyone stopping and gasping, waiting to see what he would say or do, whose life he would change forever on a whim.

He'd been a god, of sorts; how had he never thought of it like that before? He'd known men and women who had, fighter pilots or destroyer captains or soldiers who loved the power to decide, but he'd always frowned on them, seen himself as bigger and better than that thinking. As if he needed another thing to hate about himself now that she was gone, and even at that he wasn't sure if he meant his ship or his wife.

The news came on and the war was getting worse. All of a sudden things were terrible, though the show they had been tuned to before would never have mentioned it. The Confederation was pulling out of Ross 128 and leaving Tom behind. It took a great amount of strength for Tom to turn and look at the faces of those watching the report, but on one seemed to care. Of course, he thought, this will bother them not at all. The war-work will end and new work will start. Not his job anymore either.

Someone sat next to him but didn't order. A pad slide across the bar to fall under Tom's gaze, and he deemed it appropriate to focus on the displayed image. There was a ship there, highlighted with words and lines, resembling a squat little urban bird with engines and doors. She looked not menacing or impressive but tired and useful, and in that Tom felt he shared half her characteristics.

"Rates about a class 2 in atmo, better in cruising. Much better." It wasn't Tom speaking but the voice was like his, albeit with more mischief and knowhow behind it. "I've got jump clearance to the core, if that's where you're headed."

Tom's heart started to pound at the thought of speaking, but somehow he managed to conjure a voice out of a dry gully. "I've been on a Redbird once before; had a tendency to fall out of the sky."

"That's handy," The voice answered, "When you're going to ground."

"Yeah. Guess there's no fallin' in space really. It's all sky."

"She could use a pilot. Her current one's... not agreein' with her."

"Nothin' much is agreein' with me these days Shaw."

"That's good." Curtis Shaw said to Thomas Freeman as the latter man looked into his friend's eyes for the first time, "This work needs invisible people."

"You're in luck," Tom said as he drained his drink, "I'm the best kind."

When the bartender came back to sullen flyboy in the dusty jacket the man had left. Among three bent local coins was something else; it had a noble face, and two wide-swept wings.