James Windsor took one last look around Britannia's drawing room. If you ignored the curving floor, the starkness of the metal ceiling and the fact that most of the paintings were holograms, it could almost pass for a room back home. He had never really appreciated the comforts of Britannia until there had come a time when he knew he was going to spend at least a month on board Ark Royal; suddenly — and more and more so, as that time drew nearer and nearer — all of the royal yacht's home comforts became a lot more apparent.

The ship was a spinner, a rotating cylinder in space; you got the feel of gravity just about anywhere on board, as compared to Ark Royal which just had its one spinning ring. Britannia was larger than Ark Royal; the cabins weren't exactly big but James had seen the plans for Ark Royal and knew the size of its cubby holes. Britannia was just more comfortable, and he wished she was going on the delegation instead of Gilmore's toy ship. He knew there were good reasons why she wasn't but that didn't stop him wishing.

The display showed Ark Royal, a thousand miles away and closing. A spinning top with an extended shaft: home, for the foreseeable future. Ugh. Looking on the bright side, it meant he would enjoy the occasional break away from her all the more. He already had a couple of invitations to attend functions on other delegation ships during the voyage to the Roving and he meant to accept them. Mix business and pleasure.

There was a cough behind him: the ship's doctor, waiting patiently with a case in his hand. James sighed and rolled up his sleeve.

"This probably isn't necessary," he said as the doctor put an infusor together. "Free fall usually makes me chuck anyway."

The doctor pressed the infusor to James' skin and the drug hissed its way into James' bloodstream. "It's your decision," he said, with a hint of disapproval at abused medication which James ignored. The doctor wasn't the first to show disapproval of James' intentions: Britannia's captain, too, had expressed reservations about what he and the ship were to do in the near future. The spray hissed and James winced, both at that and at a pang of prescience. If disapproval was all he got before this business was over, he would be lucky. He suspected he was going to make a lot of enemies.