" No problem, boss."I hurried back out and down the hall, to be greeted by questioning eyes and puzzled looks from all the people in the dayroom."No t...ey're not all mine." I said."You sure were kissing 'em like they was yours." one young airman said with a grin.Couldn't argue with that kind of reasoning, now could I?"It's kind of complicated, but the simple truth is that they decided to share me." You belong to them, they belong to you... what's the difference?" he asked.I showed him a half. I want to have the time on the plane to prepare for the meeting in Milano." OK, son. Show me your crystal ball. I'm sure it's almost all in there, but just to make sure."I produced the image of the crystal ball. For a while dad kept it hanging in the air, turning it round, looking into it, I supposed. Of course I could not see him, and the sight of the turning ball was eerie, but I guessed what he was doing."You know, dad, it may be a bit difficult to come up with an excuse to lie down,. Even now, in my memory, that was the way I saw him. Heavily muscled and tall, he seemed indomitable. If he said I was safe, that the monster spray would stop the night terrors, then surely I was.It was he who had caught the huge dog when it charged me. He had seized it by the throat as it leaped and shook it like a rag. I remember the dull sound of it's neck breaking. He had cuddled me afterwards. Softly cooing to me that it was all right. Telling me that as long as he lived I would need never. As usual, there was a big deal made of our liftoff for the first attempt at FTL flight. I lifted us out of the atmosphere and aimed for a starting point out of the planetary ecliptic so there would be less chance of an accidental collision as we build up speed to our launch velocity. We started our acceleration toward light speed and waited to see what would happen. The speed rapidly increased until we were traveling so fast that I could not get a meaningful measurement on my own, but had to.