"Actions, Captain, will speak for you from here on."He bobbed his head. "I understand."Noia found that she was getting rations as good as anyone else;...her duties were no more onerous than those of any other. It took nearly a moon to reach Baytown. Most of her fellow crewmates shied away from her; well aware of the frequent conversations she had with the captain.Once, on the voyage south, they'd put into a cove and two dozen men came pelting towards them from an ambush. A single volley of rifle. The summer was like an oven and bathed the street in brilliant, harsh, white light. The sand in the vacant block beside her blazed brilliant white, while the breeze lifted it into little columns and eddies which seemed to hang in the air for the moment before collapsing. The ubiquitous hotel and apartment buildings lined the street, behind which rose the odd oblong of the Ski Dubai construction. Far in the distance the sharp spike of the Burj Khalifa pointed at the sky like an exclamation mark. I remember the amazing water cube thing we swam in. And press. I know I talked to the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Washington Post and, oddly enough, a pair of Japanese papers. There were others but those were the ones I remember. If I wasn't in the water, I was at the pool rooting for someone. If I wasn't there, I was either eating or sleeping. In all that, there were a couple moments that time stopped and I'll remember forever.Winning the bronze was not one of them. I didn't realize that. "Where did you go?" Donna asked when Phil drove back intothe drive way, undid his seat belt and got out of the car.Since Phil had traded in his old car he had missed theautomatic seatbelts of the old one."I got a razor for my legs," Phil replied as he glared athis mother in the eyes. "Later I'm going to buy a dress formy Uncle's wedding next month. As I told you a milliontimes, I'll wear a dress for special occasions like thewedding but I'll slice my throat open and kill myselfbefore I'll ever.