 How many times has Critten been a Nilly?
Sure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very many of us, never were. The Weblor I had taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. "As I recall," Ellason said, "there was something about stunners." Being a Nilly is important, probably as important as running the ship, and I think it is this thought that keeps us satisfied, willing to be what we are. A space-borne metropolis, it would be the home for three thousand persons outward bound, only the crew on the return trip. This would be his home for a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. It was a sound he knew would be with him for two years—one year going and one year returning. The theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first day out. Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of them, according to the Captain's Bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter which went to all hands and passengers. This, then, was what happened when you took three thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year.
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