You could drift and do it, you could shut your eyes and halfway sleep sometimes and just feel the tread with your fingers to know you were on, and check sometimes with your eyes to make sure the strokes didn't miss any dust.Effin' scrub-duty.But you got to hear a bit, like the couple saying the ship was on a sit-and-watch, like the three bitching about somebody named Orsini, somebody saying Fitch had put somebody named Simmons on report for a slow answer to a page, and Simmons was asking for a transfer to alterday, but Orsini wouldn't take him: you got a feel for the way things drifted on board.But then the back started to ache and the arms ached, and the kneecaps got to feeling every shift of weight.And you knew every damn doorway and every crack and crevice in the burn-deck, and you damned every foot that stepped off the mat. You got to know those prints that did it often and what size they were, and thought if you ever found that son of a bitch he was meat.Up to the galley by noon, for tea and a Keis-roll, the hard way, quiet there, because mainday was sleeping.All the way around through the galley and past sickbay—right next to each other; and right around to the white-line and the bridge by a/d 1800.
