Mindeham was constructing a cage for the teddy bear when Lae came back to the ship.

"I'll get my revenge!" the teddy bear vowed as he was placed in the cage and the lid was screwed in on top. He hit the bars with his soft furry hands. It made no noise.

"Hi, Mindeham," Lae said, dashing into the ship. "When you're finished with that, can you think of a way to politely refuse my parents' invitation to dinner today?"

"Uh... I've already eaten?" Mindeham tried, double checking the bolts on the cage.

"That wouldn't do. They want to meet you."

"I am horribly ill?"

"You'll be horribly ill when I get to you!" the bear yelled.

"Then they wouldn't let me leave until you're better and they know I won't catch whatever it is!"

"I could just be rude and say no?"

"Then they will hassle me to not fly with you, because you're obviously untrustworthy."

"I can't think of anything else," Mindeham said, stringing the cage up in mid air and standing back to observe his handiwork.

Lae sighed. "I guess you will have to come to dinner then. Put on a nice jacket."

"But I don't want to come to dinner with your parents," Mindeham said. "It's not like we're dating or anything."

"Too bad, it's your fault for not being able to find a good excuse," Lae said. "I don't want to catch hell with them for leaving you behind."

"You'll catch hell from me!" the bear shrieked.

"What if I say I have to keep an eye on the teddy prisoner?" Mindeham asked.

"I can do that," the ship interjected.

"Fine," Mindeham said. "But this is weird."

"I still don't understand," Lae said.

"It makes you look smart," Mindeham said.

"No it doesn't."

"Yes it does."

"How did you even get it?"

"I got it made when we first started. I didn't know that business attire had changed."

"You have to wear a weird top to wear it in the first place!"

"A shirt with a folding collar isn't 'weird'," Mindeham said, adjusting his cuffs nervously.

"You look weird," Lae said. "With your weird top and your weird tying."

"Tie," Mindeham corrected. "Should I go back and change, then?"

"No, we're here now," Lae said. She knocked at the door.

"Hi, Mum," Lae said. "This is Manuel, my coworker."

"Very pleased to meet you," Lae's mother said warmly, looking Mindeham up and down. "Come in, come in."

"Thank you, Mrs... Lae's Mum."

"Oh, call me Yvon!"

Mindeham walked cautiously into the house, Lae following. It looked startlingly like a normal Earth house, with rugs hiding the metal floors and shelves full of knicknacks on the walls. Most of the places he had been in so far had been what Mindeham considered futuristic; possibly Lae's parents were into a more retro look. Lae's mother herded him into the lounge room, where Lae's father was sitting down watching spaceball on a small screen. He got up from his cushiony armchair with a little difficulty, and held out a hand to Mindeham.

"Hello," he said, taking Mindeham's hand in a firm grip. "You're the one looking after my girl, eh?"

"She mostly looks after me, but I try," Mindeham replied.

"Inel, this is Manuel," Lae's mother said.

"Pleased to meet you," Lae's father said. "Shall we go into the kitchen, then?"

They trooped into the small kitchen, and sat around the table while Inel served them stew with bread.

"Your accent's interesting; do you come from World?" Inel asked.

"Oh. Yes," Mindeham said, swallowing a spoonful of stew. "I've been away for a while, though."

"What is it like, living on a planet?" Yvon asked.

"To be honest, it's a lot like living on a station," Mindeham said. "You have your own houses and neighbourhoods and shopping districts. It's just that on Earth, when you go out of them you realise that it's only one part in a huge landscape. And you can go out in any direction as far as you can walk, unless you're on a mountain or next to the sea or something."

"I've heard it is a godless place," Yvon said.

"Mum!" Lae said, waving her spoon at her mother.

"I don't think it is that godless," Mindeham said. "Aphelka lives there, you know. And while people there are more likely to follow the old religions or not follow any religion at all, the gods all did come from there in the first place."

"And they were driven out," Yvon said piously.

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"Your mother has been reading pamphlets from a pastor over in quadrant 5," Inel confided to the table. "He has some very strange ideas."

"They can't have all been driven out if Aphelka is still there," Mindeham said reasonably.

"Don't get into a religious argument with my mum," Lae hissed quietly at him, and more louder, "This stew is great, Dad!"

"Yes," Mindeham agreed quickly.

Yvon served them dessert, an apricot flavoured pudding with a fluffy cream-flavoured topping.

"This is really good," Mindeham said.

"I suppose you ate real apricots down on World," Yvon sniffed, apparently still annoyed at him.

"Well, yes, but they tasted like this," Mindeham said, waving a hand at the pudding. Inel laughed.

"Apricots are extinct," Lae whispered to Mindeham. While Mindeham came to terms with this devastating fact, Lae started a conversation with her father about spaceball.

"We've been doing badly since Sreta was taken by the cult," Inel said, shaking his head.

"Didn't you see the news? It's been taken down," Yvon said.

"Oh, maybe we'll finish the season a bit stronger, then!"

"Is that all you care about? Poor Jarad will be so upset!"

"Maybe it'll knock some sense into him," Inel said.

"I'm still upset you took on Jarad's debt," Yvon said. "We don't want to deplete your savings."

"Don't worry about it. I'm paid a lot in sales."

"Who do you work for, dear?" Yvon asked.

"Er," Lae said.

"United Exports and Holdings Group Incorporated," Mindeham said, thinking back to the writing on his last paycheck.

"That's one of Preasi's companies," Inel commented.

"Well, she can afford to pay us well," Lae said.

"You never seemed like a Preasi type of girl," Yvon said, patting her daughter's hand worriedly.

"I'm not anyone's type of girl," Lae muttered.

After dinner, Lae and her father went into the lounge room to watch a spaceball program, while Mindeham was interrogated by Lae's mother in the kitchen.

"You're not involved with my daughter in any way, are you?" Yvon asked him.

"What? No, we're just coworkers," Mindeham said.

"Do you know if she has anyone?"

"I haven't noticed anyone, but I wouldn't know if she was communicating with someone out of business hours."

"I guess it is good that you both have your privacy, despite living on that ship," Yvon said, sounding vaguely dissatisfied.

"It's a well-designed ship," Mindeham said. "And very safe; it won't glitch like the ship Lae was renting did."

"What does she mean, it glitched?"

"We're not sure exactly, because the ship was destroyed by the aliens who kidnapped her, but from what she describes it sounds like the computer wasn't writing redundancy coordinates properly, and then during jump they interacted with a neutrino, scrambling the main computer. The jump computer then went to the redundancy coordinates to tell it where to jump out from, but as they were wrong, it jumped her far from human space."

Yvon didn't understand this explanation, so Mindeham went on a long-winded explanation on how warp ships worked and the usual sets of safeties that were put in place.

"Our ship actually has three redundancies, instead of one; it has one physical disc, so electronic interference can't wipe it out; we've got one on solid state, to make mechanical failure less likely, and we've got another regular optical computer, stored on the other end of the ship so that if there is a local disruption it is unlikely to take out both."

"How do you remember all of those?"

"Oh. Preasi understood that Lae was a bit wary about ships after what happened, so she ran us through all the safety features before she gave it to us."

"You talked to Preasi herself?" Yvon demanded. "In person?!"

"Yes. You see, after we were rescued, we were taken to Bardlenni space, and Preasi happened to be there and so gave us the maps to get home. That's how Lae met her."

"How Lae met her; how did you meet her?" Yvon asked, picking up on that.

"Oh, I was on her payroll on and off before I got kidnapped," Mindeham said, waving his hands vaguely.

"Is she trustworthy?"

"Very, otherwise she'd not be able to do the deals she does. As long as you know what you want out of the arrangement and don't forget it half way through negotiations, she'll work for you as well as herself up to a point."

"I just don't know if I like Lae working for her."

"Hey, Lae came up to Preasi and came up with her own job description," Mindeham said. "You don't need to worry about Lae."

After the spaceball program, Mindeham and Yvon joined Lae and Inel in the lounge room for coffee, tea, and chocolate biscuits.

"We should do that quiz," Yvon suddenly said. Inel sighed.

"What quiz?" Lae asked.

"There was a quiz on who your patron god is going around ChatTime recently," Inel said. "Your mother is still worried about your employer, Lae."

"It's just a quiz," Yvon said defensively.

"I'll do it," Lae said, rolling her eyes. Yvon found the quiz in her feed, and Lae spent the next few minutes answering the questions.

"There we are, it says Preasi's my patron," Lae said after a while.

"Let's see," Yvon said, leaning over.

"Sorry, I already pressed the back button," Lae said.

"What about you, Manuel?" Inel asked.

"I already know who my patron god is," Mindeham said, but took the test anyway.

"Why didn't you let me see your results? Do the test again," Yvon said.

"Nope," Lae said.

"Yep, Elvenheim," Mindeham said a few minutes later, showing the result to the rest of them.

"Are you particularly adventurous, then?" Yvon asked.

"Not really, I just lead an adventurous life," Mindeham said.

"Who did it say was your patron?" Lae asked her mother.

"I got Wendolina, who I always felt was a good fit for me," Lae's mother said.

"You do work in station systems, and you are a mother," Mindeham said, "so that makes sense."

"I got Mindeham, so I guess I'm all the rage at the moment," Inel said.

"Why Mindeham?" Lae asked, as Mindeham choked on his tea.

"I thought you'd be Case, because you deliver messages," Mindeham said.

"Apparently Case is revealing and collecting information, not facilitating its spread. Delivering the post is considered catalytic, and therefore in Mindeham's domain."

"I guess I need to read up more about this sort of stuff," Mindeham said, finishing his tea.

"Thanks awfully for the dinner, but we're already a day behind schedule, so we'd better go before the port closes for the night," Lae said, standing up. Yvon and Inel hugged her, and Inel shook Mindeham's hand.

"Nice to meet you," he said.

"And you as well," Mindeham said.

"Yes, safe travels," Yvon said.

"I hope everything here stays well," Mindeham said.

"Well, good night!" Lae said brightly, and ushered Mindeham out of the house.