Zaf's frustration mounted as his three most anterior appendages cramped. His vehicle's manufacturer would be receiving a nasty letter about the speciesism implied by the fact that they didn't make a single model suitable for tentacled beings, that's for sure. Tentacles weren't designed to be so tightly coiled for any length of time. He wondered fleetingly whether he'd be able to sue if his tips suffered permanent loss of dexterity, then forced himself back to alertness when he realized how tired he must be if he'd thought of himself as desperate and his thoughts as fleeting. He'd never get published indulging in such clichés . . . but again he was drifting. He felt vaguely guilty for not keeping intently focused on what awaited him at home, so set his face as if looking grim and determined would direct his throughts straight ahead, but he still had more than three-quarters of an hour left to his flight, and he knew himself well enough to know that his mind roamed as it would.

Trebor normally wouldn't have minded except that he misread the intergalactic traffic sign and he thought that he was getting into the correct lane. But instead of getting into the "tentacle" express lane he was doomed to hang out just below Orion's belt for as long as it took for traffic to resume flowing.