Several hours had passed since launch. Spiff's initial excitement had given way to impatient boredom, and he'd been occupying his time pacing and reading the computer's Planet Gallery file on Q-13. It being an unknown planet, there wasn't much in the file; it was yellow, it was deserty, and that was all they knew. The movable 3D model was fun to play with, though.

Spiff had been alone in the computer room, until he heard a door open behind him. He turned around to see Rolf walking in.

"Hau are yu feelink?" asked the older boy.

"You know, Rolf, I think I'm finally starting to barely understand what you're saying," Spiff sardonically replied. He went back to playing with the model. Rolf, quite impatient, grabbed him by the shoulders and droned, "Howwww arrrrrrre yyyyoooooouuuuuu feeeeeeeliiiiiiiinnnnnggg?"

Spiff blinked. "Oh... Oh, I get it. Uh. Why do you want to know?"

Rolf released his grip on Spiff's shoulders. "Becauhss, yu- ohhh, c'mere..." He pushed Spiff away from the computer and quit out of the Planet Gallery program. Spiff protested, "Hey!", but Rolf ignored him. He clicked on a program labelled "Note Taker 17.3", which turned about to be a word processing program.

Rolf placed his hands on the keyboard and typed, "You never talk to anyone. And now you seem mad for some reason. I wanted to see if there was a problem." When he finished, he stepped away and motioned for Spiff to type something.

Spiff read over Rolf's message, thought for a moment, and typed:

"i dont talk to you because i dont like you. and im not mad im just really really bored"

Rolf typed: "Why don't you like me?"

Spiff typed: "youre friends with mort and you talk too much"

Rolf: "How do I talk too much? Nobody else has ever told me that."

Spiff: "well its not like you talk too much i just cant understand what your saying and it ticks me off"

"That's not very nice. I can't help how I sound."

"yeah yeah but it still bothers me and anyway its not really why i dont like you"

"Well then why dont you?"

As Rolf typed this, Spiff scoffed and said, "You really don't know?"

Rolf started to say "Vat du yu meen?" but he cut himself off and returned to the keyboard: "No, I really don't, I'm sorry. Why?"

Rolf went over the past few days in his head. Spiff was about to take the keyboard from him, but Rolf pushed his hand away and kept typing:

"Is it because of the thing with the rocks?"

"YES!" typed Spiff. "MORT WAS TRYING TO TRAP ME AND YOU SAID NOTHING! I HAD TO GET OUT ALL BY MYSELF!"

"I said I was sorry. Mort was pulling on me."

"you could have told hiM NO! YOU COUldve said you had to help me 1st!"

"But Mort needed my help."

"so did I! why do you always have to do what that meatbrain wants?"

"He's my friend. I know he's mean sometimes but he just thinks he's having fun. I told him to stop."

"yeah and he DIDN'T!"

"Look, you just have to let him be around you for a while. He'll warm up to you."

"yeah like how he warmed up to fargul?"

"It's Fargle. And he doesn't like to talk to people."

"neither do i but youre talking to me anyway"

"I'm just worried about you. I wanted to talk to you."

Spiff broke the silence by saying aloud, "Yeah, and I don't want to talk! So butt out of my face! And if you're so worried about me, why didn't you worry about Fargle? Huh?"

Rolf, it seemed, had no response to this. He simply stared unblinkingly at the screen. The awkward silence was broken briefly by the sound of the door opening again, but after it did, the silence returned.

Spiff turned around. At the door was Fargle, who seemed to want to say something, but was having a very difficult time actually saying it. He stammered, "Um... Uh... Er... M-M-Mort..."

"Mort...?" said Spiff.

"Mort... Mort wants..."

Spiff inched a bit closer to the boy. "What does he want?"

The ship echoed with the faint sound of Mort's voice. "What Mr. Quiet's trying to tell you is that I want you in your seats! We're landing in a minute!"

"Yeah..." said Fargle, who swiftly turned around and started to run back to the cockpit.

"Fargle! Wait!" shouted Spiff.

Halfway through the hall, Fargle stopped running. He turned around, and looked back. "W...W...What?"

Spiff started walking to his side. "I wanted to ask you something," he said. He turned back at Rolf and smiled. At first, it was a gloating smirk, but then it turned into something more friendly. He kept walking and closed the door.