"By the way my name is Rain; and now tell us who you are, what you are, and most importantly what you are doing here." the norn demanded. Douglas, Rain, Erik and the other Ettins who had been in the lab turned into another corridor. By now Douglas had lost any idea about the direction they were heading.
"Well, ... my ... name ... is ... Doug ... las ... and ... I'm ... a ... hu ... man ... and ... I ... have ... no ... i ... de ... a ... how ... I ... got ... here ... so ... don't ... ask ... me."
"Does he always speak like this?"
"No, I guess he has a bad condition - or his species isn't very physically strong." Erik answered.
"My ... con ... di ... ti ... on ... is ... n't ... bad." Rain slowed down.
"If he gets unconscious we'll lose a lot more time. Better now?"
"Much ... better ... I just ... couldn't run ... any longer." Douglas said still gasping.
"Maybe it's the air..." Erik suggested.
"Wait a moment." Rain took a small object out of her pocket which reminded him of a PDA. "That's a small terminal device for the board computer." Rain started to explain. "It can't manage difficult tasks but it *can* access most of the ship's data. Sometimes that's really helpful. Let's see... Atmospheric data... At the moment we have 21% Oxygen, 73% Nitrogen, 5% Carbon dioxide and 1% other gases..."
"That's n..." Douglas started.
"... and an air pressure of 0.4912 bar. Everything at normal levels."
"Oh. That's low - for *me* about 1 bar is normal." he answered.
"Enough small talk. We should keep an eye on this but at the moment there are more important things." Rain stopped in front of a door looking exactly the same as the others they had passed. She took a small plastic card out of her pockets and opened the door with it.
'That's amazing. Looks like military headquarters.' Rain read in Douglas' eyes like in a book.
"Our headquarters. That's the place we use as base for our operations."
'Which operations?'
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Let's go to my office. I'll give you an introduction of what's going on, and then you should tell me your story." Only by now Douglas recognized that the Ettins, except Erik, had vanished in the crowed of Norns and other Ettins.
'Like a bee hive. That must be over hundred Ettins and Norns in this room.'
"What's the mather?" Rain demanded.
"It's only... I've never seen so many Norns and Ettins in one place..."
Erik whispered something in Rains ear and she nodded. "I realized that. You know what to do..." Now Erik, too, disappeared in the crowd.
'I must have said something wrong. But what?'