QUOTE : Rachel barely noticed any of it, and not just because she was insulated by the press of bodies on every side fo her. She paid little mind to the deck buckling beneath her like a maddened mule, or even to the stink of feces and urine that the exiles were forced to void where they sat. She was simply numb, her mind having absorbed all the fear it could, like a sponge saturated with water: after a while the fear became a constant, cold companion, a simple fact of existence.