Gordon R. Dickson & Harry Harrison

1

The explosion drummed and shuddered all through the fabric
of the Albenareth spaceship, just as Giles reached the foot of the
ladder leading up from the baggage area into passenger territory.
He grabbed the railing of the spiral staircase that was the ladder
and hung on. But almost on the heels of the Erst tremor came an
unexpected second explosion that tore him loose and threw him
against the further wall of the corridor, smashing him into the
metal surface.

Stunned, he stumbled back to his feet. He began to pull him-
self up the staircase as fast as he could, gaining speed as he went.
His mind cleared. He could not have been unconscious for more
than a few seconds, he thought. At the top of the stairs he turned
hastily back down an upper corridor toward the stem and his own
stateroom. But this wider, passenger corridor was already filling
with obstacles in the shape of bewildered, small, gray-suited men
and women-arbites indent to Belben; and abruptly the loud and
terrible moaning of an emergency, ship-out-of-control signal
erupted into life and continued without pause. Already the atmo-
sphere of the corridor had the acrid taste of smoke, and there were
cries to him for help from the half-seen figures of the arbites.

The incredible was happening. Below them and around them
all, the great spaceship had evidently caught fire from the two

explosions, and was now helpless, a brief new star falling through
the endless distances of interstellar space. Spaceships were not
supposed to bum, especially the massive vessels of the Albenareth
-but this one was doing so.

A coldness began to form in the pit of Giles' stomach; for the
air around him was already warming and now beginning to haze
with the smoke, and the sounds of arbite terror he heard tore at his
conscience like sharp and jagged icicles.

He fought off his ingrained response toward the frightened
indentees around him, walling it off, surrounding it with his own
fury. He had a job to do, a duty to finish. That came first, before
anyone or anything. The arbites aboard were not his direct re-
sponsibility. He began to run, dodging the hands of the reaching
figures that loomed up through the smoke ahead of him, brushing
them aside, now and then hurdling a fallen one who could not be

sidestepped.

And all the while around the cold core in him, his fury grew.
He put on speed. Now there was occasional debris in the corridor;

here and there, panels in the walls, glimpsed through the smoke,
sagged away from him like sheets of melting wax. None of this
should be happening. There was no reason for wholesale disaster.
But he had no time now to figure out what had gone wrong. The
moans and cries of the arbite passengers still tore at him, but he
plunged on.

A darker, narrower-than-human figure loomed suddenly out
of the smoke before him. A long, oddly boned hand, a three-
fingered hand, caught his bright-orange shipsuit and held him.

"To a lifeshipl" brayed the Albenareth crewman, almost
buzzing the human words. "Turn about. Go forward! Not to the

stern."

Giles checked his instinct to surge against the restraining
hand. He was large and powerful, stronger by far than any arbite,
except those bred and trained to special uses; but he knew better
than to try to pull loose from the apparently skinny fingers holding
him.

"My Honor!" he shouted at the alien, using the first words he
could think of to which an Albenareth mind might respond. "Duty
-my obligation! I'm Steel-Giles Steel Ashad, an Adelman! The
only Adelman aboard heie. Don't you recognize me?"

The alien and he were trapped in a moment of motionless-
ness. The dark, lipless, narrow face stared into his from inches
away. Then the hand of the Albenareth let go and the alien mouth
opened in the dry cackling laughter that meant many things, but
not humor.

"Go!" said the crewman. Giles turned and ran on.

Just a little farther brought him to the door of his suite. The
metal handle burned his fingers and he let go. He kicked the door
with a grunt of effort, and it burst open. Within, the bitter taste of
thick smoke took him solidly by the throat.

He groped his way to his travel bag, jerked it open, and
pulled out the metal box inside it. Coughing, he punched out the
combination, and the lock of the box let go, the lid sprang open.
Hastily he pawed through the mass of papers within. His fingers
closed on the warrant for extradition, crammed it into a suit
pocket, and dipped down to rip open the destruct trigger that
would incinerate the box with all the rest of its contents. A white-
hot flare shot up before him and the metal frame of the container
collapsed like melting ice. He turned, hesitated, and pulled tools
from inside his shipsuit. He had meant to hide these carefully,
once his job was done; but there was no point in hiding anything
now. Still coughing, he tossed the tools into the heat of the still-
flaring container, turned, and plunged once more into the clearer
air of the corridor, heading back finally toward the bow of the
vessel and the particular lifeship he had been assigned to.

The Albenareth crewman was gone from his post when Giles
passed that point again. Under the ceiling lights, the corridor was
misty with smoke, but free now even of the figures of arbites. A
small hope flickered in him. Perhaps someone else had taken
charge of them by this time. He ran on. He was almost to the
lifeship. There were voices in conversation just ahead-then some-

thing large and dark seemed to flicker up in front of him, out of
nowhere, and something else that felt like a giant flyswatter
slapped him from his feet-
He was momentarily staggered, but recovering even as he fell
backward to the soft surface of the corridor. His head clearing, he
lay for a second fighting to stay conscious. Now that he was down
where the smoke was thinner, he could see that he had run into a
door someone had left standing open. As he lay there, he heard
two arbite voices-one male, one young and female-talking.

"You heard that? The ship's breaking up," the man said.

"There's no point our waiting out here now. The lifeship's
just down that short hall. Let's go."

"No, Mara. Wait ... we were supposed to wait . . ." The

man's voice trailed off.

"What're you afraid of, Groce?" The girl's voice had an edge
to it. "You act as if you don't dare breathe without permission
from her! Do you want to stay here and choke to death?"

"It's all right for you . . ." muttered the male voice. "I've
never been mixed up in anything. My record's perfect."

"If you think that matters-"

Giles 'head was clear now. He rolled to his feet in one quick
motion, stepped around the open door, and joined the two smaller

gray-suited figures beyond it.

"All right," he said, crisply. "You're correct, girl. The life-
ship's just down the corridor, here. You-what's your name?
Groce? Lead off!"

The male arbite turned without a word and obeyed, respond-
ing instinctively to the note of command he would have heard from
Adelbom all the days of his life. He was a short, round-headed,
stocky man in early middle age. For a second, before following.
Giles glanced curiously at the girl arbite. She was small, as all
those of the lower class were, but good-looking for an arbite.
Under her light-brown, close-cropped hair, her pale, narrow face
was composed and unafraid. No doubt some high-caste blood in
her ancestry somewhere, Giles thought.

"Good girl," he said more gently. "You follow me, now.
Hang on to my jacket if the smoke gets too thick to see."

He patted her on the head before stepping out in front of her.
He had turned away and did not see the sudden wild flash of
indignation and anger that twisted her features as his hand touched
her head. But the look was gone almost as soon as it had ap-
peared. She followed him with the normal calmness of arbite ex-
pression on her face.

Giles reached out ahead to close his hand on the right shoul-
der of Groce. The man flinched at the touch.

"Steady, there!" snapped Giles. "All you have to do is obey.
Move, nowl"

"Yes, Honor," muttered Groce, doubtfully. But his shoulder
squared under Giles' fingers. His step became firmer, and he led
the way into the smoky corridor.

The smoke thickened. They all coughed. Giles felt the hand
of the girl, Mara, grope for the slack of his jacket in back and take
hold of it.

"Keep moving!" said Giles, between coughs. "It can't be
much further."

Suddenly they came up against a barrier.

"A door," said Groce.

"Open it. Go on through!" snapped Giles, impatiently. The ar-
bite obeyed-and suddenly they were all in a small area where the
smoke was less dense. Mara pushed closed behind them the door
by which they had just entered.

There was another door directly in front of them, also closed.
A heavy airlock door. Stepping past Groce, Giles pushed at it
without being able to open it, then pounded on its activating but-
ton with his fist. The door opened slowly, swinging inward, away
from them. Beyond was an airlock space and a further airlock
door, open.

"Go," said Giles briefly to the two arbites, pointing to the
other open lock. Mara obeyed, but Groce hesitated.

"Honor, sir?" he asked. "Please-what happened to the
Spacehner?"

"An explosion somewhere aft. I don't know what caused it/'
answered Giles, shortly. "Go ahead, now. The lifeship's through
the further lock, there.*'
Groce still hesitated.
"What if there's others coming?" he asked.
"Anyone coming will be here soon," Giles said. "With this
smoke already in the corridors, there isn't much time. This lifeship
is going to have to be launched soon."
"But what if, when I get inside-"

"When you get inside," Giles said, "there'll be an Albenareth
there to tell you what to do. There's an alien officer in charge of
any lifeship. Now, movel"

Groce went. Giles turned back to make sure that the airlock
door behind him was closed. The smoke was eddying around him,
although he could not see the source of the air current that was
moving it, now that the shipside airlock door was closed. A loud-
speaker over the closed door echoed suddenly to the sound of
distant coughing.

"Sir," said the voice of Groce, unexpectedly behind him,
"there isn't any Albenareth in the lifeship yet."

"Get back inside. Wait there!" he snapped at the arbite, with-
out turning his head. The sound of coughing from the loudspeaker
was louder now, echoed by the clang of stumbling feet approach-
ing. One of those coming, Giles thought, had better be the Al-
benareth officer. Giles could pilot his own yacht around the Solar
System, but as for handling an alien lifeship ...

He punched the "open" button. The inner lock door swung
wide. Dim figures were stumbling toward him in the smoke. Giles
swore. They were all human, dressed alike in the dusty gray of
their arbite shipsuits. There were five of them, he counted as they
came closer, clinging to one another's clothing, several of them
whimpering when they were not coughing. The one in front was an
angular, gray-haired woman who dipped her head briefly in an
automatic gesture of respect when she saw him. He opened the
inner door and motioned them inside, moving aside so they would
not brush against him as they went. Before the last one was in, the

corridor lights flickered, went out, came back on again-then died
completely.

Giles closed the door behind the five and touched the glow
button on his watch. Under normal conditions the light from the
dial was normally quite strong, but now it only lit up the rolling
smoke, let in from the corridor. The air holding the smoke was
hotter too; the fire could not be far away. He was coughing again,
and could not control it, his head aching from the fumes.

With a sharp clang a section of the airlock wall fell away and
Giles turned in that direction. The air current from a hidden
source was suddenly stronger, and there was an elongated opening
in what had appeared to be solid metal. The smoke was being
sucked into it strongly. In the partially clear air a tall, thin form
appeared, stooping with its head to pass through the opening.

"About timel" Giles said, coughing. The Albenareth did not
answer him, moving quickly in a typical broken-kneed gait to the
lock, with Giles close behind. Once they were both inside, the
Albenareth turned and dogged shut the inner lock door. The action
spoke for itself; the clash of the dogged lock echoed on Giles' ears
like the closing of a coffin lid.

The voices of the arbites had dropped into silence as the
Albenareth and Giles entered, and those already there moved war-
ily aside from the alien. Still silent, the gaunt figure reached down
into a slot in the soft flooring and pulled up a metal frame laced
with flexible plastic. It was an acceleration cot, and a good deal of
dust came up with it.

"Open the cots like this," the Albenareth ordered, the human
words coming out at last, high-pitched and buzzing. "Strap down.
Motions will be abrupt."

In the continuing silence, he turned and strode to the control
console in the lifeship's nose, and belted himself into one of the
two control chairs there. His three-fingered hands moved swiftly.
Lights glowed on the panels and the two viewscreens before him
came to life, showing only the out-of-focus metal walls of the
lifeship capsule. Giles and the arbites aboard had just enough time
to pull up their cots before the launch button was hit. They

clutched at the frames of their cots as the sudden acceleration
pounced on them.

Explosive charges blew away the hull section covering the
lifeship capsule. Gravity forces pressed them hard against the web-
bing of their cots, as the lifeship was hurled away from its mother
ship, into space. The acceleration changed direction as the life-
ship's drive took over and moved it away from the dying ship; and
a nauseating sensation rippled through their bodies as they left the
gravity field of the larger vessel and the weaker grav-simulation
field of the lifeship came on.

Giles was aware of all this only absently. Automatically his
hands were locked tightly about the metal frame of his cot to keep
him from being thrown off it, but his eyes were fixed on the right of
the two viewscreens in the bow. The screen on the left showed only
stars, but the right-hand screen gave a view directly astern, a view
filled with the image of the burning, dying ship.

There was no relation between the jumble of wreckage seen
there and the ship they had boarded in orbit high above the equa-
tor of Earth, twelve days before. Twisted and torn metal glowed
white-hot in the darkness of space. Some lights still showed in
sections of the hull, but most of it was dark. The glowing wreckage
had shrunk to the size of a hot ember as they hurtled away from it;

now it maintained a constant size and moved from screen to screen
as they orbited about it. The Albenareth that had joined them was
speaking into a grille below one of the screens, in the throbbing
buzz of his own tongue. He or she was pronouncing what were
clearly the same words, over and over again, until there was a
scratching hiss from the speaker and another voice answered.
There was a rapid discussion as the burning wreck was centered on
the forward screen, then began to grow in size once more.

"We're going back!" an arbite voice shouted hysterically from
the darkness. "Stop him! We're going back!"

"Be quietl" Giles said, automatically. "All of you-that's an
order!" After a second, he added, "The Albenareth knows what
has to be done. No one else can pilot this ship."

In silence the arbites continued to watch as the image of the

wreckage grew before them, enlarging until it filled the screen-
until it appeared they were driving down into it. But the smooth
play of the Albenareth's six long fingers on the control console
keys controlled the lifeship's motion, sent it drifting inward, slip-
ping past jagged fangs of steel that swam into view in the lifeship's
forward viewscreen. Suddenly, there was a smooth, unscarred sec-
tion of hull before them and they clanged against it. Magnetic
clamps thudded as they locked on, and the lifeship was moved
spasmodically, with loud grating sounds, as it was orientated with
something on the hull. Then the alien rose from the controls,
turned, and strode back to undog the airlock. The inner door
ground open-then the outer one.

There was no rush of air, for they were sealed tight to another
airlock-one on the spaceliner. The outer door of this lock, chilled
from space and white-frosted with condensation, opened a crack,
then stopped. The Albenareth wrapped a fold of his smocklike
garment around his hands, seized the open edge, and pulled
strongly until it opened all the way. Smoke haze beyond it cleared
briefly to reveal another airlock and the gaunt figures of two more
Albenareth.

There was a rapid conversation between the three aliens.
Giles could make out no expression on the creased and wrinkled
dark skin of their faces. Their eyes were round and unreadable.
They punctuated their words with snapping gestures of their three-
fingered hands, opening and closing the mutually opposed fingers.
Suddenly, their talk ceased. Both the first Albenareth and one of
the others reached out to touch the fingertips of both their hands,
briefly, with those of the third, who stood deepest within the lock.

The two closer aliens stepped back into the lifeship. The one
they left did not move or try to follow them. Then, as the airlock
door began to close, all three began to laugh at once, together, in
their high-pitched, clattering laughter, until the closing door sep-
arated them. Even then, the captain and the alien beside him con-
tinued to laugh as the lifeship moved away from their shipmate in
the spaceliner wreckage. Only slowly did their laughter die, sur-
rounded by the staring silence of the arbite passengers.

2

Shock at the sudden disaster fatigue, and smoke inhalation,
or perhaps all these things, combined to numb the watching hu-
mans as they stared with reddened eyes at the image of the burning
ship, pictured on the stemview screen in the front of the lifeship.
The image dwindled, until it was no more than a star among all the
other points of light on the screen.

Finally, it winked from sight. When it was gone, the tall alien
who had first entered the lifeship and driven it outward from the
spaceliner rose from the control seat, turned, and came back to
face the humans, leaving the other alien doing some incompre-
hensible work with part of the control panel. The first Albenareth
halted an arm's length from Giles, and raised one long, dark finger,
the middle of the three on his hand.

"I am Captain Rayumung." The finger moved around to
point back at the second alien. "Engineer Munghanf."

Giles nodded in acknowledgment.

"You are their leader?" demanded the Captain.

*T am an Adelman," said Giles, frigidly. Even allowing for
the natural ignorance of the alien, it was hard to endure an as-
sumption that he might be merely one of a group of arbites.

The Captain turned away. As if this action were a signal, a
number of voices called out from among the arbites-all of which

10

the Captain ignored. The voices died away as the tall form re-
turned to the control area and from a compartment there took out
a rectangular object wrapped in golden cloth, and held it cere-
moniously at arm's length for one still moment before putting it
down on a horizontal surface of the control panel. The Engineer
moved to stand alongside, as the Captain put one finger on the
surface of the cloth. Both then bent their heads in silence above it,
motionless.

"What is it?" asked the voice of Groce, behind Giles. "What's
that they've got?"

"Be quiet," said Giles, sharply. "It's their sacred book-the
Albenareth astrogational starbook holding their navigation tables
and information."

Groce fell silent. But the determined voice of Mara, ignoring
his order, took up the questioning.

"Honor, sir," she said in Giles' ear. "Will you tell us what's
happening, please?"

Giles shook his head, and put his finger to his-lips, refusing to
answer until the two aliens had raised their heads and begun to
unwrap the golden cloth from about their book. Revealed, it was
like something out of the human past-as it was indeed out of the
Albenareth past-a thing of animal-skin binding and pages of a
paper made from vegetable pulp.

"All right," said Giles at last, turning around to find the
arbite girl right behind him. He spoke to her and to all the rest as
well. "Spacegoing and religion are one and the same thing to the
Albenareth. Everything they do to navigate this lifeship or any
other space vessel is a holy and ritual act. You should all have
been briefed about that when you were sent to board the space-
liner, back on Earth."

"They told us that much, sir," said Mara. "But they didn't
explain how it worked, or why."

Giles looked at her with a touch of irritation. It was not his
duty to be tutor to a handful of arbites- Then he relented. It would
probably be better if they were informed. They would all be living
in close quarters under harsh conditions for some days, or even

11

weeks. They would adapt better to their privations if they under-
stood.

"All right. Listen, then, all of you," he said, speaking to them
all. "The Albenareth think of space as if it were heaven. To them,
the planets and all inhabited solid bodies are the abode of the
Imperfect. An Albenareth gains Perfection by going into space.
The more trips and the more time spent away from planetfall, the
more Perfection gained. You noticed the Captain identified himself
as *Rayumung' and the Engineer as 'Munghanf.' Those aren't
names. They're ranks, like stair-steps on the climb to a status of
Perfection. They've got nothing to do with the individual's duties
aboard a space vessel, except that the more responsible duties go
to those of higher rank, generally."

"But what do the ranks mean, then?" It was Mara again.
Giles gave her a brief smile.

"The ranks stand for the number of trips they've made into
space, and the time spent in space. There's more to it than that.
The rougher the duty they pull, the greater the count of the time
involved toward a higher rank. For example, this lifeship duty is
going to gain a lot of points for this Captain and Engineer-not
because they're saving our lives, though, but because to save us
they had to pass up the chance to die in the spaceliner when it
burned. You see, the last and greatest goal of a spacegoing Al-
benareth is to die, finally, in space."

"Then they won't care!" It was an abrupt cry, almost a wail,
from someone else in the crowd, a dark-haired arbite girl as young
as Mara, but without the marks of character on her face. "If
anything goes wrong they'll just let us die, so they can die!"

"Certainly not!" said Giles sharply. "Get that idea out of
your heads right now. Death is the greatest achievement possible
to an Albenareth, but only after one of them has done his best to
fulfill his duties in space for as many years as possible. It's only
when there's no place else to turn that the Albenareth let death
take them."

"But what if these two decide suddenly there's no place to
turn, or something like that? They'll just go and die-"

12

"Stop that sort of talk!" snapped Giles. Suddenly he was tired
of explaining, ashamed and disgusted for them all-for their im-
mediate complaints, their open and unashamed display of fears,
their lack of decent self-restraint and self-control, and their pasty
faces which had obviously spent most of their lives indoors away
from the sunlight. All that was lower-class about them rose in his
throat to choke him.

"Be quiet, all of you," he said. "Get busy now and pick out
the cot you want, beside whoever you want for a neighbor while
we're in this lifeship. The one you pick is the one you'll have to
stick with for the rest of the time we're aboard. I'm not going to
have arguments and fights over changing places. After I've looked
the lifeship over I'll get your names and tell you how you're to act
until we reach planetfall. Now, get busyi"

They all turned away immediately, without hesitation-
except, perhaps, the girl Mara. It seemed to Giles that she paused
for fust a second before moving to obey, and this puzzled him. It
was possible she was one of those unfortunate arbites who had
been unnaturally pampered, petted, and brought up by some
Adelman family to feel almost as if she was one of the upper
classes. Arbites hand-raised-so to speak-in such a manner were
always maladjusted in latter life. They had not acquired proper
habits in their early, formative years and as adults were never able
to adapt to social discipline in normal fashion. If that was the case,
it was a pity. She had so much else to recommend her.

He turned away from the arbites, dismissing them from his
mind, and began a closer examination of the lifeship. It bore little
or no similarity to the luxuriously comfortable and highly auto-
mated private spacecraft he, like most of the Adelbom, had often
piloted among the inner worlds of the Solar System.

"Sir . . ." It was a whisper behind him. "Do you know-are
they females?"

Giles turned and saw that the whisperer was Groce. The
man's face was white and sweating. Giles glanced back for a mo-
ment at the two aliens. The Albenareth were almost indistinguish-
able as far as sex went, and both served indiscriminately at duties

13

aboard spacecraft-and everywhere else on the alien worlds, for
that matter. But the extra length of the Captain's torso was a clue
and the particular erectness of that officer's stance. She was a
female. The Engineer was a male.

Giles looked back at the sick paleness of fear on Grace's face.
Among the arbites there were a thousand horror stories about the
behavior of Albenareth females under certain glandular conditions,
not merely toward their own "males" but-arbite superstitions had
it-toward any other intelligent male creature. The basis of all the
tales was the fact that the Albenareth "female"-the two sexes of
the aliens did not really correspond equivalently to human male
and female-when in estrus, required from the "male" not merely
the specific and minute fertilizing organism he had produced for
the egg she carried, but the total genital area of "his" body. This
she took complete into her egg sac, where it became connected to
her own bloodstream, part of her own body, and a source of
nourishment for the embryo during its period of intrauterine
growth.

The acquisition of the "male's" genital area, entirely normal
by Albenareth standards, in human terms represented a rather
massive mutilation of the "male" by the "female." It effectively
desexed the male until his genital area should grow back, which
took about two years, roughly, by Earth time-long enough for the
single Albenareth offspring to be bom and learn to travel with
comfort upright on its two legs. Human xenobiologists had the-
orized that in prehistoric times the evolutionary principle behind
the desexing of the Albenareth "male" had been to ensure his
protection and assistance to the particular "female" carrying his
progeny, during the vulnerable period before she and it were fully
able to take care of themselves.

But such sophisticated understanding of alien instincts,
thought Giles, would be beyond the comprehension of arbites
whispering among themselves in dark corners- Groce, evidently,
had the human lower-class horror and fear of what the alien "fe-
male" might do to him, specifically, under certain conditions of
glandular excitation. And probably every other arbite male aboard

14

would react the same way if any of them suspected the Captain's
sex.

"They're officers!" Giles snapped. "Do they look like females
to you?"

Relief flooded back into Groce's face.

"No, Honor. No, sir, of course not... thank you, sir. Thank
you very much."

He backed away. Giles turned from the man, back to his
examination of the lifeship. As he did so, however, it occurred to
him to wonder just what the effect would be on the arbites if a
breeding impulse should take command of the pair of aliens on
board before they made planetfall. Of course, he had no idea
under what conditions such an impulse could be generated; he put
worry about it out of his mind. For the moment things were under
control and that was all he required. He concentrated on examin-
ing the lifeship.

15

3

1:02 hours

It was little more than a cylinder in space.

The rear half of the cylinder was occupied by the warp drive
and the fusion chamber that powered it. In the cylinder's nose was
the control console and the three viewscreens. The remaining
space, like a tube with a flat floor inside, was a little over twelve
meters in length and four in diameter. The floor was of a purple,
spongy material that was clumsy to walk upon but comfortable for
sitting or lying. The collapsible cots they had occupied while blast-
ing free of the spaceliner were concealed beneath that same spongy

surface.

Overhead, a glaring band of blue-white lights stretched the
length of the lifeship. These, Giles had learned before leaving
Earth, in his studies of the Albenareth and their space vessels,
were never turned off, even when the lifeship was not in use. The
continuous light source was needed to assure the healthy growth of
the ib vine that completely covered all the exposed surfaces from
midway in the lifeship's length, right back to the stem. The vine
was life to all the passengers, alien and human alike; for the stoma
in its flat, reddish-green leaves produced oxygen. The golden,
globular fruit, hanging like ornaments from long, thin stems, were
the only source of nourishment available aboard. The trunk of the

16

ib vine, as thick through as a man's leg, emerged from a coffinlike
metal tank in the stem that contained the nutrient solution to
nourish the plant. A dusty metal hatch cover on the tank covered
the opening into which all food scraps and waste were put for
recycling. A simple and workable system for survival, a closed
cycle in which the sanitary conveniences aboard consisted of a
basin under a cold-water faucet and a covered container beside the
tank.

The arbite passengers were not yet aware of how these things
would circumscribe their existences aboard this alien craft. As yet,
they had scarcely examined the new environment into which they
had been thrust. The shock of awareness would be profound when
it came. They were not Adelmen or Adelwomen, who under these
same conditions would have felt an inner duty to maintain their
self-control and not to give way to unseemly fears or yield in any
way to the situation, no matter how unendurable.

He should start out gently, Giles told himself. He turned and
went back to the others, who had now sorted themselves out, each
on the cot he or she had pulled up and would occupy until they
made planetfall.

"All set?" he asked them.

There were nods of agreement. He stood, looking down at
them, a head taller than any except the obvious work-gang laborer
individual in the very rear. The others would tend to ostracize the
laborer, he reminded himself automatically, as being even of lower
class than themselves. He must not let that cause divisions among
them while they were aboard here.

The laborer was as tall as Giles and doubtless outweighed
him by twenty kilos. Outside of that, there was no resemblance.
Only Giles, of all the humans there, showed the tanned skin, the
handsome regular features, and the green eyes, with sun-wrinkles
showing at the corners of them, that testified to both breeding and
a lifetime of outdoor exercise. These differences alone would have
set him apart from the rest, even without the expensive, gleaming
fabric of the burnt-orange shipsuit he wore, in contrast to the drab,

17

loose-fitting, gray coveralls that were their garb. Alone, his fea-
tures were enough to remind the others that it was his to com-
mand, theirs to obey.

"All right," he said. "I am Giles Steel Ashad. Now, one at a
time, identify yourselves." He turned to Mara, who had taken the
front cot space on his left. "You first, Mara."

"Mara 12911. I'm recop, on indent to Belben like the rest"

"All right." He turned to Groce on the right, across from
Mara. "Next, we'll take them in this direction. Speak up, Croce.
Give your name and specialty number."

"Groce 5313, indent for three years, computer control sec-
tion, Belben Mines and Manufacture."

"Very good, Groce. Clad to see you kept your compute by
you."

"Go no place without it, sir. Feel naked without it."

Giles saw several of the others smile at this time-worn joke.
Computecoms were always supposed to be unable to think without
making a calculation first. This was good; a feeling of order was
being restored. The next man behind Groce was thin, blond, and
wiry, his fingers nervously tapping out unheard rhythms on his

thighs.

"Esteven 6786, entertaincom," he said, in a tenor voice. "I'm
setting up the broadcast system to Belben, to replace the au-
tomated one there now."

"Yes. Is that a recorder in your wallet?"

"Yes, Honor, sir. Would you like to see it? A multiplex
memory store for the music."

"Very good-we can use that for a log of this voyage."

Giles put out his hand. Esteven stepped forward, but hesi-
tated for an instant before taking out the flat case.

"But you won't want to wipe all the music to record, will you,
sir? Please? We'll find some entertainment welcome, here in this
little ship...."

Giles winced internally at the pleading note in the man's
voice. Even an arbite should not have to beg like that.

"Not all of the music," said Giles, "don't worry. Pick an hour

18

to wipe clear for me. That should be enough. If it's not, I'll ask
you for more."

"An hour?" Esteven's face lit up. "Of course, sir. A single
hour's really no problem, of course. This has a bit of everything. I
can wipe some of the jazzpop or early-decade symphonies. Or
there are lots of musical commercials . . ." Esteven smiled hope-
fully and the others laughed, and the laughter quickly dying away
when they saw that Giles was not smiling with them. "Honor, sir,
forgive-naturally, I don't mean that. A joke only. Here, an hour
from the music; it's all set." He passed the recorder over quickly,
his hand shaking ever so slightly.

"I'll put everyone's name into this; we'll need to keep rec-
ords." Giles spoke into a recorder the names and numbers told so
far.

"Now just you four left."

"Biset 9482. Supervise, indent one year." She stood up
straight, across from Esteven's space, when she said it-the tall,
angular, gray-haired woman who had led the party of survivors to
tiie lifeship. She was, thought Giles, obviously used to authority. A
lifetime had adjusted her to it-unlike the girl Mara. The two
arbites side by side behind her were a dark-haired young man and
an equally dark-haired plump girl. They had been holding hands
until the others looked at them. The girl blushed; the man spoke
for them both.

"Frenco 5022. This is my ... wife, Di 3579. We're both
comserv, indent seven years."

"Both just out of school, only on your first indent-and mar-
ried already?"

The laughter of the others-free and open, this time-
released a good deal of the tension that had been gripping them all.
Frenco nodded and smiled and Di smiled, looking about, seeming
to enjoy the sudden attention. She was the girl who had panicked
when Giles spoke of the Albemareth seeking death, as a final act
in space. Giles spoke their names into the recorder and looked
beyond to the big laborer.

"Now you, lad."

19

The laborer touched his index and second finger to his fore-
head just below the cap of short-cut black hair, in a sort of half
salute before answering.

"Hem 7624, Honor, sir," he said. His face was square and
young, unwrinkled, but his voice had the rough and broken
hoarseness of an aging person. "Graded manual, no specific skills,
sir. But perfect work record."

"Good for you," said Giles. "We're lucky to have someone
like you aboard. Hem, in case we have something to do that takes
someone with strength we can rely on." He ran his gaze deliber-
ately around the faces of the other arbites and saw that they had
caught the social implication of his words. A couple of them
flushed, and some of the rest looked sourly down at the floor. The
girl Mara, however, was not one of them. Clearly they did not like
Hem being placed on the same level as themselves, but they would
put up with it.

Giles held the recorder. Esteven came and took it back.

"All right," Giles said. "Now, I'm going to talk to the Cap-
tain and see what information I can get. All I know at the moment
is that either we ran into something or there was an explosion, and
we seem to be the only ones who got out of the ship."

"Over two hundreed people-human people-aboard, two
hundred and twelve," Groce said hoarsely, tapping the figure into
his compute as though to make it more real.

Giles shivered internally, feeling again within him the sharp
teeth of conscience.

"And twelve alien crew members," he said loudly. "So we're
the lucky ones. Just remember that. if things go badly. These
lifeships are meant for survival and are a little short on comforts.
You've seen how to work the cots. Those ib fruit you see on the
vines are what we'll be eating, after the water has been pressed out
of them. They're three-quarters fluid, so we'll have more than
enough to drink. This plant's a mutation, gene-designed for this
one function. Plenty of protein, so we're not going to starve."

"But, sir, how does it taste?" Di asked. Plainly, she had never
eaten anything but prepared commissary food in her life.

20

"Is that . . . it?" the gray-haired woman named Biset asked,
sniffing sternly as she pointed in the general direction of the cov-
ered pail.

"I'm afraid it is," Giles said. "But there should be folding
partitions stored in the floor or walls here somewhere. I'll ask the
Captain. We can arrange something for privacy."

"Ask him why we went back for that other pruney." Now
that the fear was ebbing away, Groce was beginning to show anger.
"We could've been killed, all of us!"

"The Captain had to have a good reason for acting as he did.
I'll ask him what it was. But listen to me, everyone. None of you,
obviously, have ever been in space before; but I know you'll have
heard dozens of wild stories about the Albenareth. Forget those
stories-now! We're all dependent on those two aliens up front,
there, for our survival. So the term 'pruney' isn't to be used again
by any of you. Is that understood? Now, check those cots of yours
to see they're all in working order, and keep your voices down while
I go and have a talk with the Captain."

Giles had been watching the two Albenareth as he talked.
They had taken the starbook from its golden wrapping and placed
it in its ritual, jewel-embossed clamp on the control console. Some
plates had been removed from the sides of the console and the
Engineer was probing delicately in the opening with the whisker-
like prods of an instrument. The Captain sat silently, arms crossed,
staring into the emptiness of space. Giles went and stood next to
her.

"I would like to talk to the Rayumung," he said in buzzing
Albenareth. The Captain slowly turned the glistening furrows of
her face toward him.

"You speak our language."

"I am of the Steel sept. I go to space because this is what
must be done. For the same reason I have learned your tongue.
Please tell me what I need to know."

"My ship has been destroyed and I could not die with it. We
will soon start and proceed to Belben."

"Belben?" echoed Giles.

21

"Belben," repeated the Captain.

"But how long will the voyage take?"

"I do not yet know exactly. Possibly a hundred ship-days.
This small engine lacks efficiency, therefore the Munghanf is un-
lucky enough to be with us."

"It is his sorrow. Is the cause of the accident known?"

"There was no accident. My ship was destroyed by a deliber-
ately caused explosion."

For the first time the Captain showed some sign of emotion,
her voice raised, her fingers shaking.

"Ifs not possible,'9 Giles began.

"There is no doubt. There were only empty cargo holds at the
explosion site. Nor was there anything there that could burn. It
would take nothing less than a fusion bomb to ignite the flooring,
which burns only at the highest temperature."

Giles shifted his weight slightly on his feet.

"This is a grave charge," he said. "Why would anyone want
to sabotage an Albenareth spacer?"

"That I do not know. But a crime has been committed." The
dark alien eyes stared directly into Giles'. "A crime one of my race
would not commit."

"There is no possibility the explosion was only an accident?"
said Giles. "Your ship was old, Rayumung. Many of the ships of
the Albenareth are very old."

"Their age is no matter. It was not an accident." The Cap-
tain's voice was unchanged, but her long, three-fingered hands
were now tightly clenched-a sign of deep emotion in an Al-
benareth, as Giles remembered from his studies of the aliens. He

changed the subject-

"You said it would take possibly a hundred ship-days to
reach Belben in this lifeship. Is there no destination closer?"

"Our destination was Belben. It is still Belben."

"Surely," said Giles, "it would be more sensible to go to the
closest point where safe planetfall is possible?"

"I and my officers and my crew have fallen far back on the
road to Perfection by permitting the loss of our ship." The dark

22

eyes turned away from Giles, dismissing him. "My Engineer and I
may not even permit ourselves the redemption of death. To fail to
reach our planned destination means a further loss of honor, and
that is unthinkable. Farewell, therefore. Our talk is ended."

Giles' temper twitched to life. He held it in check, and con-
tinued to talk in an even voice.

"I have not ended speaking, Rayumung," he said. The Cap-
tain turned her head back to face him.<t! have a responsibility for
the other humans with me on board here. I make a formal request
that you look for d closer destination that will shorten our time in
this lifeship."

The Captain stared at him a moment without speaking.

"Human," she said at last, "we permit you to travel aboard
our holy ships into holy space because you have no ships of your
own worth the counting, and because it is a step upon the Way to
assist others, even though they are aliens who will never know the
meaning of Perfection. Also the rewards you bring us for carrying
you permit more of our people than otherwise could to be un-
bound from the worlds of their beginnings. But you are only that
which we carry of our own choice. You will not speak to me of
destinations."

Giles opened his mouth to answer, but the Captain's eyes had
already looked past him, and she was talking again.

"Nor are you aboard this lifeship in such mode as I would
prefer," she said. "You are eight. The number is not optimum."

Giles stared at her.

"J don't understand the Rayumung," he said.

"The number," repeated the Captain, "is not optimum for
Perfection in continuing our voyage to Belben. It would be more
optimal if you were one less. Perhaps you will reduce your number
by one individual." She pointed to the tank in the back of the
lifeship. "The converter could use the additional raw material."

Giles stiffened.

"Murder an arbite, just to suit your idea of Perfection?" he
snapped.

"Why not?" The dark, round eyes stared unblinkingly at him.

23

"You use them as slaves, but here in this small ship you have no
need for so many slaves. What is one of them compared to the
good will of myself, who hold survival of all of you in my hands?
Why concern yourself for any of them?"

A shock like the blow of some icy-bladed ax between his
shoulder blades robbed Giles of words. It was several seconds
before he could get himself under control enough to speak.

"They are arbites!" The buzzing Albenareth words lent them-
selves to being snarled by the human throat, and Giles heard him-
self snarling them. "They are arbites, and 1 am an Adelmani An
Adelman of a family who have been Adelbom for twenty genera-
tions! Put me in the converter, if you think you can, Rayumung.
But lay one finger on any of these now under my protection, and I
swear to you by the God of my race and the Perfection worshipped
by yours that this lifeship will reach no destination at all, and you
will die in dishonor, if I have to take the hull plates apart with my
bare hands!"

The Captain loomed over him. The wrinkled alien face, ex-
pressionless, was close to his.

"I suggested only, not commanded," said the Captain. A rare
tone of emotion, of something almost like grim humor, crept into
her voice. "But do you really think you could match yourself
against me, human?"

She turned away. Giles found he was trembling like a dead
leaf in the winter gale of his rage. He stood for a second until the
shaking stopped, before turning around. It would not do to have
the arbites see him otherwise than in perfect control of himself.

He had let himself react without thinking and the results had
nearly been disastrous, to himself as well as to his mission. He
should never have lost his temper. True, the destruction of another
human being was nowhere near the small thing the Albenareth
Captain thought it to be. But theoretically, Giles' duty was more
important than every arbite on this boat, and logic dictated that he
should have not hesitated to sacrifice one of them if his mission
demanded it. Moreover, no doubt there were many of the other
Adelbom in the Oca Front who would never have so hesitated.

24

Still, he knew in his innermost self that if he were to face that same
suggestion from the Captain all over again, his reaction would be
no different.

He was a Steel-one of the ancient and honorable family who
still lived and worked with the metal that had given them their
wealth and rank-unlike Copper or Comsats or Uti, families who
long ago had left the sources of their names to the handling of their
arbites. The metal, steel, had lifted man on the first steps of his
road to civilization. The Eiffel Tower and the San-Fran Bridge still
stood as monuments to the lifting. No one of the Steel sept could
in honor stand idly by and see a defenseless arbite abused-let
alone killed.

He calmed, inwardly as well as outwardly. There was no
question about his duty. He had only to follow his instincts-let
live or die who might.

He turned back at last to the arbites with a face that was
composed and even smiling a little.

25

4

3:17 hours

The panels for the partitions were dry and old like much of
the rest of the hfeship parts. Their fabric had torn in Hem's thick
fists as the large arbite pulled them from their niches in the floor of
the ship. Giles lay on his cot, watching Groce and Esteven pains-
takingly gluing the torn edges together with an adhesive film ex-
truded by a tool in the small repair kit the Albenareth Engineer
had been able to provide. The two aliens were supplied with a
permanent in-place screen behind their seats in the control area,
that they needed only to loll down and fasten. They had been out
of the sight of their human passengers most of the time since they
had done so, and for that bit of screening, particularly, Giles was
thankful. The less the arbites saw of the aliens, he reasoned, the
more likely they would be to live with the Albenareth in harmony.
Once their own screens were repaired and in position, he would set
a couple of the women to harvesting the fruit of the ib vine- But
for the moment, work space aboard was too crowded, with the
panels spread out as they were for repair.

He transferred his gaze from his fellow passengers to the
ceiling of the craft, with its sections of utilitarian gray metal. A far
cry from the comforts of his own interplanetary yacht. . . . His
mind drifted off to large problems, the whole of his mission.

He had saved the warrant, thankfully. Without the warrant,

26

he would have to risk an assassination on a Colony World where
the police methods of those there would be unfamiliar. He smiled a
little bitterly to himself. Once there had been no need for the
Adelbom to kill one another, but Paul Oca had forced the chain of
events that now moved to destroy him. If Paul had only been
content to be their namesake, their philosopher, who had set them
-all the conscientious young men and women of the Adelbom
who had formed the Oca Front six years ago-on the road to
cleansing and reawakening the human spirit. But some twist in
Paul, some instinct to destruction, had pushed him to go one step
further to suggest they throw open the doors of the Free Teaching
Centers to the arbites, immediately.

"Are you insane, Paul?" Giles had asked.
"That's a ridiculous question," said Paul coldly.
"Is it?" said Giles. "You have to know that doing it suddenly
would cause chaos-people starving in the streets in the long run,
all governmental control broken down and production at a halt.
Something like that has to be done step by step. Why do you think
the world was put under the present social structure by our ances-
tors? There simply wasn't room enough or production enough to
support the population and the power demands of an emerging
technology. There wasn't any choice. Everybody realized that. It
was time to stop developing civilization-all the wild growth in
population and invention-for as long as it was necessary to get
the race on a working basis, supporting itself without draining the
planet any further. Now we've almost got to the point where the
Adelman-arbite differences can be scrapped-and you want to
smash everything that's been achieved by bringing in heaven
immediately, fifty years ahead of schedule."

"I thought," said Paul-his white, regular features were
unmoved from the classic impassivity and coldness of the Adel-
bom-schooled face-"you adhered to my principles of the Oca
Front."

"I adhered, and I adhere," Giles said, "to the principle of
what needs to be done. The Oca Front is made up of Adelbom,
Paul. Remember that. I won't stand by for one member's ideas if I

27

think they're wrong, any more than you would. Even when that
member is you. You started the organization, Paul, but you don't
own it. You're just one of a group that wants to work to bring this
two-hundred-year-old, unnatural social structure to an end. If you
doubt that, check some of the other members for opinions. You'll
find they don't like your idea of revolution at this moment any
more than I do. It smacks of glory-hunting, wanting to have the
skyrockets all go up in your own particular time."

"Glory," said Paul, "hunting?" He made two words of it.

"I said that," said Giles, equally deliberately. Only another
Adelbom, looking at and listening to the two tall, lean, level-
voiced young men, would have realized that they were on the verge
of a deadly explosion. "I said that and I meant that. As I say, check
with others of the Front. You'll find I'm not alone in my opinion."

Paul looked at him for a long second.

"Giles," he said, "I've doubted your opinion was wise once or
twice in the past. This now confirms that doubt. You fail in your
concept of duty, which is everything to us. We're caretakers for the
rest of the race until the situation and their own growth makes
them ready to come of age. That duty is paramount. If you had it
fully in you, you'd understand that it makes no difference if open-
ing the Teaching Centers now causes widespread breakdown,
starvation-or any other temporary upheaval. If the time has
come, the time has come. But you, Giles, have a flaw. You are-
and always were-partly a romantic. You worry about people, not
the great shift and flow of human history."

"People are history," said Giles. His tone and attitude were
unchanged, but inside himself he was feeling a sort of despair. The
flare of anger toward Paul's unreasonableness which he had felt a
moment earlier had quickly bumed itself out, as quickly as it had
sprung up. Adelbom did not have friends, at least in the old sense
of the word. As Paul had said, duty was everything. But as far as it
could be said there was friendship, Paul had been his oldest and
closest friend- Their relationship went back to their first young
years in the Academy together. They had been side by side in the
long dining halls, the austere dormitories, the cold classrooms, and

28

the barren sports fields. Together, they had been changed from
children who remembered and longed for even the limited family
closeness of the Adelbom, to members of a ruling class who knew
only that duty Paul talked about, and who needed or wanted noth-
ing and no one else.

From that time on they had lived, each self-sufficient and
isolated within himself, as complete and separate individuals with-
out the weaknesses of any closeness with any other human being.
It was necessary that they be so, that corruption and human frailty
not be allowed to damage the rigid structure of the survival society
that their ancestors had set up, to be maintained until there should
be room enough, food enough, and future enough for the race as a
whole to be free again.

As it was, no one was free. In essence, the arbites were slaves
to the Adelbom; and the Adelbom were slaves to their duty-to
that survival program laid out two centuries before. The Adelbom
were not to question that plan until survival for the race was
assured, and they were not to permit the arbites to question it.

AH this was true. And perhaps it was true too, as Paul had
said, that Giles was a romantic and his sense of duty had a flaw in
it. But at the same time Paul was wrong about opening the Centers
this soon. If he insisted on doing so, the others in the Front would
have to stop him-which necessarily would mean destroying him.
No Adelbom would turn aside from what he considered a correct
action merely because of the weight of opposition, or from any
fear of personal consequences. Giles did not want Paul destroyed.
He had done too much that was good already. He was too useful
to be wasted. Once more, Giles tried to reach the other man by
argument.

"Already the arbite class has bad cracks in it, Paul," he said.
"You know that as well as I do. There's that Black Thursday
group of wild-eyed revolutionaries. There are these gangs that are
starting to roam around beating up other arbites for the kick of it.
Particularly, beating up the laboring arbites, as if they were tro-
phies to be taken-and the other arbites know as well as we do
that the laborers are genetically tailored to be harmless outside of

29

the friendly brawling among themselves in their barracks. Finally,
there's the arbite bureaucracy that's evolved over two centuries
while the best of them were becoming a sort of noncommissioned-
officer class for Adelbom like us. Stop and think of those three
groups, each with its own self-interest or blindness to the Survival
Flan you and I have in our very bones. If you could throw open
the Teaching Centers tomorrow, do you think the individuals of
each of those arbite groups would sit back and wait to let the Plan
accomplish itself? You know better. You must know that each one
would dive into the chaos caused by relaxation of the social order,
to get the biggest possible slice of authority in the future for their
own group's people. They'd tear the arbite class apart, Paul.
They'd each pick up adherents and this scarred old world would
see war, once more. War in the streets, with each man out to
destroy his neighborsi"

Giles ran down. There was nothing much more he could say
about the dangers of arbite reaction. He gazed at Paul hoping for a
counterargument-anything to show that there was still hope of
reaching him with logic. But there was no sign in Paul's face that
he had been reached, not even the faint signs visible to a fellow
Adelborn. Paul said only:

"Is that all you've got to tell me on the subject, Giles?"

"No," said Giles, with a sudden surge of feeling. "Not quite.
There's the Albenareth to think of, too."

"The aliens aren't our concern," said Paul. "We didn't need
them before the Plan was begun. They've been useful while it's
been in operation because it was a great deal cheaper from a
production standpoint to supply them with manufactured goods in
payment for stellar transport than to build our own space fleet
from scratch. With their help we've been able to develop new
worlds for settlement at half the expense we'd have had otherwise.
But now we'll be developing our own fleet anyway, so the Al-
benareth are no longer needed. In the future we can ignore them."

"NoF said Giles, grimly. "Our race can't just make contact
with another race, use it for a couple of hundred years, and then
walk away from it. If the Albenareth have been useful to us, we've

30

been a lifesaver to them. Because our technology and labor force
saved them work-hours their own people would otherwise have
had to supply, they've come to put more of their people out in
space than they can afford to support there, on their own. You've
seen the private reports of the Council. Even with us supporting
them, in recent decades-because space is such a religion with
them-they've gone to the ragged edge of a survival economy in
manning new vessels. To the point where they've got crews in
spaceships that are dangerously undermaintained, or overage; and
they aren't about to take such craft out of service, because no
Albenareth is going to deny another Albenareth the chance to live
and die in Holy Space."

"That's their concern," said Paul. "Let each race look to
itself."

"It's our concern as well!" snapped Giles. "I tell you, words
won't talk this away. It's no longer enough for the Plan to come up
with a solution to our human problems. Any realistic solution has
to take into account the Albenareth and their problems as well; for
our sake as well as theirs, the Albenareth have got to come to
terms with a religion that demands a life in space for every mem-
ber of their race, but disregards the necessary planet-based econ-
omy sufficient to provide support for that life in space."

"I repeat," Paul said. "The Albenareth are no part of our
problem. They can be ignored, to live or not live as they choose.
Our only duty is to the survival of our own race. I think, no matter
what you say, that the other members of the Oca Front will back
me rather than you, on that."

He glanced across at the ancient, ornate grandfather clock
that dominated the far wall of his study. It was the slightest of
glances and his eyes came back immediately to Giles, but to an-
other Adelbom the hint was more than sufficient.

"I'm sorry," said Giles, formally, getting to his feet, "if I've
taken too much of your time; but I thought the subject was impor-
tant. Perhaps we can talk more about it sometime soon."

"Perhaps," answered Paul. The single inflectionless word said
"no" more plainly than any impassioned statement could have.

31

"In that case," said Giles, "I'll be talking to other members of
the Front. One way or another, we'll find ourselves in contact,
shortly."

"By all means," said Paul. "Good day."

"Good day."

Giles turned and went. Internally, as he left he was telling
himself that he need not contact the other members right away. He
could take a few days at least to think about Paul's attitude. Per-
haps a miracle of persuasion could yet be worked.

But it was less than six weeks after their conversation that
Paul disappeared; and less than another six months before his
Manifesto, calling on all arbites to demand Adelbom rights, had
been found circulating among the lower class.

The search for Paul had been thorough, of course, after that.
But within a week, Giles and others in the Oca Front were con-
vinced-even if the World Police were not-that Paul Oca was
already off the Earth, and almost certainly out of the Solar System.
Somehow, the arbites had helped him get away, possibly in a
freight shipment to one of the frontier worlds.

To do so had taken organization. Which meant that some
arbites at least had already begun to band together in revolution-
ary groups and think of the immediate burning of contracts and
the unrestricted freedom of movement Paul had advocated to
them.

So it was for a fact-the fact of arbite organization-that
Paul Oca must die, once Giles had him. It would take willing, law-
abiding arbites as well as duty-minded Adelbom to build the space
fleet that must replace the alien ships. Lots of arbites and many
Earth years. The genius-level intelligence of Paul Oca must not be
allowed to lead and attempt an arbite revolution prematurely.

But it was not easy to kill an old acquaintance, Giles thought.
Even if you knew that no matter how you hated killing him you
would still go through with it when the time came, because an
obligation to your duty had been built into you like an iron rod in
place of a spine....

The screens were reglued. One of the partitions reached al-

32

most across the cabin, making two separate rooms. The other,
shorter partition enclosed the sanitary facilities, with its open end
facing toward the rear of the craft for additional privacy. Giles got
up from his cot.

"Mara, Di," he said, "come over here. You two are going to
be in charge of picking the fruit."

"I never did that before." Di tried to hold back. Giles guessed
her to be showing a common arbite fear of responsibility.

"I don't think it'll be too hard to leam," he said gently.
"Come over here. Do you see the lower end of the stem on this
fruit I'm pointing at? Twist the stem to break the fruit loose. Don't
pull it off or you'll injure the vine. Collect about a dozen fruits
apiece and bring them down here." He turned to look for the
graded arbite. "Hem, how strong are you feeling today?"

Hem bounded to his feet from the cot on which he had
stretched out. He grinned crookedly.

"No one ever beat me in the barracks, sir." Solid, scarred fists
closed at the memory. "You show me what you want done, Honor,
sir."

"Well, you don't have to fight anybody, not yet at least,"
Giles said easily. "Though I'm sure you're good at it. I've got
something that calls for someone with good muscles."

"That's me!"

"All right, then. This is the fruit press." Giles pointed to a
heavy cast-metal apparatus fixed to the wall. There was a round
opening at the top and a long lever projected from the center;

scuffed plastic containers were locked into position below it. "You
lift the handle and drop the fruit in here, like this. Then, press
down hard on the handle. The juice drains down on this side and,
when you lift the handle, the two halves drop into the other con-
tainer. Then you're ready to repeat the process,"

"I can do that, easy!"

It did not actually take much effort to squeeze the fruit, but
Hem threw himself into the operation with a will.

"Containers full, sir," he announced when he was done.

"Very good. Now who'll be the first to try this food?"

33

The truth was, Giles had to admit to himself, that the green-
gold pulp looked repulsive. The arbites shied away. Giles smiled at
them encouragingly, dipped a bowl into the stuff, and dug out a
gobbet. There were no utensils of any kind aboard, so he had to
use his fingers. The pulp was slimy and had a musty odor like
worm-ridden wood- He popped a lump into his mouth and chewed
industriously. Thankfully, it had almost no taste, but the texture
was very unpleasant. The juice, however, was a good deal better. It
was almost pure water with only an edge of sweetness to it. He
held the bowl of pulp out and, after some hesitation, Di took a tiny
bit. And instantly spat it out.

"Phooi That's terrible."

"I don't think ifs really that bad. I imagine we'll get used to
it. Anyone else hungry?"

The only other taker was Hem. He chewed and swallowed
without expression and finished a whole bowl. Apparently flavor,
or the lack of it, made little difference to him.

"Stuff's all right," was all he said.

"One satisfied customer already," said Giles. "I'm not going
to force anyone, but the ib fruit is here. During the next twelve
hours I want you all to try it. We're all going to stay in condition
and no one's going to get sick. This is our food and we're going to
eat it." To prove the point he filled the bowl again and managed to
finish everything in it without changing expression. It is often eas-
ier to lead than to follow. He was rinsing his hands clean at the
basin, not successfully because the water in the tank was ib fruit
juice, when Mara approached him.

"Did the Captain say how long this trip will last?"

He had been braced for someone to ask him that. She de-
served an answer.

"It's not going to be a short one," he said. "That I'm fairly
sure of. As soon as the Captain has worked out the figures I'll let
you all know."

"Did he say why they left that other crewman on the ship?"

Giles also had been waiting for someone to ask him this and
had worked out what he thought was a satisfactory answer. There

34

would certainly be trouble if the arbites discovered that the engines
weren't functioning correctly.

"To understand the Albenareth you need to know something
about their philosophy .. . their religion, or whatever you want to
call it," he told her. "To them the mere act of being in space is a
blessing. They gain what I suppose you'd call 'holiness' by being
many years in space. About the only thing that exceeds the value
of many years spent in space is the honor of dying there after a
lifetime of service. So the ones that were left on the ship were
fortunate by their standards-and that included the one of them
that had a chance to go with us but stayed behind. From this point
of view it was probably the most important and best thing that
ever happened to him."

She frowned.

"That sounds, well, almost sick, doesn't it? I mean being in
space is just being in space. Dying there certainly doesn't accom-
plish very much, either."

"Apparently the Albenareth think it does." He made an effort
to bring the conversation back to the present "Have you picked all
the fruit we'll need?"

"A lot more than we need. Nobody's rushing to eat it. We
had both baskets filled, and the bumper's been working up a sweat
squashing them."

"Bumper?" He had never heard the term before.

She looked at him a little warily, then her tenseness of expres-
sion dissolved into a smile.

"Bumper . . ." she said. "It's a name for someone of the
graded ranks. I can call Hem that, but you shouldn't."

"Why?"

"Because . . ." She hesitated. "Actually, it means someone
who got dropped on his head when he was small, and who doesn't
have all his brains because of it. Among ... us, it's just a word.
But if you used it. Hem would think you meant it literally."

He gazed at her curiously.

"You express yourself well," he said.

For a second he thought he saw something that might have

35

been a flash of anger in her eyes. If so, however, it was gone before
he could be sure it had been there at all.

"For an arbite, you mean," she said. Her voice was perfectly

even and calm.

"Why, yes," he said. "I don't expect you to have had the
advantages of a wide education."

"No, you wouldn't, would you?" she murmured. "I should
thank you for the compliment, then."

"Compliment?" he said, bemused. A compliment was some-
thing you gave to an Adelwoman, not to a girl like this. "I was just
stating a fact-a fact you should be proud of, of course."

"Oh, I am." There was a slight edge to her voice, but it
changed abruptly. A note of sadness crept into it and she looked
down at the spongy floor of the lifeship. "Along with the others,
I'm glad just to be alive. When I stop to think about how many
there are back on Earth who'd give anything they have to be out
here in space, even if it meant being on this lifeship..."

He stared at her, puzzled.

"You mean there're arbites who like space travel that much?"

She shifted her face to look at him. For a second he thought
she was going to laugh at him-an unpardonable breach of man-
ners, of discipline, coming from someone like herself to an Adel-

bom.

"Of course not," Mara said. "I'm talking about the chance to
indent to one of the Colony Worlds-a chance to get off Earth."

"To get off Earth?" The girl was a bundle of strange remarks.
"To get away from a safe life on the Mother World-away from
the pleasure parks and the entertainment centers-and to go out to
work for long hours with a restricted diet, and under harsh condi-
tions? Why should an arbite want that?"

"Why should an Adelbom want it?" she said. "But many of
tile upper people do."

"But that's entirely different." He frowned. There was no way
to explain to this child of the underclasses, with her no doubt
permissive upbringing, what it was like to accept the self-discipline
and singleness of purpose that were the duties of the Adelbom

36

from the moment they were old enough to walk. Faintly, from very
long ago, he remembered the loneliness of being four years old and
separated from his family, sent to a boarding school to begin the
training that would fit him for his adult responsibilities as a leader
of the race. He had cried-he winced with shame now at the
memory-that first night, silently into his pillow. Many of the
other small Adelbom in his barracks had cried also their first
night, but only one of them openly. The fact was that that one, a
boy, had continued to cry, if more quietly, on succeeding nights,
and at the end of the first week he was taken away. To where, the
rest of them never discovered, for none of the masters or mis-
tresses at the school would talk about him.

"That's different," Giles said again to Mara, now. "It's a
matter of responsibility for our class, as you know. Adelbom don't
go out to the Colony Worlds because they prefer it there to Earth.
They go because duty points them that way."

She was watching him closely.

"You really believe that, don't you?" she said: "Haven't you
ever done what you wanted-just because you wanted it?"

He laughed.

"Come, now, Mara," he said. "What sort of an Adelman
would I be if I could say yes to a question like that?"

"A human one."

He shook his head at her, amused but completely baffled.

"Honor, sir," a voice spoke in his ear. He looked around and
saw that Frenco had come in and was waiting to get his attention.

"What, Frenco?"

"The Captain wants to see you. He spoke to me in regular
Basic and said to tell you."

The Captain had his fingertips resting on the book on the
console before him when Giles stepped behind the controls parti-
tion. The engineer stood stolidly at his side.

"You wished to talk with me?" Giles asked, in Albenareth.

"The Munghanf has located the problem, in our drive."

"The Munghanf is exceedingly competent."

The Engineer touched two fingers together in the gesture that

37

might be translated as meaning "your words give me pleasure,"
then he pointed to the engine compartment.

"Our power source operates well, the warp drive functions
within the desired parameters. The malfunction is located in the
radiant drive mounted on the hull outside. It must be repaired."

"Can it?" asked Giles.

"Most easily. There is a spacesuit here and I have the tools
and knowledge to do what is needed."

"That is good." Giles nodded.

"It could be more than good. It could be of great reward for
one person."

The Engineer picked up a bulky plastic bundle from the deck
and pulled the spacesuit from it. The fabric crackled when he
shook it out and held it up for Giles' inspection.

"Loofe here, and here, at the seams. They are stiff with age,
cracking open. They could burst under internal pressure and leak
air, and then whoever wears this suit may die in space. And it is I
who must wear it if the necessary repairs are to be model"

Before Giles could say anything more the Engineer was
rocked by loud and continuous laughter.

38

5

Giles waited until the laughter died down. Then he spoke to
the Engineer.

"So the Munghanf approaches the further Portal of the Way,"
he said. "My congratulations."

"It is not certain yet," said the Engineer. He turned to look at
the other dark, wrinkled alien face. "Also, she has been my Cap-
tain through much time and space, and the I that is I would be
lonely to go on without her. But as a passing from the suit failure
would be an end result of the explosion that destroyed our vessel,
my responsibility thereby would be canceled, and I cannot but
hope."

"The Munghanf has lived in duty and may properly proceed,"
said the Captain. "But we will cease talk of it now, Munghanf. The
human can only look on this important thing that happens as
through a thick wall of clouded transparency. The Wdy and its
meaning are closed to his race."

"That is so," said the Engineer, looking back at Giles. "And
at this moment I am sorry for it. Let my Captain speak."

"I did not call you here on behalf of the Munghanf," said the
Captain, addressing Giles. "I will require your help. It must be the
help of you, personally. I cannot trust this effort to one of your
slaves."

39

"They are not," said Giles, speaking slowly and distinctly,

"slaves. Mine, or anyone's."

"They live to work and breed and die. I know no other term
for such," said the Captain. "I will show you the work to be done."

She stepped past Giles and led him back to the inner door of
the lifeship's airlock. To the left of it, the spongy wall covering had
been peeled back to reveal a large panel, which the Captain pushed
inward, then slid aside, to reveal a control console equipped with
viewscreen and two hand-sized sockets just below it.

"Put your hands into the control openings," directed the

Captain.

Giles stepped up to face the console and did so. Within the
dark depths of the two sockets, his fingers found and closed over a
pair of upright, movable rods, pivoted at their bottom end and
each grooved to fit the three fingers of an Albenareth hand. In the
depths of each groove was a stud that yielded to the pressure of

Giles' grip.

The moment he touched the bars, the screen before him lit up
and he saw a section of the outer hull from beyond two mechanical
extensions ending in three metal fingers each. As he moved the
bars and pressed harder on the spring-cushioned studs, the arms
extended, waved one way or another, and the metal fingers flexed.
Clearly what he had in his grasp was something mounted on the
outer hull that was the alien equivalent of waldoes-mechanical
hands operating in response to the movement of his own flesh-and-
blood appendages upon the controls they grasped.

"I must stand by the general controls," the Captain said,
"and put them in various modes as the Engineer works upon the
drive. I am therefore needed at the main console while you will be
here. From my position, I will be able to move the unit carrying
the device with which your controls connect about the hull. But it
will be up to you to operate it-if necessary, use it to carry the
Engineer inside if he should fail before his work is done, or before
he can return to the airlock under his own power."

"I will need to practice with these controls," said Giles. "I do
not know them and they am not designed JOT my hands."

40

"There will be time for practice," the Captain said. "Prepara-
tions must be made. I will require the stern section of this vessel
beyond your second screen, as space in which to set up necessary
equipment. You must keep all humans out of that area until fur-
ther notice."

"I'll take care of it," said Giles.

He turned, leaving the bow of the lifeship, and went back to
the stem area behind the final screen the arbites had erected. This
was a space containing the converter, the fruit press, and a good
section of the ib vine. There were only two cots there-the cots of
Frenco and Di. The young couple had been tacitly left with this
place to themselves, to give them the closest approach to privacy
that the lifeship afforded. It was an illusion of privacy, actually, for
the screen was no barrier to sound, and the slightest movement or
whisper could be heard beyond it by anyone who made it a point
to listen.

The two young arbites were alone there when Giles arrived.
They were seated facing each other, each on his own cot, holding
hands and talking with their heads together in low voices.

"Frenco . . . Di," said Giles. "Forgive me, but I'm going to
have to dispossess you for a little while. The Engineer has to go
outside to work on the ship and this area's going to have to be used
as back-up room for that effort. I'll let you in here again, as soon
as it's available. Meanwhile, one of you can take my cot up front,
and there's another cot across from it that's never been pulled
up."

The two stood up, looking shy.

"Honor, sir," said Frenco. "How long is it going to be?"

"No longer than it has to," Giles said. "But that'll be a matter
of hours. Why? Any particular problem?"

"Ifs just Di, sir," said Frenco. "She's been having trouble
sleeping-even back here alone with me. She has nightmares-
she's always had nightmares-and she fights going to sleep. She
can't help it. She probably won't be able to rest much at all, up
front."

"I sympathize," said Giles. "But there's nothing I can do

41

about it. If this was one of our own spacecraft, we'd have a medi-
cal kit on board and there'd probably be something I could give her
to help her sleep. But it isn't, and I can't. I'll let you back here as

soon as I can, though."

Defeated, Frenco and Di sidled out from between their two
cots and started through the opening in the screen, obediently.

"And tell everyone else," said Giles, pitching his voice so that
the flimsy screens would in no way block the other humans from
hearing his message, "none of them are to so much as look back
here until I tell them it's all right. The Albenareth require complete
privacy in this area, and I've promised it to them. So all our people
are to stay clear. That's an order."

"Yes, Honor, sir," Frenco and Di chorused, disappearing.

They had scarcely gone when the alien Captain stepped
through the opening and stood, looking around the area.

"No harm has been done here," she said to Giles in Albe-
nareth. "Good. The Engineer is busy with other preparations up
front. I will prepare this space. You may go now. If I call you, you
may come back."

In spite of Giles' better judgment, her choice of expressions
raised instinctive hackles of his temper.

"If you should ask for my presence here," he retorted in icily
correct Albenareth, "my sense of duty would, of course, urge me to

come."

The dark, round alien eyes locked with his. There was abso-
lutely no way of reading expression in them. Whether the Captain
was angry, amused, or indifferent was beyond the power of Giles

to tell.

"I will only call you if it is absolutely necessary," said the

Captain. "Co now."

Giles left the stem area and went back up to the airlock and
the open control panel where he would be working. He slipped his
hands into the two apertures, grasped the control rods, and began
experimenting, practicing with them. It was clumsy work at first
The Albenareth waldo, like the Albenareth hand itself, had its
three fingers all semi-opposed, so that their tips approached each

42

other at equal angles of 120 degrees between them. They were not
capable of being directly opposed in a straight line as the human
thumb and forefinger are; and in spite of their normally greater
strength, the clumsiness of any two fingers only in opposition made
for a bad grip.

In the end, Giles taught himself to think of taking hold of
anything at all in terms of a full-hand grasp. This concept brought
all of his fingers into pressure on all three studs on any one of the
control bars, and the result was closer to the Albenareth ian.

He was practicing this attitude and reaction, when he felt a
movement beside him and turned his head to see Biset standing
beside him, as if waiting for his attention. He stopped what he was
doing,

"Did you want to see me?" Giles asked.

"Please, Honor, sir," she said, "continue what you're doing."

She hesitated and abruptly switched languages, from Basic to
the one she now named. "I understand you speak Esperanto?"

While she had been talking he had gone back to his practic-
ing, and, because of the distraction of her sudden shift of tongues,
he completely bungled the same three-fingered pickup he had been
telling himself he now had almost under control. He exploded at
her, reflexively, in the same tongue she herself had used.

"Cu, jes me bonege parloas Esperanto!"

He broke off and let go of the two rods, turning to look at
her.

"How do you know that?" he demanded in Basic, lowering
his voice. "It's an old international language. I got interested in it
myself only five years ago. How did an arbite even come to hear
about it?"

"Please, sir," she said, still in Esperanto, "please continue
working. It will be better if the others think that their lack of
understanding is due to the noise, only."

He went back to his practice with the waldoes.

"f asked you," he said, in Esperanto, "how an arbite happens
to know this particular old language-or in fact, anything but
Basic? The earlier tongues of Earth are matters of academic study

43

only, nowdays, unless you were born where one was spoken; and
no particular territory owned Esperanto."
"My case is special," she said.

He turned his head to look at her as he worked. Her thin,
disapproving features were only inches away. As with the girl
Mara, there were signs of some upper-class fineness of bone. This
one must have had her share of good looks too, once.

"Yes," she went on, as if he had said out loud what he was
thinking, "I'm no common woman. I was raised in a good family.
But that's something we can talk of at some other time. The im-
portant thing now is that you be told there is a member of the
Black Thursday among us."

Giles was suddenly, icily, alert. But he kept his hands moving
on the rods; and before she could say more she was cut short by
the sound of an Albenareth voice calling from the back of the
lifeship in Basic.

"Human! Come now!"

Giles swung away from the control panel, his eyes still on
Biset.

"Stay here," he said. "I'll talk to you later."
He went back through the gaps in the two screens, ignoring
the questions and the somewhat frightened gazes of the arbites. He
stepped into the stem area to find the Captain and the Engineer
both there, the Engineer already wearing the spacesuit. On him,
and semi-inflated up to the neck seal, it had become transparent
enough to show his arms and legs clearly within the limbs of it.
Helmetless, his head protruded from the neck seal like some dark
seed being squeezed from a cluster of cloudy grapes.

"You are in command here," said Giles in Albenareth to the
Captain. "For that reason I overlook much in the name of our
common necessities. Nonetheless, outright discourtesy on your
part will be met with equal discourtesy on mine. When you speak
the human tongue to me in front of other humans, you will use
human courtesies, or I will not respond. I have a position to main-
tain as leader of this human group. Is that clear?"

44

"Completely clear, 0 human of great honors," answered the
Captain. "I will call you 'Adelman in future, especially whenever I
speak to you in your own language. Now assist me-we must tie
off this suit in places to ensure that the Engineer can continue
working even if small leaks depressurize parts of it."

She handed Giles what seemed to be short lengths of plastic
cord with a metallic core-something partway between wire and
rope. One end of each length had a small, odd-shaped clamp at-
tached to it. The cords were long enough to go around the Engi-
neer's spacesuited arm or leg two or three times before the clampless
end was drawn through the clamp and so secured. In theory this
binding and securing should have been a simple matter, but the
weakness of the grav-simulation field aboard the lifeship made it
not so. Work on the Engineer was done most efficiently when that
alien was lying horizontally on one of the cots, but with both Giles
and the Captain pushing and tugging at him, to wind or secure a
cord about one of his limbs, his body bobbed or floated away into
the air. In the end Giles' greatest usefulness, he found, was to hold
the spacesuited alien figure as still as possible while the Captain
worked with the cords.

When they were finished and the Engineer was once more
upright on his feet, holding himself in position like the rest with a
hand on one of the hull or ceiling anchor points, he looked like a
figure made out of very short lengths of fat link sausage, each tie
compartmentalizing a section of his arm or leg. The ties were not
so tight as to keep his suit's interior atmosphere from circulating,
but in case of a leak, the sudden lack of pressure on the down side
of a tie would cause the elastic material to clamp tightly enough to
make a seal.

Or at least, thought Giles, gazing at the Engineer when they
were done, that seemed to be the theory of the two aliens. But he
could not really believe that the cord seals would be that efficient
in case of spacesuit rupture. The thought came to him suddenly
that perhaps this tying was only a ritual-merely a matter of going
through some form of protecting the Engineer in a hopeless situa-

45

tion. Some such impractical gesture on the part of these members
of a death-worshipping race might make sense to them. But still,
thought Giles, it was odd.

"All right, Adelman," said the Captain. "Come forward with
us now. I will let the Engineer out the airlock, then move to the
main controls. You will return to work your own console."

They moved through the openings in the screens, past the
stares of the arbites as the two of them helped the Engineer, now
with his fishbowl helmet in place and completely sealed in the suit,
to walk clumsily past.

The Captain punched the airlock controls, and the inner door
of the lock swung open. Frost formed instantly on all surfaces
within the lock now exposed to the interior warmth and atmo-
sphere of the ship. The Captain wrapped plastic around his three-
fingered hands to protect them from the icy metal surfaces, and set
about connecting the umbilicals-the flexible tubes that would
provide atmosphere, power, and heat-to the Engineer's suit.

At last it was done. The Captain stood back, and the inner
lock door closed again. Without a further word to Giles, the alien
turned and stalked forward behind the screen that hid the main
controls. Giles himself turned back to his own console and reached
in to take control of the rods.

On his screen, which had come alive again the moment he
had touched the rods, he could now see a section of the opened
outer door of the airlock and the spacesuited figure of the Engineer
emerging slowly on the outer hull. There was a grating sound
beyond the wall Giles faced as the magnetic-soled boots of the
Engineer took hold on the hull and alternately slid forward one by
one, with each step the alien made. The Engineer headed toward
the stern of the vessel, his full figure now showing in Giles' screen
with the lines of the umbilicals trailing behind him. A moment
later there was another grating, and the figure of the Engineer,
which had been diminishing in size, began to swell again as what-
ever vehicle supported the waldoes and camera eye of Giles' con-
trol console began also to slide over the hull in pursuit.

This movement across the hull surface was plainly being

46

controlled by the Captain. Giles found he had nothing to do, and
simply stood, waiting. His vehicle eventually caught up and
stopped just behind the Engineer, who was now at the very stem of
the vessel and slowly unhousing the shielding over the propulsion
motors there.

Tentatively, Giles advanced one of his mechanical hands to
help the spacesuited figure.

"Stop!"

It was the voice of the Captain, speaking in Albenareth from
a grille in the console before Giles.

"Do nothing until I order it, Adelman," the Captain's voice
went on, "You are unfamiliar with our mechanical and more likely
to do damage to the motors than help. I repeat, do nothing until I
order you to."

"Very well," answered Giles.

He released his grip on the rods, but continued to hold them
lightly and stood watching what went on in the screen. The En-
gineer, clearly, needed to tear down a good part of one of the
motors in order to reach what he had to repair. It was a slow
business-not merely because of the amount of work involved but
because every movement the Engineer made was made under the
clumsiness imposed by his spacesuit and the lack of gravity.

"Sir," said Bisefs voice at Giles' elbow, in Esperanto.

He had dropped his earlier conversation with her from his
mind entirely. It came flooding back to him now, and he turned to
look at her without taking his hands off the rods.

"Oh, yes," he answered in the same language. "You were
going to tell me how you came to know Esperanto."

"No, sir," she said. "I was going to warn you that on board
here-"

"First things first," he interrupted her, quietly but with an
edge to his voice that should check any impulse on her part to
argue the point. "First, I want to hear how you can speak this
language-and, more important, how you happened to guess I
could, too."

"As for the language," she answered, "J was given a special

47

course in it. As for knowing you, yourself, could speak it. Honor,
sir, I was informed of that. Both things were done so that I could
communicate with you privately as I'm now doing. Now, if you

will allow me to tell you-"

"Oh yes, about the Black Thursday matter." He had had a
few seconds now to gather his wits since this second appearance of
hers, and it occurred to him that the best defense here might be to
meet her halfway-or better. "Something about one of their group
being aboard, here."

Her eyes were small and sharp.

"You know about the Black Thursday revolutionaries, then?"

she asked.

"I've heard a good deal about them in the past," he said

lightly. "I was something of a revolutionary myself in my younger
days when I was still putting over fifty percent of my time in

study."

"Yes," she said. "We're aware you were a friend of Paul
Oca's, and a member of his so-called Philosophical Group. But
you parted with that group some years since, didn't you?"

He looked at her grimly.

"Biset," he said-and now his tone was wholly that of an
Adelman speaking to an arbite-"I think you're forgetting your

manners."

But she did not cower. She stiffened.

"Pardon me. Honor, sir," she said, "but that is one thing I
never do. I told you, I was raised in a good family. Under different
conditions I... might even have been part of that family."

So that explained it-as it could as well have explained Mara's
differentness and signs of good breeding. Giles took a more com-
passionate look at the tight face opposite. If life was not easy on an
arbite brought up as the pet of some Adelborn, it was a great deal
less easy on a half-caste, some arbite bom on the wrong side of an
Adelborn blanket. There was no place for anyone like that among
the Adelborn themselves, and rumor had it that the ordinary arbites
hated and despised anyone of their own who carried Adelborn
blood in her-or him.

48

"Forgive me, Biset," he said, in a gentler tone, "but your
questioning was getting a little personal, you know."

"It's not for myself I question or speak," she said, and her
pale eyes flashed momentarily like winter ice in a glimpse of sun-
light from a cloud-thick sky. "I am the voice of the Police."

He chilled a little, inside-but he hid the signs of his reaction
under a calm face.

"I see," he said, quietly. "O/ course, that makes a difference.
But these are pretty strange statements you're making. What would
a member of an arbite revolutionary group be doing, going as an
indent to Belben? Certainly, someone like that would want to stay
on Earth, where they could be useful to whatever plans the or-
ganization has."

"We don't know the answer to that, yet," said Biset. "But it's
a fact that many of the Colony Worlds are more lax than they
should be in reporting the presence of criminals from Earth back
to the World Police. Witness the fact that your former friend Paul
Oca is thought to have left Earth for one of those'colony installa-
tions."

So, thought Giles, the World Police had joined the Oca Front
in their conclusion about Paul's whereabouts. That meant he must
find Paul before the Police did, if there was to be any hope of a
successful assassination. The Police were limited by law to at-
tempts at rehabilitation that in no way forced or damaged a crim-
inal's personality. Their methods, of analysis and discussive per-
suasion, worked well enough on the circumscribed minds of arbites.
They would never dent the educated intellect and will of an
Adelbom like Paul; and Paul, under Police guard, would continue
to survive as a symbol for the arbite revolutionaries, who could go
on recruiting in his name.

"Is he?" Giles said, now. "I wonder how he got there."

"He had help-from the Black Thursday organization, we
believe," Biset answered. "In fact, whoever it is aboard who be-
longs to that organization may be a courier to him."

"Oh?" said Giles.

A sudden, sharp interest kindled in him. If this woman was

49

right and he could find out who the Black Thursday courier was
before she did, the courier might be able to lead him directly to
Paul. Of course that would mean protecting the Black Thursday
member long enough to let him or her make contact-and that in
turn might make necessary the killing of Biset. The deep training
of a lifetime rose in him against the thought. It was bad enough to
have to kill an equally competent member of his own class, like
Paul. To murder a helpless arbite, one of the class he and his
family had dedicated their generations to guiding toward the day
when no one need be bound to a lifetime on the wheel of duty any

longer, that was-

He blocked further thought on that topic, deliberately. What
needed to be done would have to be done. There was no turning
aside from necessity. If he must kill an arbite to reach Paul, then
he must kill an arbite ... that was all there was to it.

"Honor, sir," the voice of Biset jarred on his ear, "are you

listening to me?"

"What? Oh, forgive me," said Giles. "I have to keep part of
my attention on the screen, here." He nodded at the screen of his
instrument console, which showed the Engineer still at work on the

motors.

"Of course. Td forgotten. Forgive me instead, sir," she said.

"But what I have to tell you is important. I was saying that while
I've got no actual proof yet who the Black Thursday member is, I
am already fairly certain in my own mind. I'm sure it's the girl

called Mara."

"Moral" Her name came from Giles' lips a little more force-
fully than he liked.

"Yes, sir," Biset was saying, "and that's why I'm speaking to
you about it now. I need definite proof, or the girl's admission to
some third-party witness, before I can do more than hold her for
temporary questioning once we reach Belben; and you'd be sur-
prised how some of these hard-core arbite revolutionaries can re-
sist and avoid making an arrestible admission during the period of
temporary questioning the law allows us."

50

"Of course," murmured Giles, his mind spinning with this
information. "I'll help in any way I can."

"The Adelman needn't involve himself unduly ..." Biset was
saying, but Giles hardly heard her. Much to his own surprise, a
section of his mind was rejecting vigorously the notion that Mara
could be in any way connected with the Black Thursday group.
That organization's name dated back to a wild attempt by a group
of obviously self-deluded arbites to force their way into a session
of the Adelbom Council-the decision-making body for all Earth.
The arbites had been carrying banners and placards calling on the
Council to shorten the term of the lifetime work contracts pres-
ently required for lower-class education.

Naturally, the protesters had been unarmed. . . . All, that
was, but one of them. One young man had a stolen Police shortgun
from the depot where he was on contract as a warehouseman. He
was foolish enough to produce this weapon, which he probably did
not even know how to fire, and wave it around. Naturally, the
Council guards themselves opened fire, and the protesters were cut
into smoking ruins.

The day had been a Thursday, and this newer, grimmer,
underground organization among the arbites had chosen to name
itself the Black Thursday. Its members were a far cry from simple
neurotic placard-carriers. The rumor was that they boasted of the
weapons each one carried; and the few suspected individuals the
Police had been able to round up had reportedly carried poison
capsules they had been able to swallow as soon as they had been
arrested and before they could be interviewed and questioned.

It was an ugly sort of fanaticism, Giles thought, that would
lead a man or woman-even an arbite man or woman-to choose
death rather than the possibility of being argued out of obsession
with that fanaticism, back into rationality and a useful life. Try as
he might, he could not see Mara as that type of irrational. He
remembered her smile as she had commented that picking ib fruit
was not the most demanding job in existence. The kind of person
who could be a Black Thursday member with a poison capsule

51

hidden about him could not be the sort of person to joke and
smile like that, certainly. No, it was unthinkable. . . .

He roused himself from his thoughts.

"Sorry," he said to Biset. "I got occupied for a moment with
what the Engineer's doing there. Would you tell me again?"

"I was saying. Honor, sir," Biset repeated, "there's no need
for you to put yourself to the trouble of any unusual effort, or any
action unbecoming an Adelborn. The girl is young and you are,
after all, of the opposite sex and of the higher classes. Ifs not
unknown that an Adelman ..."

Uncharacteristically, for once, Biset's voice wavered. She
caught herself up sharply and went on.

"It's not unknown that an Adelman should find himself
attracted-temporarily, of course-to an arbite. And of course
these Black Thursday people like to think they're as good as any
Adelborn. I'm sure if your Honor will simply avoid rejecting her
when she finally gets to the point of making advances to you, you'll
soon have her talking quite freely to you. The minute she says
anything compromising, you need only tell me. TU take charge
from that point on."

"You're that sure, are you," demanded Giles, "that she'll
make advances, as you put it, to me?"

"I'm positive of it," said Biset, crisply. "A man-pardon me,
sir-an Adelborn like you doesn't know these arbites the way I do.
They'd all sell their soul to be one of the upper classes."

Giles looked at her tight-held lips. She was probably right, he
told himself, glumly, but somehow it was sickening to hear her put
it in words like that. Well, duty was duty, and in this case it was as
much in the interest of the Oca Front as of the Police to see the
Black Thursday arbites captured, or put out of business. But who
could have thought that pretty, bright-looking little Mara-

A new thought exploded suddenly on the battleground of his
mind. He looked sharply at Biset.

"Just a second," he said. "We're forgetting something. You
say you're a member of the Police, but I've only got your word for

$2

that, or for any of this you've been telling me. For all I know you
could be a Black Thursday member yourself, and Mara could
belong to the Police."

"Of course, sir. Quite right," she answered.

Her fingers went to the tab at the top of the vertical seal line
of her coveralls, hesitated a second, then grasped the tab and
pulled it down no more than a couple of inches. The coverall collar
gaped open, revealing the thin, corded column of her neck, shad-
owed within. Against the dimness of that shadow, something tiny
burned and glowed like a speck of living green fire.

Giles frankly stared. He had heard of the Police identispores,
but had never seen one before in his life. What he was looking at,
he knew, was a miniature bubble of crystalline transparency, in the
heart of which was buried a special spore, the cultivation of which
was one of the most jealously guarded secrets of the Police and the
Council. The bubble would be glued with a physiological glue to
the flesh of Biset's neck, and from the bubble itself a nearly invisi-
ble hair of a tube would be reaching down into a nearby blood
vessel. Up that tube, as up a capillary, some of Biset's blood would
reach and nourish the spore, which-as long as it was alive-
would glow with its own, unique color, unlike the color of any of
its sister spores.

Removed from its connection with Biset's bloodstream, that
spore would die and its individual light would go out. Even if
placed immediately in contact with the bloodstream of any other
person, it would die. It had been cultured on Biset's individual
body chemistry, and any other body chemistry was poison to it.

"My ident card," Biset was saying.

Giles looked down and saw her holding a small white card,
also enclosed in a few millimeters of crystalline transparency-a
material that made tampering with it almost an impossibility. A
perfectly ordinary arbite identification card, except that one comer
of it was colored green. Giles took the card from her hand and
held it up so that the colored comer was only a fraction of an inch
from the minuscule living jewel at her throat. The colors matched.

53

"Yes," he said, letting his breath out in something that almost
became a sigh. "Thank you. I believe you now."

He handed back the card. She took it with one hand, resealed
the collar of her coveralls with the other.

"I can count on your help then. Honor, sir?9'

"Yes," he said, heavily, "you can count on it. Wait-" The
sudden sharp note in his voice arrested her as she started to turn

away.

"The Police serve the Council and the Council represent the
Melborn. I am the only Adelbom here. You'll do what I "dy-
and I say you'll take no steps to arrest or question anyone on this
ship without coming and getting my permission first. Youll do
nothing whatsoever in the line of Police duty without checking
with me first. Is that understood?"

Her face was unreadable. She hesitated for just a second, and
in that second, the Captain's voice spoke.

"Now.'" it exploded, in Albenareth, suddenly from the grille
of the console before Giles. Giles jerked into full alertness. He had
let his thoughts run away from him, while his attention was lulled
by his own lack of understanding of the purpose behind most of
the actions of the Engineer shown on the screen. Now he woke
suddenly to the fact that what he had taken for a continuing effort
of work on the part of the spacesuited figure had become a sort of
aimless pawing at the cover of the remaining motor, like the fum-
blings of a drunk man.

"Adelman!" said the Captain's voice. "Do you hear me? Now
you must act. Use your mechanical to take hold of the Engineer.
Gently, now-about the body ... gently ..."

Tensely, Giles maneuvered the rods and their finger studs.
The alien waldoes were like the equivalent machine of human
design in that they were far more powerful than the flesh-and-
blood hands directing them; and Giles concentrated on using them
as lightly as possible to take hold of the Engineer around what in
human terms would have been his waist.

He was too gentle. He got a six-finger grip on the Engineer
and then lost it. The spacesuited body hobbled away, floating

54

above the hull of the lifeship, tethered only by its umbilical con-
nections. Giles made a grab for it-but instinctively used two
mechanical fingers in the human manner instead of the Albe-
narethian three, and the Engineer floated free again.

The voice of the Captain shouted something from the grille in
front of Giles, but Giles was concentrating too hard on his job at
hand to listen or translate what was said. He tried once more,
delicately, with all three fingers on each metal arm; and this time
he caught the Engineer firmly.

The grating sound rumbled through the hull of the lifeship. In
Giles' screen the images of the motors began to shrink as the
Captain activated the vehicle carrying Giles' mechanical device
and the Engineer back toward the airlock.

"Stand by, Adelman!" said the Captain's voice from the grille
-and this time Giles heard and understood him. "Now comes the
difficult part. You will have to lift him around the corner into the
airlock, and place him so that he does not float out when I close
the outer lock door."

Giles grunted. No doubt it would be a maneuver that any
trained Albenareth could accomplish without thinking. But for an
untrained human like himself, it was as delicate as balancing a
plate on edge and then letting go of it to reach for another plate to
balance on top of the first. He must release the Engineer with both
waldoes, hoping that the alien would hold his position on the lip of
the airlock while Giles got a new grip from another angle that
would allow him to move the Engineer all the way inside the lock.
If he fumbled, the Engineer would drift out of his present position,
and the two-move series would have to begin all over again. And
the Engineer-if he was not already dead-was coming closer to
death by the minute.

A little, distant section of Giles' mind took this moment to
laugh at him. Here he was straining every effort to save the life of
a being to whom death was the greatest of rewards, and the cul-
mination of all other rewards. But, strangely, knowning that the
Albenareth thought so made no difference to Giles' body and mind
in this moment. He was not Albenareth; he was human. And the

pattern of humans was to fight death in themselves or in anyone
for whom they felt love or responsibility, down to the last moment
of hope, and the last line of defense.

Delicately, Giles freed his six mechanical fingers from their
grasp on the middle part of the spacesuited figure. Quickly, he
rotated both the finger-support rods, to change the whole angle of
their attack on the body they were trying to lift. Then he moved
them in for another six-finger grip on the Engineer.

The Engineer had already begun to float away from contact
with the lifeship; but Giles, operating above himself under the
adrenaline of the moment, made a fair recatch of the other's figure
with all six fingers of the two mechanical hands. For a second he
merely held position, waiting for the wave of relief to pass, then
slowly he began to swing the Engineer down into the airlock itself.

The move inside went smoothly, but the bight of the umbili-
cals still floated out into space, through the open outer door. They
would keep the outer door from sealing properly, unless they were
also brought fully into the lock.

Giles risked a great deal. He had been so aware of his inabil-
ity to use the two hands of the waldoes separately that he had not
even practiced doing so. But now, with the Engineer safely within
the lock. he could not risk letting the spacesuited alien float out
again. Delicately, he concentrated on holding the Engineer down
upon the airlock floor with one mechanical hand, while with the
other he reached for the umbilicals.

For a moment he felt the division of attention and frustration
that anyone feels who is trying for the first time the old trick of
patting his head with one hand while rubbing his stomach in a
circular motion with the other. Then his groping mechanical fin-
gers hooked the floating umbilicals and drew them back into the
airlock.

They were barely inside the lock when the outer door began
to close. Clearly the Captain had been watching and had no inten-
tion of letting a second be lost. When the outer lock door was
swung to sufficiently so that neither Engineer nor umbilicals could
escape to block its closing, Giles unwrapped his aching hands from

56

around the two rods, turned about, and slumped against the inner
hull of the lifeship, panting. His upper suit was soaked with sweat
and clung to him.

The Captain had been right. What Giles had just done had
been no job for an arbite. It had required not only a healthy body
in good nervous and physical condition, but someone with enough
personal self-confidence to gamble on the abilities of that body....
Giles woke suddenly to the fact that he had an audience. All the
arbites on the ship, it seemed, with Mara and Biset in their front
rank, were clustered just beyond the gap in the first screen, silently
watching him.

He opened his mouth to order them back, but the voice of the
Captain, buzzing loudly on the human words, beat him to it.

"Back! Out! Adelman, tell your people to get out of our
way-and help me after I open the lock!"

"You heard him!" panted Giles. "Get back. Sit down on your
cots. Stay out of the way. We'll be coming through with the Engi-
neer in a minute and I want the way open!"

They melted away before him. He turned to join the Captain,
but the Albenareth motioned him back.

"Stop!" said the alien, in her own language. "Touch him and
you'll injure yourself!"

The Captain was right, Giles saw, as the inner airlock door
slowly swung wide to reveal the Engineer. His spacesuit was cov-
ered with frost, as the whole inner part of the lock had been when
they had first opened it, and was again now. The Captain stepped
forward into the lock, extending hands around which she had once
more wrapped plastic sheeting for protection. Awkwardly, but
swiftly, she disconnected the umbilicals and lifted the motionless
figure of the Engineer through the inner lock door into the body of
the lifeship.

"Go ahead of me," she said to Giles. "Make sure the way is
clear to the rear area of the ship. By the time we get back there, his
suit will be warm enough for you to touch safely."

"I understand," said Giles.

He walked swiftly in front of the two aliens into the back area

57

of the lifeship, and the Captain, following him, brought the figure
of the Engineer to a cot that had belonged to Di, and laid it down
there, clipping the tool straps from the belt of the spacesuit to the
frame of the cot to hold it in place.
"Now ..." said the Captain.

She unwrapped the plastic from her hands, and gently setting
the powerful three fingers of each hand around the curve of the
helmet, she turned it carefully until its seal disengaged. There was
a little inward-sucking sound of air, and then the still-frosted hel-
met came loose in the Captain's hands. She and Giles stood look-
ing down at last on the face of the Engineer.

To Giles, there was little to be read from what he saw. The
Engineer's eyes were closed, and his dark skin had an ashy color,
as though it had been lightly dusted with gray powder. It was
impossible for human eyes to tell whether he breathed or not.

"How is he?" Giles asked.

"Good. Some life remains," answered the Captain shortly,
almost absently, her hands flying about the spacesuit to undo its
lockings and seals. "Adelman, behind you on the other cot you will
find certain tools-among them a joined pair of cutters. Use them
to remove the ties from the Engineer's limbs. Do not try to unfas-
ten the clamps. Cut. Do you understand?"

"I understand," said Giles.

He turned about and found the cutters of which the Captain
had been talking.

In the process of cutting the ties, he saw at close hand how
the ancient spacesuit had, indeed, failed. Around the body section
there had evidently been no leaks. But at more than one place on
each arm or leg where flexing had occurred, there had been leaks.
In each case the ties had clamped down; and now in the section
that had lost air pressure, the limb of the Engineer showed swollen
and ugly. In cutting the ties, Giles inadvertently touched several of
these swollen sections and they gave slightly, bulging to his finger-
tips, like worn inner tubes filled to bursting with liquid.

The Captain had the upper part of the Engineer stripped of
the spacesuit by the time Giles had finished cutting the last of the

58

ties around the engineer's ankles. A moment later and the space-
suit was pulled free of the motionless alien, leaving him lying there
in only the shipboard harness both Albcnareth were accustomed to
wear.

The Engineer's eyes were still closed. He had shown no sign
of understanding that they had him back in the lifeship and were
working on him. He did not move, but once or twice he had made
a faint hissing noise deep in his throat.

"How is he? Will he die?" Giles asked.

"He is dying," said the Captain. She whirled on Giles. "Go
now. Keep your humans out of this back area. 1 do not want them
here. I do not want them looking in here. Is that clear? The last
moments of an Albenareth are not a spectacle for aliens."

"I will stay away and keep all the others away-of course,"
said Giles. He turned and went out through the gap in the closer
screen, into the section where the arbites still waited. Behind him
there was a sudden screeching of torn metal. He turned to see the
cot which had been Frenco's literally ripped from its supports,
being thrust upright into the gap in the back screen to make a
barrier there.

The cot did not really fill the gap. There was room on the hull
side of the opening for a human to slip through, if he or she
wanted to. But it blocked a view of the two aliens from the middle
section of the lifeship, and it was a stark symbol of the Captain's
demand for privacy.

"I think you all understand what that means," Giles said to
the arbites. He was surprised to hear his own tongue thick from
exhaustion. He gestured toward the cot blocking the entrance to
the rear section of the lifeship. "The Captain has said none of us
are to go back there, or look in there. I'll add my own personal
order to that. I don't want any of you going close to that opening
or sneaking a look-"

He broke off suddenly. For the first time since they had come
aboard the lifeship, the blue-white lights overhead that were never
turned off and that nourished the growth of the ib vine had
dimmed. They shone now with only a faint reddishness of illumi-

59

nation; and the abrupt decrease of light after all these hours left
the humans nearly blind while they waited for their eyes to adjust.

"I repeat," croaked Giles. "Stay away from that rear section.
There's nothing back there you're likely to need." He nodded
meaningfully at the lifeship's primitive sanitary facilities, which
were enclosed by the screens of the middle section. "Stay here and
stay quiet until further order. Not only will you have me to deal
with if you don't, but the Captain will probably take his own
measures-and I can't promise to protect any one of you, in that
case."

He turned, feeling his blind way with both hands, and stum-
bled through the gap in the front screen to fumble for and locate
his cot. His hands closed on the edge of it, he sat down on it, and
lay back. Sleep swallowed him at a gulp....

He was on his feet and moving again before he was truly
awake. The air was being shivered by screams from some human
throat. The overhead lights in the lifeship were back to a brilliant
blue-white. In a staggering plunge he went toward the noise-
through the gap in the nearer screen and through the knot of
arbites who were beginning to cluster about the cot-blocked gap in
the farther screen. He went past the cot itself, knocking it aside as
he burst into the rear section of the ship. Just as he did so the
screams were stopped as abruptly as if a hand had been jammed
over the mouth of the screamer.

He found himself facing the Captain, who stood holding Di
like a broken doll in long, dark alien hands. The girl draped
limply, eyes closed, in the grasp of the alien. Of the Engineer there
was no sign; but the Captain, the floor covering, and the one cot
that remained were liberally spotted with dark alien blood.

"Take her," said the Captain, making one step forward and
putting the unconscious form of the girl into Giles* arms. "She
came back here where she was told not to; but she is not harmed."

Giles accepted the dead weight of Di. He stood holding her
and still staring at the Captain.

"Where is the Engineer?" Giles said thickly in Albenareth.

"He has passed through the further Portal in all honors," said

60

the Captain. She switched abruptly to Basic. "So much for he that
was he. His husk"-the Captain turned and nodded toward the
converter-"is of use and has been put to use."

There was a sickened moan from the arbite group in the
screen opening. Giles stared at the converter. The main door on
top of it was still propped open slightly. That door was fully large
enough to allow insertion of the Engineer's body. There would
have been no need to dismember the corpse. Giles looked about
and saw the pile of instruments he had seen earlier. None of them
was marked with the dark blood so omnipresent otherwise.

"Whose blood is that?" he asked in Albenareth.

"Human," said the Captain, in the same language. "I am
weary of the questions of you and your race!"

She strode past Giles abruptly, almost knocking him over.
The arbites scattered before the tall figure, then flowed back into
the rear section to stare at the blood, the converter, and the figure
ofDi.

Giles himself looked down at Di. On either side of her neck
toward the back the dark shadows of bruises were beginning to
discolor the skin-two bruises on one side of the neck and one on
the other, as might have been made by a very powerful, three-
fingered hand.

"What happened?" It was Mara, facing him, reaching down
to lift the unconscious girl's head. "Frenco said she had night-
mares. She must have woken up from one, forgotten where she
was, and started back to her cot, here. But what made her scream
like that? What did she see?"

"God knows," said Giles, grimly. He looked down at the
closed eyes in the still face. "And if those screams are any indica-
tion, I doubt she'll want to remember what it was when she does
wake up. We may never know."

61

6

Second day-16:15 hours

Giles had been right in his unprofessional guess. When Di
came to, after she had been carried to a cot in the middle section,
she did not remember. She seemed confused and uncertain, like
someone who has just recovered from the effects of a heavy drug.
She cried and clung to Mara or Biset, whoever was closest. She
threatened to become hysterical if any of the men came near her-
including Frenco, whom she did not seem to recognize at all.

In the end, the two other women took turns sitting with her,
and bit by bit she dropped into short periods of uneasy sleep, from
which she was as likely to wake screaming as not. But, gradually,
the violence of her nightmares seemed to diminish, and she began
to sleep for longer and more normal periods. Still, she did not
remember anything of what she had seen in the stem area of the
lifeship. Her last memory was of the Engineer being brought back

through the airlock.

Frenco, meanwhile, in the space of less than twenty-four
hours, went from a round-faced boy to a pale, sharp-featured man
on the edge of violence. He could not believe that Di did not want
him near her and was ready to fight his way to her. In the end,
Giles had to appoint Hem to guard the girl against Frenco's ap-
proaches.

Meanwhile, the rest of the humans were close to a condition

62

of total anarchy. With the exception of Hem, who was apparently
undisturbed by the disposition of the Engineer's body, and Giles,
who forced himself to eat, none of the others would touch the pulp
of the fruit from the ib vine. Indeed, with the exception of Hem
and Giles, the humans held off drinking the ib juice until thirst
literally drove them to it. But eat they would not. Finally, Giles
called them all together in the center section between the screens.

"Now listen to me," he said. "Try to understand. We're out
here alone in space, surrounded by light-years of emptiness, and
this lifeship is the only thing we have to give us a chance of ever
making it to planetfall again. If we ever get out of this alive, what
we'll have to thank will be the lifeship and the Captain-yes, the
Engineer, too. Don't look away from me when I say that. Make an
effort to think outside all the things you grew up with and learned
and took for granted. What we have here-this closed cycle with
the converter-is exactly the same kind of closed cycle we had
back on Earth, only simplified. . . . Look at me when I talk to
you!"

Pale faces that had been averted turned back to him. That
much he could make them do-obey the physical command.
Whether he could actually get them to think in terms of this new
and alien environment was something else again. Well, at least he
could try-

"I want you to look at matters squarely, with your feelings set
aside," he went on. "The drive motors needed to be worked on.
That is a fact. The Engineer had to go outside and work on them,
at the cost of his life, which was a price he expected to pay.
Another fact. It did cost him his life; and the Captain, rather than
letting go to waste nutrients which would help keep us alive-us
humans, remember, not just some equivalent number of individ-
uals of his own race-put the Engineer's body in the recycling
tank to feed the ib vine. Fact. There they are-facts. Not matters
of opinion which you can choose to react to or not to react to-
but facts. Because if you don't accept them as the facts they are,
the final fact of all will get you-if you don't eat, you'll die."

"Kept him alive, too ..." muttered a male voice.

63

"Who's that? Esteven?" Giles stared at the entertaincom. Un-
like the others, Esteven was not particularly pale. If anything, he
was a little flushed and there was a glazed, defiant look to his eyes.
"What do you mean-kept who alive, too?"

"I mean him-the Captaini" said Esteven, more loudly. "He
lives off the ib vine, too-and the Engineer. I say he was keeping
himself alive by putting the Engineer in there-Honor, sir!"

The last two words were uttered almost impudently. But
Giles paid little attention. He was busy adjusting his own mind. He
had forgotten that the arbites believed the Albenareth Captain to
be a male. For a moment he toyed with the idea of telling them the
truth about the alien commander's sex, then rejected it. The less
confusion and surprise aboard from now on, the better.

"The Albenareth don't fight the prospect of death the way we
do, Esteven," Giles said, evenly. "You know that. What makes the
Captain run is a sense of duty, not personal worries."

"Pardon me. Honor, sir," said Esteven. The ordinarily quiet
and withdrawn man was acting far out of his usual character at the
moment. He was almost belligerent. "But are you sure about that?"

It was time to sit on him, thought Giles.

"When I tell you anything, Esteven," he said, harshly and
finally, "you can take it for granted that I'm sure about it, or I
wouldn't say it. Now, unless you've got something more useful to
say, I want you to sit there and be quiet. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Honor, sir ..." All at once the belligerence went out of
the arbite. He shrank back into his usual silence and inconspicu-

ousness.

"All right,*' said Giles, turning to the others. "I'm not going
to order you to eat. I'm going to appeal to you to try to eat; and
until you do, all of you are going to be required to sit here, twice a
ship-day, and watch while Hem and I eat. And that first meal is
going to be right now.... Hem?"

The big laboring arbite got up, stepped into the rear section,
and returned with two bowls of the ib pulp. He handed one to
Giles and sat down on a cot with the other.

64

Giles ate stolidly, hiding his own feelings about the Engineer
and the vine pulp under the mask of indifference he had learned
during that first year after being sent away to boarding school.
Hem was truly indifferent. The watching arbites sat silently, bear-
ing up very well under the scene they were witnessing-until the
very end, when Hem thoughtlessly began to lick the stray pulp
from his fingers and first Di, then Croce and Frenco, were abruptly
sick, crowding into the sanitary cubicle with little energy left over
to be considerate of one another.

Much of the same scene was repeated six hours later, and
again for three more times before Biset and Mara, at once, sat
down with bowls holding hardly more than a tablespoonful apiece
of the ib pulp and choked it down. Two mealtimes later and they
were all eating, including Di.

Meanwhile, Di and Frenco had moved back into the spurious
privacy of the rear section of the lifeship. Another cot had been
pulled up from the floor to take the place of the one the Captain
had torn from its fastening to bar the entrance in the screen. The
rest were all in the center section with the exception of Hem, who
had moved to a cot up in the front section where Giles had been by
himself until the Engineer's death.

It was a curiously forward thing for the low-graded bumper
to do on his own intiative, but Giles thought it best not to question
the man about it. Most arbites of Hem's type, questioned about
anything, became overwhelmed with embarrassment and tongue-
tied with the fear of not giving the proper answers. Meanwhile,
things were going as smoothly as could be expected, now that all
the humans were finally adjusted to the lifeship's environment and
eating correctly once more. Giles turned over the situation in his
own mind. It was one in which ordinarily he would offer the ar-
bites some kind of reward to reinforce the positive effect of their
good behavior. But here on the lifeship, rewards were not easily
available.

He hit finally on a farfetched possibility. He must talk to the
Captain anyway, and that conversation would provide an oppor-

65

tunity for the asking of a special consideration. He waited until
several ship-days after the death of the Engineer before approach-
ing the other Albenareth.

Choosing a time when the arbites were all in the middle or
stern section of the craft, Giles went up to the partition within
which the Captain had been keeping herself isolated almost con-
tinuously since the Engineer's death. Standing outside the screen
that hid the alien commander, Giles spoke in Albenareth.

"Captain, I'd like to talk to you." There was a moment's
pause, then the sound of the alien voice answered.

"Come:'

Giles walked around the edge of the screen and turned to face
the Captain, who was sitting before one of the control consoles.
Without getting up, she swiveled her command seat to face him.

"Captain," said Giles, "perhaps you can tell me now how
long it will be before we make planetfall in this lifeship"

"We will reach Kelben in a little less than a hundred and eight
ship-days:'

"I see," said Giles. "That is a long time:'

"It is the time required," said the Captain. There was no
difference that Giles' human ear could find in the Albenareth's
tones, and no difference that he could see in the way she sat or
spoke. But still, something about her conveyed an impression of
remoteness, as if she had somehow put a new distance, not only
between her and himself, but between her and the lifeship with
everyone else aboard it.

"I take it there is no better destination?" asked Giles.

"There i$ no other destination"

"If the Captain will bear with me," said Giles. He had a
feeling as if he was walking through some strange field sowed with
booby traps and mines that he could not imagine, much less see.
What he had to say skirted the dangerous perimeter of alien emo-
tions, alien honor. "There is a human mining colony together with
an Albenareth spaceship station, on a world called 20B-40, ac-
cording to our charts. Out of interest, I studied those charts before

66

leaving on this voyage. I have no skill at navigation, of course,
beyond piloting my own small craft within my own Solar System;

but unless I am mistaken, at this moment 20B-40 would be only
perhaps half the distance from us that Belben is"

"Perhaps," said the Captain. "However, Belben is our des-
tination."

"Why, when 20B-40 is closer?"

"Belben was our original destination. My ship has been lost,
but some honor may be saved if what is left of her passengers are
delivered as promised."

"What honor will there be in delivering them, if they are not
then living,?" Giles asked. "A hundred and eight days is a long time
for these people of mine to survive under these conditions"

"Survive?" said the Captain. "Oh yes, I had forgotten how
you humans, having no knowledge of the Way and its Portals,
shrink and scurry from the thought of Passing. But that is your
affair. My duty was only that of delivery-alive or dead are all one
to me."

"They are not to me," said Giles. "I have a responsibility to
keep these of my own race alive. I ask you to pilot us instead to
20B-40."

"No," said the Captain. She closed her eyes as if she was very
tired. "I can afford no more departures from. the Way."

"Captain," said Giles, slowly. "I am of the house and sept of
Steel, and Steel has great wealth, part of which I command per-
sonally. Jf you will turn aside to 20B-40 I will give you my
promise-and the promise of an Adelborn is a contract signed-to
either pay you whatever is necessary to build you another ship just
like the one you lost, or pay to actually have it built by your own
people first, and then present it to you. You will have lost nothing,
then"

The Captain opened her eyes and looked at him for a second.
"But I will have lost," she said. "You are an alien and do not
understand. All my crew and officers, now that the Engineer has
Passed, won death in the destruction of my ship. To have the ship

67

alone replaced is a hollow thing. It would pleasure me only; but it
would be an insult to the honors of my crew and officers who have
now gone through the further Portal, if I were to accept something
they could not share and which did them no honor."

She stopped speaking. Giles stood without moving, staring
down at her, momentarily without recourse. His offer to her had
been the equivalent of holding out a fortune to a pauper. In all his
plans for this moment it had never occurred to him that this last
and greatest possible price would be refused.

"You are right. Captain," he said, slowly. "I do not under-
stand. But I would like to. Perhaps if I understood, there might be
some way we could come to other understandings. Can you not
explain matters to me so I will comprehend?"

"No," said the Captain. "There is no responsibility upon me
to make you understand, and none upon you to understand."

"I fail to agree with you," said Giles. "For a long time now I
have believed that the Albenareth and humanity are bound to-
gether in more ways than just those of trade and shipping. There is
not only a duty but a need on us to understand each other, as
individuals and as members of our respective races."

"Your opinion is of no consequence," said the Captain.
"What you believe is not even possible. You are not of the Albe-
nareth, which is to say you are not of The People. Therefore you
would never be able to understand the ways of The People, no
matter what efforts I or any other should make to bring you to
understanding."

"I think," said Giles, "That what you have just said is not
true. I think it is an opinion of yours, only, and that it is that
opinion which is wrong, not my own. I ask only that you try."

"No," said the Captain. "To try any such thing would take
strength. My strength is now limited. I will not waste it on useless
effort"

"It is not useless," said Giles. "It is vital to you and your
honor. It is vital to me and my honor. It is vital to the lives of my
arbites. It is vital to your race and mine, who may both go down
into extinction unless some closer understanding can be found."

68

The Captain closed her eyes again.

"This matter is no longer discussible," she said. "On what
other subjects did you wish to speak to me?"

Giles opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"There is more ib vine and fruit of the vine than is needed for
as small a party, such as we are presently in this lifeship," he said.
"At the time of the Engineer's passing, the lights were turned down
to a less bright mode. It would be a great help to my people in
enduring this voyage if the lights could be turned down at regular
intervals for short periods. Surely the ib vine can supply us with
sufficient nourishment in spite of short periods of lessened illumi-
nation."

"The light must remain constant," said the Captain, without
opening her eyes. "All things must remain as they are until we
reach our appointed destination. Now, Adelman, I am weary of
talking and wish privacy."

"Very well," said Giles. "I will talk no more with you-now."

He turned and went back to his cot. He sat down on it, his
mind whirling. There had to be a way to make the Captain change
their destination to the mining colony on the nearer world. He
became aware suddenly that Hem was seated on his own cot,
silently watching.

"Don't just sit here!" said Giles, irritated by the big bumper's
silent stare. "Do something with yourself. Go back and talk to
some of the others. They're never going to include you in things as
long as you hide off by yourself this way!"

Without a word, Hem got up and stepped back through the
gap in the screen into the middle section of the ship where most of
the other arbites were.

"And the rest of you back in there'." added Giles, raising his
voice. "Hem's one of you on board here, and I want you to react
to him the same way you would to any of the rest of you! Remem-
ber that!"

A corner of his mind nibbled at him with small teeth, remind-
ing him that he was taking out his own frustration with the Cap-
tain on the arbites, who dared not frustrate him in anything. But he

69

forced himself to ignore the thought. He stretched out on the cot
and threw a forearm across his eyes to shut out the never-ending
ceiling illumination. Maybe if he slept on the problem he could
come up with some idea for changing the Captain's mind.

He woke some time later. There were no arbite voices in
conversation sounding beyond the screen next to his cot, but he
had the impression that something, some noise, had wakened him.
He listened, but all he could hear was the faintest of sounds-
almost a sort of struggling-to-breathe sound-
He sat up silently and swung his legs over the end of his cot.
From this position he could see through the gap in the near screen
to the cots of the middle section. Each one was occupied by a
sleeping figure, but it was from none of them that the faint sound
was coming-nor was it from beyond the further screen, where Di

and Frenco would be.

Puzzled, Giles sat listening. Slowly, his hearing began to get a
directional fix on the sound. It came from close by. In fact, it came
from the cot across the center aisle from him, the only cot besides
his own pulled into up position in the front part of the lifeship.

Hem was sleeping there, lying on his side with his clenched
fists up in front of his face, his heavy body curled up on the long
but narrow cot. Or was the bumper actually asleep? Silently, Giles
got to his feet and stepped over to stand by the head of Hem's

cot.

The big arbite was crying-in all but perfect silence. His two
heavy fists were hiding his face and somehow he had managed to
pull loose enough of the fabric covering his cot to stuff into his
mouth and muffle the sounds he was making. He lay there on his
side, his mouth hidden by the fists and the fabric, and the tears
running down from his tightly shut eyes.

Giles frowned.

"Hem," he said softly.

The bumper did not respond.

"Hem!" Giles said again, no more loudly, but with more
tension in his voice. Hem's eyes flew open and stared up at Giles in
what might be either astonishment or panic.

70

"Hem, what's wrong?" Giles asked,

Hem shook his head, tears still rolling down his cheeks.

Giles gazed down at him for a moment, perplexed. Then
Giles sat down on the fioor beside the cot, so that his lips were
close to the arbite's ear and he could talk very quietly indeed.

"All right, Hem," he said, softly. "Now you can tell me
what's wrong."

Again, Hem shook his head.

"Yes, you can," Giles went on, keeping his voice gentle but
insistent. "Something's bothering you. What is it, now?"

Hem struggled with himself and finally lifted the muffling
fabric from his mouth long enough to say one, almost inaudible,
word.

"Nothing..."

"It can't be 'nothing,'" said Giles. "Look at you. Now tell
me, what is it that's troubling you? Or who is it? Answer me."

"I'm sick," whispered Hem.

"Sick? How? What kind of sickness?"

But Hem had the fabric back in his mouth and was saying
nothing.

"Hem," said Giles, still gently, "when I ask you a question, I
want you to answer me. Where do you feel sick-in your stomach?"

Hem shook his head.

"Where? In your arm or leg? In your head?"

Hem shook his head to all these suggestions.

"What kind of sickness is it?" demanded Giles, "Do you hurt
someplace?"

Hem shook his head. Then he closed his eyes and nodded.
His tears began to flow heavily again.

"Well, where, then?" Giles asked.

Hem shuddered. Still keeping his eyes closed, he took the
fabric from his mouth.

"Yes," he whispered.

"'Yes' . . . what? What hurts? Your head-arms-legs?
Where?"

Hem only shook his head silently. Giles checked his temper,

71

which was threatening to rise. It was not Hem's fault he could not
express himself. The responsibility to find words for what was
wrong with the big bumper lay not with the arbite who had only a
limited vocabulary, but the Adelman who could express himself.

"Tell me if you can. Hem," said Giles. "Just when did you
start to feel bad? Was it just after we got into the lifeship? Or ]'ust
a few hours ago? Or did you feel bad when you were back on the
big spaceship?"

Then, at last, it began to come out, in bits and pieces of
disjointed sentences. Hem, it seemed, was the exception to what
Mara had claimed for all the arbites. The last thing in the world
Hem had wanted was to be indent to one of the outer worlds. The
reason for this, Giles became aware, had much to do with the
status and purpose of Hem's own life back on Earth, a status and
purpose Giles had known about all his life but had never appreci-
ated until this moment.

The heavy-duty arbites, those males specially bred to the few
hard physical tasks that remained, were essentially a culture apart
from the rest of the working class. To keep them from becoming
discontented with the relatively simple, repetitive tasks they had to
do, they were gene-controlled for a low intelligence level and for
those factors that would encourage a feeling of docility and depen-
dence upon their superiors. Theoretically, they were as free as the
other arbites. Once in a while, one of them succeeded in leaving
the work barracks and setting up a permanent family relationship
with some normal arbite woman, but this was uncommon.

For all the strength in their oversize bodies, they were timid
socially. Most of them lived out their relatively short lives-for
some reason they were more than normally vulnerable to diseases,
especially pneumonia, and few of them in the barracks lived be-
yond their middle thirties-almost exclusively in the company of

their work-mates.

Hem had been like the rest. To him, the barracks had been
the whole world, and his beer-mate, Jase, the closest thing to any
kind of family he knew. Conceived, essentially, in a test tube,
raised in a nursery reserved exclusively for low-intelligence boys

72

like himself, and graduated to the work barracks at the early ma-
turity of thirteen years of age, Hem had been in no way prepared
psychologically to be torn from the only way of life he knew and
sent light-years away with no company but that of the superior
arbites who had little in common with him. Everything that Hem
knew had been taken from him. He would never again have a
barracksful of old friends to return to. He would never again know
the friendly drinking and the equally friendly brawls of the beer-
busts, tiie jokes, the tricks, the pleasure of working in company
with his mates. Above all, he would never see Jase again.

It was a little while before Giles began to put together the
incoherent and broken whispers of the big man. What he heard
opened his eyes to the fallacy of a great many comforting beliefs
he, like everyone else, had always accepted about this lowest class
of arbites, without ever stopping to examine them. Those of Hem's
special type were supposed to be incorrigibly cheerful because of
their ignorance, automatically brave because they did not have the
intelligence to know the meaning of fear, and- totally unself-
conscious because their size and strength made them indifferent to
the opinions of the weaker, but more intelligent humans around
them.

None of this was true, he now learned. But the discovery still
left him puzzled. Something more than just the difference between
his actual nature and the way others thought of him was chewing
at Hem. Giles kept after the arbite with gentle, but prodding ques-
tions and finally, in the same fragmentary fashion in which Hem
had expressed himself about other things, the deeper problem
came out.

The important thing for Hem had been his work-mate, Jase.
Whether the relationship Hem was trying to describe had been a
homosexual one or not hardly mattered in the childlike terms of
which Hem thought of such things. The important point was that
nobody had loved Hem-mother, father, sibling, or girl friend.
Only Jase. And Hem had returned that affection. For twelve years
of barracks life they had been beer-mates, which in essence meant
they did their after-hours drinking always in each other's company.

73

Then suddenly Hem was taken away, to be shipped to some
strange colony on a different world, where it was doubtful that
there would be even one other laboring-class arbite for him to talk
to. He could not even write Jase-not because he was illiterate,
but because it was too much of a creative demand for someone
like himself to make a letter anything but an emotionless vehicle
for the simplest sort of factual information.

So, suffering under this loss, with his grief completely unsus-
pected by everyone around him, including his so-called fellow ar-
bites. Hem had stumbled even deeper into emotional trouble. He
had no name for the new pain within him; he could not even
consciously connect with its cause-but Giles, eking the informa-
tion out of him bit by unhappy bit, came to understand what Hem
could not admit, even to himself.

Simply, it was that Hem, robbed of Jase, had needed des-
perately to find someone else to fasten his affections upon. And
unconsciously, he had fastened them finally on Giles. Giles, alone
among the aliens and upper-caste arbites that now surrounded
Hem, showed some of the size, the strength, the characteristics
that Hem associated with his own mates.

And the big arbite's reaction was not so much to wonder at,
at that, thought Giles silently. He contrasted his own early days in
boarding school with Hem's. He and the bumper Tiad been at
opposite ends or the social spectrum; but in both cases the irre-
sistible hand of custom and authority had picked them up, molded
them, and determined the life they would lead while they were still
too young to know what was being done to them. They were
equally damned-no, thought Giles, Hem was the better of the two
in one respect. He had been left with the freedom to love-even if
it was only one of his mates. Giles had had as close a friendship
with Paul Oca as perhaps he had ever had with any other man, but
it could not really be said that they were "mates," even in the
ordinary, work meaning of that word in Hem's barracks.

As for girls . .. women, it came to Giles suddenly that he had
given nothing worthwhile in any of his brief liaisons, and had been
scrupulously careful to take nothing. For the first time it occurred

74

to him that no one had ever loved him, and he also had really
never loved anyone. His own parents had been there in the flesh,
but removed from him across barriers of age and manners. His
brothers and sisters, if he had ever had any, would have been
brought up apart from him to become polite strangers. He did not
miss this lack of an affection that was one of the necessary ingredi-
ents of life itself to Hem; but he was not unaware of its existence.
For him, love was duty, and duty love. That was as far as his
emotions would go-and he could see no hope of there ever being
anything more for him.

His thoughts came back to Hem. Unconsciously, Hem had
taken hold of one of Giles' hands in his own two big fists and was
holding it, weeping over it in the depths of his voiceless unhappi-
ness. Hem, Giles realized, would never be able to understand why
he was suffering. The perhaps lucky thing about Hem's affection
for Giles was that while the bumper felt it, he was completely
incapable of acknowledging it. The very suggestion that he might
dream of someone like an Adelman being a "mate" to him in any
sense of the word was so far out of context with life as Hem knew
it that he was mercifully protected from entertaining it consciously.
The only way he could approach such a thought was in the des-
perate wish to do something for Giles, something large and ter-
rible, up to the giving of his life for the Adelman. He tried to tell
Giles so, in fragmentary phrases.

"Good," said Giles. "That's very good. Hem. I appreciate it.
Don't worry. If ever I need you, I'll call you-right away."

"You will?" said Hem.

"Of course," said Giles. "Of course. Don't let it worry you,
Hem. Everything's going to be all right."

"It is?" Hem relaxed at last He still cried, but now it was out
of relief and gratitude-he could not have said why, any more
than he had been able earlier to identify the cause of his unhappi-
ness. He clung to Giles' hand and wept.

Giles sat with him patiently for a little while longer, until the
bumper dropped off into sleep. Then gently withdrawing his hand,
Giles stood up and stretched stiff muscles. He was cramped from

75

sitting cross-legged on the floor of the lifeship. Stretching, he made
a mental note to find out, once they made planetfall, where, if at
all, there were other heavy-laboring arbites stationed on the Col-
ony Worlds- It would probably be impossible to get Hem returned
to Earth, but it should not be beyond the bounds of impossibility
to get his indent changed to someplace where he could be with
work-mates of his own stamp, if any such place existed on one of
the Colony Worlds.

Meanwhile, Giles lay down again on his own cot and closed
his eyes. There must be some means of convincing the Captain to
change the lifeship's course to 20B-40. Now that he knew that the
World Police also believed Paul was on one of the Colony Worlds,
they might have men and women out on those worlds hunting
Paul now. Time had become a factor in the assassination. Giles
had never anticipated that the alien officer, whoever that might be,
in charge of the lifeship would be this stubborn about maintaining
course for the spaceship's original destination.

Why? That was the question. Why was the Captain being so
adamant in her refusal to do the sensible thing and head for the
nearest safe planetfall? Maybe if he could find out what was
motivating her....

76

7

Two sleep-days later, Giles still was without an answer to his
question, a solution to the problem of how to get the lifeship
turned toward 20B-40. But he was not destined to be left to puzzle
over it in peace. As he sat on his cot with Esteven's recorder,
talking the last day's entry into it, there was an explosion of noise
from between the screens enclosing the middle section of the ship.
Shouts, screams, and the sounds of bodies bumping about.

He shoved the recorder into a pocket and went through the
gap in the adjoining screen almost as swiftly as he had gone
through it when Di had screamed, at the time of the death of the
Engineer. In the middle section, Groce had Esteven pinned up
against one wall of the lifeship hull and was doing his best to
pound the other arbite into unconsciousness. Groce was obviously
a good ten years or more older than Esteven. Also he was the
smaller, lighter man and very obviously he had no knowledge of
how to fight, beyond a general idea that he should ball his fists and
keep swinging them at another person. But his sheer fury was
outweighing these small drawbacks. Esteven, caught between two
cots and with his back to the metal wall, could not get away from
the furious computecom, and it was plain enough that unless he
was rescued, Groce was going to succeed eventually in doing him
considerable damage.

77

Giles hurdled a pair of intervening cots and grabbed Groce by
the back of the collar and the slack in his coveralls at his waist.

"Stop that!" he snapped, pulling the computecom back out of
arm's reach of Esteven, who sagged against the wall. "Calm down,
Groce. . . . No, no, don't try hitting me now. Sit down and be
quiet. You, too, Esteven. Sit down on that other cot over there,
and tell me what's going on here."

"He-he-" Esteven was almost sobbing. The unnatural
flushed look Giles had noticed once before was back on his cheek,
and the finger he pointed at Croce trembled. "He's got everything
to keep him occupied. He's got a compute. And he's got a book,
too. All I wanted was a few pages out of the book so that I could
write down some music I've been composing-"

"All!" shouted Groce. The older man's voice scaled upward
in outrage. "Just a few pages-that's all? A whole handful of
pages torn out of my ancestor's book on prepositional calculus!
I've been working the statements in it, to pass the time. But it's my
book-and it's priceless! It's over two hundred and twenty-five
years old. Do you thing I'm going to rip sheets out of a precious
family antique like that, just so he can scribble some homemade
music notes on it? What's he doing composing music, anyway?
Nobody writes any real music nowdays except with a compute-
tank-"

"Groce!" said Giles. Groce went silent.

"He thinks-" began Esteven.

"You, too," said Giles. "Be quiet Now, Groce, let's see this
book."

Glaring at Esteven, Croce reached into a pocket of his cover-
alls and brought out a brown-covered volume almost small enough
to be hidden in the closed hand. But when Giles took it and
opened it, he saw that the little pages did, indeed, have a good deal
of white space on them, between and around the blocks of printing
diagrams.

"It's a math book all right," he said. "Propositional calculus,
you said, Groce?"

"That's right, Honor, sir," said Groce, somewhat less trucu-

78

lently. "My grandfather bought it, back before the Green Revolu-
tion. It's an heirloom-from the days when computes took up
whole floors in buildings."

"A book two hundred and twenty-five years old?" Giles
nodded. "I don't blame you for not wanting it damaged, Groce."

He frowned suddenly and took a comer of one page between
his middle finger and thumb, rubbing it.

"It's in remarkably good shape for a book that old," he said.
"How-"

"It's been plastic-injected. All the original materials have
been replaced with single-molecule stuff," said Groce, proudly.
"My father had it done. Cost him the equivalent of a full month's
pay, but it hasn't shown a touch of wear since then, in fifty-four
years."

"Plastic?"

The word came from Esteven, in an odd voice. He was star-
ing at the book in Giles' hand.

"That's right, Esteven," Giles said. "That's what Groce just
told us. What about it?"

"WTiy .. . nothing," said Esteven. still staring at the book. "I
mean ... I suppose if it's plastic my stylo wouldn't work on it. I
wouldn't be able to use the pages to write on, anyway...."

"Damned shame you didn't think to ask about that before
you tried to steal it from me!" Groce spat at the other arbite.

"I did ask you for it first-"

"And I told you no!" shouted Groce, "Do I have to give
reasons for not wanting to tear up an heirloom book?"

"It might have been a little wiser if you had," Giles said to
him, dryly, handing back the book. "Here. Keep it someplace
where no one can get at it to tear pages out, from now on."

He turned back into the front section of the ship and his own
cot. Behind him the recorder started up, and the familiar three
chords of Bosser, backing up the suggestive lyrics of the throaty
Singh, followed him.

He sat down on his cot and discovered that Mara had fol-
lowed him. She was standing over him.

79

"Yes?" he said, looking up at her.

"Could I show you something?" she asked. Her face was
serious, almost grim.

"What is it?" he asked.

"If you'll come with me-"

A sudden new explosion of voices broke out in the middle
section. The Bosser-Singh combination abruptly gave way to a solo
instrument sounding a high-pitched bit of wailing melody. Giles
shot up from his couch and strode into the middle section, to find
Groce trying to tear the recorder out of Esteven's grasp.

"-and kill that kind of thing!" Groce was shouting. "Give us
the Bosser and Singh back. That was good!"

"In a minute . . . just a minute," said Esteven, pleadingly.
"Just listen a second to this spinny-"

"What d'you mean, spinnyl" snarled Groce. "Ifs a lousy
kilin, and I hate kilin music!"

"Sir?" Esteven appealed to Giles. "You know music, Honor,
sir. You've probably had education in it. You can tell the differ-
ence, can't you?" Esteven's trembling fingers were snapping time
to the music.

"That's right, it's a spinny," Giles said. "But I'm afraid
music's not one of my larger interests, Esteven. The Bosser and
Singh suits me as well as anything."

He started to move on, but Esteven held up a hand, asking
him to wait a moment Moved by an obscure sense of pity for the
man, Giles did.

"I was right, though, sir," said Esteven. "You do know. You
do understand. Would you be surprised if I told you the name of
the soloist on that spinny? That's me. It's my job arranging and
setting up pieces like that. I know I can just program an instru-
mental part and have it come out perfect from the synthesizer. But
there's so few like me nowdays who really know and love their
instruments-I always feel you put more into the recording if you
have at least a part or two played like that-I mean, if you use a
live musician-"

The music stopped suddenly as Groce reached out and

80

stabbed the control button. Bosser and Singh poured forth.

Esteven opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it
silently.

"Groce," said Giles. Groce looked up at him. "That's Es-
teven's recorder, not yours. Just like your grandfather's book be-
longs to you, not him. If you don't like what's being played, come
and tell me. I don't want you touching the recorder yourself again."

"Yes, sir," muttered Groce, looking down at his cot.

"Give them half an hour or so of what they want," Giles told
Esteven, "then take half an hour to play what you want."

"Yes, Honor, sir," said Esteven. The look of gratitude in his
eyes was so overwhelming as to be almost a little sickening. Giles
turned to Mara, who was standing just behind him.

"Now," he said. "What was it?"

"If you'll come with me," she said.

She stepped past him and led the way into the rear section,
which was empty at the moment. There, she turned to the nearer
wall of the hull and the vine on it She searched among the leaves
for a moment, then lifted a stem of them out of the way with her
left hand and pointed with her right forefinger.

"Look at this fruit," she said to Giles, in a low voice.

He stepped close to the vine and brought his gaze down to
the fruit she indicated. At first he saw nothing about it that was
different from the appearance of the other fruits he had been ac-
customed to seeing and eating. Then, shading his eyes against the
dazzle of the eternal bright lights overhead, he began to make out
faint shadows on the ib fruit's surface. He stepped closer and saw
that the shadows were spots of darkness, seemingly just beneath
the skin of the fruit.

"I've seen one or two fruit before like this," Mara was saying
quietly in his ear. "But none of them had the number of brown
spots this one has. When I ran across it, I did some more looking
around the vine and found a couple of dozen of the fruit that have
at least two or three brown spots like this."

"Could you show me some of the others?" he asked.

She nodded and led him down along the vine. With a little

81

searching she uncovered three more fruits with a fair number of
spots on them, though not as many as the first one she had shown
him.

Giles turned back to examining the vine generally. Superfi-
cially, it looked very much the same as it always had been, but
after a few moments he came across a leaf that was blackened and
curled up. He broke it off thoughtfully, and went looking for more
of the same.

He collected four such leaves, then went back to detach the
first fruit Mara had shown him.

"I'll take these to the Captain," he said to her, and looked
down at her with approval. "You were wise not to tell any of the
others about this before telling me."

She gave him a faint, thin smile.

"Even an arbite has a touch of common sense. Honor, sir,"
she said.

He could not tell if she meant her tone to be mocking, or
not.

"I'll let you know, of course/' he said, "whatever I leam from
the Captain. I appreciate your coming and telling me about this.
Meanwhile, keep it to yourself until I've talked to the Captain."

"Of course," she said.

He turned and left her, heading toward the front of the life-
ship and holding the leaves and fruit hidden in his hands as he
passed through the middle section. His mind was crawling with a
vague uneasiness- Naturally, no system as simple as this could be
expected to endure indefinitely. While the lifeships were unused
aboard the spaceliner, the nutrient tank would have to be added to
at intervals to keep the vine alive and operating. No system was
perfect. But his researches back on Earth had told him that it
should be good, with the lifeship carrying a full load of passengers,
for six months at least- And those aboard here now were far from
a full load. He stepped around the edge of the screen hiding the
Captain,

The alien officer was sitting in her command chair, her eyes
closed.

82

"Rayumung," said Giles, in Albenareth, "I need to speak
with you."

She did not answer; nor did she open her eyes. He went closer
to her, to the very arm of her command chair. Now hidden himself
deep behind the screen that protected her, he spoke again, no
louder, but almost in the tiny dark orifice of the alien ear.

"Captain! Captain Rayumung!"

She stirred. Her eyes opened, her head turned, and she looked
at him.

"Yes?" she said.

"I need your attention to a matter," Giles said. "K concerns
the ib vine."

"The vine is not to be disturbed. Take only the fruit as di-
rected."

"Rayumung," said Giles, "is your memory failing you? You
have never given us directions for using the fruit of the ib. I from
my own knowledge informed my people."

"As long as the knowledge has been made available. Act
accordingly." The eyes in the dark and wrinkled face closed again.

"I repeat," said Giles, more loudly. "I must have your atten-
tion. There is an emergency about the vine."

"Emergency?" The eyes opened.

"Will the Captain examine this fruit?"

Giles held the fruit he carried, the one Mara had first shown
him. The three long dark fingers of the alien's right hand reached
out and took it in their tripodal grip. The Captain held the fruit for
a moment, gazing at it, then returned it to Giles-

"Do not eat this. Dispose of it."

"Why? What's wrong with the fruit?"

"It will make you ill. Perhaps you will die. Do not eat such
fruit."

"I did not need your advice to caution me about that," said
Giles. "I asked you what was wrong with it."

"It is no longer wholesome"

"That, too, was obvious." Giles had made the mistake of
losing his temper with the alien Captain before this. He told him-

83

self he would not make it again, now. His voice, in the buzzing
Albenareth tones, was icy, but as controlled as the Captain's.
"Look at these leaves, then."

He held out the four curled and darkened leaves to the Cap-
tain. She took them, held them as she had held the fruit, and
passed them back.

"The leaves," she said, "are dead."

"I can see that," Giles said. "I want to know why. Why are
the leaves dead? Why is the fruit not wholesome, suddenly? What
has gone wrong with the ib vine?"

"I have no idea." The Captain's voice was distant, almost
indifferent. "I am a spaceship officer, not a biotechnician. There
are those who could tell us what is wrong with the ib, but they are
not here."

"Have you no tests you can make? How about the nutrient
solution from the converter? Can't you iest that to see if there's
anything wrong with it?"

"There is no testing apparatus on board this lifeship."

"Yes," said Giles, grimly. "Jn fact, there is very little of
anything aboard this lifeship. Like all your ships. Captain Rayu-
mung, it is falling apart from old age and lack of proper mainte-
nance."

He had hoped to prod the Captain out of her strange condi-
tion of lassitude and into anger. But the attempt did not work.

"You do not understand," said the Captain, in the same dis-
tant voice. "The ships are dying. The Albenareth are dying. But we
do not die as lesser races do. We do not choose to curl in on
ourselves and perish in the soup of an atmosphere, to be broken
down chemically into the soil, and less than soil, from which we
came. It is our choice to go proudly to meet our deaths, one by one,
as the further Portal lets us pass, until the race of Albenareth are
known no longer. You are an alien and do not understand. You
will never understand. The ib vine on this lifeship, too, is dying-it
does not matter why. Since you are dependent on it, you will die
also. It is a matter of chemistry and physical law."

"What about your responsibility to your passengers?"

84

"Yve told you," said the Captain, "my responsibility is to
deliver them-whether they are alive or dead at the delivery point
does not matter."

"I do not believe that," said Giles. "When you took those of
us aboard here, together with the rest of the human passengers
who boarded your spaceship above Earth, your responsibility was
not indifferent to whether they reached their destination alive or
dead."

"That was then," said the Captain, "before some one or more
of your humans destroyed my ship and cost all Albenareth aboard
her great loss of honor. If human actions initiate a logic chain of
actions that leads to human deaths, I am not responsible."

"I do not agree with you," said Giles. "And in any case, as I
have told you, I am responsible for the lives of my fellows aboard.
You may be able to excuse your actions to yourself, but I warn
you, neither I nor any other humans will excuse them-and your
race needs the payments in metal and energy my race gives yours,
if you want to keep these ships of yours running for the next few
thousand years-or however long it will take you all to die prop-
erly."

"I will not argue with you," said the Captain. "What eventu-
ates from the arrival of you humans at Kelben, dead or alive, must
be the concern of others of my race. It is no longer mine."

"No longer-" Giles broke off, at the stab of a sudden, sharp
suspicion. "Rayumung, is it that you, yourself, don't expect to
reach Belben alive?"

"That is correct. I will not."

Giles stared down at the long. narrow, dark figure in the
command chair.

"Why?" he snapped.

The Captain looked away from him, transferring her gaze to
the nearer of the two screens on the control console before her-a
screen showing the endless darkness of space sprinkled with star
lights out ahead of the lifeship.

"The ib vine does not have the nutrients I now require," she
said. "Alone, it would nourish me as long as necessary for sur-

85

vival. But I am no longer alone. I carry new life within me-a new
life, as yet free of any taint of dishonor, to keep alive the search
for whoever destroyed my ship. A new life, if necessary, to found a
family line which will never cease from searching until the truth is
known. It is a ship's life, bred of the Engineer and myself, but
carrying the honor line of all my officers and crew who were with
me while my ship lived. I will die, but my ship's child will take
what it needs from my body and live to land at Belben, to become
a ship's officer and erase the shame of what has happened."

She fell silent. For a long moment, Giles himself had no
words. All at once it leaped into context in his mind-the elastic
ties around the limbs of the spacesuit of the Engineer, that could
do next to nothing to protect that alien's life in case of leaks, but
which could protect the vital generative area of his central body
against the dangers of decompression. That-and what it was that
Di had seen, there in the alien blood-marked back of the ship when
she had wandered in on the Captain and the dying Engineer.

"But you could have lived if you hadn't done . . . this," he
said. "Why didn't you just survive, yourself, in order to do your
own erasing of the shame of what's happened?'9

"I am already dishonored beyond the cooperation of any but
members of my own ship's company, all of whom now are dead.
But the new life within me, being stainless, cannot be denied co-
operation by another Albenareth without new reason; and that
assistance will be needed to find whoever destroyed my ship."

There was another pause between them.

"Very well," said Giles, finally. "Z am not Albenareth, as
you say, and I admit I do not fully understand. But I still see no
reason why you will not change the course of this lifeship to 20B-
40 and give the rest of us a chance of life. In fact, now I formally
insist that you change course."

"No," said the Captain, emotionlessly- "The life that I carry
will be stainless at birth, but more than this is needed. There must
be some inherited honor for the young one to ensure its chance at
the rank and duty of a ship's officer, which is available only to a.
few, even among the Albenareth. If this lifeship delivers what is

86

left of its passengers to Belben, alive or dead, there is that honor.
Otherwise, there is only expediency."

"There's no honor in saving lives?" snapped Giles.

"How could there be?" said the Captain. "A life saved by
other than that life's owner has only been intruded upon, in its own
area of honor-its own responsibility to delay as long as possible
the satisfaction of passing through the further Portal. Also, these
are only human lives. If you and your people were Albenareth, you
would all gain honor by joining me in the execution of my duty,
which is to convey them to Belben. As you are not, it makes no
difference one way or another. But, Adelman, it is to Belben we go
and no other destination."

The Captain closed her eyes-

"Rayumung..." said Giles.

The dark figure did not answer. Giles turned and walked out,
leaving the motionless alien behind him.

In the first section of the ship he saw Hem lying on his cot
and Mara standing as if waiting. For a second he stared at her,
puzzled. Then, with a jolt, memory returned. He had become so
involved in his conversation with the Captain he had forgotten that
they had been speaking the alien tongue, which Mara of course did
not know.

He smiled at her, now, to reassure her.

"I'm afraid," he said, "the Captain doesn't know much more
about the vine than we do. It's not the Captain's area of specialty.
So, for the present, we'll simply avoid any of the spotted fruit. If
you find any like that, pick it and put it directly into the converter.
Will you tell the rest about that?"

"Yes," she said. She did not turn away immediately, however,
and it seemed to him that she was watching him a little curiously.
"That was all you were able to find out, in spite of talking to him
so long?"

"The Captain and I always seem to have a bit of an argument
whenever we talk," he said. "I'm afraid I didn't leam anything else
worth telling you. But I'll be talking to the Captain again, and as
soon as I have some information to pass on, I'll pass it on. But for

87

now, ]'ust avoid the spotted fruit as I said, and don't worry. Tell
the others that."

"I will,*' she said.

She turned and went back into the middle section of the ship
and he heard her voice, although, with the recorder running in the
background, as it was more and more constantly now, he could not
make out exactly what she was saying to the rest. Gradually, the
sound of the recorder was coming to be used as a privacy tool, and
as such it was welcome.

Giles lay down on his cot and gave his thoughts over to the
problem of the Captain. One way or another, their course must be
changed to the destination of 20B-40-and the change must be
made while the Captain was physically still able to make it.

8

Sixth day-23:57 hours

The humans, except Giles, were all asleep. Although the
lights still blazed eternally overhead, they had all fallen into a
pattern, a sleeping and waking cycle. At about midnight, lifeship-
time, Giles sat murmuring into the recorder to \og the day before
trying to sleep himself.

"Sixth day," he dictated. "There's still enough fruit, but the
numbers of those with spots are increasing. More leaves dying.
Morale, about the same. This is the end of the sixth day."

He put the recorder safely away on the floor at the head of his
cot, where Esteven could come and get it in the morning, and
reached for the sleeve he had cut from his shipsuit. The orange-
colored sleeve, from wrist to shoulder, was long enough to make a
workable blindfold with its two ends tied behind his head-enough
to keep the light out so that he could sleep more easily. He had no
way aboard the lifeship of seeing himself reflected, but he could
imagine how his one bare, exercise-muscled arm and his curly, six-
day beard gave him a wild, almost barbaric look. Curiously, none
of the arbites had such a look. Though Groce and Esteven both
were sprouting considerable beards-touched with a few gray
hairs in Groce's case-they looked disheveled and unwashed,
rather than wild. Frenco and Hem, on the other hand, had no
beards to speak of. Frenco's consisted of a few limp black hairs

89

scattered sparsely over his lower features. Hem had a faint Huff of
blond mustache and some sandy stubble following the line of his
jawbone on each side from chin to upper cheeks.

Nearly all of them now, except Biset, had sacrificed at least a
small part of their clothing to make a light shield for their eyes
during sleeping hours. He could hear them breathing slumberously
beyond the screen now. Luckily none of them was a snorer of any
heaviness or regularity, although Hem occasionally rolled over on
his back and fell into a sort of deep rumbling in his throat.

Giles wrapped his loose sleeve around his head and tied it,
then stretched out on his cot. He waited for sleep, but it was slow
in coming. At moments like this he became actively conscious of
the closeness of the surroundings, the thickness of the atmosphere,
and all the unresolved problems that stood between them and a
safe planetfall on 20B-40, to say nothing of those standing be-
tween him and the successful completion of his mission. He turned
over restlessly on the cot, looking for a more comfortable position.
Even assuming the ib vine held up and they could make the course
change to 20B-40, could the arbites stand up to another thirty or
forty more days like this?

Something intruded on his thoughts. Something barely heard,
like a cry cut off before it had actually had time to clear the throat
of the one crying out. He listened ... but he heard nothing.

He continued to listen. There was no sound but the nighttime
heavy breathing; even Hem's approximation of a snore was silent.
And in addition to those noises there was nothing ... or was
there?

He sat up on the cot, pulling the sleeve from his head. The
bright light overhead burst on his eyes in its full strength. Through
the dazzle of it as his vision adjusted, he identified what he thought
he had been hearing-a quiet thudding from the very bow of the
ship.

He got to his feet, his sight clearing. The quiet thudding was
coming from behind the screen that hid the control console of the
lifeship and the Albenareth Captain. He stepped forward, turned
the end of the screen-and saw the alien choking the life out of

90

Esteven. The man's face was dark, his hands plucking feebly at the
alien fingers fastened with casual power around his throat, his
kicking heels making the almost inaudible noise Giles had heard as
they drummed upon the fabric-covered flooring.

Giles threw himself at the Captain.

"Release him!" he shouted in Albenareth, tearing at the Cap-
tain's fingers. It was like trying to pull steel rods loose. "Let that
man go! You're killing him!"

"I am in process of disposing of him," said the Captain coldly,
continuing to choke the entertaincom. "He has profaned the book
of navigation and should be removed from our midst in the interest
of honor."

"You do yourself dishonor!" raved Giles- "He is not yours to
dispose of. You take something to which you have no right! He is
my man-mine to keep or mine to kill-not yours! You are a
thief, without honor!"

The reaction was instantaneous. The Captain literally
dropped Esteven, who fell gasping to the floor.. The Captain's
hands were up, her long fingers now directed toward Giles, who
braced himself to face attack by the alien.

But the hands dropped. The Captain turned from Giles and
dropped into her command chair, to gaze at the forward screen.

"Take him, then." The Albenareth's voice was cold and in-
different. "He has dared to touch and turn the pages of our Holy of
Holies. But do with him what you want. Only, if I see him in the
forward part of the lifeship again, I will consider that one who
cannot control his property lies about his rights to it."

Giles pulled Esteven to his feet, lifting him bodily into the air,
slapping aside the feeble efforts of his hands when the entertain-
com tried to resist, then shoved the man ahead of him, out of the
Captain's area, through the first section of the lifeship and into the
middle section.

The other arbites had crowded into the first section, awak-
ened by the sound of the loud voices in Albenareth. They rolled
back now like retreating surf before the approach of Giles with
Esteven, into the middle section. When Giles with the other man

91

had joined them there, he shoved Esteven into their arms, beckon-
ing Mara to him. She hesitated, and in exasperation he reached out
a long arm and literally hauled her close enough to him so that he
could speak to her in tones too low to be heard by the Captain up

front.

"Take care of Esteven," he told her. "The Captain was chok-
ing him, but he'll be all right."

"What-" began Biset, demandingly. Giles stopped her with
a glare.

"I've just saved his stupid life-keep your voice down!"
whispered Giles harshly. "And I don't guarantee to be able to save
any more of your lives, unless you follow orders. Now. do what I
say, and don't let Esteven beyond that screen there into the front
of the ship if you value his life!"

He let her go and turned away. Behind him, Esteven had
slumped down on the floor and was sobbing.

"I didn't mean anything wrong. I couldn't sleep. I thought it
was just a book-to read, to look at, you know...."

Giles returned to the front section of the ship, followed by
Hem.

"Hem," he said to the big arbite, "keep them back there. I've
got to do some thinking."

Hem nodded and stood in the doorway. Giles threw himself
down on his cot. Now, on top of everything else, he had the puzzle
of Esteven. Not for a second did Giles believe that the entertain-
corn had merely wanted to look at the navigational book. And to
actually step into the private area of the Captain would have taken
courage Giles would have been ready to swear Esteven did not
have.

On the other hand, what could the entertaincom have been
hoping to gain from getting at the book? The Albenareth mathe-
matics would have meant nothing to him-and the navigational
manual would have no white spaces such as Groce's antique math
book had owned, on which Esteven could play at writing music.

The recorder had started up with the familiar Bosser and
Singh in the middle section of the lifeship. The puzzles in Giles'

92

mind seemed to go up and down, around and around, with the
repetitive melody of the music....

He woke suddenly to the awareness that he had dozed off.
Hem was looming over his cot.

"Mara wants to talk to you. Honor, sir/' Hem said.

"Oh?" Giles sat up, rubbing his eyes into the clearer vision of
full wakefulness. He became aware that Mara was standing in the
entrance through the screen as if before an invisible barrier.

"Sit down," he told her, motioning to the end of his cot.
"Save your strength. We all need to save what strength we've
got"

She hesitated for perhaps a second. He could not tell. Then
she sat.

"You're right, of course," she said.

He smiled. It was one of the unlikely sort of things she had a
habit of saying-certain statements or questions that, if they had
not been said so innocently, would have been impudent. It was not
up to an arbite like herself to pass judgment on the correctness of
what he said. He remembered what he had thought of her shortly
after he had first noticed her.

"Tell me, Mara," he said. "You didn't happen to grow up in
the household of some Adelbom family, did you?"

"Did I?" She laughed. "Far from it. My father died when I
was only three. There were eight children in our family-a com-
puter error gave my parents a permit for that many offspring, and
they didn't realize it was an error until too late. Then, as I say, my
father died, and my mother got special permission to devote all her
time to bringing up her family-she even got permission to move
my grandmother in, to help. So I actually grew up almost as if I'd
lived a hundred and fifty years ago, before the Green Revolution."

He gazed at her, surprised.

"Weren't you enclassed?" he asked.

"Oh, I had to take the usual courses," she said. "But with a
family as large as ours, whenever I was home we were in an
environment of our own making. A regular old medieval family-
type environment."

93

"Yes," he said. He felt a terrible pity for her. No wonder a
girl like this could fall into the trap of joining an organization like
Black Thursday. For a second he was almost tempted to warn her
that Biset had identified her as a revolutionary. But the habit of
duty silenced him.

"What was it you wanted to talk to me about?" he asked.

She glanced at the entrance to the middle section of the life-
ship, but the recorder was putting out enough sound there so that
she did not have to lower her voice unduly to speak privately to
him.

"It's about Esteven," she said. "I thought you'd want to
know. I'm not a licensed nurse, but when I was in secondary
school I put in a year full time as a probationer in the medical
services. I had the usual courses. There's something wrong with
Esteven physically. His hands are ice-cold-here in this thick
steambath air of a lifeship-and his pulse is rapid and erratic."

He looked at her with respect.

"That's good-your noticing that and coming to tell me
about it," he said. "I don't suppose you've got any idea what could
be causing symptoms like that?"

She shook her head.

"As I say," Mara said, "I was only a part-time volunteer
worker for a year, and back when I was hardly grown, at that."

Giles nodded.

"Of course," he said. "Well, it's something I'm glad to know
about. I'll try talking to Esteven himself and see if he knows what's
wrong with him."

"Not that we can do much about it, whatever it is," Mara
said. "Here on this alien lifeship with no medical equipment or
drugs. I don't know what to do."

She sounded to Giles' ears to be genuinely upset.

"It's not your responsibility to do anything," he reminded her
gently. "I'm the one who's responsible."

"Oh yes," she said, waving one hand as if to brush that
statement aside. "You're an Adelman and you think you ought to

94

take everything on your own shoulders. But you're stuck here with
a bunch of arbites; and what do you know about arbites?"

"What do I-" he began to repeat in astonishment, and
checked himself, hearing the long-ago echo of Paul Oca's voice
saying almost the same thing to him. The astonishment carried him
past what would have been an ordinary, instinctive refusal to dis-
cuss such a ridiculous charge with her. "Aren't you the arbite who
told me how all the lower classes dreamed of a chance to go indent
to one of the Colony Worlds-"

He broke off and glanced over at the other cot in the front
section of the ship. But Hem was not there, nor was he in view in
the middle section. Hem did not spend much time in the middle
section anyway. If he was not up front, he was probably back
harvesting the vine or collecting the fruit he would eat himself.
Nonetheless Giles lowered his voice.

"Just the other day," he went on, "I had a long talk with
Hem. Hem's miserable at being shipped away from the work-mates
he used to know. He'd give anything to go back t& Earth. Perhaps
I know more about arbites than you think."

"Oh, Hem!" said Mara. "It's immoral, the way poor, helpless
children like him are gene-controlled to grow up as hardly any-
thing more than animals-"

"Shh!" he said, genuinely alarmed for her. "Keep your voice
down, "There's . . . someone aboard here might decide to report
you."

Mara did lower her voice, but the tone of it was still scornful.

"You mean the split?" she said. "I'm not afraid of her!"

"Split?" he echoed.

"The Police agent," said Mara. "Biset."

He studied her, unable to believe it. "You . . . already know
she belongs to the Police?"

"Of course," said Mara. "Everybody on the spaceship knew
it. There's always one. The World Police sent an agent out with
every shipment of indents. Any arbite knows that."

"What else do you know about her?" he asked.

95

"I know she's likely to report anyone she doesn't like,
whether they've done anything or not. If she decides she doesn't
like me she'll dream up some reason to report me."

He gazed at her gravely.

"The possibility doesn't seem to worry you much," he said.

"The word is they don't pay too much attention to Police
agents like her out on the Colony Worlds when they turn in bad-
conduct or revolutionary-talk reports and minor charges like that/'
she answered. "They've had too many Police agents coming out
with shipments and trying to cause trouble before they're shipped
back to Earth again."

"I think her accusation might be a little more serious than
that." Suddenly Giles threw his sense of duty to the winds. Bisets
were a dime a dozen. This girl, with her straightforwardness and
courage, was a jewel among the stones of the gravel pile that was
the arbite lower class. "She might accuse you of being one of the
Black Thursday revolutionaries."

She looked at him.

"Oh?" Mara said.

Without warning, an invisible barrier had raised itself be-
tween them. They were no longer two people sitting together; they
were opponents facing each other across a strip of disputed terri-
tory. Giles felt a powerful urge to break down and do away with
whatever was separating them-an urge, the powerfulness of
which surprised him. But he had no time to examine the emotional
angle of the situation now.

"She told me so," Giles said. "I didn't really believe it."

"That's good of you. Honor, sir," said Mara. "Of course,
you're right. I'm not."

"I didn't think so," said Giles.

But the barrier was still there, in place between them.

She got to her feet.

"Thank you for telling me, though, Adelman."

"Not at all," he said, formally, helplessly. "Thank you for
telling me bout Esteven."

"I wanted to help," she said.

96

She turned and walked out. He let her go. There was a
strange anguish inside him, at seeing her leave like that. He could
not understand what had gone wrong.

It was some hours later, when the recorder was playing loudly
in the middle section, that he looked up to see Biset, this time,
standing by his cot. She spoke to him without preamble, in Es-
peranto, as soon as his eyes were on her.

"Forgive me. Honor, sir," she said, with no tone of an actual
plea for forgiveness in her voice at all, "but Tm afraid I have to
speak to you. I've warned you once about the girl, Mara, and her
revolutionary connections. I must remind you now ihat your rank
doesn't exempt you from the authority of the Police. You've been
giving this girl a good deal more license than you should."

"She came to tell me about-" Giles broke off. He had been
about to tell this woman how Mara had come to inform him about
Esteven's possible illness, and then it dawned on him that he was
condescending to explain himself to her. A cold fury erupted in
him.

"Get outi" he snarled.

He rose to his feet on the physical impulse of his own rage,
but by the time he was fully upright, Biset was gone. He felt the
pounding of his own heartbeat, marking its pulse in the big artery
under his chin.

He strode back through the screen entrance into the middle
section of the lifeship and caught a glimpse of Biset in a comer,
staring at him with widened, white-encircled eyes as he went by.
Mara was not there. He stopped by the recorder long enough to
turn it nearly to full volume with one twist of his fingers, then went
on into the rear section. Di and Frenco were there, and so was
Mara, picking spotted fruit from the vine and putting it into the
converter.

"Leave us," snapped Giles to Di and Frenco. They stared at
him and hurried to leave the rear section.

He was alone with Mara. She turned to stare at him, puz-
zledly, as he came up to her.

"Biset," he said. Standing face to face with her, inches apart,

97

it was just possible to make himself heard over the sound of the
recorder while speaking in a normal tone of voice. They were
entirely private under the noise of the music. "She came to see me
just now with the damned effrontery to suggest I shouldn't talk to
you."

Mara opened her mouth.

"Perhaps-" she began in the same formal tone on which
they had last parted, but then her face and voice changed to a tone
and expression of concern. "Perhaps you shouldn't."

"I?" he said. "I'm Giles Ashad of Steel. Never mind that.
There was something I should have mentioned to you. I should
have told you that if Biset tries to make trouble for you-in any
way-you come to me. I suspect she may try to accuse you of
being the one who planted the bomb that blew up the spaceliner."

Mara stared at him.

'Tt actually was a bomb, then?" she said. "How can she or
you or anyone be sure about that?"

"She can't," said Giles briefly. "I can. I was the one who
planted it there." Giles' teeth ground together at the memory. "It
wasn't intended to hurt anyone, and it certainly wasn't intended to
destroy the spaceliner. It was only supposed to damage it at a
particular point on its trip, so that it would have to turn aside to
the closest planetfall-a mining world called 20B-40-for re-
pairs."

For a second she only stared at him.

"All those lives . . ." she said. Then she changed and came
forward to put her hand on his arm. "But you said you didn't
mean to hurt anyone. What went wrong?"

His jaw muscles ached. He was suddenly aware that his teeth
were clenched together. He parted them with an effort.

"I don't know!" he said. "I suppose like a damn fool-the
damn fool I was, and we all were-we underestimated how rotten
with age one of these Albenarethian spacecraft are. The bulkhead
that ought to have contained the explosion, back there among the
cargo, must have split wide open and the fire started-you saw
it."

98

Her grip on his arm increased. She stared up into his face.

"Why are you telling me all this?" she said.

He looked at her grimly for a moment.

"Perhaps," he said, slowly, "because I trust you. I don't know
why-I couldn't explain to anyone why. But just now I suddenly
began ... Suddenly I had to tell someone, and you're the only one
I could bring myself to open my mouth to."

He saw her looking at him now in a way no one had ever
done before. It disturbed him and, in an odd way, made him feel
humble. He had never suspected that a woman might look at him
with just that look. There were things he found he wanted to say to
her, but a lifetime of training and discipline closed his throat when
he tried to utter them.

Clumsily, he patted the hand with which she was holding his
arm, and turned away. She released her fingers, letting him go. He
went back through the middle section of the lifeship, pausing for a
second to turn the volume on the recorder down to its previous
level. All the other arbites there were staring at him and among
them was the face of Biset.

He ignored them, going on into the front section and lying
down on his cot, on his back. Throwing the loose sleeve across his
eyes, he abandoned himself to the privacy and loneliness of artifi-
cial darkness.

99

9

Tenth day-11:22 hours

Di was crying. Sitting on her cot and crying. For a while after
her experience with the Captain and the dying Engineer in the rear
section of the lifeship, having one of the other women with her had
comforted her. Then she had seemed to get better, and it was the
presence of Frenco that soothed her when she woke from one of
her nightmares. But lately, nothing helped. She cried frequently

and could not say why.

"What can I do?" Frenco asked. He was standing with Giles
and Mara in the rear section. Di had just thrust him away from her
when he had tried to sit down beside her.

"I don't know/' said Giles, thoughtfully, looking at the girl.
"Obviously she needs medical help. Obviously none of us is
equipped to give it to her. Don't blame yourself, Frenco-"

"It was my idea to apply for indent to a Colony Worldl"
Frenco said wildly. "My idea. The odds were a thousand to one
against our getting it, and when we did, we couldn't believe it, we
were so happy. Now-"

"The word I used," said Giles, "was 'don't.' Don't blame
yourself. This depression of Di's could have one of any number of
causes. It could be a result of the food, or a result of the atmo-
sphere aboard. It could be something generic in her that would
have cropped up even back on Earth. But we'll stay with her and

100

do what we can for her. Call me if there's any help I can give
you."

"And call me," said Mara to the boy, "anytime I can help."

"Thank you," said Frenco. But he said it wearily, like some-
one who has worn out hope.

"Brace up!" Giles said to him, sharply. It was the same hard,
sensible advice he would have given another Adelbom; but then
Frenco cringed, and Giles remembered he was speaking to an
arbite. He softened his voice. "If we can get her alive to planetfall,
she'll be all right in the long run."

"Yes, sir," said Frenco. He made an effort to put some life
back into his words and some animation into his posture.

"That's right," said Giles. "Why don't you leave her to herself
now? You can see she'd rather be left alone-and you could use
some rest Come up to the front section and take my cot for a
while."

Frenco looked at him gratefully.

"Thank you. Honor, sir," he said. "But you're sure-you think
I can't help her at all by being here even if she acts like she doesn't
want me?"

"I'm sure," said Giles. "Everyone else on board here will be
keeping an eye on her for you."

Frenco nodded.

"Yes," he said. "Thank you. Thank you all. ... I guess I will
go and lie down up front, just a bit."

He went out.

Giles turned his attention to Mara.

"Have you been eating?" he asked. "You look like you're
losing weight."

She gave him a wraith of a smile.

"We're all losing weight," she said. "I don't see how we can
last another eighty days to reach Belben, if we and the vine keep
going downhill like this."

"Yes . . ." Giles felt the sudden ache in his jaws that signaled
he was clamping his teeth together again too fiercely. The gesture
was becoming a habit with him, lately.

101

"What is it?" Mara was looking at him.

"Something - . ." He looked at Di, but Di was beyond lis-
tening-lost in the dark night of her own misery and the sound of
her own weeping, added to the music sounds from the recorder in
the middle section, that would keep anyone else from overhearing.
"You know I said the plan behind my bomb was to turn the
spaceship aside to 20B-40?"

"I remember," she said.

"There was a critical period," he said, "a maximum number
of ship-days during which such a change of direction would be
practical. The period of days began the day the bomb went off.
I've been counting the days since. We've got no less than six days.
After that it'll be too late to change course. We might as well
continue on to Belben."

Her eyes were big. Or perhaps it was just the new thinness of
her face that made them seem so.

"How close is this 20B-40?"

"Now?" he said. "About thirty days away."

"But we could hold on another thirty days!" Mara said. 'T

don't understand-"

"The Captain's refused to change course from the one set for
Belben/' he said. "There's no use my trying to explain to you why.
I don't really understand it myself. Just take my word for it that it
has to do with honor in the way the aliens see it."

"But what's wrong with him? Certainly just honor-"

"It's not a 'him,'" Giles said. "That's something I've been
keeping to myself from the first so as not to scare the arbites-"
He broke off with a short, harsh laugh. "Do you know, I'm begin-
ning to forget to think of you as an arbite? We're all getting down
to a basic common label of 'human animal' on board this boat....
No, the Captain's a female. Not only that, she's pregnant. The
Engineer was the male parent, just before he died; and it must
have been their . . . mating that Di stumbled in on, back at that
time she can't remember."

Mara drew a deep breath.

"Oh..."she said.

102

"The fact that the Captain is pregnant ties in somehow with
the matter of Albenareth honor, in taking the lifeship to its original
destination, even though all of us-and she, too-are going to die
before we reach it."

"But if she dies, what about the-the child?"

"It won't die- It lives on her body, in some way." Giles waved
the matter aside. Somehow, as with the matter of the bomb, he felt
immeasurably better just from having been able to tell someone
else about the Captain, her pregnancy, and 20B-40. "At any rate,
what it all adds up to is that I've got to find some way of convinc-
ing the Captain she has to change course to 20B-40 inside of the
next six ship-days."

Mara shook her head.

"I still don't understand," she said. "Why can't we just take
over and make the course change ourselves? I know these aliens
are awfully strong, but there's eight of us and only one of her."

He smiled at her a little sadly.

"Do you have any idea what changing course means?" he
asked.

"No," she said, "to be honest, I don't. It's a matter of using
the controls up front a certain way, isn't it? But didn't you have to
study the Albenareth and their ships in order to figure when the
bomb needed to be set off? So don't you know how to work their
controls?"

"The controls are no problem," he said. "The problem is
calculating a new course that will bring us to 20B-40 and figuring
the changes in the present course that will put us on that new
one."

"But there's Groce and his compute," Mara said. "Groce
could help you with any figuring you needed to do-"

She broke off at the shaking of his head.

"Why not?" she asked.

"I'm sorry/' he said. "But you really don't have any compre-
hension of what's involved in interstellar navigation. The manipu-
lation of the controls is simple, and the mathematics of course
calculation can be performed by Groce's compute, all right. But

103

navigation out here between the stars is a science by itself. It calls
for a mind trained in that science, and preferably one that's already
done some navigation."

"But what about you? You're an Adelbom, and lots of them
have yachts they pilot themselves between Earth and the other
planetary bodies of the Solar System. Haven't you ever done any-
thing like that before?"

"A few hundreds of times," he said. "But interplanetary
yachts like the one I had are preprogrammed with a great deal of
information that out here would have to be worked out from
scratch. The first problem in interstellar space is to find out where
you are ... and it builds from there. No, if the course change is
going to be made, the Captain is going to have to be the one to do
it, and she's going to have to do it while she's still alert enough to
manage it. She's been getting less and less active, more and more
withdrawn and indifferent, lately. I think from what she says it's
that 'new life' she talks about inside her, draining the nutrients it
needs from her."

Mara's jaw was at a stubborn angle.

"There must be some way," she said.

"No. It has to be the Captain. . . . Why don't you get some
rest, yourself, and leave me to work with the problem?"

"I can watch Di. That'll leave you free to think."

He shook his head again.

"Watching her doesn't interfere with my thinking," he said.

She got to her feet slowly.

"Call me, though," she said, "the minute you need help."

"I will."

He watched her go through the entrance in the rear screen,
into the middle section and out of sight. There was a weariness
inside him that tempted him strongly to lie down, to stretch out
horizontally, if only for a few minutes, but he knew better than to
give in to it. Flat on his back, he would not be able to resist the
desire for sleep that lately seemed to be plucking at his sleeve most
of the time.

He must keep his mind alert and on the problem. There was a

104

solution to any reasonable situation. The Captain's objection to
the course change was difficult only because it was involved with
alien psychological and social factors. If there was only some way
to give the Albenareth female what she wanted, without in any
way sacrificing human lives or interfering with his own duty...

He came awake with a start, to the realization that someone
was standing almost at his left elbow.

He turned to look. It was Esteven.

"Sir, sir . . ." Esteven's voice was hoarse. His face was gray
and sweating under the merciless light from the overhead lamps.

"What is it?" demanded Giles.

"I . . ." The words seemed to take more effort to pronounce
than Esteven had to give them. "I need help, sir. You . .. you will
help. Honor, sir?"

"Of course, if I can," Giles said. "Sit down, man, before you
fall down."

"No ... no, thank you. Honor . . ." Esteven swayed. "I must
have . . . It's just a request, a small one. But necessary. Indulge
me, if you will, please, Adelman. You know I... the Captain .. ."

"What are you trying to tell me?" demanded Giles. "Pull
yourself together. Talk plainly."

"It's just that I need ... Do you. Honor, sir, have ... a piece
of paper... in your wallet, maybe?"

"Paper? No, I don't even have a pad or stylo-" Giles broke
off, looking at the other man narrowly. "This isn't that music-
writing you keep talking about, is it? Why-"

"No, sir! No, Honor, sir!" The denial was a cry from
Esteven's colorless lips. "I can't explain. But I have to have some
paper. Just to touch. Just to look at. Please, please ..."

The real pain in Esteven's voice was undeniable. Instinc-
tively, Giles began plunging his hands into the various pockets of
his shipsuit. He came up with various odds and ends, but nothing
made of paper. There was the warrant, of course, but that was of
incalculable value. He must not let Esteven know about it. Paper
was almost a collector's item, on Earth, at least, nowadays. Only
on the Colony Worlds was there much paper manufactured. How

105

Esteven expected Giles, here on this alien lifeship, in just the
clothes he stood up in, to produce a collector's ...

Of course! Giles dug out his identity card case from a right
trouser pocket. Behind the card was a souvenir folded banknote
issued sixty years before by a small African country, before the
last of the independent currencies had been done away with in
favor of the International Credit Standard. Esteven snatched at it,
but Giles pulled it back from the other's trembling fingers.

"Wait a minute," said Giles, sharply. "You said you just
wanted to look at it, to touch it."

"To feel ... to hold. If I could just keep it a little . . ."
Esteven's mouth was becoming wet at the comers from escaping
saliva. His lower jaw was making odd, chewing motions. Giles
stared at these things, at the popping eyes and the strange grayness
of pallor on the man's face, and suddenly the truth jumped into the

conscious area of his mind.

"Tonky!" Giles reacted instinctively, snatching the banknote
back out of Esteven's reach, and the cry from Esteven at the loss
was proof enough. "A tonky-chewer! I've heard about the drug-
one of the pseudohallucinogens, isn't it? You take it and nothing
seems real after a while. So that's what's been at you!"

"Honor, sir . . ." Esteven was trying to crawl over Giles, to
get at the hand with which Giles held the banknote behind him.
The entertaincom's chin was wet all over now with saliva. "Please
.. . you don't know what it's likel Every little wrong sound hurts.
It hurts to move, even...."

Giles shoved the man away. It was like shoving away a child,
Esteven seemed strengthless. He tumbled back from the cot to the
floor and crouched there, panting.

"Be sensible," said Giles, coldly, although inside him he was
moved as much as he was sickened by the sight of the man in this
state. "Even if I gave you this banknote, it'd only do you for one
or two more doses and we've got weeks yet before we reach a
planet where you could get more paper. And the tonk has to be
taken with paper, doesn't it? It has to be buffered with some cel-

106

lulose or else it can hit hard and kill you. How did you get started
taking a poison like that in the first place?"

"What does an Adelman like you know?" Esteven almost
screamed at him from the floor. "I can play thirty-two instruments,
but who wants to listen, nowdays? So I'm an entertaincom. I ar-
range and play moron-tapes of moron-music to moron-arbites; and
that's my life, all the life I have. All the life I'll ever have-on
Earth or out on the colonies. Oh, please, just give me half of the
paper . . . just a scrap of it to go with the bit of tonk I've got
left"

"No."

Giles got to his feet, putting the banknote back into his
pocket. "I can't help you to do that sort of damage to yourself. I
won't help you. You're going to have to face life without the drug
when it runs out, so face it now!"

He strode off, through the opening in the screen beside him,
headed for the forward part of the lifeship, away from the mewling
pleas of Esteven. Inside himself, it felt as if a huge, cruel hand
had just gripped his intestines and twisted them. Everything that
he had learned in those years of his growing up, everything that he
had come to believe in, sickened at the thought of Esteven there,
groveling on the floor and pleading for a scrap of paper. Giles
choked, almost gagging. He could not crawl and whimper like
that-no matter what any drug, man, or alien should do to him.
Anything would be preferable to such a state.

He passed through to the forward part of the lifeship and
began to pace back and forth. There was no end to problems. Now
that he knew what was wrong with Esteven, it was necessary to
decide what to do to help the man. Obviously Esteven was going to
have to do without the drug-and, with luck, that would break
him of his dependence on it. But he would undoubtedly need
attention and care while he was going through his period of with-
drawal. ...

Giles frowned, trying to recall all he knew about the drug-
one of the illegal toxics made and circulated in the arbite social

107

ranks. It was, it he remembered rightly, a purely synthetic drug,
originally developed as an aid to psychiatric treatment, before its
dangerous and addictive side had been understood.

It was a complex, long-chain molecule that affected the ner-
vous system directly, causing poisoning and death if it was not
absorbed by the system slowly. It had an affinity for carbohy-
drates, and any of these slowed down its action if taken at the
same time as a minute quantity of the drug in its gray, powder
form. Plain cellulose in the form of paper was the most convenient
and most effective carbohydrate to companion a dose. Tonk, taken
and chewed slowly with paper, reacted with its molecules locking
onto the carbohydrate molecules, and was absorbed by the body
chemistry only very slowly, over a matter of hours or even a
couple of days. That meant that a little of the drug must go a long
way. It must also mean that the body of an addict ended up having
some trace of the drug lingering in its system most of the time ...
and deterioration, both mental and physical, would be swift under

those conditions.

The ib fruit was high in protein and low in carbohydrates.
Those carbohydrates it did have were easily and quickly digestible,
of little use in slowing down the effect of tonk taken with them.
This explained Esteven's attempt on the navigation book earlier.
The pages of that book were made of vegetable fiber-

A wailing sliced through his thoughts. He jerked his head up
to stare through the opening in the nearer screen.

Esteven was coming toward the front of the lifeship, his
mouth open with a long rope of saliva pendent from it, keening
the sound Giles had just heard, over and over again, breaking off
only to chew and swallow, and wail again. His hands were out in
front of him, reaching blindly. Plainly, he neither heard nor saw

Giles-
He's taken some of the drug, Giles thought, taken it raw.
Even as he was thinking this, he was on his feet and headed

back through the middle section of the lifeship to meet Esteven.
"I'll help you," he called to the drugged man. "Hold on. We

can do something."

108

Staring eyes in Esteven's face glared right through him. Giles
reached the man, grabbed him by the shoulders, and hurled him
backward. For a moment, Esteven resisted with a strength that
was unbelievable. Then he staggered back through the screen and
against the i& fruit press. His outflung left hand closed on the
handle of the press, jerked at it, and the rust-eaten handle snapped
off short, leaving a long length of it like a jagged-ended club in
Esteven's hand.

He came forward again, still wailing, swinging the club with
an overhand motion. Giles dived forward, trying to get under that
swing, but he was only partly successful. The club glanced off the
side of his head. Still struggling to keep his feet, he reeled sideways
into a roaring red darkness on the very edge of unconsciousness.

Vaguely, he was conscious of Esteven going past him.

"Book .. ." croaked Giles to the other humans. "The naviga'
tion book! He's after it... stop himi"

His head was clearing now. But he saw the arbites of the
middle section making no effort to stop Esteven. Instead they were
scrambling out of his path, trying to stay as far away from him as
possible. Giles got his half-stumbling body under control and
lurched after the madman.

Hem appeared in the opening of the first screen. Esteven
swung the club again, and Hem made a heavy, grunting noise, as
the metal length thudded against his right upper arm, knocking
him aside. Beyond Hem and in front of the book on its jewel-
bright stand appeared the tall, lean, dark figure of the Captain.

"No, Esteven!" cried Giles, plunging forward. But he could
not catch up with the man before Esteven reached the alien figure
barring his way. A third time Esteven struck with the club.

There was no room to dodge. A human could not have es-
caped being struck. But the Captain swayed, bending her body in a
sudden and gracefully serpentine arc to one side, so that the club
whistled by, missing her by inches. At the same time her right hand
shot forward, not clutching, but striking, the three long fingers
clustered together to form a solid-ended rod that drove into Es-
teven's chest.

109

The force of the blow knocked the human backward, off his
feet. He dropped the club and lay for a second, apparently fighting
for breath. Then he managed another choked wail and scrambled
to his feet. Obviously, he had been hurt, at least the breath
knocked out of him and possibly ribs were broken; but under the
influence of the drug he was still moving. He lurched once more
blindly toward the navigation book.

The Captain was waiting for him. But before he could reach
the alien, who still stood barring the way, Giles caught up with him
from behind, caught him around the body, and hurled him off his
feet The Captain stepped forward, but now it was Giles who
barred the way.

"No!" shouted Giles, in Basic. He switched to Albenareth. "I
forbid it! He doesn't know what he's doing!"

"This time I end him," said the Captain. She faced Giles and
her powerful club of fingers were aimed at him now. "I gave you
•warning,."

Esteven was starting to scramble up from the floor, but now
Hem was looming over him. Hem raised his left arm, the heavy fist
at the end of it balled into a rocklike shape aimed to descend on
the nape of Esteven's neck.

"Don't kill him!" Giles shouted at Hem.

The blow from the big arbite was already started. Somehow,
he managed to turn it slightly off target. It hit high on the back of
Esteven*s head, instead of in the vulnerable spinal area.

Giles turned back to the Captain, just as she started to brush
him aside. "No? Wait. Think. You are more powerful than any one
of us, but what of all of us, together? If you have no fear for
yourself, what of the new life you carry in you? Will you risk what
all of us together might be able to do to it?"

The Captain checked herself, inhumanly, in mid-motion, and
was suddenly as still as if she had never intended to move.

"J know his sickness now," said Giles, swiftly. "I did not
before. Now I can guarantee he will not come forward in the
lifeship or threaten to touch your book."

Still, the Captain did not move. The adrenaline that had kept

110

Giles on his feet since he had been hit on the head by the metal
handle was beginning to die within him. He felt consciousness
seeping out of him.

"Believe me!" he said, urgently. "It is one or the other. I will
not let you kill one of my people!"

For a second Esteven's life, and perhaps the lives of all the
rest of them, hung balanced. Giles forced himself to stand upright,
to stare into the Captain's dark, unreadable eyes. Within he prayed
that the Albenareth would not realize how badly Giles, himself,
was hurt, how Hem was one-armed now, how the other arbites
would be like rabbits facing a wolf without Hem or himself to
spearhead an attack.

"Very well," said the Captain, stepping back. "This last time
I give you the life of this one. No more."

She turned and went in behind her screen, disappearing. Giles
turned, fainting, to find himself caught by half a dozen hands,
Mara's and Biset's among them.

Ill

10

Fifteenth day-16:19 hours

"Feeling any better?" Mara asked.

"I suppose so," said Giles-then reproved himself silently for
giving such a grudging answer. "Nonsense. I'm a lot better. Fine,

in fact."

"Not fine," said Mara, looking at him keenly. "I know better
than that. But you're going to live, anyway."

"Live? Of course I'll live. Why wouldn't I?" he said stiffly.

"Because you probably had a concussion," she said. "When
metal and bone come together, it isn't the metal that gives."

"Well, never mind that." said Giles. He touched his hand to
his bandaged head, pleased in spite of himself by the fact someone
cared how he felt. "I have to admit things have been kind of hazy
of late. How long was I..."

He fumbled for a suitable word.

"How long have you been like this?" she said. "Five days."

"Five days?" He stared at her. "Not five days?"

"Five," she said, grimly.

He was beginning to feel the effort of talking. He lay still for
a second, while she did something or other down near the foot of
the cot he was lying on.

"This isn't my cot!" he said suddenly, trying to sit up. She
pushed him back down. He was in the rear section of the lifeship.

112

"Rest," she said. "Lie still. We brought you in here because
we didn't want the Captain to see how helpless you were."

"Good," he said, staring at the lights overhead. "That was
wise."

"Sensible."

"All right-sensible." He began to remember things. "How's
Hem?"

"All right," she said.

"His arm wasn't broken? I was afraid."

"No. Just bruised. He's got bones like a horse."

Giles sighed with relief.

"Esteven-"

"Two broken ribs, I think. We had to tie him up for a day or
two, while he went through withdrawal from the drug," Mara said.
She came up near the head of his cot and handed him what seemed
to be a small plastic envelope with a few tablespoonfuls of gray
powder in it. "This is what's left of his tank. We thought you'd
want to be the one to keep it."

He took the envelope in a hand that required a surprising
amount of energy for him to lift, and tucked the drug remnant
away into a chest pocket of his shipsuit.

"You had to tie him up?" Giles asked. "But how is he now?"

"Quiet," she said. "Too quiet. We have to watch him all the
time. He's tried to kill himself several times. They go into that sort
of depression during withdrawal after the pains quit, Biset says.
She's seen other cases of addicts arrested by the police and having
to quit cold, like this. The depression can last for weeks. She also
said we'd all be better off if he killed himself."

Giles shook his head, feebly.

"Poor lad," he said.

"He's not a 'lad' and he's not 'poor'!" said Mara sharply.
"He's a very unhappy, maybe psychotic, full-grown man, who in-
dulged himself in drugs and nearly got us all killed."

He stared up at her, puzzled.

"I had the wrong choice of words, I guess," he said. "But I
don't understand-"

113

"No," she said. "That's your trouble. You don't understandl"

She turned and went off. He had an impulse to rise from the
cot and follow her, to make her explain herself. But the first at-
tempt to sit up made his head swim. He lay back, furious at his
own helplessness, but helpless none the less.

He fell asleep. Later, he woke when it was evidently a sleep
period for the rest of them. The recorder was turned down to a
murmur, and there was no noise of human voices talking in the
background. He felt much more clear-headed and comfortable.

He looked around him. He was alone in the rear section of
the lifeship. It was as it had been. Even the broken handle to the
press was welded back into place. He wondered what had been
used for this. Only Di and Frenco were not to be seen-they must
have moved into one of the other sections. The thought that they
might have moved out of consideration for him was oddly touch-
ing. Curious. Before he had left Earth on this mission, he would
have simply taken it for granted that any arbites would move
elsewhere to give him space to himself.

Paul Oca had been right-he had not understood arbites at
all. At least, he had not understood them anywhere near as well as
he understood them now, after living with a handful of them in
these close quarters for fifteen days. On the other hand, Mara had
just finished telling him he didn't understand, and no doubt-he
grinned wryly in the emptiness of the rear section of the lifeship-
that was true also.

But all such matters of understanding were beside the point.
He had probably been a fool to risk his mission and his life by
trying to save Esteven from the Captain. But at least he knew
enough about himself now to realize that he was self-condemned to
such foolishness in certain areas of behavior. It was strange . . .
Mara had objected to his calling Esteven a "lad." He had used the
word unthinkingly as any Adelbom might use it in such a situa-
tion. But of course Mara was right: Esteven was not a lad, al-
though it was part of Adelbom attitude to think of the arbites as
simpler, childlike individuals, limited by birth and training.

114

Curiously, at the moment, he found himself wondering if
exactly the opposite was not true. The arbites aboard were anything
but simple, non-mature people. In fact, with the possible exception
of Di and Hem-and possibly not even them, come to think of it-
they were not merely adults, but hardened adults, scarred and
twisted by the lives they had led, to the point of having or lacking
certain traits of character.

He, on the other hand . . . perhaps he was the immature
specimen. Life had not operated upon him to make him what he
was. What he was in character and reactions had been a suit of
armor ready-made and waiting for him to put it on at so young an
age that he had no real judgment about its worth. Since then, he
had worn it unthinkingly. It was not until this trip off-Earth, with
its mission, its burning spaceship, its lifeship, and its handful of
shipwrecked arbites, that he had begun to feel differently about
many things, and change inside his armor. What he had felt and
the changes he had experienced had left him adrift for the first
time, at a loss to understand the rights and wrongs of matters he
had always taken for granted.

He felt lost, now, and weak. There was a strange unhappiness
in him he could not identify. As if he was lacking in something ...
something necessary. For a second he entertained the thought that
it might be a simple physical thing he was feeling, the natural
aftermath of the concussion from the blow on the head. But that
seemed hardly likely....

He shoved that whole question aside. There was something
more important to think about. If he had been out of matters for
as long as five days, it was only a matter of hours now until the
lifeship would pass the point where changing course from Belben
to make an earlier arrival at 20B-40 would be possible. They had
reached the point where the Captain must make the change-
without any more delay-and, for the first time, Giles felt he had
found a way of convincing her to do it.

Now was an ideal time to talk to the Captain, with all the
others asleep. A trifle gingerly, half expecting any sudden move-

115

ment to wake the swimming head he had felt earlier when he tried
to sit up, Giles lifted himself first to a sitting position on the edge
of the bed, then slowly got to his feet. But his head stayed clear.
He was conscious of a feeling of delicacy, as if he was made of
glass above the shoulders and might shatter if jarred too abruptly,
but other than that he felt as good as ever.

He walked slowly and carefully through the pair of screens
and up to the front of the ship. As he went, he examined the ib
vine he passed. The dead leaves were many now, and only an
occasional unspotted fruit showed among the mere handful that
seemed to be ripening. When he got to the front section, where his
own cot was, he saw the tank that collected and held the juice from
the ib fruit. It was now welded against the hull in a new position,
just back of the Captain's screen. Only the Albenareth, herself,
could have done that. Giles had not even been aware that there
were tools aboard capable of removing and rewelding the tank in
this new position.

He went around the screen that hid the Captain's control
area. The alien sat as he had seen her last, in the furthest of the
two command chairs. Her eyes were closed and she did not move,
even when he came up against the other command chair with his
knees and the chair rattled.

"Captain," said Giles, in Albenareth.

There was no response. The long, dark figure did not stir.

"Rayumung," said Giles, "I must talk with you. We have
reached a moment of decision"

There was still no reaction from the Captain.

"If you do not wish to discuss this matter with me, I will act
without discussion," said Giles.

Slowly, the round, dark eyes opened. Slowly, the head swiv-
eled to face him.

"You will not act in any way, Adelman." The buzzing alien
voice was as expressionless as ever, but now there was something
distant about it, as if the Captain spoke to him from a long way
off. "I am not yet helpless to control what is done on this lifeship."

116

"No," said Giles. "But each day you give more of your
strength to the new life inside you. I believe you are weakening
faster than we, who lose strength only because we lack adequate
food and drink."

"No," said the Captain. "My strength is greater and will re-
main greater."

"I will accept that if you say so," said Giles. "It does not
matter. All that matters is that very shortly it will be too late to
alter course to 20B-40."

The dark eyes regarded him without moving for a long mo-
ment.

"How do you know this?" the Captain asked.

"I know," said Giles. "That is all that is important. It is even
possible that I could change our course for 20B-40 myself-"

"No," said the Captain. For the first time Giles thought he
heard a faint trace of emotion in the Captain's voice. "That is a lie
you tell me. A foolish lie. You are helpless here in space like all
your race."

"Not all our race" said Giles. "Some of us know how to
guide ships between the stars. But you interrupted me. I was about
to say that whether I could change the course for 20B-40 or not, I
would not, for I respect such decisions as belonging to the officer
in charge of any vessel in space."

"Then respect the course which takes us now to Belben."

"I cannot," said Giles. "As you have a responsibility to the
single life you carry, I have a responsibility to the seven other
human lives aboard."

"The lives of slaves," said the Captain, "are of no value."

"They are not slaves."

"As I count, they are slaves, and worthless."

"As I count, they are men and women. They must survive.
To ensure that they survive, I am ready to give the Captain what
she wants."

"You?" The alien gaze did not move from Giles' face. "You
cannot give me back my honor."

117

"Yes," said Giles, "I can. I can identify for you the one who
destroyed your spaceship. I can deliver that individual into your
hands"

"You .. ." The Captain surged up from her seat. "You know
who did it!"

"Touch me-" said Giles, swiftly, for the long, thin hands
were almost at his throat, "touch me and I give you my promise,
which is my contract, that you will never know."

The Captain dropped back into her chair.

"Tell me," she said. "For the honor of all those who worked
my ship with me, for the honor of that which I carry within me-
tell me, Adelman!"

"I will tell you," said Giles. "I will place the individual I
name in your hands, and your hands alone, to do with as you
will-once all the humans aboard here are safely down on 20B-
40:'

"You would have me change course from that destination
marked out by honor and duty!" said the Captain. "You would
hold back information until I have lost all hope of buying credit of
honor for the unborn last of my line, until you are landed among
other humans who will protect you, no matter what. You will
cheat me, human!"

The last words came out on a high note that was almost a cry.

"I will name and give you that individual I speak of-free
from interference, to do with as you will," said Giles steadily.
"That is my promise, my word and my contract. Your people have
done business with the Adelbom for some generations. Captain
Rayumung. When did ever an Adelborn cheat one of you?"

"It is true," said the Captain, looking into the front view-
screen before her as if she hoped to find some support and assur-
ance there. "The word of such as you has always been good, in my
knowledge."

She stopped speaking. Giles waited. There was no sound, in
the small area behind the screen guarding the control consoles and
the command chairs, but the sound of Giles' own breathing. Fi-
nally, the Captain stirred.

118

"I must take you at your word," said the Captain at last, once
more speaking in that distant voice in which she had first answered
Giles. "If I did not, and you were honest, I would have com-
pounded the dishonor now upon me and mine, by passing by an
opportunity to regain the honor I have lost."

Giles breathed out, softly. He had not realized that he had
been inhaling and exhaling so shallowly-mere cupfuls of air from
the upper part of his chest as he waited for the Captain to decide.
She turned her head back to look at him now.

"I will make the first course change now, the second course
change later," she said. "The angle is not such that a single change
is indicated. After I've made the first change we must stay twelve
hours on that course before the second and final correction can be
made."

119

11

Sixteenth day-17:09 hours

"I don't want"" said Giles, "any of you to think the situation
isn't still serious, because it is. We've got twenty-seven days yet,
minimum, to survive on board this lifeship; and the ib vine, as you
know, has been putting out less and less fruit, for reasons the
Captain doesn't understand any more than we do. Something
seems to be poisoning it. I'm not sure but what the Captain thinks
that it's us-we humans-that are the poisonous element. But the
important thing is we're racing a situation with less and less fruit.
Now, we can do with a minimum of food for twenty-seven days if
we have to-but that fruit juice is our only source of water. So
keep that thought in your minds and try to get used to using as
little liquid as possible."

Giles had gathered the arbites, even including Esteven, who
was by now somewhat recovered, into the middle section of the
lifeship to brief them. He had just finished telling them the truth
about the Captain's sex and much of what had gone on between
the Captain and himself in his efforts to get the course of the ship
changed to 20B-40. They had listened in silence, except for a
general murmur of excitement when he had explained that they
might be getting to planetfall earlier than had been expected. But
generally, they had reacted less than he had expected.

He was being forced to the conclusion that they had never

120

really appreciated the danger of the situation they were in. If not,
perhaps they did not understand, now. It was a thought that
gnawed at Giles as he looked about at them.

"You've followed what I said, have you?" he demanded
sharply, looking around at them all. "You realize what we're up
against? It's going to be a real test of will power and physical
determination to survive. You've got to keep your spirits up and
your exertions down. Now, you understand that, and the serious-
ness of the situation, even with this course change?"

There was a pause and then a mild murmur of agreement
from them, interrupted by a small, but curious noise from the front
of the lifeship, where the Captain was out of sight behind the
control-area screen. It had been a sound almost like that of an
Albenareth clearing her throat-almost as if the Captain had been
listening to him from the bow, and now was politely signaling her
desire to say something.

Giles looked toward the front. So did all the rest, but the
noise was not repeated.

"What was that?" asked Mara.

"I don't know," Giles said. "It's about time for the Captain to
be making the second course change to put us on target for 20B-
40. Perhaps something's come up...."

He got to his feet.

"Stay here," he said to them and went forward.

He reached the edge of the screen and stepped around it. The
Albenareth navigation book had been rotated upon its stand so that
its pages faced the closest command chair. In that chair the Cap-
tain sat, arms on the arm supports, back stiffly upright against the
back of the chair, and her eyes closed.

"Captain Rayumung?" said Giles in Albenareth. "Is there
something of consequence-some problem?"

There was no answer from the alien figure. No movement, no
response of any kind.

"What is it. Captain? What's wrong?" Giles demanded.

There was still no answer. The Captain's mouth was slightly
open, her breathing light, and her body utterly motionless. Giles

121

reached out and gently lifted one of the dark eyelids. Beneath, the
pupil of that eye was rolled up out of sight.

"What is it?" He heard the voice of Mara at his elbow, and
turned. Against his order, they had all followed him forward and
they stood now in semicircle, gazing at the Captain.

"She's unconscious," Giles answered. "I don't know why.
Look at her, Mara. See if you can find any reason."

Mara pushed past him and felt for a pulse in the Captain's
long wrist. After a moment, she abandoned that effort and lifted an
eyelid as Giles had done. Then she ran her hands over the Cap-
tain's body, feeling here and there, until her fingers came to rest at
last at the back of the Albenareth's neck, just below the bone of
the round skull.

"I've found it," Mara said. "A pulse. Has anyone got a
chrono? No? Groce, can't you give me a second count, somehow,
out of the compute of yours?"

"Of course," said Groce. He punched controls on the com-
pute and began counting out loud as he watched its display screen.
"One ... two ... three ..."

Mara let him count to thirty before she let go of the Captain's
neck.

"All right," she said. "You can stop. Adelman-" She turned
to Giles. "She's alive. But I can hardly believe it. Her heartbeat's
only about sixteen counts per minute. Do you know if their pulses
are naturally that much slower than ours?"

Giles shook his head. "I don't know. But I doubt they can be
that slow. They don't live any longer than we do, and they're warm-
blooded and just as active. Heartbeats that low from a normal
resting pulse rate of around seventy, as in humans . . ." He
searched his memory but couldn't come up with any exact com-
parisons. "At any rate, it sounds like the Captain's in a coma-or
a state of hibernation, or something like that."

It was Biset who put into words the question that was in all
their minds.

"Did the second change in course get made before she folded
up?" Biset asked. "What do you think, Honor, sir?"

122

"I profoundly hope so," said Giles.

He looked around the control board, but to his human eye it
held no information that would answer Biset's question.

'TH study these control consoles," he said, "and see what I
can figure out. There's no reason for us to assume the worst until
we know for sure. The Captain particularly wanted to-" He
checked himself. He had not told the arbites, of course, of his offer
to give up the one responsible for the bomb, once the lifeship made
planetfall on the mining world. "She had her own strong reasons
for wanting to get to 20B^O. This coma, or whatever it is, may be
a natural state with Albenareth, at a certain period, when one of
them is carrying young. She would have known the collapse was
coming and made sure she made the second course correction
before letting herself fold up like this."

"And if she couldn't help it?" Mara asked.

"I'm sure she could," Giles said, stiffly. "Find a cot for her
and put her on it. Go on!" he snapped at them, angered by their
hesitation. "She won't poison you if you touch her."

Goaded by his voice, Hem, Groce, Mara, and Biset picked up
the limp alien body and carried it away. Giles went back to exam-
ining the control area.

Ignoring the fact that he did not understand much of the in-
strumentation, he examined what there was to examine, item by
item. It was all alien, but none of it was totally unfamiliar. Many
of the items were counterparts of what he had seen in the control
area of his own and other space yachts; other instruments were
understandable in terms of his limited knowledge concerning inter-
stellar navigation. Still others-like the viewscreen-were obvious
appurtenances for this kind of craft. Regardless of how familiar
each item was, however, he gave it the same minute examination
as if he had never seen anything resembling it before.

He drew a blank.

Not only was there no sign of anything gone amiss-there
was no clear evidence whether the Captain had made the second
course change or not before lapsing into her present state of un-
consciousness.

123

He was about to turn away and give up for the moment while
he attacked the problem from the angle of pure speculation and
rationalization, when the navigation book caught his eye.

If he could only understand the information contained in it,
he thought, he could probably zero in on the answers he needed. It
was impossible for him actually to understand it, of course-not
merely because of the alien mathematics involved, but from the
viewpoint of the whole system of navigation of which it was a part.
But he glanced at the pages of the book, anyway. Each page was a
double column of short lines of what could best be described as
squiggles-the sort of apparently meaningless marks that Arabic
seems to be to untutored Western eyes.

Then he saw the raw edge of torn paper between the two
open pages in the spread spine of the book.

He stopped and bent his head to look more closely.

There was no doubt of it. A page had been torn out of the
book. Why would the Captain-

Esteven!

"Esteven'." roared Giles. "Come up here!"

There was a moment, and then Esteven appeared, pressed
along-hustled along would perhaps be a better term, Giles
thought-by the others. Giles let them crowd the man up to him,
then he turned and pointed at the book.

"Esteven-" he began.

Esteven burst into tears, falling on his knees. He clutched
Giles around the knees and clung to him. He was obviously trying
to explain himself, but the explosion of his emotion made him
impossible to understand.

Giles looked out over Esteven's head, at the others.

"I called for Esteven/' he said. "Did I ask for the rest of

you?"

Embarrassed, they backed off and disappeared through the
opening in the Erst screen. He kept staring after them until they
were all hidden from his gaze, then he reached down and lifted
Esteven to his feet.

124

"Now tell me," he whispered. "When did you tear a page out
of this book? While I was unconscious?"

"No ... no ..." sobbed Esteven. "It was before . . . long
before. Back before the pru . . . the Captain caught me the first
time. Believe me . .." Esteven grasped Giles' arm frantically. "I'm
not lying. I wouldn't lie to you. You saved my life three times.
First by not letting the Captain kill me the two times she was going
to, and then by helping me kick the tonk. I never believed anyone
cared whether I lived or died. But you cared-and you didn't even
know me, except that I was on this lifeship with you. I'd do
anything for you. Believe me-I only took one page, a long time
ago. Just one page ..."

"All right," said Giles, embarrassed by the man's naked dis-
play of emotion but moved by him, nonetheless. "I believe you.
Now, go back with the others, and don't tell them what I talked to
you about. Don't tell them you ever took a page. Understand?"

"Thanks . . . thank you, Honor, sir." Esteven backed away,
turned, and went.

Giles turned back to the book. There was a cold feeling in
him. He thumbed through the pages preceding and following the
one that had been torn out, trying to see if he could find any marks
that could represent page numbers. There were no such marks, but
in spite of that, his suspicion grew and grew until they were so
close to certainty that he was half prepared when Mara spoke
unexpectedly behind him.

"So that's why the Captain collapsed," Mara said, quietly, as
if the information was not a matter of life or death, but only
something out of which casual conversation was made. "She
turned to the page needed to make the second course correction
and found that Esteven had already eaten it."

He turned sharply.

"Don't assume-" he began, but she cut him off. For such a
small girl, it was wonderful how she always appeared to be able to
meet his eye on a dead level.

"We're not fools or innocents, Adelman/' she said. "Please
don't try to treat us as if we were."

125

He looked at her soberly.

"All right," he said. "You're very probably right. Esteven
stole and used a page from this navigation book sometime before
the Captain ever suspected him. And it may be that the page he
took and ingested was the specific page that the Captain needed to
make the second course change."

"Which means," she said, "that the second course change was
never made; and, far from being headed for 20B-40, we aren't
even headed for Belben. We're headed for nowhere."

"Yes," he said. "I think that's likely."

He stared at her.

"You take the news very well," he said. "In fact, Mara, you
amaze me. You're standing up to most of the disasters of this
voyage better than any of the arbite men aboard. The only one
who comes close to you in that way is Biset-and she's a woman,
too."

"Women,'* Mara said, "have always been the stronger sex,
Adelman. Hadn't you heard that?"

"Yes, of course," he said. "But you're-" He caught himself
up short, but she finished the thought out loud for him.

"We're arbite women?" she said. "That doesn't make it less
likely-it makes it more. When the men of an oppressed group are
beaten down, that tends to make the women stronger, not weaker.
Necessity makes them stronger."

He nodded, slowly.

"Sometime, when this is all over," he said, "perhaps we can
argue about that. But right now and here neither one of us ought to
be wasting strength on argument."

"What are we saving our strength for?"

"For . . ." He smiled, as grimly as she had smiled at him on
occasion, "Mara, you may have given up. I haven't."

Her manner softened suddenly.

"Good," she said. "I knew you wouldn't. Then you actually
will take over the piloting, and make the second course change to
get us to 20B-40?"

"Take over the piloting?" Her casual assumption that he

126

could, almost took his breath away. "I've tried to explain how that
isn't possible."

"What else is there to do?" she asked. "If you haven't given
up it's because you still think we can get to 20B-40. And if we're
going to get there, who else is going to manage it?"

He laughed. It was a laugh so full of irony that it surprised
even him. Whether it surprised Mara, he could not tell. He swung
back around to look once more at the alien controls.

"All right!" he said. "Leave me alone for a while. Leave me
alone here to study things; and if there's a miracle capable of being
worked, I'll try it!"

127

12

Twentieth day-20:45 hours

"All right, Groce," said Giles. "I want you to sit there and
listen to me. And I mean listen. If you don't understand what I
mean, tell me. Interrupt whatever I'm saying and tell me right
away. This isn't a situation where you can-"

He checked himself, as he had come to do so much lately. He
had been about to warn Groce that this was not the kind of work
situation encountered on Earth where it was safe to pretend under-
standing when understanding was actually not there. Now, some
new sensitivity stopped him.

"This isn't," repeated Giles, "a situation where we can take the
chance that you and I don't understand each other. You follow me

on that?"

Groce nodded. The man's face was hardly different of expres-
sion than Giles had ever seen it, but Giles felt a sense of excite-
ment rising almost like steam from the small body in the command
chair next to his.

"All right," said Giles. "Now, I do know the broad outlines
of what needs to be done. First, we have to establish where we
are-what our position is as a moving point along the line of our
course. Then we have to establish the position of the destination
we want-again as a moving point along the line of its course-

128

and from this work out the direction and angle of change we want
in our present course to take it toward that destination."

To his surprise, Groce nodded.

"Sounds simple," said the arbite.

"That's probably because I'm making it sound simple/' said
Giles, "so I can explain it. The fact is that it isn't that simple at all.
For the Captain it was. She took observations with the equipment
here, or a figure from her book, to locate her ultimate destination,
then referred to the book in other ways I don't know anything
about, in order to translate that information into heading and cor-
rection factors. I can make observations with the equipment-I
can do that much. I can also set a heading and correction factor
into the drive control. But the gap lies in what the book would
have told the Captain. How do I derive correction figures from the
position figures I getfcy observation?"

"Why the correction?" Groce asked.

"Because this lifeship's powered by a warp drive, like the
Albenareth spaceship was," Giles said. "You can't feel it, but
about once every eleven minutes the drive is kicking us into warp
space and back out again. We cover immense distances of normal
space every millisecond that we're in warp, but we don't keep
moving there more than a few milliseconds because in warp our
motion's got only an eighty percent possibility of being correct
You understand? We're going in the right direction only about
eighty percent of the time. Given the proper correction factor, the
lifeship's computer would keep recalculating our path back on
target for our destination and putting us back on target for our
destination. But even with this, if you could see us from the out-
side, it'd look like we were wobbling through space in a very erratic
manner. Unless we can establish a correction factor, we'll have to
stop and recalculate our position by hand, every time we go in and
out of warp-several hundred times every ship-day-until we're
inside the solar system of our destination planet, and it'll take us a
thousand years to get there-a thousand years we haven't got."

Groce shook his head with continued and determined op-
timism.

129

"This compute of mine, and me," he said, "can give you any
constant you need, if I've got the rest of the elements of the prob-
lem. How do we start?"

"We start," said Giles, grimly, "by my trying to apply inter-
planetary navigation to interstellar space. Basically, what we're up
against is a problem in solid geometry, only with moving instead of

fixed points...."

He continued explaining. It was a curious situation. Essen-
tially, before they could get to grips with their problem, they had
to educate each other. Groce, Giles found, was number-minded

rather than space-minded.

Giles had to search and struggle for ways of presenting the

problem to Groce in math terms the arbite could understand and

use.

"Look," said Giles, "visualize cutting a triangle out of card-
board, or something of that nature, and holding two points of it

with thumb and finger."

He held up his thumb and middle finger to illustrate. Groce

nodded, frowning.

"The point-the angle-" went on Giles, "that you aren't

touching is free to rotate in a circle. You understand?"

Groce nodded.
"All right," said Giles. "Assume the two angles your fingers

are touching represent known positions. Then your position-the
angle you aren't touching-lies somewhere on that circle; and to
pin it down to an exact location, you take a third known point and
measure the angle between it and either of the first two."

"Ahl" said Croce, his face lighting. His fingers danced over
the keys of his compute, in self-congratulation at his own under-
standing, as a musician might play his instrument in a like situa-
tion.

"The first three points," went on Giles, "need to be unique in

appearance, outside the galaxy, and a comfortable distance from
the galactic plane-you remember my explaining to you what the

galactic plane was?"
"Yes," said Groce.

130

"All right, then. Three such suitable points might be S.
Doradus, the nucleus of the Andromeda galaxy, and the nucleus of
the Whirlpool nebula-that's M51 in Canes Venatici."

"I don't-" Groce began.

"That's right," said Giles. "You don't know anything about
these names I'm mentioning. Don't let it bother you. The point is
that they're outside the galaxy, out of the galactic plane, and rec-
ognizable from anywhere in our galaxy. What I want you to under-
stand is how we use them to determine our position."

"I understand that," said Groce, vigorously. "Of course. It's
just geometry, in three dimensions, like you said."

"Good," said Giles. "Then I'll go on. Now, using those refer-
ence points I just mentioned will just give us a general location in
our galaxy, so general it very nearly includes the Solar System,
Earth, Belben, and 20B-40 all at once. In practice, after getting
our general position with these points from outside the galaxy,
we'd have to consult star charts and pick three bright, known stars
closer to us and refigure to get a more precise location. But, as it
happens in this case, we don't need to do that. I studied the stellar
neighborhood of our original route to Belben and I know roughly
where we are in a general area."

Groce nodded. It did not occur to him, evidently, to ask why
Giles should have gone to the trouble of studying the star maps
and other necessary space navigational material.

"I also know the position of 20B-40, in reference to the area
of space it inhabits, and the larger stars of its neighborhood," Giles
went on. "So the only thing we need to discover is our own posi-
tion right now, as precisely as possible, and the angle from that to
20B-40. We've only made the single course change at the captain's
hands since we left the original route to Belben, and I'm betting
that this involved a single phase shift. Consequently we shouldn't
be more than one phase shift off our original line of travel and still
in a stellar neighborhood where I can recognize the larger stars
and other light sources visible in the screen there-"

He pointed.

"In fact," he said, "I do recognize them. So calculating our

131

present position should be relatively simple. I can use the control
section of this lifeship well enough to take angle readings on the
three stars I've pointed out; and that gives us our location, from
which we can figure the angle from our present direction or move-
ment to 20B-40. Then we're ready to make a correctional phase
shift."

"What about what you talked about earlier?" asked Groce.
"Everything so far you've mentioned is simple. I could run the
calculations on something like that in my sleep. But what about
that correctional factor you mentioned? Didn't you say we had
only an eighty percent chance of moving correctly through warp
space even after we shift the lifeship on a correct course?"

"That's it," said Giles. He sat back with a heavy exhalation
of breath. "That's the real problem. The correction factor repre-
sents a tendency for the vessel to drift in warp space. The drift is
different with every vessel and each separate course it takes. The
Captain got it from her book. Somehow we've got to work it out
for ourselves-that particular adjustment figure that applies to this
lifeship and the unique course that exists from where we are at
this moment to our destination of 20B-40."
"How?"
Giles sighed again.

"The only way I can think of," he said. "We've got to calcu-
late our course, then shift and recalculate our new position, to see
how far off we are when we come out of shift. We keep that up,
shift after shift, until we accumulate enough data on the error per
shift to guess at a constant correction factor. In other words, some-
thing that the lifeship would do automatically, every few minutes
or so, we're going to have to do by hand over and over again, until
we leam enough to estimate a correction factor."
Groce scratched his head.
"Well, Honor, sir," he said, "we might as well get started, I

suppose."

They got started. Theoretically, Giles had told himself, it was
just a matter of doing the necessary work, sticking to it until
enough data could be accumulated. Sooner or later they would

132

have it done. Then would come the unsure part-the guessing at a
correction factor and, with it, worry. But up until that point things,
he had imagined, should go with fair smoothness.

But they did not. For one thing, the ib vine had been becom-
ing steadily less productive all the while, and this was now becom-
ing a factor that influenced everyone aboard-

The tiny food ration per person that the vine produced
seemed adequate; no one had any real appetite. But the amount of
juice the pulp produced was now noticeably less than what they all
would have preferred, even those who at first had found the juice
sickly sweet and unsatisfying. Thirst ruled everything. There were
always at least three or four of them awake at all times now,
keeping a jealous watch on the fruit picked and on the juice con-
tainer. Their skins were tight and shiny, their mouths always dry.
They looked at one another with suspicion.

To complicate matters, there was the Captain, still lying on
the cot where they had put her, breathing so slowly it was hard to
tell if she breathed at all, neither alive nor dead-but able to
swallow automatically the daily ration of juice Giles insisted be
given the alien along with everyone else. Mutterings about the
waste of that ration of juice rose among the others and finally
forced Giles to leave his calculations and face them all down.

"But why?" Di wailed. "She's not even human. And she's the
one who got us in this fix! Anyway, she's probably already as good
as dead-"

"She's alive!" snapped Giles. His own thirst had brought him
close to the end of his tight-leashed temper. "If we refused an
Albenareth care in a situation like this it'll give the Albenareth an
excuse to refuse care to humans if another situation like this ever
happens and it's the Albenareth who've got the chance to keep the
juice, or whatever's needed, for themselves. We've got a respon-
sibility to treat this alien just exactly the way we'd want ourselves
treated if it was the other way around."

"Damn the responsibility 1" muttered a male voice. Giles
looked about quickly and met the sullen eyes of Frenco, Groce, and
Esteven. Only Hem returned his gaze without hint of mutiny.

133

"We won't damn responsibility or anything else," Giles said
slowly, looking at each one of them in turn, "while I'm here. Is

that clear?"

They made no sound. They were not yet ready to defy him
face to face, but from then on, he made a point of breaking off
work and watching when it came time for one of the others to lift
the alien head and hold a partially filled cup of the precious juice to
the unconscious lips. Twice he caught one of the men going
through the motions with an empty cup. After that he gave himself
the added task of actually bringing the juice to the Captain and
getting it down her throat.

Meanwhile, even the calculations in which he and Croce were
engaged did not go well. Under the nagging discomfort of his
continual thirst, Giles blamed himself for not being more clear-
headed when the first of the obviously wrong results showed up.
Groce's compute, he reminded himself, was after all immune to
thirst. He painstakingly recalculated with the other man's help,
found a difference he was too weary to check out, and carried it
through to a conclusion that appeared to check out.

But the same thing happened several times, and in a moment
of fury he snapped at Groce, who exploded in denial.

"Wrong? How can I be wrong? I've never made a mistake.
Never! It's your figures that're wrong-Honor, sir!"

The "Honor, sir" came out as an obvious, it not intentional,
afterthought. Croce did not stop at that, but continued on for some
seconds, in an injured tone of voice, reiterating over and over
again how impossible a mistake was on the part of himself and his
compute.

"All right, all right. I believe you," said Giles, finally. "Now,
let's drop the subject and recalculate."

They did. But in spite of going over this particular calculation
twice more, they still got a figure that was obviously wrong.

"We can't have moved that far on the last warp shift," mut-
tered Giles. "That much of a shift would give us an error greater
than our total progress...." He made up his mind. "Groce, let me
see that compute!"

134

Groce handed it to him reluctantly. Giles examined it, but
could find nothing out of the ordinary about it. It was simply a
sealed box with ranks of keys with either numbers or symbols on
them. Even if he could open it up, he would not be able to tell if
anything was wrong with its interior construction, and Groce knew
no more about that than he did.

"All right," said Giles, handing the instrument back. "We'll
do it once more, from the beginning, slowly, and double-check
every step as we go."

They began the recheck. In spite of himself, Giles found he
was watching each calculation Groce made with a sort of paranoid
intensity. Many of the motions Grace's figures made on the but-
tons were meaningless to Giles, but when it came to the other man
entering up the compute figures that Giles had just told him...

"Groce!" roared Giles, suddenly-and Groce's fingers
checked abruptly on the keys as if arrested by a paralytic spasm.
"Groce!" Giles' voice was lower now, but snarling. "Groce, that
was a nine I just gave you. You punched a five." -

Groce raised his eyes from the compute to Giles' face, the
arbite's mouth open to protest. But no sound came forth. Seeing
the expression of the other as a mirror to his own, Giles realized
that there must be murder written on his own features. Words
came softly, viciously, from his throat without his willing them.

"So," he said, "you never make a mistake, you and your
compute? You never make a mistake ..."

His voice was rising in spite of himself. A madness born of
thirst and frustration was beating in a pulse at his throat. He was
beginning to rise from his chair-when an unexpected hoarse
shout in Hem's voice broke in on the mounting tide of his fury.

"WrongJ" Hem was shouting. "Let go-stand back. Honor,
sir-come! Come quick!"

Giles bolted from his chair and brushed past Groce, who was
in the outer of the two command chairs. He went with long strides
back through the openings in the two screen partitions, to find all
the others clustered around the cot where the long, dark body of
the Captain lay. Hem was holding Biset by the shoulder with one

135

massive hand. His other was clenched in a fist with which he was
warning the others back.

"Honor, sir!" he said, his face lighting up with relief as he
saw Giles. "I knew you wouldn't want them to. I told them you
wouldn't. But she went ahead anyway-"

He gestured toward Biset with his fist. The Policewoman met
Giles* eye fiercely and without fear.

"That," said Biset, nodding at the silent shape of the Captain,
"is a threat to all our lives. I was going to put out of her misery."
Biset looked down at the torn-off sleeve of an arbite shipsuit that
half covered the Captain's mouth and nose.

"I don't know that she's in any misery. Neither do you," said
Giles, harshly. *Tn any case, it's not up to you-any of you-to do
anything about it.*'

He looked around at the rest of them. They all but glared
back. Even Mara's face was still and set.
"You, too?" he said to Mara.

"Me, too," she said, clearly. "I wouldn't have done it myself,
but I can't stand in the way of people who want to live. This isn't
earth, Adelman. This is a lifeship lost somewhere in space with
humans on board it who didn't ask to be here, and who've got a
right to live."

Her steady looked accused him of the bomb he had set
aboard the lifeship-the bomb that had resulted in their all becom-
ing castaways between the stars- For a second, grimly, he won-
dered what they would say if they knew that he had given his word
to the Captain-a word he knew he would honor whether the
Captain lived or not-to give himself up as the price of getting
them all to 20B-40. But of course whatever reaction Mara and the
others might have did not matter. He could no more tell them what
he had done in an effort to buy their cooperation than he could
break the word he had given. He was locked, lonely in the armor of
his upbringing.

"Right or no right," he said, "no one, human or alien, is
going to be killed aboard this lifeship while I can stop it. Hem,
carry the Captain to my cot in the front of the ship, and watch her

136

from now on. If you have to leave her, call me. As for the rest of
you-if I find her hurt or dead, the one who did it will lose his own
juice ration. If I can't find out who did it, I promise you on my
word as an Adelman that I'll take the juice she would have gotten,
daily, and pour it out on the floor of the lifeship!"

He paused, waiting for their reaction, but they were silent.

"All right," he said. "On the other hand, I know the strain
you're all under. We need to work together, not fight each other.
So I also give you my word as Adelman that if we all-including
the Captain-come through this alive to 20B-40, I'll buy up the
contract to indent on each one of you and make you a present of
it. You'll all be free to build your own estate and pay for your
children's education or spend your own earnings in making any life
you want. That's a promise, not a bribe. I don't care what you do,
as long as you keep yourselves alive and help to keep everyone else
alive with you. You've got my word."

He turned and went back to the control section, where Groce
still sat. It was surprising that the other had not followed him back
to see what the excitement was. Looking at the man, Giles guessed
that the shock of Giles' anger had left the little man too frightened
to risk doing anything that would push the Adelman over the brink
into some action that might destroy Groce completely.

"Back to work," said Giles, briefly, reseating himself in the
empty command chair.

They returned to their task. One ship-day went by, then an-
other- ... Groce dozed between times when Giles wanted him, but
Giles kept himself going out of some well of inner determination
he had not known he possessed. He was beyond knowing whether
he was or not, now. He hardly knew if he slept or waked. But
something kept him moving. Moving slower and slower all the
time, but moving ...

Somehow, they were at last at their goal. A final figure looked
up at him from Groce's compute display.

"Is that it, then?" Groce was asking. "The correction factor
we need?"

"It could be the correction factor for a course to hell, for all I

157

know." Giles heard his own hoarse voice answering from some-
place far off, as if someone else was speaking, distant at the end of
a lightless tunnel. He reached out, slowly and carefully, and with
fingers that wobbled like those of a drunken man, he punched the
correction factor into the course change that was already set up on
the lifeship's control panel.

"Now ..." he said, and thumbed the drive switch.

It was done. There was no sensation of movement or change
of direction, but it was done. Clumsily, he got to his feet and
stepped out past Groce, away from the control panel.

"You should get some sleep now," Mara said, coming up
quietly behind him. She touched her hand to his shoulder, steady-
ing him as he tottered, and unconsciously he covered her fingers
with his own hand. Her skin was soft and strangely cool to his
touch.

"Yes . . ." he said, still from a long way off. "I guess I need

it."

"I'm sorry"-her voice was low in his ear-"I hinted about

... what you know about, when Biset tried to kill the Captain."
"That's all right," he said. "It doesn't matter."
"It should," she said. She was guiding him to a cot. It was his

own cot. The long shape of the Captain lay still on Hem's. He was

aware now of Hem standing beside it, watching him. Giles dropped

heavily on his cot and lay back.

"A little sleep..." he said. "Yes. Just a little..."
He went away then, off into the same lightlessness of the long

distance where his voice had already preceded him, leaving ship,

arbites, and Albenareth Captain all behind.

138

Thirty-fourth day-11:45 hours

It was the last fruit on the vine.

They were all watching as Giles plucked it and cradled it in
his hands. It was full, plump, filled with juice, and it had remained
on the vine until the absolute last moment. The juice container was
about three-quarters full-about six days' supply on half rations.
They had come a long way to this moment when the final fruit was
plucked, the last liquid extracted. After this...?

Hem lifted the handle of the press carefully so Giles could
place the fruit into the opening. Then the big arbite pushed down,
over and over again, until the last drop had been pressed from the
pulp and had dripped into the plastic container. It was a pitifully
small amount Giles removed the pulp and divided it into eight
equal amounts.

"Eat it all, right away/' he said. "There's still water in the
pulp, so we'll skip today's juice ration. And from tomorrow on
we'll go on half rations until all the juice we have is used up. This
is the only way. We have to stretch what we have as long as
possible, while there's still hope."

There were no arguments. They choked down the pulp, chew-
ing it to extract every last drop of juice, licking the bowls dry
afterward. Giles poured the juice from the last fruit carefully into
the tank, then went to make his noon check of their course. He

139

was doing it faster now. Once it had been set into the controls
there was little else he could do for six hours. The stars in the
screen seemed unchanged, changeless, and he fought hard against
a feeling of black despair that threatened to overwhelm him. Mara
came up, walking slowly as they all did now, her clothing hanging
loose on her thin body. She pointed to the screen.

"Which one is it?" she said. "I don't mean 20B-40 itself. I
know we can't see that. I mean 20B-40's sun."

He tapped a spot of light, no different in appearance from so
many of the others.

"Shouldn't it be getting larger, or brighter?"

"No. Not until we've made our last warp shift. This screen is
for navigation only. In any case a star doesn't look any brighter
until the last day or two of flight."

"But we are on the right course?" There was need for reas-
surance in her voice.

"I believe so," he said.

"If it is the right course, then how much longer will it be?"

"According to what the Captain told me, we could be there
about ten days from now. But that would be on her course, under
ideal conditions. I don't think we can expect that well of my
navigation, even if it's right. It could be more than ten days."

"You're not very encouraging," she said, with a weak attempt
at a smile.

"Sorry . . ." he said, staring at the controls. His voice ran
down and stopped. He could think of nothing more to say.

The conversation died like most of them lately, ran down
without any real point or ending. He dozed in the chair and when
he opened his eyes she had left. The stars looked very, very cold.

Forty-first day-12:00 hours

The last drop of juice dripped from the faucet into the bowl
with a small plopping sound. The very last. There was nothing to
be said, so they drank their rations in silence. The last.

There were no buds on the vine, although they kept checking.

140

There were no buds anywhere, and no sign of fruit at all. The ib
vine seemed healthy enough, covered with a fine crop of glossy, flat
leaves. They had tried chewing the leaves, but it was useless, since
they were very dry and bitter and seemed to use more saliva than
any amount of water they might supply.

Forty-second day
Forty-third day
Forty-fourth day
Forty-fifth day
Forty-sixth day

"Do you still keep checking the course?" Mara asked in a
whispered, bitter voice. "You still keep trying?"

"Yes. Have to . . ." Giles whispered back. He was in no
better shape than the others. Thirst, he thought, with dull-witted
humor, was no respecter of class.

"We're going to die, I know that now. Di is in some kind of a
coma, hasn't opened her eyes in a long time. I think she'll be the
first to die. I don't want to die that way, just giving in. Will you kill
me?"

"No." He raised his head. "If anyone lives, we all live."

"You don't want to help me. You want me to suffer." For the
first time her voice was petulant, as if she would have cried had
there been tears to cry with.

He sat in his command chair. The others lay on the cots or
the floor without energy or desire to move. Someone had turned
the recorder on and no one had the strength to turn it off. A girl's
reedy voice sang a repetitious song in which the word "love"
seemed to be repeated an unusual number of times. A drum beat a
monotonous rhythm in the background, and there was too much
percussion. It would have been very annoying to Giles normally;

now he was scarcely aware of it. His throat hurt, his eyes burned,
his body felt completely desiccated; all desires and sensations fled

141

before the overwhelming thirst. Perhaps Mara was right: This was
not a good way to die. The singer shrilled, the percussion clanged
and banged. The inner door of the spacelock opened.

Reality had become detached. Hallucination held him, sup-
plied visions his eyes could not see, swung inward the door that
opened on the spacelock and then into empty space, and supplied
an image of a spindly-legged Albenareth in a spacesuit, removing

the helmet.

When a voice behind him screeched, then howled again, he
realized that the others were seeing this hallucination, too. Per-
haps, after all, it was not an hallucination. Gasping, he pushed
himself up on his elbows, climbed to his feet, holding to the con-
trol panel for support, staring. The helmet came off to reveal the
wrinkled, dark, seamed face of an Albenareth, staring at him.

"You did not answer the communications call," an alien
voice buzzed in awkward Basic.

"Water..." rasped Giles, in a voice dry as sandpaper.

"I have none. It will be supplied. The communications-we

called."

"Don't know where the comm. controls are, how it works.

Water!"

"There is trouble with the ib vine?"

Giles dropped to his cot, laughing voicelessly, laughing un-
controllably, clutching his midriff and rocking back and forth
under the incomprehension of the alien gaze. Water. Trouble with
the ib vine! Water! All they wanted was water\

Something clanged heavily against the hull. It was the forty-
sixth and last day.

142

"An incredible story, Adelman/' murmured the manager of
the 20B-40 Mining Complex. He was a small, pink man, a gradu-
ate arbite, obviously, who had risen to this position of authority.
And authority it was, Giles had to remind himself. Amos Barsey
was the closest thing to a representative of Earth government on
the mining world. "May I top that drink for you?"

Giles smiled agreement and extended his tall glass, watching
the dark, cold local beer gurgle into it. A beautiful sight. His hand
was tanned dark from the long ship-days under the ultraviolet of
the lifeship's overhead illumination-tanned, dark, scrawny as a
bird's claw clutched around the beaded glass, by contrast with the
healthily fleshed fingers of Barsey.

"Thank you," said Giles. "Kind of you."

He drank, feeling the coolness run down his throat.

"It's still a shock," he said, almost dreamily, "to realize it's
all over. My navigation was better than I'd hoped. Only, all the
time the emergency communications unit was beaming for help in
sub-warp, with none of us knowing it"

"It wouldn't have helped, you know," Barsey answered, "if
you hadn't been able to bring the lifeship close enough to our solar
system so the local Albenareth here could pick up your signal."

Barsey chuckled unexpectedly.

143

"I've never seen the aliens that disturbed," he said. "They
still can't believe you could manage to navigate the lifeship, when
their own Captain couldn't."

"It wasn't her fault," said Giles.

"No, I suppose not" Barsey cast an oblique look at Giles
from under his plump brows and his tone became somewhat dry
and distant. "A page missing . . . and all that. Another mystery.
But I suppose the book could have gotten damaged when the
spaceliner was destroyed."

"I suppose," said Giles.

"Yes . . ." Barsey swung his float-chair around in mid-air to
pick up a slip from his desk. "There was another mystery. Nothing
important, of course. That ib vine. The Albenareth thought it had
been poisoned, but the spaceship repair station here doesn't have
the facilities for chemical analysis. They sent a sample of the
nutrient fluid over to our lab for analysis. Quite a list of organic
compounds in the sludge-none of them anything we'd consider
could hurt the plant. Of course, maybe their experts will be able to
pick out something harmful. Oh . .. and there was just a trace of
something else." His gaze flicked to meet Giles', flickered away
again to a far comer of the room. "A human-type drug, filthy stuff
called tonk. That could have done the job, our chemist thinks-if
there was enough of it, or it was in the nutrient fluid long enough.
No way of telling when the contamination occurred, of course. It
could have been from any human passenger who used that lifeship
as a safe place to store his drug supply, on any of the spaceliner's
last fifty trips. And no point in mentioning that to the Albenareth,
as I told our chemist. Just cause bad feelings, I should think."

His eyes met Giles'. The slip dangled from two of his fingers.

"No, I shouldn't think there's any point in mentioning it" He
dropped the slip into the disposal slot of his desk top. "Merely
confuse the issue, since our medical people didn't find any of your
arbites with active sign of any tonk addiction when they were
examined after they landed."

"No," murmured Giles, "I don't believe you'd find any of
them presently addicted."

144

"Yes," said Barsey. "Well, enough of that There's another
matter. You made quite a point of wanting our medics to return
the shipsuit you wore. Here it is."

He reached back to the desk, opened a drawer, and drew out
the torn orange shape of Giles' shipsuit

"Thank you," said Giles. He felt in the pockets of the suit
There were a few small possessions in them, but the extradition
paper he had saved from the blazing spaceliner and guarded so
long were not there.

"Something missing?" Barsey asked. The manager had been
watching.

"Nothing that can't be done without," Giles said, flatly. It
was true. The justicar on 20B-40 who had signed the papers had
also been the man who was to be Giles' Oca Front contact, once
Giles arrived here. But he had memorized the man's name. It was
only necessary to contact him and either get a new set of papers,
or be directed to Paul's hiding place so that Giles could take care
of the assassination here, on 20B-40. Killing Paul on 20B-40
meant certain capture and condemnation for Giles; but, he told
himself now, if he was to back off from that now, it would have to
be for a better reason than just not wanting to be caught He had
brought the arbites safely to planetfall without loss of a single life,
so his good name as a Steel in that respect was clean. What hap-
pened now, provided it was for the good of the race, should make
little difference to him, personally. And the deaths of those who
had been trapped in the flaming spaceliner were still a debt on his
conscience, waiting to be discharged by the only thing that in
decency could do so-an act that would preserve the future for the
human race. One that possibly could even aid the future of the
Albenareth, as well. The alien crew and officers who had died in
the burning ship had died willingly; but still . . . Giles roused to
hear the manager speaking to him.

". . . this is a somewhat isolated and lonely world," the
manager was saying. "There are no Adelbom here, barring your-
self, sir; and the fact that we have to depend on each other a good
deal on these Colony Worlds has made us close-even close with

145

the Albenareth who're similarly stationed here. You'll find"-
Barsey coughed-"we think a little differently from those back on
Earth, arbite and-forgive me-Adelborn alike."

He checked himself.

"Well, well, I didn't mean to rattle on," he continued.
"There's a ship calling here in two days, headed back for Earth. I
understand you wanted passage on it."

"That's right" Giles got to his feet. "I just have to look up an
old friend. You'd know him, I suppose? He's one of your justicars

-Olaf Undstead?"

"Olaf-I'm so sorry'" Barsey scrambled to his own feet,
looking unhappy. "He died-just last week. You say he was an old

friend?"

"I'd come out here to see him," Giles said.

"What an unfortunate-but let me give you his address."
Barsey scribbled on a slip with a stylo. "He had a sort of house-
keeper-companion. A free man, former arbite. His name was
Willo. Arne Willo."

He passed the slip to Giles, who took it automatically, a cold
feeling settling in his chest.

"Yes, thanks," said Giles automatically.

"Arne can tell you all about him," said Barsey. "It there's
anything else I can do, come back and see me at once."

"Yes," said Giles. "Yes, I'll see you again before long....

He turned and went out. Outside the Mining Complex Head-
quarters, he took a two-man autocar to the address Barsey had
printed on the slip.

He had expected to find the address within the domed struc-
ture of the Complex itself. The atmosphere of 20B-40 was breath-
able, but arctic in its temperatures for most of the year-though
now, which was during its summer months at the latitude of the
Complex, it resembled barren, snowless winter in some area of
lava fields and shattered rock. But he discovered that in recent
years dwellings had sprung up outside the giant dome of the
Complex-either singly or in groups, under small domes of their
own. He therefore found himself directed to an exit port, where an

146

attendant sealed him up in a thermal suit, transparent helmet in-
cluded, and seated him at the controls of a rock buggy, a simple
electric-powered, three-wheel vehicle, equipped with an autopilot
compute that could be set for the address he wanted.

A second later he was outside the dome, bouncing over the
rough rocky surface on the outsize wheels of the buggy. The in-
credibly distant white dwarf sun of the mining world illuminated
the landscape around him no more than the full moon might back
on Earth, and with much the same eerie contrast of pale light and
black shadow. Behind him the huge Complex dome was like some
enormous crouching monster, that dwindled as he moved off from
it.

The autopilot of the buggy drove it steadily toward its as yet
invisible destination. Under the dim light of the dwarf sun, the
surface of 20B-40 was like a small, rocky platform surrounded by
uncountable numbers of stars. It came to Giles, strangely, that
after all his days of being lost in the tiny lifeship, it was now, with
his feet firmly on planetary surface, that the utter^ incomprehensi-
ble depths were making their impact upon his feelings. On the
lifeship the stars had been only points of light on a screen. Here
they were naked and real, and seemingly almost close enough to
touch.

Reality, in fact, enclosed him. Even through his thermal suit,
it reached and cooled him like the touch of some wind that could
freeze him to the bone if he dared to face it without coverings. In
the thin light of the far daystar owning this lifeless world, his
beliefs about the situation of men and Albenareth and all his own
personal plans and duties shrank in his mind's eye to passing
things, inconsequential, transient touches of warmth in a cold uni-
verse. Touches that would come and go, in any case, leaving no
mark or sign of their having been.

In the end, said a deep, atavistic part of him, there's only
survival. Nothing else counts. Nothing else matters.

No, said his stubborn, upper mind. There has to be meaning.
Survival without a meaning to it is nothing.

Survival, said the deep gut part of him, insisting.

147

Meaning, he said above, in his upper mind.

Surviv-

He wrenched his mind away from the internal argument. The
rock buggy was approaching a dome which, by its size, should
house no more than one dwelling. The buggy trundled forward as
if it would smash itself against the blank-surfaced, back-curving
outer wall. But half a dozen meters from it, the wall opened an
iris and the buggy carried him inside, the iris closing after them.

Within, there was a small garage area large enough to hold
three other rock-buggy vehicles like Giles', but empty at the mo-
ment. He parked his own buggy, got out, and approached a door in
a further wall. There was an annunciator button inside it, and he
pushed it, but no one answered from within the house to ask who
had come calling. He put his hand on the button latch, experi-
mentally, and it gave, unlocked to his touch.

The door opened before him. He stepped through it into a
lounge room, wide, white-ceilinged, and filled with comfortable
chairs-empty except for one large figure that rose at the sight of
him. It was Hem, holding a laser pistol.

148

"Hem!" Giles snapped out the order instinctively. "Don't
point that thing at me! Put it down!"

Hem looked puzzled for a moment, then his face creased in
contrition.

"Sorry, Honor, sir," he said. He stuck the pistol into the
waistband of the gray work slacks he was wearing. Giles drew a
deep breath.

"What are you doing here?" Giles demanded.

"I had to stay here," said Hem. He beamed. "To guard you."

"Guard me?" Giles felt a cold prickling beneath the back of
his collar as sweat popped out there. He had been just about to
order Hem to give him the laser. But if Hem had already been
given other orders about the weapon, a direct command might not
be wise. Giles altered his tactics. "What are you doing here any-
way, Hem? Doesn't a man named Ame Willo live here?"

"Oh yes," said Hem, "but he had to go someplace else for a
few days."

Giles felt his temper begin to stir. He forced it down. It was
not Hem's fault that the big arbite laborer was limited to simple
answers to simple questions. There was something going on here; a
part of it was that laser in Hem's possession, as dangerous a toy in
those big hands as a live grenade would be in the grasp of a five-
year-old child. It might be significant that Hem had put the

149

weapon back into his waistband, instead of laying it down out of
easy reach as Giles had ordered. Or perhaps it had meant nothing
at all. The situation called for a careful phrasing of questions.

"You're here all alone, then. Hem?" Giles asked.

Hem nodded.

"They all went to make sure nobody was after you."

"Who's they. Hem?"

"You know. Honor, sir. Everybody. All of us on the ship."

"I see," said Giles. "You mean Mara and Biset, Groce, and
the rest?"

Hem nodded again. He seemed to have forgotten the laser at
his waist. Giles began to walk slowly toward the massive arbite. If
he could get close enough to simply reach out and take the weapon
from Hem ...

"Are they coming back soon, Hem?" he asked, as he moved.
If he could keep Hem talking, the bumper would have no attention
left over to focus on what else Giles might be trying to do.

Hem nodded.

"Guess what. Honor, sir?" he said.

"Just a moment," said Giles, talking calmly and steadily as he
continued to advance, "then I'll guess. First, I want to know how
you knew I'd be coming here."

"She knew," Hem said.

"She? You mean Mara?"

Hem shook his head.

"No. Not Mara. The split-Biset."

"So," Giles said. He was only a few casual steps from Hem
now. "It was Biset who knew I was coming out here. How did she
know?"

Hem shook his head, looking puzzled.

"I don't know, Honor, sir," he said. "She didn't tell us. She
just said we all had to come out here, because you'd be coming
here sooner or later. Then, when you came in, everybody had
better go look and make sure nobody was after you. So, when the
light went on for the garage, everybody went out to see. Everybody
but me."

150

Giles checked his forward movement, under an irresistible
temptation to turn and see if anyone was behind him. If Biset and
the others had just stepped outside the dome enclosing this build-
ing for a moment, they might be back inside even now. He risked a
quick glance over his shoulder and around the room, but it was
•still empty and silent, except for Hem and himself.

"Guess what, though. Honor, sir?" Hem was asking again.
Giles looked back to see the broad face before him literally glow-
ing with excitement and happiness.

"What?" Giles asked, taking another step forward.

"I'm going homel" Hem almost shouted. "I'm going back-
to Earth."

"Going back?"

Surprise checked Giles' feet.

"Going back, you say?" he echoed, slowly.

Hem nodded vigorously.

"I'm going to see Jase!" he said. "And I'm going to say to
him, 'Jase, guess where I've been?" and Jase, he'-ll say, 'W^here?
They put you in some other barracks?' And I'll say, T was clear off
Earth- I was out in a spaceship and in a lifeship and on a whole
different world. Look, Jase,' I'll say, 'I brought you back a piece of
that other world to show you!' See ..."

Hem fumbled in his slacks pocket and came out with a small
bit of igneous rock, obviously picked up somewhere outside the
dome.

"And Jase'll say to me, 'Hey! Great you're back!' He'll say,
Tve been waiting for you to get back. That's why I didn't pick
some other bumper for a beer-mate.' "

Giles' ears pricked up. Had that been a sound from some-
where in the structure? No, it must have been only his imagination.
He turned back to Hem, who was still rehearsing the conversation
he would have with Jase when the two were back together again.

"Just a minute. Hem," said Giles, taking advantage of a
momentary pause of the other, to draw breath. "What makes you
think you're going back to Earth?"

"She said I could," Hem answered, happily.

151

"She?"

"Biset," said Hem.

"Well, damn her guts!" said Giles, with a sudden spurt of
anger. "Hem, listen to me. Biset doesn't have any control over
where you're stationed. She can't arrange to have you shipped
back to your barracks on Earth."

"Oh yes, sir," said Hem, solemnly. "She's a split. Everybody
knows a split can do anything."

"They do, do they?"

"Sure, Honor, sir. They can put you in jail and beat you and
keep you there for the rest of your life. Or they can get you
transferred anyplace you want if they like you enough. They can
even just kill you, and the judges and all say it's all right."

Giles stared at the big man with tightened eyes.

"Hem," he asked, "who's been telling you all this nonsense?
The World Police don't beat anyone. That sort of thing hasn't
been allowed for a couple of hundred years."

"Oh yes. Honor, sirl" Hem was very earnest. "They don't
beat Adelmen, but any arbite who gets in the wrong place or
doesn't do what they tell him, they beat him at least a little. Even
an office arbite. A couple of them beat our timekeeper once for
letting half a dozen barracks gangs of us into town, one day they
didn't want any of us there. Of course, with office arbites, they
usually just send them to jail or transfer them someplace bad."

"Now listen to me. Hem," said Giles, sternly. "You've been
frightened by a lot of tall tales. You don't understand. For anyone
in the Police to get away with anything like that nowdays, nearly
every other branch of social control-the courts, the records de-
partments, everybody-would have to be involved."

Hem looked unhappy.

"But they do it. Honor, sir'" he said. "And they can send
you anywhere. She can send me back to Earth-Bisetl"

Giles recognized a blank wall, and shifted his questioning.

"All right, Hem," he said. "We'll talk about that some other
time. Tell me why it is Biset's going to help you get back. Can you
tell me that?"

152

"Yes, sir," said Hem, cheerful again. "She said it'd be all
because of you. Because I'd be helping her with you."

"Helping-" began Giles, then stopped. Hem, smiling, had
obviously no understanding of what Biset had meant in saying
what she had. There was no point in asking the question of
him. . . .

A faint sound behind him, as of a foot shuffling on some
smooth surface, made the back of his neck chill abruptly. He spun
about-and they were all there. Mara, Groce, Esteven, Di and
Frenco-and Biset, like Hem, holding a laser pistol. But, unlike
Hem, the Policewoman was not holding hers casually.

"Don't move," Biset said. "Don't stir a muscle until I tell you
to!"

Her laser was pointed directly at his chest. He stood still-
and from behind some drapes at the further end of the room a
seventh figure entered. A man, Adelbom, tall and erect, with a
thin, handsome face but without the tan normally found on Adel-
bom features.

"Well, Paul," said Giles.

"Hello, Giles," said Paul Oca, halting beside Biset. "So you
tracked me down here, after all?"

"But not for long," said Biset, almost with relish.

"No, not for long." For a second a frown shadowed Paul's
face. "Of all the Adelbom in that glorified debating society I
founded, Giles, I'd hoped that you'd be the one to see the light.
The time for change is here, and nothing can stop it. You remem-
ber Tennyson's 'Morte d'Arthur'? "The old order changeth, yielding
place to new...' "

"True enough," said Giles. "I believe it. The old order's
about to change, Paul, but not necessarily the way you see it
changing."

"Oh?" Paul Oca's dark brows raised.

"That's right," said Giles. "For one thing, it's never occurred
to anyone to realize that the Albenareth are up against the same
problem we are. Only the way they think of death is so alien to the

153

way we think of it that nobody saw the parallel. But we and they
can help each other-"

"Giles, Giles," Paul interrupted, shaking his head. "How long
are you and the others going to cling to straws, in the hope of
getting change without trauma? Change never comes easy. Face it.
In this case the price of it is nothing less than amputation of the
two useless and crippling elements in our society so that a true
middle culture of the human race can take over."

"Amputation?" Giles stared narrowly at him.

Paul nodded at Hem, as someone might nod at a post, or an
animal chained to a post. His voice deepened.

"As long as the Adelbom and the genetically suppressed ar-
bites, like this one, still exist, change is blocked. But the human
race can't endure that block any longer. We've got to cut loose at
any price, and build a strong, new management class out of the
best of the arbites, in a culture that's wholly arbite-arbite alone."

"The best of the arbites?" Giles looked at him keenly. "Since
when were you concerned only with the best among the arbites?"

Paul's aristocratic face became even a shade paler.

"Don't chop words with me, Giles," he said. "Obviously
some group has to remain in control while the middle culture is
maturing."

"What group? And what do you mean by cutting loose at any
price? You can't just line up all the Adelbom and work arbites and
shoot them down!"

Paul's face did not change. It was like the ice-cold visage of
some ancient Roman's marble bust in a winter-frozen garden. The
silence that was his answer stretched out in the room.

"By Godi" said Giles at last, on an indrawn breath. "You
actually are planning it! You're planning to kill millions of people
-millions-to make this change of yours take placeF

"It's something that has to be done, Giles," said Paul. "That's
why we couldn't let you find me. It'll take another six months to
set up a world-wide, spontaneous purge of Adelbom and manual
arbites alike-"

"Hey," said Hem. His unnaturally old, hoarse voice broke in

154

on Paul's words. "You aren't going to hurt Jase? You aren't going
to do that?"

Giles hardly heard Hem's words. He was staring wolfishly at
Paul.

"Who's 'we,' Paul?" he asked.

"Listen, Biset," Hem was saying, looking at the Police-
woman, "listen, you don't have to send me back to Earth. Just
don't hurt Jase."

Biset laughed.

"You didn't think it was for your sake you were going back to
Earth, did you, bumper?" she said. "No, it's for our sake--
because you can be useful that way."

"That way?" echoed Hem, bewilderedly.

"This way," said Biset.

Calmly, she pointed the laser pistol in her hand and pressed
the firing button. The pale sighting beam that guided the laser
thrust seemed barely to touch Hem's broad chest, but his knees
sagged. Slowly, he fell and Biset shot him again in -the chest as he
was going down.

He had fallen forward. He rolled painfully onto his side to
look up at Biset.

"It hurts," he said. "Why-"

There were no more words in him. His eyelids fluttered for a
second, then closed, and he lay without moving.

"Why?" Biset told his corpse. "To make sure anybody com-
ing after your high and mighty Adelbom friend here runs up
against a dead end."

She turned to face Giles with the laser still in her hand.
Suddenly realizing she was about to shoot him also, Giles half
crouched to spring. But before he could leap at her, a shocking
coldness lanced through his left shoulder and his knees went weak
without warning. He caught at the back of a chair and kept himself
from falling. Through blurred vision he saw Mara wrenching the
weapon from Biset's grasp. Then his vision cleared and he saw
Mara clearly, holding the laser, half-pointed at Biset.

"You idiot!" she was raging at the Policewoman. "Didn't I

155

say I had to be the one to shoot him? The wound needed to be
placed just right anatomically if he's to live until he's safely away
from here. Now you've complicated thingsl"

Biset's teeth drew back from her lips. She almost snarled like

an animal.

"Don't give me orders! You and your handful of Black
Thursday fanatics aren't running things. It's the Association that's
been preparing for this day for two hundred years-and it's only
the Association that's got the size and power to take over, when
the change comes. I don't do what you say, you bumper's-get; you

do what I say!"

Giles still held to the back of the chair, although he was
already beginning to throw off the effects of the shot. Lasers could
be lethal when one of their beams hit a vulnerable spot in the
human body, but in a non-vulnerable area they made a particularly
clean, self-cauterizing wound that-except for the heat shock
when the beam first struck flesh-did less overall damage to the
body than many earlier weapons had done. It was a little like being
run clear through by a very thin sword blade at forge heat. Biset's
shot-as far as Giles could guess-had struck high on his shoulder
and gone mainly through flesh and muscle without touching a bone
or an important blood vessel. He had been lucky. But it might pay
not to act as recovered as he was, just at the moment.

"Association?" Giles said. gazing from his chair at Biset.
"What Association?"

Biset laughed at him.

"Fooll" she said. "Overeducated fool! Do you think world-
wide revolutions are made by a few philosophers like yourself and
your friend there"-she nodded at Paul-"or even by half a hun-
dred like her Black Thursdayites"-she turned toward Mara-
"who solemnly go out to get themselves shot down, to provide
martyrs for the cause?"

She turned to glare at Mara.

"They couldn't even do that by themselves!" she spat. "We of
the Association had to have the proper men in Police uniform,
ready and briefed to make sure they were all killed on the spot,

156

neat and tidy, otherwise the whole thing would have come apart."
All right," Giles said. "Tell me. This Association-what is
it?"

"What is it?" Biset said, turning to him. "What do you think
it is? An Association, a network, of all the arbites who did the real
work under you so-called Adelbom. Police, administrative, pro-
duction, and service personnel of high rank like myself." She inter-
rupted her own tirade. "Did you think I was just an ordinary
Policewoman? I'm Deputy Chief of the Investigative Arm, North-
east European Sector. It's me, and a few thousands like me-but
thousands controlling thousands apiece-who're the Association,
the real arbite underground that set out to get rid of you Adelbom
almost from the first day you were in power."

She turned her back to speak pointedly to Mara.
"Get busy," she said. "Shoot him-your way. Let's get things
moving."

"Just a minute," said Giles. He spoke out of a pure instinct,
to play for time that seemed to be running out. His head was
whirling with what he had just learned, and certain conclusions of
his own that developed inescapably from it. He groped for words
that would annoy Biset enough to keep her talking.

"So," he said, to the older arbite woman, "you aren't a con-
vert of Paul's after all. I thought you'd come to believe in him."

Biset took the bait.

"Believe?" She almost spat the words. "In him?" The last
word was expelled from her lips as if it had been a poisonous toad.
"These other fools may believe in daydreams. I belong to the
people who've made things happen-from the beginning when
your kind took over! Do you think I'd listen to people like him-
or her?"

She glared from Paul to Mara.

"It's not a simple job," she said venomously, "to get rid of
millions of people over the face of an entire planet in twelve hours.
We need those six more months of quiet-perfect quiet, while
things are set up-so that no Adelbom gets curious or alarmed.
And this fool"-she threw a glance at Paul-"had to go and let

157

your amateur Oca Front sleuths track him down here to 20B-40,
in spite of all we could do in the World Police to cover up for him.
Whether you killed him or brought him back, there'd be no way to
hush up the fact he'd come this far and been given asylum by the
aliens and humans here. That had to trigger off an investigation by
Adelbom in the Police ranks, and our own plans for a tidy elimi-
nation would have been turned up, too."

She stopped talking abruptly. Giles spoke quickly.
"So you knew I was headed for 20B-40?" he said. Then he
shook his head. "No, of course, you couldn't have known."

"Couldn't?" Bared Biset "Of course we knew. I came on
board for the trip particularly to take care of you. I brought
these"-she flung her hand out at the other arbites in the room
with a sweeping motion-"as a team to help me. A team pulled
from the lower ranks of the Association, a team that knew nothing
but how to obey orders...."
She paused to look at Mara.

"All but this one. This one I was forced to take to keep the
good will of the Black Thursday idiots!"

"That's very interesting," said Giles-and he meant it. "Then

just tell me one thing-"

But Biset was through being conned into conversation.
"I'll tell you nothing," she said, turning to Mara. "All right,
girl, you've got the weapon. Shoot him, and let's get goingi"

Mara lifted her hand holding the gun. Its slim barrel became
a tiny ring with a black dot in its center facing Giles. Beyond that
ring, Giles could have sworn he saw something in Mara's face that
did not match the pointed weapon-something that begged him to

understand.

Then there was a little wink of light from the black dot at the
center of the metal circle-and darkness came instantly.

He awoke-if it could be called that, because it was a sick
and uncertain return to consciousness-and found himself in some
small, dimly lighted space with darkness surrounding it. Mara's
face was a few inches in front of his own. He was able to recognize

158

it quite clearly, although it went in and out of focus as he watched.
He became aware that her hands were doing things to his body-
strapping him in, in fact, to the seat of a vehicle-a seat of the
rock buggy that had brought him out here.

"What're you doing?" he tried to ask, but the first word that
came out was more like a blurred grunt than anything else.

"Hush . . ." Her voice barely breathed in his ear as she
worked with her face close to his. "Save your strength. Don't talk.
Listen . . . There wasn't any choice. I had to shoot you a second
time. They think I placed the bum so that you'll die in about
fifteen minutes, well before the buggy brings you back on au-
tomatic controls to the main Complex. But I didn't angle the shot
the way they think. If you can get to a doctor in the next couple of
hours, you'll be all right. You must live. You must. . . ." Her lips
brushed his cheek faintly as she tightened the strap around his
shoulder and chest. "It's all I can do. I'm almost as much in
Biset's hands as you are. But remember ... don't do anything until
the buggy gets you to the Complex. Then punch -the control keys
for the nearest hospital. Don't waste time trying to reach the local
police. You understand?"

"Yes," he said, or thought he said. But evidently she under-
stood. Her head nodded slightly, and her face moved away from
him, out of his field of vision.

He found himself staring through the windshield of the rock
buggy, directly at the closed metal doors he had entered earlier,
now glinting metallically in the buggy's headlights. After a mo-
ment, the doors parted and the buggy jerked into movement. It
rolled forward, out of the doors and onto the rocky, lunarlike land-
scape of 20B-40.

The distant white dwarf sun was high in the sky now, and the
jumbled rocky plain before the windshield of the moving buggy
was a panorama in black and silver, in which the headlights of the
buggy paled almost to invisibility. Over everything rose the dome
of the night and the stars, with all other habitations, including the
main dome of the Complex, invisible in the further distant dark-
ness, around the horizon. The buggy jolted and swayed as it went,

159

in spite of its excellent suspension, crossing the boulder-studded
and uneven ground.

The jolting intruded a slight nausea into the aura of dullness
and discomfort that encased Giles like a bottle. He was not con-
scious of any specific pain, but a sort of general uncomfortableness
seemed to have soaked all through him, even into the marrow of
his bones. He was dull-minded, weak, and heavy.

It required a great effort, but he finally forced his mind to
think about where he was and what was happening to him. The
effort itself woke him slightly, perhaps pumping a little adrenaline
into his bloodstream. He became more aware, but at the same time
his discomfort sharpened. He was conscious of two overlapping
areas of heavy painlike pressure, as if a large bruise was being
pressed on by some intolerably heavy weight. One of the areas
involved his left shoulder, and the other was just above his breast-
bone. It had been in the shoulder that Biset had shot him, he
remembered muzzily. The pain over the breastbone must be where
Mara had burned him a second time with the laser.

The why of all these things nagged at his dulled mind. Why
go to all the trouble of shooting him, just so, and then sending him
back to the central Complex in his rock buggy?

He made an effort to sit up, to see what, if anything, had been
done to the rock buggy itself-and his right foot caught against
something on the floor at his feet. With a second great effort, he
pulled himself up to look down at it. The body of Hem lay there,
as if it had tumbled from the seat beside him; and the laser hand-
gun was still tucked in the waistband of the gray slacks.

Every moment was like lifting some great weight, but move-
ment was possible. Slowly, in several successive, jerky efforts,
Giles managed to bend forward, reach down, and pick up the
weapon. He curled his finger around the trigger button and pointed
it at the surface of the buggy seat beside him. He pressed the
button.

Nothing happened. The weapon's charge was either ex-
hausted or removed. Effortfully, he shoved the useless, but still

160

dangerous-looking weapon inside his jacket and leaned heavily
against the backrest of his seat.

He felt exhaustion imprisoning him like soft but massive fet-
ters. The buggy jolted onward, headed toward the main Complex
dome, still invisible on the night horizon.

He passed out a second time....

161

l6

He came to, suddenly, choking on the bitter taste of bile in

his throat.

He had been sick ... or rather his body had tried to be sick,
but found nothing in his stomach except digestive juices to expel.
The raw, searing throat-and-mouth bum of the internal acids had
brought him back to himself again.

He felt clearer-headed now. He was aware of his body in a
more normal sense, and the pressure areas were beginning to send
signals along his nerves in a more normal fashion-not yet as
sharp pain, but rather as deep-seated aches. Under the acid taste
lingering in his throat, he was conscious of a raging thirst, and his
eyes burned and gritted as if he had been staring into dust-filled
air, unblinkingly, for some time. Beyond this, however, his mind
was newly alert, with the abnormal alertness of someone under a
high fever- He looked down at his feet and saw the body of Hem,
still there. He looked ahead through the windshield of the moving
buggy and saw the tall black semicircle of the main Complex
dome, now partially occulting the stars ahead.

Feverishly, with a rush, the whole plan of Biset and her
underground arbites tumbled into understanding before him. Bar-
sey knew he had set forth to visit the caretaker of a dead friend's
dwelling. Now he would be on record as returning with one of the

162

arbites who had shared his shipwreck-and that arbite shot to
death, while he, himself, showed two burns through him and an
empty weapon at hand. Plainly, from what Mara had said, he had
been intended by Biset to be a corpse like Hem by the time the
buggy rolled automatically into its stall at the main Complex.

That meant an investigation by the World Police-the only
ones competent to investigate in a case where an Adelman was
suspected of something illegal. Biset, herself, as a fellow survivor
of the lifeship journey, would be automatically disqualified from
investigating. That meant an investigator must be applied for from
Earth, must make the trip out and spend days or weeks-weeks,
undoubtedly, thought Giles, if the World Police were as infiltrated
with Biset's arbite underground Association members as the Po-
licewoman had claimed. Whoever was sent out would almost cer-
tainly be a member of that Association and would spin out the
investigation as long as the Association needed or wanted it spun
out.

That would give the underground the six months Paul and
Biset had mentioned, or as much time as it needed to prepare for
the wholesale slaughter of the Adelborn and the work arbites.

Giles made himself move. He managed to reach out and
switch on the voice control to the autopilot of the rock buggy.

"Change destination," he croaked at it, as the small white
light on the panel before him lit up. "Go to ... the place where the
Albenareth are. The alien area in the main Complex. I want to
locate an Albenareth Captain...."

For a moment he doubted that his words had conveyed any
clear and adequate order to the autopilot. But then, abruptly, the
vehicle altered direction. Giles fell back in his seat, panting. There
was nothing to do now but wait-and hope that this new destina-
tion he had ordered was not too far away in terms of time.

The buggy rocked and jolted along. After a while, he was able
to see that they were close to the high metal wall that was the base
of the main Complex dome, and running along parallel to it. They
would be headed toward a different entrance from the one at which
they had originally emerged. After some fifteen minutes, Giles saw

163

such an entrance approaching. But the doors of it did not dilate as
they got close, and his buggy went on by. He lapsed into a state
that was half doze, half actual unconsciousness.

The buggy stopped with a jerk.

He roused himself and looked around. He was already inside
the dome, in a parking area. Some twenty meters from him was a
building that seemed to grow out of the dome itself, and in a wall
of the building facing him was a transparent section beyond which
the head of an Albenareth looked at him. The thin mouth moved^

as if speaking.

Belatedly, Giles punched on his intercom.

"Repeat, your business here?" an alien voice was asking in
the human tongue. "You have arrived and flashed a recognition
signal, but you have not answered my question. What do you

want?"

"Sorry . .." said Giles thickly. "Intercom off. Sorry. I want to

... I want to meet with the Captain Rayumung again."

"Which Captain Rayumung? We have a number of individ-
uals here of that rank and honor."

"The . . . Captain Rayumung who lost her ship in an explo-
sion . . . who came to this world in a lifeship with a number of
humans, of which I... am one. I am an Adelman, of Steel. She'll
know me. Will you call her?"

There was a small pause before the voice spoke again.

"1 identify the individual you refer to. She is now Rayumung
past-captain. I will try to locate and message her. Will you come

inside?"

Giles started to move without thinking, and found the

strength was not in him.

"I ... have to wait out here for her. I'm sorry. Tell her . . .
so. I apologize. Ask if she'll come here to me. But hurry."

"All dispatch is always made."

The state of doze-unconsciousness moved back in on Giles as
the intercom fell silent. He roused again to the sound of a tapping
on the transparent pane to his right, against which his head had
been resting.

164

He straightened up, turned, and looked. An Albenarethian
face was staring in at him from just beyond the transparency. Was
Hem visible to it, in the shadows at his feet? With a surge of
alarm, he fumbled with the latch of the door below the transpar-
ency. It opened, and he half fell, half stepped out to face the alien
figure beyond.

"Captain Rayumung?" he managed, in Albenareth.

The dark eyes looked down into his.

"I am a past-captain now," said an alien voice in human
speech. "But I know you, Adelman. What do you want with me?"

Giles leaned back against the body of the rock buggy to keep
from falling. His knees were treacherously weak. They would start
to shake visibly in a minute. He tried to go on speaking in Albe-
nareth, but the effort was too great.

"I promised you something," he said in his own language. *T
promised to tell you who set the bomb that destroyed your ship."

The alien face watched him. The alien voice buzzed its
human words.

"That no longer matters. After further consideration I have
given up the life I carried. It will be matured and borne by an-
other. So all connections are broken, and it no longer matters how
my ship died."

"Doesn't matter , .." He stared at her, sick with the weakness
from his wounds, unable to think how to deal with this new defeat.
"You gave up your ... Why?"

"I had no honor of achievement to pass on- It was you who
piloted your humans to safety. Dishonor canceled is no shame, but
neither is it of any assistance. It would be good to find and bring
justice upon whoever killed my shipmates and my vessel, but it is
nothing to do with the life I conceived. I have given that away.
Only for the prospect of achieved honor would there be reason in
keeping the relationship with my child that is now parted; and
where is there any such prospect? For a ship and all who served it
are lost, and that is a thing which nothing can change."

"But," said Giles, "if that loss could still lead to some great
good for the Albenareth-all the Albenareth-what then?"

165

"Great good?" The dark eyes watched Giles' face closely.
"For all our holy race?"

"Yes," said Giles.

"How could that be? And how could you, being only human,
know what would be a great good for the Albenareth?"

"Because in this case it's involved with what has to be great

good for humans."

"There can be no such involvement," said the Captain. "In
no way are we alike, human."

"Are you sure?" Giles asked. His legs were close to the end of
their strength. Imperceptibly, he began to slide down the side of
the rock buggy against which he was leaning. The Captain stood
silent. "You lived with me-and the other humans-all those days
on the lifeship. Are you so sure still that we aren't alike, so sure
there's no chance we could have anything in common?"

The tall figure before him blurred.

"Perhaps . . ." said the Captain's voice. Suddenly, two casu-
ally powerful hands caught Giles by the shoulders and lifted him,
held him up, pressing him against the side of the buggy. "Are you
ill?"

"A little ... hurt," said Giles.

He moved his lips to say more, but there was no strength in
him to form words. Dimly, he was aware of the head of the Cap-
tain bending forward as she looked past him, into the buggy. This
close, she could not miss seeing the body of Hem.

Giles waited for her demands for an explanation, for the
alarm that she would now surely give. But nothing of the sort
happened. Instead, he felt himself held aside as the door of the
buggy was opened, then lifted in, with the body of the Captain
hiding the assistance she gave him from the transparent panel
where the other member of her race still sat watching.

He was thrust into his seat and the seat clamps folded in
automatically to hold him there. The door of the buggy closed. A
second later the door on the buggy's other side opened and the tall
shape of the Captain moved in to take the seat beside him. She

166

reached for the controls; the buggy moved, pivoted, and drove out
through the door in the dome shell where he had entered.

She headed the buggy directly outward from the dome. After
a moment, she spoke.

"I am a past-captain," she said. "And I will die now as planet-
bound as if I had never known space; nor will there be shipmates
who remember me. But there is something here that is unfinished.
You defied me to save the least of your slave humans, and here
with you is one who is dead and you are clearly more than a little
hurt. Also you asked me if perhaps there was not something in
common between human and Albenareth after all, and that ques-
tion troubles me. Before our time on the lifeship I would have had
no hesitation in rejecting such an idea. Now, I do not know....

Her voice died in uncharacteristic fashion. He lay there, let-
ting his body give to the jolts of the rock buggy.

"Can you speak?" she asked, after a moment.

"Yes," he said. The word came out as a barely audible whis-
per. He made an effort and strengthened the effort-he put into his
voice so that it sounded more clearly. "I understand a lot now I
didn't before. The Albenareth don't just seek death, any more than
we do. Death is only a way station to something bigger-to a
racial oneness with the universe."

"Of course," said the Captain.

"No . . . not 'of course,' " he said. "You don't understand
how hard a concept that is for humans to understand. Death for us
is personal and unique-either the end of everything or the freeing
of something called a 'soul' that ends up making its own individual
terms of unity with the universe."

"The race lives," she said. "The individual is only one of its
parts."

"For you Albenareth-not for us. That's the difference," he
said. "We think of ourselves always as individuals. 'When I die,'
one of us will say, 'the world ends.' You Albenareth can't really
appreciate that way of thinking, any more than we can really
appreciate your Portal and your Way."

167

"Then there is nothing in common, after all."
"Yes, there is," Giles said. "A common lack. Both of our
racial philosophies were adequate while each of our races lived
only and entirely on the world of its birth. But now we've both
gone into space, and it's not enough for you just to translate the
Portal and the Way from single-world to universal terms. That way
lies stasis and physical death for your race. Likewise, for us hu-
mans it's not enough to say merely, 'When I die, the universe
ends.' Because now we've seen the universe, and now we know it's
too big to vanish just because one individual has died. As individ-
uals we face a universe too big for us."
"A common lack binds nothing."
"But the fact we can help each other binds something-in
both our cases/' said Giles. The feverish feeling he had experi-
enced earlier had come back on him again, and he was finding a
strength to argue that he had not known he had. "What we
humans lack can be found in part of what your race already has
in its philosophy-an anchor point in the idea that the race sur-
vives. As individuals we're too small to face up to the universe,
but as a race we can. That is what our philosophy needs. And what
you Albenareth lack is the part of what we have-the individual's
refusal to give in to a situation where all race teaching says that
survival is an impossibility. Remember, you gave up; but I brought

the lifeship in, after all."

His words echoed and died in the small capsule of the rock
buggy, in the face of the unearthly black and silver of the barren
nightscape outside the vehicle's windows. He turned his head to
stare at the motionless, round, unhuman head of his companion,
waiting for her reaction. What it would be he had no way of
telling. In human terms he had reminded her most cruelly of her
failure in that function of which she had been most proud.

"It is true," the Captain said at last, slowly. "And it is that
which has remained unfinished in my mind. You did what you

could not possibly do."

"Because I had no choice," he said. "I had to get to 20B-

168

40-even if the universe, even if all the Albenareth and all other

humans were opposed, or thought it impossible."

The Captain turned her head slowly to look at him.
"But what you describe is anarchy," she said. "No race can

live if its individuals are like that."

"Ours does. We live. And here we are-with you Albenareth

-in space."

She looked back away from him, out through the windshield
at the rocky land.

"Even if you are right," she said, "how could we help each
other, your people and mine?"

"I want your aid," Giles said, "to save a human from other
humans who would use him as an excuse to destroy many other
human lives, millions of lives, in fact. Together we can take him
from them, and their excuse as well, as together we brought the
lifeship safely to this world. Because, even though you were not
able to navigate the ship the last stage of the way, up until that
point where I took over, I in my turn would have-been unable to
navigate. Until then. I hadn't lived through the necessary days
aboard that small vessel that were to teach me about your race and
mine, and bring me to know how much of what I used to believe
was wrong."

"But even if we do something together, what will it prove?"
"It will prove we can supply each other's lack," said Giles.
"It can prove we're capable of small things together neither of us
could manage alone. To save the lives of some few humans and
one Captain Rayumung is not a highly noticeable thing. But to
save the lives of many humans, and because of that potentially to
save many lives of the Albenareth, setting them free to follow the
Way with new understanding and cooperation with my race-that
would be a noticeable thing, something to convince your race and
mine that we both need to leam to think differently and work
together, in space and on the planets, not just in our own separate
spheres. And the benefits from creating that conviction could win
great honor for you and your child."

169

She moved a little in her seat-restlessly, he thought.

"What you talk about," she answered, "goes beyond my per-
sonal honor. You ask something unusual from me."

"I know," he said. "If there is a word for it in Albenareth, I
have never learned it. But in human the sound is 'friendship.' "

" 'Friendship/ " she echoed, "It is a strange word, if it is
based on no kinship, no duty association or logical cause for

cooperation."

"It is based on mutual respect and a liking," Giles said. "Is

that enough? Or not?"

He sat, waiting for her to answer. She turned her face to him
again. As always, her eyes and tone of voice were unreadable.

"This is all new to me," she said at last. "It is true I have
noticed that among your people and mine on this world of 20B-
40-" She broke off abruptly. "Well, in any case what you say is
enough for this moment. Where do you want us to go, then?"

The feverish strength drained suddenly from Giles, and he

sagged in his seat.

"The rock buggy's log there has the destination point-the
one before I came hunting you ..." he murmured huskily.

Her hand went out to the log control dial and turned it.
Figures flickered to light on the control's small, rectangular screen.
"I have it," she said. "It is now entered in the autopilot."
The rock buggy lurched into a right turn. Giles closed his eyes
and let himself float off on the slightly nauseating tide of his weak-
ness. ...

"We are here," announced the voice of the Captain.
He opened his eyes again and found the buggy standing still,
apparently lost in the midst of the white-dwarf-lit plain. Then,
slowly, his eyes recognized, ahead through the windshield, the
shape of a single-dwelling dome.

"Good," he muttered. "You stopped outside it."
"We had talked of what to do only this far," said the Captain.

"You want us to go inside, now?"

"Yes," said Giles. He was coming awake again, drawing on
himself once more for the feverish strength that had so far been

170

there for him when he needed it. At the same time, he felt the deep
extent of the weakness and pain that were with him now-like a
tight metal band enclosing all his upper body.

"Yes," he said again. "But we mustn't drive it. There'll be a
foot entrance somewhere, and maybe we can get in without their
knowing it."

He made an effort to sit up, but he could move only his arms,
weakly.

"Wait," said the Captain.

She turned and reached into the back of the buggy, to the
compartment in which emergency outside suits were stored. She
brought a limp garment forward and held it up-but it was obvi-
ously designed only for the smaller shape of a human.

"You can't go out there without a suit," said Giles despair-
ingly within the transparent helmet of his own suit. "It's too cold."

"This vehicle has none other, and this will not fit me," said
the Captain indifferently. "It is a short distance and no matter."

She got out, walked around to Giles' side of -the vehicle, and
opened the door there. Picking up Giles in her arms, she began to
walk with him toward the dome. Breath plumed from her lips, and
almost at once icicles began to form about her mouth and nose
slits. But her arms seemed to hold the weight of Giles' body with-
out effort, and she paced calmly and regularly across the rocky,
broken ground.

When she came to the dome, she circled it; and at about
eighty degrees from the large doors that had admitted Giles' buggy
before, they found a small individual entrance with a latch button
beside it glowing with its own internal dim red light to show that it
was unlocked. The Captain pressed the button without putting
Giles down, and the door slid aside. She carried Giles inside, and
the door closed again behind her as a light went on to show them a
small entry room, and a further door.

"Can you walk now?" the Captain asked.

Giles shook his head.

"It does not matter," she said. "I will continue, then."

She went forward to the further door, opened it, and mounted

171

a short ramp into the carpeted interior of the house. The sound of
voices came to them from along a corridor to their right; and the
Captain, turning, carried Giles in that direction until they stepped
through the light-curtain obscuring an entrance to find themselves
in the lounge room Giles had visited earlier.

She stopped. A reflecting wall across the room gave back her
image and Giles'. Inside his suit, he looked pale and ordinary, but
the Captain glittered black and silver like the landscape outside,
for the fur covering her body was beaded now with tiny crystals or
ice where the warm, moist interior air had frozen on contact with

her chilled body.

She stepped to a nearby float chair that was empty and set
Giles down within it, then unsealed his helmet and removed it. She
straightened up again, turning to the people in the lounge, who had
been staring at her all this time in silence.

"I bring you the Adelman you know," she said. "He has things
he wishes to do-and with my help. But before I help I want to see
among you, or between you and him, this thing he calls 'friendship/
which surely all you humans must understand since it is a word of
your own language."

172

Seated helpless in the chair, Giles cursed himself. He had, he
told himself, made the most basic mistake possible-anthropo-
morphism. Carried away by his own emotion, he had forgotten
that under no circumstances could the Captain have the same
human referrents for the concept of "friendship" as he, who had
tried to bring her to share it with him. What had made him think
he could so simply put himself in the mental shoes of a being that
was product of an alien physiology, an alien culture?

Biset, Esteven, Croce, Di, Frenco, and even Mara, clustered
around the chair in which Paul Oca now sat, stood silent, still
staring at Giles and the Captain. But Paul was tied in the chair
now, and a thin line of blood had run down from one comer of his
mouth. Plainly, Paul had proved recalicitrant in some way, and
Biset had turned against him. Perhaps there was hope. Paul had
been the closest thing he had ever had to a friend. Perhaps Paul
would acknowledge friendship for Giles now and satisfy the Cap-
tain. Without the help of the Albenareth, neither he nor Paul had
any reason for optimism; and Paul must know that.

"Paul," Giles said swiftly to the other man. "The Captain
Rayumung listened to me when I said there was such a thing as
'friendship.' But she has only my word for it. You and I were
friends once, Paul. You'll back me up, won't you?"

173

He threw all the emphasis possible into the last few words, so
that Paul should understand the unspoken message. Back me up
and live. Don't, and we're both out of luck.

Paul stared back at him.

"I-" Paul began, and then his face and body stiffened.
Something came into his face and body that Giles had not seen
there for years.

"No," said Paul, clearly. "Whatever's to be gained by my
agreeing with you, Giles-the answer's no. I've never lied, and I
won't lie now. We grew up together, but we were never friends. I
had no friends, any more than you did. No true Adelbom feels
friendship; only his duty, as he sees it."

His eyes met Giles', without apology. Giles shook his head
feebly. With his momentary hope falling in ruins around him, he
could not bring himself to blame the other man. Paul Oca, in the
end, had answered with the only words his upbringing had left him
to say, the sort of words Giles himself had once been ready to live

and die by.

"All right," he said. "But if that's all there is to it, Paul, I'm
no true Adelbom any longer. Since that lifeship trip I've felt a lot
of things that went beyond my duty as I saw it."

He looked at the arbites standing about the chair where Paul

sat tied.

"Even with all of you," he said to them. "In the beginning, all
I wanted was to come to 20B-40 to find Paul, because that was my
duty. I started out in the lifeship determined to keep you all alive
because that was also my duty-what one of Steel should do. But
during the trip, I got to know you. I got to like you, all of you, just
as persons, in spite of everything each one of you did that disap-
pointed me, jarred on me, or rubbed my temper thin. You aren't
angels. No humans ever are. You aren't even Adelbom. But you're
the people I lived and nearly died with and you've come to mean
something to me now. You-and all the arbites like you, back on

Earth."

He gazed at them, a little sadly.
"Doesn't even one of you know what I'm talking about?" he

174

said. "Isn't there one of you who felt it, too-that something I'm

talking about?"

Mara suddenly broke from the group and ran to him.
"Get her back here! snarled Biset. "Esteven, Groce-drag

her back here!"

The two men hesitated, turning to stare at each other.

"Go on!" blazed Biset. "Do what I tell you!"

The men turned away from each other. Together they went
forward to where Giles sat. But when they reached the chair, they
did not touch Mara, who was now standing behind it with her arms
around Giles. Instead they turned, one on each side of Mara, and
stood facing Biset.

"What's the matter, you idiots?" raged Biset. "Bring her back
here!"

"No," said Esteven.

The entertaincom's face was pale, and sweat was rolling
down it. But his lips were tight together.

"You don't own me!" Esteven said to Biset. "If it was up to
you I'd be crazy or dead, from the tonk. He saved me from the
Captain. He saved me from the stuff! Why should I do what you
want?"

"That's right," said Groce, hoarsely. "You don't own us."

"Don't own you-why, you bumper-gets-" Biset broke off,
for the others who had been standing beside her were now in
motion, crossing over to join Mara, Esteven, and Groce beside
Giles. "Come back here, all of you.'"

Di, alone, hesitated at the sound of the Policewoman's voice.
But Frenco caught her hand and pulled her along with him. They
reached Giles and turned to face Biset.

"No one owns us," Esteven said to her. "It's different out
here on the Colony Worlds. You can't have us beaten up or judged
criminals and put to forced labor, here, just because you want to.
Here, you've got to prove we've done something wrong."

"You think so," said Biset, grimly.

She reached into a pocket of her suit and came out with her
laser hand weapon.

175

"I can kill you all," she said, harshly, "and claim you're a
Black Thursday group. I may be held under house arrest until an
investigator comes from the World Police on Earth to check the
matter; but when the investigator comes, I'll be cleared-by him
or her, whoever they send. Think of that as you're lying in your

graves-"

But she had been concentrating wholly on those who defied

her. The Captain was suddenly in motion, moving toward her with
great strides. Biset jerked the laser weapon about, to aim it at
point-blank range at the towering figure.

"Get backl" she shouted. "I'll kill you, too, if I have to."
But the Captain came on. At this range Biset could not miss.
Desperately, Giles reached into his jacket, snatched out the empty
laser he had found in the rock buggy, and pointed it at her.

"Bisetl" he cried.
She glanced at him for a moment, saw the laser, and pulled

her own weapon about to shoot him before turning its beam on
the Captain. But time was too short for both actions. Giles saw the
wink of light at the end of the barrel of Bisefs weapon, heard
Groce grunt and clap a hand to a burned forearm, then the tall,
dark figure of the Captain closed with the slighter human shape

before him, and Biset went down....

Giles blinked about him, slumping in his chair. A wave of
weakness and dizziness had threatened to carry him off. Now it
was clearing, but his eyes were still playing tricks on him. He was
seeing double-no, triple-images of the Captain. He blinked and
stared again, but they remained. The room was full of Albenareth,
and there were other humans there who had not been present a
moment or two before. One of them was Amos Barsey, now super-
vising the release of Paul Oca from his bonds by a couple of men
with police armbands-clearly members or the local 20B-40

constabulary.

Freed and on his feet, Paul was led out of the room. As he
went, he passed by the chair where Giles still sat, and paused.

"Remember today, Giles," he said, coldly. "Today, you've
kept the human race from saving itself and put it on the same

176

road to eventual death that these Albenareth are already on."

"Or perhaps on a new road for both races that's the road to
life," answered Giles. "We'll have to wait and see, won't we, Paul?
But I'm betting my way's the right one."

Paul turned without a word and let himself be escorted off.
Two men carried out the body of Biset, and the space where Paul
had stood was occupied a moment later by a man with a medical
kit, who began to fuss with Giles' bums. Above the head of the
working medician, Giles saw the tall shape of an Albenareth step
into view and look down at him.

"Captain?" said Giles in Basic, uncertainly. Even after all
those days on the lifeship, he could not be sure to tell the one
Albenareth he knew from those he did not know.

"I am satisfied," said the Captain. "It is apparently a real
thing, this 'friendship.' There are others of our holy race who have
been on such new worlds as this and had experiences with humans
that suggest it is not uncommon-I am now told."

"Told . . ." said Giles. He looked about the room, at the
other tall, dark shapes. "Where did they all come from?"

"I did not know," said the Captain. "But evidently, while you
waited for me, you by your stillness and other unusual behavior
aroused a concern in the mind of him of our race who greeted you
and sent for me. As a precaution, the local human police were
contacted, and these ordered a listening device attached to your
rock buggy, while you were unnoticing. We were listened to as we
talked and followed here, by both my people and yours."

Giles shook his head feebly. The medician had just given him
some kind of an injection and he was feeling the pain recede as
strength returned, but he was still far from being himself.

"I don't understand," he said.              v

"We have been a subject of the attention of both our peoples,
here on 20B-40, ever since we landed, Adelman," the Captain
said. "As I may have said, our races on these new worlds seem
closer to each other than in other places. But I wait for what you
promised me."

"Promised?"

177

"You promised to tell me who it was among you humans who
destroyed my ship. I wait to hear, now."

"Giles . . ." It was Mara, speaking beside him, wamingly. He
put up a hand to calm her.

"I'll tell you," he said.

"Giles!"

"No ... no. It's all right," he said aside to her. "Listen ..."

He turned back to the Captain.

"I set a bomb aboard your ship," he said.

"You?" The Captain's tall body moved almost imperceptibly
toward him.

"Yes," Giles said. "It was part of a plan worked out by the
Oca Front to get me to 20B-40 without arousing any suspicion on
Paul Oca's part that one of us had been sent to kill him." Giles
shook his head briefly. "To think I left Earth intending to kill . . .
but I was wrong about a good many things, then."

He looked back up at the Captain.

"The idea was that the bomb would damage your vessel
enough so that you'd want to turn aside to 20B-40 for repairs.
Once we'd landed here, I could leave the ship and find Paul."

"I am listening." The Captain's voice was expressionless,
remote.

"To make the plan work," said Giles, wearily, "I had to set
the bomb off at just the right time. Which was why I knew some-
thing about your course and the location of 20B-40 from the
position at which the explosion occurred. Also-we thought-the
bomb had to be just the right size so that the ship would be
damaged enough to make you turn aside from your original
course, but not damaged so much that it couldn't make it safely
to 20B-40. There was no plan for me to make the trip here in a
lifeship."

His voice was harsh as he ended.

"You planned," said the Captain. "But the bomb was larger
than you thought?"

Giles shook his head.
"It was the right size," he said. "But it had help we hadn't

178

counted on. Someone else wired another bomb to it-a much more
powerful bomb, that couldn't fail to wreck your ship completely."
His voice took on an edge. "Good God, where would a bunch of
amateur revolutionists like us get hold of something that would
make metal bum like dry leaves?"

"Why," asked the Captain, "this second bomb?"

"Because there was another plan I didn't know anything
about. It called for me to get to 20B-40 in a lifeship, as we did.
But not just me alone, but with a handful of people." Giles lifted a
heavy hand to indicate Mara and the other arbites from the lifeship
who still stood around his chair. "It was understood that if the ship
died, you Albenareth would choose to die with her-all but one of
you, who'd pilot the liteship to safety, out of duty to save the few
humans that remained."

"Why did you agree to this second bomb, this further plan?"
demanded the emotionless voice of the Captain.

"I didn't. Neither did any of the others on the lifeship, but
one. That one identified herself when I first came to this dome
here. Biset."

"The female I just killed?" said the Captain.

Giles nodded.

"Biset admitted she'd planned to bring these others, and her-
self, with me to 20B-40 in the lifeship. By admitting that, she gave
herself away. The only way she could have been sure of doing what
she planned was if she set the second bomb herself-and made
sure it was a bomb large enough not only to destroy the ship, but
to make sure no other arbites, except those she'd chosen back on
Earth, lived to escape. I'll bet if it'd been possible to examine your
ship before the bomb went off, we'd have found every lifeship but
the one we took was sabotaged, made unusable."

There was a long silence in the room. Finally, the Captain
spoke.

"How could she know that I"-the alien voice broke, unchar-
acteristically, then went on as unemotional as ever-"that you
would be able to take command of the vessel and bring it to
20B-40, rather than Belben?"

179

"She didn't," said Giles. "She and her people were as ig-
norant as I was of Albenareth ways of thinking. It never occurred
to her, any more than it did to me, that you'd do anything but
head for the nearest safe planetfall, which was 20B-40. But when
you insisted on going on to Belben instead, even if we all arrived
dead, she was forced into using the joker in her deck-the one
person she'd included just in case there was some dirty work to
be done."

He turned his head to look at Esteven.

"She supplied you not only with tonk but with paper to take
with it, to begin with, didn't she?" Giles said. "Then she claimed
she was out of paper."

"And I believed heri" Esteven's face twisted. "I believed heri
That's why I went for the book."

"Yes," said Giles. He looked back at the Captain. "So now
you know, Rayumung."

"Yes," said the Albenareth. Her head lifted. "And now that I
know, I shall take back the child that is mine, and live. For I have
canceled my dishonor by slaying the one who slew my ship; and
there is also honor to be acquired in this thing you have given me,
called 'friendship,' as I shall explain it to others of my holy race."

"Yes," said Giles. "And when you've done that, there's an-
other word you can introduce them to. It's called 'cooperation'-
and it can mean human and Albenareth as shipmates working
vessels through space together."

The dark eyes glittered on him.

"You have done much, Adelman," said the Captain, grimly.
"Be warned. Do not try for too much, too soon."

The eyes were steady on Giles. Slowly, Giles nodded. "Per-
haps you're right," he said. "Good luck, anyway, Rayumung."

"The holy race does not proceed by luck," said the Captain.
"But by understanding of the Way, on which all things may
journey."

She turned away. But just before going she turned back.

"All things but slaves." she said. "However, I find that I have
changed my thought about these others here." Her gaze swept over

180

the arbites about Giles. "They have proved themselves not slaves
all save the one I have just slain. This, therefore, is the greater
message I carry to the Albenareth, and 'friendship* is the lesser.
For in truth, respect between us and you must come before all
other things."

She turned and went, erect, unyielding, stalking from their
presence with great and measured strides, like someone who now
saw her way clear to the uttermost reaches of eternity.

181