Fossil

Chapter Eleven But New Light On A Scene May Show It True

Barrar received Hugh’s additional information with surprising calm, Hugh felt, and the aircraft reached Pwanpwan with equally startling speed. It was a smaller machine, and Reekess had some trouble accommodating her wings, but they were back at Pitville before this became a major discomfort.

It took some time for personal clocks to adjust, short as Hugh’s absence had been. Work on Habranha was continuous, since the “day” was a spatial rather than a temporal division. People rested, or slept if their species did this, simply according to the need of the moment, whether timed by simple fatigue or evolution-rated biological clocks.

Hugh had even gotten out of phase with Janice. Assigned duty watches in Pitville were based, of course, primarily on the need to keep a position filled; but the biological nature of the beings on duty also had to weigh heavily. This sort of scheduling formed a large part of Spreadsheet Thinker’s own job description; requests for change, such as Hugh so frequently made without consultation, ranked extremely high on her list of major nuisances. Barrar had wondered several times whether he should try to make this a little clearer to the Erthuma, but was so far still favoring natural selection.

Even with nobody actually criticizing his work, however, a safety director’s job remains full. When nothing bad is happening, there is time spent wondering when it will; when something does, one wonders why; when the reason is obvious, there is usually no one else to blame. Hugh had accepted this long ago and now simply tried not to take his irritations out on anyone else, especially not on Janice.

He was not sure how to react to S’Nash’s presence. This was frequent enough to make him wonder in his balanced moments whether the Naxian wanted Hugh’s job, and in his more paranoid ones to suspect it/him of being part of the Administration net. Knowing that the being could sense his feelings made it superfluous and even silly to relieve them with bad language or similar unrestrained behavior; on the other hand, the knowledge itself was, oddly, a sort of relief.

Hugh Cedar was a good, competent, thoughtful explorer. He was not yet a good administrator.

His wife was a good, competent, thoughtful explorer. She was also an extremely good physical chemist, at both theory and laboratory levels. Currently, therefore, she was much better off and happier than he. She knew it. She didn’t actually worry, but looked forward eagerly to the Lime when Rekchellet would be back in the air and the real, physical, possibly dangerous adventure over the Solid Ocean could start and let her husband relax. In the meantime, she tried to keep Hugh’s mind on other things, an effort sharply constrained by diving fluid and such of its effects as the need to use code rather than speech and the impossibility of enjoying such simple biological pleasures as eating.

They discussed the age of the frozen Habra in private; they had decided not to reveal it even to S’Nash, to make sure that Rekchellet’s expressed wishes weren’t accidentally frustrated. The body was, in fact, much more recent than the wing which had been found earlier, little over twenty-two thousand Common Years — well within the carbon reliability range on this world. They wondered where and how it had actually been found. The only source either one could guess was the putative Ennissee dig, and thinking of that made Hugh impatient again. All Janice could do was point out the obvious fact that the body could have come from anywhere on Habranha where ice existed, and that this was not even restricted to the dark hemisphere. The reminder didn’t really help. A confrontation with Ennissee, with a Naxian on hand to indicate whether the Crotonite were telling the truth, was very high on Hugh’s want list.

Whenever he was less self-centered, of course, the list had Rekchellet’s recovery even higher. Frequent calls to the Naxian station brought only the ages-old and galaxy-wide medical response — progress was normal. Since the biologists had admittedly never before tried the current techniques on a Crotonite, Hugh was tempted to ask just what the word could mean in this case.

He restrained himself, however, with Janice’s help, and tried to concentrate on his work. Occasionally a minor accident somewhere in Pitville would help, or at least relieve boredom. So did the training of Erthumoi workers in the use of diving fluid and Pit equipment, against the approaching time when Naxians would be unable to support the pressure at the bottom. Work on designing a Habra suit able to protect the natives from liquid air temperatures was making some headway, Ted reported. Erthumoi and Naxians had been helpful with information about the insulations they used. The Habra could not say what the difficulty was; he wasn’t involved with the matter himself, and had merely been asked by his Erthuma chief whether he knew anything about the program. Hugh, at the time of the question, had been particularly annoyed by the carelessness of some trainees of his own species, and was made no happier by Ted’s answer.

Twice he was able to talk to Rekchellet himself.

The second time the Crotonite reported that his hands and legs were done, but his wings were still immersed and restrained in growth tanks. He seemed disinclined to accept the Erthuma’s congratulations; wings appeared to be all that really mattered. Neither Hugh nor Janice, who happened to be in the safety office at the time, was greatly surprised, but did their best to point out the good side. The woman asked whether the Naxians were supplying proper Crotonite food, and found that this was precisely the wrong question.

“They haven’t fed me a shred!” Rekchellet snarled. “By the time my wings have grown back, my stomach will have shriveled. They insist they have to keep track of every molecule that gets into me. It’s all synthesized from chemically purified minerals, they brag, and is pumped straight into the tank — just enough into my arteries to keep my brain from shriveling, too! Not a drop or a sip in my mouth!”

“Do your people have organic feeding enthusiasts?” asked Janice. The other failed to get her meaning, and the discussion at least distracted him from his troubles for a few minutes. Unfortunately, her description of the people she was trying to explain carried a suggestion of extremism, and this reminded Rekchellet of Ennissee. The patient soared into another rage and was still in it when duty forced Hugh to drop out of the conversation. Hoping his wife could smooth matters over, he left his office to inspect the Pit area. He made it a point to get all the way to the bottom and be very detailed.

“I got him thinking about Ennissee waiting for us to set out for the Cold Pole and wondering whether we really would, as Reekess did before. It seemed to work,” Janice said hours later when both were back in their quarters. “Rek was almost gloating. I still hope you — we — don’t walk into more trouble. I’d hate to have us in a couple of those Naxian tanks growing new extremities.”

“I doubt that’s what Ennissee’d want for us,” answered her husband. “We were born crawlers, beneath his dignity to hate from the beginning. Rek is a renegade by his standards, worth real emotion. That’s hypothesis, of course; I’m not at all sure. He may not even feel strongly about Rek, may just have wanted a Crotonite subject to go through the routine before he faced it himself. Don’t worry about our trip — I mean, worry as sensibly as you can; we’ll be careful.”

Fafnir had just risen again in the northeast as seen from Pitville when a Naxian called to say that someone could come to collect Rekchellet. He had already been brought down to Pwanpwan, and was waiting at the Guild center, or possibly flying about the city; the speaker could not be sure. It was Barrar, not Hugh, who received the call. The Erthuma knew nothing of the matter until minutes later, when Rekchellet settled beside him outside his office. The Crotonite was in very high spirits.

“Strong as ever,” he whistled, spreading his broad wings to full span — fortunately there was little wind at the moment. “You’d better take a good look, so you’ll know me still. The wing-face isn’t exactly the same. They said there was nothing they could do about that; the basic nature of the pattern is genetic, but the details are random.” Hugh obeyed. He had become as accustomed during the last Common Year to recognizing Crotonites by their wings and Naxians by their body swirls and ripples as his own species by their faces, and felt after a few seconds that he would still know Rekchellet among any number of his fellows. He was about to ask whether Ennissee might also recognize his former victim when Rekchellet forestalled him.

“Are we ready for the trip? Who’s going? I want that (no-symbol-equivalent) to have a chance to recognize me again, too.”

“Almost. We decided four other Crotonites, you, and four Habras, all of you flying yourselves, at least until a lot of the food’s used up, with the big craft carrying the food. The trip will take longer than if you all could ride, but we won’t be so restricted when we get there. Does that make sense to you? Can you fly that far on your new wings?”

“Of course. It’s the same old muscles, just new webs, and the muscles certainly need the exercise. I want to fly anyway. It’s been much too long. What’s not ready?”

“I don’t have the ship, of course. I didn’t even dare ask for it until I knew when you’d be here and we could go. Also, I think I’m learning something. I’m not going to ask for it.”

“Who is? I don’t carry any weight. There isn’t a flying person anywhere in Administration. I can guess why.”

“There are no Cephallonians, either, and only one Erthuma, for that matter. I’m it. I don’t try to guess why. It took me a long, long time to get an aircraft the other time, and I think I can shorten it now. Never mind why.”

“How?” asked Rekchellet.

“I’ll have S’Nash ask.”

“That doesn’t make sense. It/he isn’t an administrator, or even a section chief.”

“Not officially. Just a communication engineer and documentarian on Spreadsheet-Thinker’s table. But it/he gives me a strong impression of having weight to throw around, for reasons I can’t yet guess, and I’m going to encourage another throw. Wait and see. I’m a little surprised it/he’s not here already, but I’ll call around.”

S’Nash appeared at the safety office before Hugh had made his second call, and did not ask why the Erthuma was routing an official request through it/him.

This was no surprise to the Erthuma. Rather than use Hugh’s communicator, the serpentine being departed after accepting the commission, leaving Hugh and Rekchellet staring significantly at each other.

Thirty minutes later, long enough to make both wonder whether their suspicions were correct and to make Hugh suspect that the delay was for just that purpose, Barrar called the safety office and told him without elaboration that the large flier was at his disposal, parked at the warehouse. The two got there as promptly as they could, Rekchellet in thirty seconds completely relaxed, Hugh in three hundred panting heavily.

Counter-of-Supplies was again ready to load cartons of Crotonite and Habra foodstuffs into the vehicle. She neither said nor did anything about Naxian supplies, and Hugh was not in the least startled when S’Nash appeared once again in full-recycling armor. The word had already gone out to those who were to make the trip, and winged forms were settling beside the warehouse every minute or two as muscular Erthumoi trundled the containers from building to aircraft. Loading and personnel count were complete at about the same time. Hugh thanked the Locrian, who acknowledged the courtesy and withdrew.

S’Nash was already aboard, and the Erthuma lifted off with caution dictated by the presence of many living fliers and possibly other aircraft in the area.

He flew slowly to the living quarters, left the ship and awakened Janice — they were out of phase again and he had not wanted to disturb her sooner than absolutely necessary — and waited while she, too, donned recycling gear.

Moments later the craft was rising slowly straight up, surrounded by its winged satellites, and at half a kilometer’s height he pointed the nose west and set the autopilot for a comfortable fifty kilometers per hour, which he knew both Habras and Crotonites could maintain for hundreds of kilometers. Janice had already gone back to sleep; there were scores of hours of travel ahead of them.

They passed only a short distance from where the truck had been abandoned; the Habras, for whom it was well within sensory range, reported that it was still there. This was not very surprising, but neither would its absence have been; there was no way to read Ennissee’s mind. The vehicle was dark, and no one tried to find whether anyone was aboard. Hugh flirted briefly with a mild regret that they had not brought a Locrian, but didn’t ask anyone to open the vehicle. They flew on.

From time to time one or another of the fliers would come aboard to eat and rest; there was not room for all, or even many, of them at once with the present stock of food. Plans were discussed, but had to be vague; there could only be guesses at what lay at the end of the flight. Conceivably there would be nothing; the hypothesis that Ennissee wanted them there might be wrong or irrelevant. He might not have cared whether they knew about the site, and even the location might be a deception.

They could plan on the latter assumption, and did. A wide search pattern based on the sensory powers of the Habras and the eyesight of the Crotonites was tentatively worked out. No one looked forward to implementing it, however. A search in the dark and chill for something probably not there would be purest anticlimax.

They hoped Ennissee, and the two Erthumoi for whom there was some evidence, and the Samian who had been reported as boarding the truck at the port, would all be there and all be able, willing or not, to explain the apparently senseless activities of the truck itself and at least one of its erstwhile occupants. Rekchellet, quite frankly, hoped that Ennissee would not be willing to cooperate; Rekchellet wanted an excuse. An on-the-spot excuse, since he had obviously suffered no permanent damage, and civilized people were above resenting mere temporary inconvenience.

Ennissee, one could hope, would be neither sneering nor uncooperative — except just at first. Rekchellet flew westward with that “at first” in his mind. Reekess, a few meters away, said little, but knew his thoughts and shared them.

Fafnir ceased rising behind them and to their right, and began to sink again very slowly; even the flight speed of living beings was greater than that of Habranha’s equatorial rotation. The shadows below grew long again.

The hills still resembled dunes. No one could be sure whether they moved, since no one elevation was in sight long enough, but the winds were generally less violent at the height where they were flying. Twice there were sharp, steep escarpments angling across their path; Habranha was far too small for plate shifting, but there must be slow currents in the deep ice, accompanied presumably from time to time by phase changes and glacier quakes far below, even this far from the sunward side. Chaos still ruled this world, however snaillike the pace of its armies might be here in the chill darkness.

Presently Fafnir was left behind, and only the distant stars lighted the icy surface. They flew on. Janice woke up and relieved Hugh at the control panel, though flight was still automatic; the only breaks in its monotony were pauses to open the lock and let people in and out. It would have been possible to open at their slow cruising speed without disturbing the handling of the ship, but entry into and departure from a portal with a fifty-kilometer-per-hour wind across the opening seemed risky to Hugh. All the fliers claimed they could handle such a maneuver, some even expressing indignation that the Erthuma should regard it as dangerous; but Hugh insisted, to the extent of stopping the craft instantly whenever he heard someone attempting to use the outside hatch controls in flight. His translator passed on a few Habra words not, apparently, directed at him which sounded suspiciously like “thinks we’re children,” but he reminded himself that the natives didn’t really regard this imputation as an insult and remained firm in his policy.

Possibly as a result of this, all his personnel were uninjured and reasonably rested and fed a hundred kilometers from their goal, after what he thought of as nearly four days of flight. They had agreed on an approach tactic, and now descended to a level just above the hills.

These were far more jagged than they had been nearer the terminator. The wind was much weaker, at least at the moment; and while there was still a good deal of blown ice dust filling cracks and hollows here and there, this no longer seemed to be the principal shaping agent of the landscape.

Hugh lowered his speed to let the fliers precede him, and watched them spread out in fan formation, Habras slightly ahead, as had been agreed. He kept his eyes on them, while Janice watched the tracker and reported distance and direction to the selected spot. They knew this might not be a precise location; Rekchellet had seen coordinates on the map, and was reasonably sure he was reading the numbers correctly even though the language was not his own, but there was no way to be sure what sort of trust could be placed in the map itself.

Every kilometer the aircraft’s upper light blinked the corrected distance in a simple improvised code, while the Crotonites winged steadily forward and the faster Habras swept back and forth in front of them, scanning the ice below with eyes and electric senses.

They were a dozen kilometers short of the indicated point when the Crotonite at the left of the line flashed her light back toward the others. Hugh and Janice saw it at the same instant; S’Nash started to speak, and fell silent. A touch on the board left the aircraft floating motionless a few meters above a barely visible ice peak, holding its position against the urge of a feeble breeze. Hugh opened the outer hatch and waited, but no one came aboard. A pair of broad Crotonite wings swept above the canopy after two or three minutes, however, and their owner’s voice came through.

“Miriam felt metal several kilometers in front of her, and the others now agree. They say it’s a large amount, and are sure they could not themselves be felt by another Habra at that distance. They will go no closer until they get your word, Hugh, in case you want to take the aircraft there before they themselves are sensed.”

“We thought of that,” agreed the Erthuma, “but couldn’t see what to do afterward. No, let’s follow Walt’s idea. Let the Habras approach the metal in single line, one far enough behind the next so they can just sense and talk to each other. You Crotonites will follow in the same direction as best you can with your lights out, and I’ll bring up the rear, well to one side, also dark. Whoever is in the lead look for signs of other living beings — Habras. of course, but any others he or she can infer from whatever they sense. If none are detected by the time the leader reaches the object, whatever it is, pass the message and any description back along the line to me as quickly as possible and we’ll come forward to look it over. If anyone living is detected, or any sort of trouble or danger shows up, relay the word back and I’ll be up there with all my lights going three seconds after I get it. That’s why I’ll be staying to one side; I don’t want to run into any of you. But if any emergency message does come through, turn your own lights on again, too, so I’ll be more certain to miss you. All right?”

“All right.” agreed the Crotonite. “It will take several minutes to get your words up to the nearest Habra. I’ll send a double-double flash when that’s done, and you can then be ready for more messages.”

All three of the flier’s occupants were now in the control section, the Erthumoi hunched over the panels, the Naxian behind them partly coiled but reared up enough to see through the windows. The autopilot was now cut out horizontally so that they were drifting slowly with the wind, and Hugh’s fingers were ready to move them in any direction at any speed. Janice’s hands were at the light controls. All three pairs of eyes were looking outside; the interior lights of the flier had been extinguished long before, though she had cut in small riding lights to let any of their companions find the vehicle.

The minutes dragged on. Hugh, realizing from a glance at the tracker that the breeze was drifting them into line behind his crew, gave a brief kick of power to send them five hundred meters to the right. He was almost ready to repeat the maneuver when the promised double flashes of light finally came and he realized that the real wait was only beginning.

He was wrong. Scarcely thirty seconds later a second, blindingly bright blaze came from beyond the crags ahead. It lasted several seconds, lighting up the sky, drowning the stars, and showing eight black spots in silhouette against the suddenly glowing background. One of these was just identifiable as a Crotonite form; the others were presumably the rest of the crew, too distant to see in detail. Hugh did not wait for any other signal.

He sent the aircraft hurtling toward the flash, grateful that the single glimpse of his people allowed him to be sure of missing them all. He had no weapons, and nothing he could have improvised as a weapon other than the craft itself; he wasn’t thinking weapons or deliberate violence; but he was used to accidents, and he intended to place his hull between his people and whatever had produced the flash. It was too bad that Janice was there, it occurred to him later, but he told himself firmly that she was an adult, had come along willingly, and he might have needed her help. He hoped the Naxian would not be a nuisance; he had no idea how any of that race might be expected to face personal risk — had never been sure that S’Nash had regarded the earlier blowing-away episode as risky — and had no time to find out now. This also failed to reach his conscious mind until later.

He did not use full speed, since he had to keep some awareness of how far he was going. He passed the farthest forward of his Habeas in some five seconds, seeing the being easily now that Janice had turned their search and landing lights on full. In five more he brought the vessel to a halt, and his wife swept the air around and the ice below with her beams.

The air was empty, but there was a cloud of dust or steam or both rising from the ground almost straight ahead of them and another two kilometers or so away. Hugh nosed down and headed rapidly toward it without consulting either of his companions, and brought the machine to a halt a hundred meters above the ice.

Whether what they saw was a menace or not was hard to decide at once. Steam was still rising from the extremely flat floor of a crater some thirty meters across and five deep. Beside the pit at a distance of less than twenty meters was a square metal structure about fifteen meters on a side and three high, as featureless as a food box and apparently undamaged. There was no motion in the vicinity but the rising steam — more probably fog, Hugh corrected his thought. The flat bottom of the pit was probably liquid water, at least for the moment. Whether energy was still being released to keep it that way was not yet obvious.

Something had exploded, just as his Habras had started to approach the building.

Hugh had a very low opinion of coincidence, backed by the Erthumoi tendency to recognize it when it wasn’t there.

He spent no more time examining building or crater, but lifted and swung back toward his people. In a few seconds the natives became visible, no longer strung out in a line; they had either never finished that maneuver or had had time to get back together since the blast. Distant, flashing lights showed that the Crotonites were also still in the air, and Hugh hung where he was, hatch open, waiting for the group to reach him.

This took several minutes, as even the nearest Crotonite had been a dozen kilometers or more away. They still lacked room for everyone aboard, so the aircraft was landed and its riders emerged as the winged members of the party settled around them.

“Is everyone all right?”

“We’re getting our sight back slowly,” replied Miriam. “The flash completely blinded all of us; we were flying on electrical sense for minutes, but could see your lights by the time you came back toward us. Do you know what happened?”

“What about you others?” Hugh asked the Crotonites, putting first things first without intending discourtesy. “Do you have alternate flying senses, too, or were you far enough away to avoid being blinded?”

“It wasn’t so much distance as having a hill in the way,” replied Rekchellet. “I suppose that was a booby trap. I still don’t like that (no-symbol-equivalent).”

“We don’t know yet. There’s a building, apparently undamaged, beside what looks like an explosion crater. I was going to suggest we look it over, but your idea makes me wonder if that’s a good idea. I wouldn’t have thought of traps, myself — at least, not really nasty ones like that.”

“I’ve met Erthumoi who were less civilized,” muttered another Crotonite voice.

“I’m sure you have. But what do we do? Ordinarily I’d have searched that building for survivors of the explosion, as normal procedure. Now I’m not so sure I want to go near it, and I certainly can’t let any of you approach it until I’ve…”

“I can. It’s my business,” snapped Rekchellet.

“It’s my business. I’m talking responsibility, not revenge, if that’s what you have in mind. Reekess, is there any use in my arguing about this? Is it just Rekchellet, or am I bucking general Crotonite ethics? Shut up, Rek. I trust you, but you’re excited, and just as likely to be sure you’re right as I would be. Reekess?”

“He has the right, by custom.”

“Even if we’re not sure Ennissee had anything to do with all this?”

“The probability is good enough.”

“All right. Get aboard, Rek. You and S’Nash stay here, Jan — no,” as his wife was about to object, “it’s quite a walk from here. I’ll fly us over to within a couple of hundred meters, set down, and you take the flier back — remember the others don’t have recycling gear, and all the food is in it.”

Janice entered the vehicle without a word, but gestured the Naxian in after her. Hugh frowned, but decided not to make an issue of it; after all, there was no way S’Nash could manage the aircraft. The handlers on its/his armor were far too clumsy, and If it/he chose to shed the armor — possible, in Habranhan environment even in this temperature, though not for very long — the prehensile fringes on the serpentine body were even less facile.

Besides, Janice probably wanted to keep the Naxian in sight. Theories need observational testing.

Hugh and Rekchellet boarded together, the rest of the group waiting silently, and Hugh brought the aircraft back toward the scene of the explosion.

Neither he nor the Crotonite was in any great hurry to commit suicide. They flew low over the crater, confirming that there was liquid water, with needles of ice now growing across its surface, at its bottom. They circled the building a hundred meters away and ten or fifteen off the ice, finding a door on the side away from the crater but no other visible opening. They made one more circle at half the distance, drew back again to a hundred meters, and landed. Hugh and the Crotonite emerged, while Janice silently took the controls. Not until she had lifted off and the flier was dwindling in the distance did the others realize that S’Nash had emerged with them.

There was certainly nothing to be done. There seemed nothing to say. The three approached the door, not at all hastily.

Ten meters away, Hugh remarked, “It would have been handy if one of us were a Locrian. Why didn’t I bring Plant-Biologist along?” There seemed no answer to this, either, and neither of his companions attempted one. They stopped some five meters from the building, and examined the door as carefully as they could from that distance. It showed no peculiarities, and they started forward again.

They failed to reach it.

They were still three or four meters away when the portal opened and three beings emerged.

Two were Erthumoi, neither of whom Hugh had ever to his knowledge seen before, one apparently female, the other a male a head taller than Hugh himself.

The remaining person looked like a slab of leather, supported by a mechanism resembling a headless human skeleton, with the Samian body ensconced in the rib cage. Hugh thought of the report about the truck users which he had received from the seaport what seemed like months ago, rather than ten or twelve Common Days. He tried some spreadsheet thinking of his own, without marked success. He rather expected to see a fourth figure emerge from the still open door, but none had appeared by the time the three were confronting the newcomers from less than two meters away.

Rekchellet, too, had his expectations.

“Where’s Ennissee?” he hissed. “I need words with him.”

“Not here,” came the answer in Samian tones. “We are very glad of your arrival, Hugh. Our communication equipment was in the mole, which for some reason developed power plant trouble, and we have no way of calling for transportation. You must have been close enough to see the explosion. We were greatly worried; we don’t expect Ennissee back for nearly a year, and while the resources of this site should keep us alive, we would all be most uncomfortable. We would be grateful if you could transport us to Pitville.”

“You expect Ennissee back in a year?” Rekchellet asked the question; Hugh was still filling spaces in his mental chart.

“About that. He departed recently, leaving me in charge.”

“Where did he go?”

“To the Naxian biological station. He learned very recently, we understand, that they can provide treatment for injuries he suffered some time ago, and for which he had been using rather unsatisfactory prosthetic equipment.”

Hugh forestalled a second explosion.

It was less difficult than he expected; Rekchellet’s rage subsided almost at once to a cold, controlled fury which held S’Nash’s full and possibly admiring attention. All Hugh really had to say was, “He’ll have a hard time getting away from those growth tanks, won’t he?”

The Crotonite gave the wing-flip equivalent of a nod.

“And when he does, it will be nice that he has no more handicaps. I can meet him in the air.” He relaxed visibly, and Hugh was about to resume courtesies with the Samian who had been speaking, when S’Nash joined the conversation.

“It’s a little surprising to find you this far from Pitville, Ged.” The Erthuma looked down at the Naxian, then up again at the occupant of the skeletonlike walker. The other human figures remained silent, giving no sign they were following the conversation; Hugh recalled the unfamiliar tech translator modules which had been found in the truck, and wondered which if either of them was indeed from the home planet he himself had never seen. There was nothing about either person to attract special attention.

His curiosity was brief, as S’Nash’s words got through to his consciousness. Ged? Barrar couldn’t be out here. The walker looked like his, of course, though Hugh could never have sworn to all the details of the machine, and one Samian looked as much like an excessively thick steak as another. But Ged Barrar must be back at Pitville, making sure that the various details envisioned by Spreadsheet-Thinker were actually occurring as the Locrian decided they should. He was the administrator’s main connection with reality, or had presented that image. But this one had addressed him by name, he suddenly realized, and its next words removed any doubt.

“The various contingency plans feed back very nicely into the main program, and it has been some time since I have had to devote much attention to Pitville — even with Hugh’s conscience and curiosity operating,” the Samian answered calmly.

“It is you!” Hugh muttered.

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry if it surprises you, but I did mention that I had other interests.”

“Not that you were working on them. How does this connect? More important, did you know what was happening to Rekchellet?”

“Not until almost too late. I’m very sorry about that. Ennissee has been useful, but I’m afraid I didn’t fully understand what his injury had done to him. I certainly never supposed that he would only submit himself to Naxian treatment, tempting as it was, until after a — uh — test. It was foolish of me, because I do have some idea of what flying means to your people, Rekchellet. Since he could fly, however, I underestimated his — well, general bitterness.”

Beside Hugh S’Nash stirred briefly. There was no way for the Erthuma to tell whether Barrar perceived this or not. After a moment, the Naxian spoke up.

“I told you myself.”

“So you did. I still underestimated. Perhaps no one but another Crotonite, or perhaps a Habra, and now that I think of it, a Naxian. can really appreciate what a threat or injury to its wings would mean to someone who flies naturally. If you recall, I had already deduced that you have been playing that addictive Naxian game which involves what I can only describe in language as ‘composing emotional tunes’ out of the readings you obtain from non-Naxians, and therefore I had reason to doubt your objectivity. If you had actually told Hugh and Janice what you do for amusement when they asked you a year Of so ago, I might have felt otherwise.”

Hugh wondered how the Samian had known about that bit of conversation, but failed to pursue the thought as S’Nash gave its/his answer.

“It’s not exactly a game; it’s normal behavior. And it’s not just with aliens, though you’re a lot less boring than my own people, I admit,” his tones flowed calmly from Hugh’s translator.

Several frames in the Erthuma’s mental spreadsheet filled themselves simultaneously.