Abbot edged t.i.tus away from the vidcom and typed rapidly, peered at the screen, and swore as if he"d made an error, then typed some more. "Here it is," Abbot said brightly. "Look, he"s been checked and cleared."

t.i.tus realized that Abbot had input that data right under Colby"s gaze. She nodded at the screen. "Good that I have a competent staff. Now, H"lim, you know that your presence is causing quite a problem-"

Mihelich said from the door opposite the bathroom, "Not as much problem as you might think, Carol." As he advanced into ie room, t.i.tus saw through the opening behind him a small lab designed to serve the patient in the suite. "H"lim has been very helpful so far, and as soon as he learns to read, I"m sure he"ll have a lot to teach us."

"I"ll be very glad to do what I can to make things easier," H"lim put in with no Influence whatsoever. Then he invoked a touch of his power as he added, "It would surely help if I could go out to see Kylyd." He glanced at Abbot who nodded.

Colby repeated the ship"s name and H"lim explained it to her, adding, "I was escorting livestock I had designed for a new colony world. I know nothing about ships, but still I might be able to solve some puzzles for you."

Mihelich chimed in, "That seems reasonable to me. You won"t believe what he knows! He meant "designed" those creatures-the other species we found with him."

To H"lim, Colby said, "We have no s.p.a.cesuit for you, and the ship"s in vacuum. In a while, when they"ve built you a suit, I"m sure the engineers will be glad for any clues you can give them. Meanwhile, your first task is to regain your strength. The doctors are worried that you won"t eat."

Mihelich explained, and Colby took the news about his diet woodenly. With no overt reaction, H"lim watched her swallow her disgust. Colby reminded t.i.tus and Abbot of rescheduled meetings, made hasty excuses, and departed, a touch pale about the lips.

Mihelich ran fingers through his white hair and turned back to the lab. "H"lim, come look at this, and then I"ll show you more things the vidcom can do. You can tap into cameras aimed at the ship."

H"lim followed him, glancing back once at t.i.tus and Abbot w"th apology.

t.i.tus gathered his Thermos disguised with the towel, and when he came out of the bathroom, Abbot said, "I"m glad to see y recovered."

t.i.tus went past him without stopping. "There are some things, Abbot, that you"ll never understand, but I hope you can finally grasp the fact that I do not want or need your help." But I"d never have pulled off that trick with my medical records.

"There may come a time when I"ll believe that."

t.i.tus went into the shower, then returned to his apartment. Inea had gone, leaving him a note saying she"d taken the "spare calculator." By that, he understood she had used the bugging system to tap the surveillance cameras in H"lim"s room, so she knew some of what had happened. He took his Bell and went to his lab where Inea was working at the Eighth Antenna Array console in the observatory. He signed some forms, picked up status reports, and headed to the first round of meetings after H"lim"s wakening.

As he started out the lab door, Inea came out of the observatory, yelling, "Wild Goose is alive! Wild Goose is reporting on relay through the Eighth!"

Wild Goose had, presumably, the best tracking data on Kylyd"s approach vector.

Everyone rushed into the gla.s.s enclosure, crowding aside to let t.i.tus through. The noise was deafening. When t.i.tus worked his way up to the screens, he saw the data relayed from one of the outer orbital observatories. "Yeah, that"s Wild Goose all right, but what is that stuff?" he asked.

"Mostly garbage," answered Inea and thrust a set of earphones at him. "Listen."

The technicians were arguing about what was coming in and what they could do to clean up the signal, about why the package had just started sending again, and about what to send back to get better data.

t.i.tus handed the phones back. "I"m late, and Colby"s going to be livid. Start this through our cruncher and let me know if anything useful comes of it." To the crowd, he announced, "This may be just what we need to nail that star! The alien, H"lim, says he knows nothing of ships, so I a.s.sume he doesnt know how to find his home star. Everything depends on us-on Wild Goose-now. Can you handle it?"

A cheer went up, and as t.i.tus began working his way out of the observatory, they threw questions at him. "You"ve talked to it?"

"Why is it alive?"

"How could it have survived?"

"Is it really a monster like they"re saying on the news?"

"Are we all going to die of plague up here?"

Climbing the steps to the hall door, he held up his hands. "There"s no plague! H"lim is no monster, just a poor, lost castaway." Then, feeling like a hypocrite, he added, "Maybe we can get his people to come take him home, and if that happens, we want him to report highly of us. So let"s see some level-headed competence around here, okay? I"m late for this meeting, so you get me those numbers, and I"ll find out what"s happening in Biomed and let you know. Wild Goose is alive!"

With that, he plunged out into the corridor.

It was a stormy meeting. The rumors t.i.tus"s crew had heard were nothing compared to what the press was disseminating. Panic was overtaking Earth"s population, and already there were riots in some countries. Unsubstantiated reports indicated that some countries were funding the anti-Hail groups in open defiance of World Sovereignties law.

Colby"s orders were to get hard data, taped interviews, and biological evidence on H"lim and beam it to Earth to counter the panic. Mihelich insisted on sending along his own report on the benign microlife the alien carried. "What little there is of it. His blood is practically sterile, and his immune system"s biochemistry is virtually the same as ours." Privately, he told t.i.tus, "He carries antibodies I"ve never seen before, but not the corresponding organisms. Nothing about him is human, yet there"s no threat to us. Why are they so hysterical down there?"

t.i.tus had no answer except that it was human nature to fear the unknown, which wasn"t wholly irrational. In the days that followed Inea clung to the vidcom, devouring every tidbit on him, and chafing at t.i.tus"s inability to get her in to meet him.

But she still fed t.i.tus willingly and abundantly, understanding that t.i.tus was supporting H"lim until Mihelich produced orl blood.

Under the imposed quarantine, deliveries to the station were now to be made by drop rather than by surface, so that crews would not stay overnight at the station. This cut the tonnage they could transport, so all requisitions were doubly scrutinized. Mihelich would not receive anything to support cloning, and t.i.tus might not get Connie"s new blood chips. Every report he filed with her mentioned the restrictions and his dwindling supply, but she only acknowledged, reminding him their channel was not secure from the Tourists.

t.i.tus scoured his hardware for any bug Abbot might have planted and found none. Any leak was on the ground.

During the frantic days after H"lim"s wakening, t.i.tus hardly slept. In the lunar night, and with Inea supporting him, he had the stamina. He even squeezed in frequent visits to H"lim, both under the cameras and privately. He was present when the luren"s eyes were examined, and learned that Earth"s luren had lost sensitivity in the visible spectrum. Luren had not only the three sensitivity peaks that humans had, but also a number of infrared and ultraviolet peaks. Luren skin responded to the electromagnetic presense of human bodies. When one of the engineers presented H"lim with a pair of goggles to allow him to use station lighting, he told her, "All the colors seem odd, but I do thank you.

He was unfailingly polite and graciously cooperative, obscuring his reticence under an effusive generosity. "I know genetics and commerce, but not politics or cartography. Believe me, I"d like your message to reach my employers even more than you would. However, I don"t know where I am, and I"ve even less idea of how to locate home from here."

Questioned on astrogation, he could only cite his inept.i.tude with that branch of mathematics. Of Kylyd"s stellar drive he said, "I don"t think anyone understands why it works, but its revolutionized galactic commerce."

That was their first clue that there was a civilization out there. Closer questioning only revealed that there were many species allied into political units, which never seemed stable enough to traders. H"lim"s people, however, dealt little with other species and even his ignorance was long out of date. How long? There was no telling, he claimed, since he did not understand astrogation, and never could antic.i.p.ate the elapsed time of a trip. He sounded much like a time zone-hopping businessman who depended on his calculator to compute local time, so no one considered he might be lying.

Knowing he was starving while waiting for Mihelich"s cloning of orl blood to yield results, they offered him human blood from the infirmary"s stores, cloned and guaranteed sterile blood. That"s precisely what it was, cloned, dead and sterile. But he accepted it with good grace and did his best to choke it down. It took more fort.i.tude than had the acceptance of t.i.tus"s supply, which he now welcomed whenever t.i.tus could get some in to him. That, at least, was infused.

Meanwhile, H"lim redoubled his efforts to help Mihelich. He was under no constraints about working around the clock in plain sight-they knew he was alien. So late one night t.i.tus found him poring over the vidcom. As t.i.tus came in, he looked up. "You don"t have much of a vocabulary, do you?"

"What?" That had never been one of t.i.tus"s problems.

"Chorion," challenged H"lim.

"Never heard the word."

"Choroid," he said.

t.i.tus leaned over his shoulder to see what he was reading. "H"lim, that"s a biology dictionary."

"I know. I"m a biologist-I think. The study of animals, yes?"

"Definitely not my field."

"True. Have you made any progress in your field?"

"We"re getting some sense from Wild Goose now, and we"ve refined our guesses with all the new data. If you came along a direct line from your home planet, we"ll find it."

"I couldn"t begin to guess about that, but it doesn"t really matter. The signal will be picked up by someone."

"Someone who"d care enough to respond?"

"Who knows? But I"m going to compose a message to go with Earth"s, so that whoever hears it will route it to someone who would care."

"You want to go home."

"Yes." H"lim turned from the vidcom, waved cheerily at the surveillance cameras, then turned them off. "Do you really think that makes privacy?"

"I"m staking my life on it," said t.i.tus, producing his Thermos from his briefcase. While H"lim drank, Tims mused, "I"d have found anything the humans left running, but Abbot might have a bug or two in here. I don"t think so, though. He prefers to use Influence."

"What little you have of it, it seems to suffice."

"We wouldn"t fare very well if we went back with you, would we?"

"Hard to say. From the two of you, I"d say your strain has become devious, perhaps sly. But then you admit you were sent as master spies to manipulate these humans and vie with each other covertly. I doubt such skills exist at home, however I"ve led a sheltered life-as you say Andre has."

Mihelich and Mirelle were the only two H"lim saw more of than he did of t.i.tus and Abbot. "Andre"s a specialist," t.i.tus said.

"Yes." Even in private, H"lim refrained from criticizing Earth"s lifestyle, though he often registered surprise at first encountering a peculiarity. t.i.tus believed the man had traveled on diverse worlds and learned the trick of accepting the strange on its own terms.

t.i.tus dug into the briefcase again. "Brought you some items from Kylyd that my a.n.a.lysts are through with. Can you tell me where these were manufactured?" He set some odd bits of metal on the desk.

H"lim scooped them up eagerly. "Where are the rest?" he demanded with an intensity that startled t.i.tus.

"Rest? I think that"s all there were. Were they manufactured from materials found on Lur?"

"I don"t know." He began sorting them and counting- "It might give me a clue to the spectrum to look for.

H"lim looked around. "Mirelle would demand to know what they"re for, but you"re not the least bit interested."

t.i.tus really hadn"t thought about it, but now he looked at the oddments. "Game pieces?"

"You"ve lost Thizan?"

"Abbot might know more than I." t.i.tus pulled up a chair, suddenly intensely curious. "Tell me about it."

Several hours later, t.i.tus left with sketches for the missing pieces of the board game which was not unlike chess but had more kinds of pieces and a more complex board. Technically, the time had been wasted, but he felt almost as relaxed and refreshed as if he"d slept a full night, and he wanted to forget all about everything else but building the set and mastering the game.

He was jarred back to reality when he found Inea in his office with a report on Abbot"s doings gleaned from her little bugs. "He"s discovered his power source is missing!"

He told her that H"lim would be adding a message to the probe"s signal. "Abbot may not think his message is so important anymore."

"He"s been running around like crazy, gathering components to rebuild the thing."

"Are you sure that"s what he"s up to?" They spent the hours until t.i.tus"s first conference of the day a.n.a.lyzing Abbot"s moves.

"Don"t worry," said Inea as he left. "I"ll stay late tonight and get those figures from Wild Goose cleaned up."

t.i.tus went on about his business, sternly putting aside his infatuation with the board game. The news from Earth had worsened, the probe construction was going swiftly but not smoothly, and despite everything he"d learned from H"lim, he felt less confidence in his targeting efforts than ever before. Maybe H"lim doesn"t know much, but he"s not telling everything he does know. Those starships don"t travel in straight lines-I know it!

But Wild Goose"s preliminary figures had confirmed the straight-line trajectory constructed from all other detection devices operating during the approach. The very earliest figures though, had eluded them. Wild Goose had been the first to spot the approaching object, but that data had a lot of noise in it due to the onboard malfunction which still hadn"t totally cleared up. The engineers hypothesized that some kind of wave from the ship"s drive had disrupted onboard electronics, but there was no proof of that.

Late during the graveyard shift, the sun was coming up outside, making t.i.tus suddenly tired as well as hungry. Inea wasn"t in her apartment, so he returned to the observatory, worried that she"d fallen asleep over her desk.

The lab was deserted, the lights dim, and there were two figures behind the gla.s.s walls beyond the computers. A singularly strong Influence pervaded the atmosphere, throbbing with hunger.

H"lim!

t.i.tus charged across the room.

Chapter seventeen.

Before t.i.tus reached the door to the observatory, H"lim cried out and backed away from Inea, the blanketing pall of his Influence fragmenting. t.i.tus fetched up against the doorjamb and H"lim sank to the floor, doubled over.

Inea stood over him brandishing the silver cross, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Seeing t.i.tus, she flung herself into his arms, sobbing. He whispered, "I have to Mark you. Inea, I have to!"

"Do it!" She huddled against his chest, trembling.

He raised his finger to her forehead and set his Mark, marveling at the tremendous wave of relief that washed through him with that act of possession. And in the next moment, he was ashamed of the feeling. To cover that, he demanded, "H"lim, what are you doing here?"

Gulping air, the luren rose and straightened his disposable suit. "You have taken the one I"ve chosen." There was no hint of defiance in him, just confusion.

"There"s a complicated story behind that," answered t.i.tus. "You shouldn"t be here. If they catch you-"

"Could it possibly go worse for me?"

Inea stepped away to face H"lim. "You could have just asked me politely and I"d have shown you anything here."

"I did not wish her to report to you," he said locking gazes with t.i.tus. "I Influenced only those you and Abbot used. Why is this one not held in abeyance, as Abbot does?"

"Abbot"s a G.o.dd.a.m.ned Tourist, that"s why!"

Inea put a hand on t.i.tus"s wrist. "Don"t swear. H"lim didn"t mean any harm." She stood on tiptoe to reach his ear and, in a choked whisper, added, "t.i.tus, he"s starving."

t.i.tus swallowed his incipient tirade and whispered back, "You may speak freely in front of H"lim, but only H"lim."

H"lim blinked at Inea, astonished. t.i.tus said, "Tell me what you wanted from Inea. I"ll dump the data into your personal files."

"I want to see the stellar map you"ve constructed."

"You know more of astrogation than you"ve let on."

"No." His gaze fastened on Inea, his hunger blunted but clear. "Why was she not Marked? Why isn"t she controlled?"