Homeward Bound

2

A Big Ugly walked into the office at the Race’s headquarters in Cairo that Ttomalss was using. “I greet you, Senior Physician,” the psychologist said. “It was good of you to come here to talk to me.”

“And I greet you, Senior Researcher.” Dr. Reuven Russie spoke the Race’s language about as well as a Tosevite could. The hair had receded from the top of his head, as often happened with aging male Big Uglies, and what he had left was gray.

“Please-take a seat.” Ttomalss waved to the Tosevite-style chair he’d had brought into the office.

“I thank you.” Russie sat. “You are, I gather, interested in the American Tosevites’ progress on cold sleep.”

Ttomalss used the affirmative gesture. “That is correct. You will, I trust, understand why the issue is of considerable concern to us.”

“Oh, yes.” Reuven Russie’s head went up and down. The way he nodded was a subtle compliment to Ttomalss. An ignorant Big Ugly would have used his own gesture because he did not know what the Race did. A Tosevite who knew more would have imitated the Race’s gesture. Russie, who knew more still, knew Ttomalss was an expert on Big Uglies and so of course would understand a nod even where some other member of the Race might not. The physician went on, “I think they know enough to fly between the stars. That is what concerns you, is it not?”

“Truth.” Ttomalss’ tailstump twitched in agitation. “But how can this be so? It is only a little more than fifty local years since we came to Tosev 3. Before then, neither the Americans nor any other Tosevites would have had the least interest in cold sleep. And they have had to adapt our techniques to their biochemistry, which is far from identical to ours.”

“Every word you say is true,” Reuven Russie replied. “I do not know the details of their techniques. They keep them secret. But I can infer what they know by what they do not talk about. Lately, they do not talk about a great many things, enough so the silence is likely to cover all they need to know of this art.”

“I had arrived at a similar conclusion,” Ttomalss said unhappily. “I was hoping you would tell me I was wrong. When trying to figure out what Tosevites are capable of, the worst conclusion a male of the Race can draw is usually not bad enough.”

“I do not know what to do about that,” the Big Ugly said. “But I can tell you where some of the differences arise. How long has the Race known cold sleep?”

“More than thirty-two thousand of our years-half as many of yours,” Ttomalss answered. “We developed it when we knew we would send out our first conquest fleet, the one that brought Rabotev 2 into the Empire. That was twenty-eight thousand years ago.”

“You started working on it… four thousand of your years before you needed it.” Russie let out a soft, shrill whistle. Ttomalss had heard that sound before; it meant bemusement. Gathering himself, the Big Ugly said, “That is even longer than I had thought. And now, of course, you take it completely for granted.”

“Yes, of course,” Ttomalss said, wondering where Russie was going with this. “Why should we not? We had it largely perfected for the first conquest fleet, and have made small improvements in the process from time to time ever since. We want things to work as well as they possibly can.”

“And there is the difference between you and the Americans,” Reuven Russie said. “All they care about is that things work well enough. Also, they reach out with both hands-with every fingerclaw, you would say-in a way the Race never seems to have done. Add those things together with their strong motivation to learn to fly from one star to another, and I am not so very surprised they have learned enough to attempt this.”

“Will they-can they-succeed?” Ttomalss said.

“This, you understand, is only a matter of my opinion,” the Big Ugly replied. “I would not, however, care to bet against them.”

Ttomalss did not care to bet against the Big Uglies, either, however much he wished he could. “But suppose they visit Home? Suppose they fill their ship up with ginger?”

Russie’s shrug was uncannily like one a male of the Race would have used. “Suppose they do,” he said. “What can you do about it? Destroying their ship would surely start a war here. Are you certain the Race would win it?”

Thirty local years earlier, at the time of the last great crisis between the Race and Big Uglies, the answer to that would undoubtedly have been yes. The victory might have left Tosev 3 largely uninhabitable, but it would have been a victory. Since then, though, the Americans-and the Russkis, and the Nipponese, and even the Deutsche, whom the Race had defeated-had learned a great deal. Who would beat whom today was anyone’s guess. Ttomalss’ miserable hiss said he knew as much.

Not wanting to dwell on that, the male changed the subject. “I hope your sire is well?” he said, such matters being part of polite conversation among Tosevites.

“I thank you for asking. He is as well as he can be, considering that he is nearly eighty years old,” Reuven Russie replied.

Even doubling the number to make the years match those of Home left Ttomalss unimpressed. His own folk wore out more slowly than Big Uglies. He wondered whether the frenetic pace with which one generation replaced another on Tosev 3 had something to do with the equally frenetic pace of progress here. He knew he was not the Race’s first researcher to have that thought.

“I am glad to hear it,” he said, perhaps a heartbeat more slowly than he might have. He swung one eye turret to the computer screen for a moment. “You have also a kinsmale who now lives in the not-empire of the United States, is that not a truth?”

“David Goldfarb lives in Canada,” Russie answered. “The two not-empires are similar to each other in many ways. He is also well enough. He is younger than my sire, but not by much.”

“I thank you for the correction,” Ttomalss said. The record stated Goldfarb was living in North America, the local name for the northern part of the lesser continental mass. He’d assumed that meant the United States. The not-empire of Canada often got lost in the shadow cast by its more populous, more powerful neighbor. He wondered what the Canadians thought of that.

“Is there anything else, Senior Researcher?” Russie asked. “I have told you what I know, and what I have guessed. You will be aware that I am not formally affiliated with the Moishe Russie Medical College, nor have I been for many years. If you need technical details, someone who completed the full course there or one of your own experts could do a better job of furnishing them.”

“I was not seeking technical details. I wanted a feel for the data,” Ttomalss said. “You have given me that, and I thank you for it.”

“You are welcome.” The Tosevite physician rose, towering over Ttomalss once more and demonstrating why the rooms in the Race’s headquarters were the size they were: they had originally been built for Big Uglies. Reuven Russie nodded stiffly and walked out of the interview chamber.

Ttomalss began drafting his report. He suspected no one would pay much attention to it. It would not be optimistic, not from the Race’s point of view. The powers that be favored optimism. They pointed to the successful colonies on Tosev 3, and to the way animals and plants from Home were spreading across the warmer regions of this planet. They did not like turning an eye turret toward the Tosevites’ continued technical progress, any more than they cared to remember the rebellions that still simmered in China and elsewhere. But colonists here were trained as soldiers. This world had what bid fair to become a permanent Soldiers’ Time, something unprecedented in the Empire. The authorities did to some degree recognize reality, even if they wished they didn’t have to.

Tosev 3 imposed haste even on the Race. Ttomalss finished and submitted his report at what would have been a breakneck pace back on Home. But he was astonished when, three days later, his computer screen lit up to show the features of Fleetlord Reffet, who was in charge of the colonists. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” the psychologist said, assuming the seated version of the posture of respect.

“And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” Reffet replied.

“To what do I owe the honor of this call?” Ttomalss asked.

“The American Big Uglies have launched what can only be a starship,” Reffet said bluntly. “Its course is in the general direction of Home, though not precisely aimed toward our sun.”

“Oh,” Ttomalss said. “Well, we did think this day would eventually come.”

“Yes, but not so soon,” Reffet said. “You understand that this means the folk of Home, folk with no experience of Big Uglies, will now have to learn to deal with them and try to understand them.”

“They will have a lively time of it, then, as did we of the conquest fleet-and as did you of the colonization fleet,” Ttomalss said. “It may even be good for them. They have not begun to understand us when we talk of what things are like on Tosev 3. Now they will gain the experience they need to form a more accurate opinion.” He did not say, Serves them right, but the thought was prominent in his mind.

But Reffet said, “That attitude will not do, Senior Researcher. We have to assume that ship is heavily armed. For the first time since the Empire was unified, Home may be in danger. They need to have someone there with some real knowledge of Tosevites.”

“Fleetlord Atvar is there,” Ttomalss said.

Reffet hissed angrily. “Fleetlord Atvar is a disaster waiting to happen. He proved that often enough here on Tosev 3. We need someone there with real expertise, not just wide-mouthed bombast. We need someone like you there, Senior Researcher.”

“Me?” Ttomalss hissed, too, in horrified dismay. “But my research program here is progressing so well!”

“Nevertheless, I am ordering you back to Home,” Reffet said. “Which counts for more, the individual or the Race as a whole? Have you yourself been infected by the rampant egotism of the Big Uglies you study?”

At first, Ttomalss reckoned the question horribly unfair. The more he turned his eye turrets towards it, though, the more reasonable it seemed. In any case, Reffet had the authority to do as he said he would. Ttomalss assumed the posture of respect again. “You may command me, Exalted Fleetlord.”

“Yes, I may,” Reffet said complacently. “I may, and I shall. Settle your affairs as quickly as you can. I want you in cold sleep on the next Homeward-bound ship. I do not know when the Tosevite starship will get there. I hope you will arrive first. I believe you will; the Big Uglies’ acceleration was relatively low. Remember-you may directly serve the Emperor himself.” He cast down his eye turrets.

So did Ttomalss. He would have reckoned the honor greater before years of studying Tosevite superstitions, none of which took seriously the cult of spirits of Emperors past or the reverence given the living Emperor. The Big Uglies’ ignorance had sown the seeds of doubt in him. But excitement soon cast out doubt and hesitation. After so long dealing with this barbarous world, he was going Home again at last! And if he did gain the privilege of seeing the Emperor-well, so much the better.

For a long time after Atvar woke up on Home once more, he’d thought the sun looked strange in the sky. He’d got used to the star Tosev, which was hotter and bluer. Only Tosev 3’s much greater distance from its primary left it with such a chilly climate.

Now, though, the sun seemed normal to him once more. Life on Home had also seemed strange to him when he came out of cold sleep. That dislocation had lasted longer. In fact, it hadn’t disappeared to this day. He had changed, changed irrevocably, during his tenure on Tosev 3.

The change wasn’t just one of holding a prominent command, either. He would have been glad enough to lay that aside. But he had lived with danger and intrigue and the unexpected for year after year. On Home, such things scarcely existed. They had been obsolete here for so very long, most people forgot they had ever existed. Atvar had long since given up trying to explain them. He knew it was hopeless. He might as well have tried explaining the effects of ginger to a female who had never tasted it.

His mouth fell open in a sardonic laugh. As he’d known they would, smugglers had brought ginger back to Home. The herb was fabulously expensive here, which only seemed to make males and females want it more. It had already produced its first scandals. More, no doubt, would come.

Even the look of things had changed here. That had truly rocked him back on his tailstump, for it was almost unprecedented on Home. But young males and females seemed to enjoy acting and looking as much like Big Uglies as they could. They wore false hair, often in colors no Tosevite could have grown naturally. And some of them even wore cloth wrappings over their body paint, which seemed a ploy deliberately designed to cause confusion. Atvar had expected the Big Uglies to imitate the Race; that was how things were supposed to work. For the process to go into reverse struck him as altogether unnatural.

The fleetlord had never been found guilty of anything. Males and females here had endlessly questioned his judgment, but no one came close to showing criminal intent. That struck many other members of the Race as altogether unnatural. Atvar lived in half disgrace: the first fleetlord of a conquest fleet who wasn’t a conqueror.

He’d published his memoirs. They hadn’t made him rich. Along with his pension-which, thanks to the Emperor’s generosity, no underling had cut off-what they’d earned did keep him comfortable. He hadn’t won any new friends in the government with their title-he’d called them I Told You So.

Males and females here needed telling. As far as those who didn’t pretend to be Big Uglies were concerned, Tosev 3 was just a world a long way off, light-years and light-years. They knew the conquest hadn’t gone the way it should, but they didn’t know why, or what that meant. Despite Atvar’s memoirs, most of them seemed inclined to blame him.

These days, one needed special skill with computers to coax his telephone code out of the data-retrieval system. Too many males and females had that expertise; he got a lot of crank calls. Because he got so many, he didn’t rush to the phone when it hissed for attention. Instead, he went at more of a resigned amble. “This is Atvar. I greet you,” he said, while his fingerclaw was poised to end the conversation on the instant.

The male on the other end of the line said, “And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord. This is Senior Planner Facaros, in the Ministry of Transportation.”

Facaros’ body paint confirmed his title. “What can I do for you, Senior Planner?” Atvar asked, intrigued in spite of himself. Home did not have a Soldiers’ Time now. There was no Ministry of Conquest. The Ministry of Transportation, which oversaw ordinary spaceflight, came as close as any other body to taking charge of matters military.

“We have just received word from Tosev 3,” Facaros said. “The Big Uglies from the not-empire known as the United States”-he did not pronounce the Tosevite words very well-“have launched a starship. Its apparent destination is Home.”

“Have they?” Atvar’s hiss was phlegmatic, not astonished. “Well, it was only a matter of time, though this was a bit sooner than I expected it of them.” He paused to think. The radio message from Tosev 3 had had to cross interstellar space, of course. While it was crossing the light-years, so was the Big Uglies’ ship, at some respectable fraction of the speed of light. “How long do we have until they get here?” he asked.

“About forty years, or a bit more,” Facaros replied. “We fly at about half of light speed, so-”

“Tell me something I do not know,” Atvar snapped. “I have done it. Have you?”

“Well… no, Exalted Fleetlord,” Facaros admitted. “As for what you do not know, the Tosevite ship seems to average about one third of light speed. Its total travel time between Tosev 3 and Home will be over sixty years.”

“More than forty years from now,” Atvar said musingly. “I may be here to see it, but I probably will not. I have lived a long time already. Forty more years would be beating the odds.”

“That is one of the reasons I have called you today,” Facaros said. “I wondered if you would consider going into cold sleep once more, so that you could be revived when the Big Uglies’ arrival is imminent. You are one of the Race’s experts on them, and-”

“You admit this now, do you?” Atvar broke in. “Do my critics in the government-which means just about everyone but the Emperor-admit it as well?”

“Formally, no,” Facaros said. “Informally… This request would not have been made in the absence of a consensus about your value to the Race.”

That, Atvar knew, was bound to be true. Even so, he said, “I am not a bowl of leftovers, you know, to go from the freezer to the microwave again and again and again.”

“Certainly not, and we will richly reward you for the service you perform,” Facaros said. “Never doubt it.”

Atvar had lived among Big Uglies too long. Whenever someone told him not to doubt something, he doubted it all the more. He said, “I care very little for money. I do care for my reputation. If you promise your principals will leave off all attacks on me while I am not conscious to defend myself, I will do this. If not, they can take their chances with the Big Uglies. Why should they worry? They already know everything, do they not?”

Facaros hissed reproachfully. “This is not the proper attitude for a male to take.”

“I do not care,” Atvar replied. “In my opinion, the attitude a good many in the government have shown is improper. If they do not wish to change it, I do not wish to cooperate with them.”

“Would a personal request from the Emperor himself change your mind?” asked the male from the Transportation Ministry. “It can be arranged.”

“I am honored,” Atvar murmured, and cast down his eye turrets. “I am honored indeed.” But he made the negative gesture. “However honored I am, though, the answer remains no. I have my terms. I have stated them for you. If your principals care to meet them, well and good. If they do not… If they do not, Senior Planner, I must conclude they are not serious about wanting my assistance.”

“They are,” Facaros declared.

“Then let them show it.” Atvar had every intention of being as stubborn and unreasonable as he could. Why not? Those who had mocked him-those who now decided they needed him-had been anything but reasonable themselves.

Facaros let out a long, unhappy sigh. But he made the affirmative gesture. “Let it be as you say, Exalted Fleetlord. Let everything be exactly as you say. My principals shall offer no opinions on you while you are in cold sleep. They are convinced the Race needs you.”

“I am not convinced the Race needs them,” Atvar said.

Facaros sighed again. “One of them, in fact, predicted you would say something along those lines. Your reputation for cynicism precedes you. Is that how you care to be remembered?”

Atvar shrugged. “I expect that I will be remembered. I also expect that most of the Emperor’s ministers will be forgotten.”

Facaros stirred in annoyance. “You are unfair and exasperating.”

“Now, now.” Atvar wagged a fingerclaw at him. “No insults, mind you.”

“You are not in cold sleep yet, except possibly from the neck up,” Facaros said.

Instead of getting angrier, Atvar let his mouth drop open in a wide laugh. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all. And yes, Senior Planner, I am unfair and exasperating. If I were not, we would not have enjoyed-if that is the word I want-even such success on Tosev 3 as we did. Until you have dealt with Big Uglies, you do not know what unfair and exasperating are.”

“I am only a hatchling in these matters,” Facaros said. “I am sure you can instruct me.”

He intended that for sarcasm. Deliberately ignoring his tone, Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “I am sure I can, too. And if I do not, Senior Planner, the Tosevites will when they get here. You may rely on that.”

“That is what concerns my principals,” Facaros said. “For the sake of the Race, Exalted Fleetlord, I am glad we have reached this agreement.” He said nothing about being glad for any reason besides the sake of the Race. That also amused Atvar more than it annoyed him. He was laughing again as he broke the connection with Facaros.

Here, unlike on Tosev 3, he could take his time about preparing for cold sleep. One of the preparations he made was for a software search on his name during the time when he would lie unconscious. He intended to check that after he was revived. If the results weren’t to his satisfaction, he was perfectly willing to let the government deal with the Big Uglies without him.

He sent Facaros an electronic message, letting the other male-and those behind him-know what he’d done. This does not surprise me, Facaros wrote back. Why should you trust those of your own kind, those who are on your side?

I do trust, Atvar wrote. But trust must be verified. This too is a lesson of Tosev 3. He got no reply to that. He hadn’t really expected one.

When he went into a hospital for the cold-sleep treatment, the physician there asked him, “Have you undergone this procedure before?”

“Twice,” he answered.

“Oh,” the physician said. “You will have traveled between the stars, then?”

“Not at all,” Atvar told her. “I did not care for what was being televised, and so I thought I would store myself away, hoping for an improvement some years down the line. No luck the first time, so I tried a second. I am sure this third time will prove a success.”

The physician gave him a severe look. “I do not believe you are being serious,” she said, and used an emphatic cough to let him know how much she did not believe it.

“Believe what you please,” Atvar told her. She did not seem to have the slightest idea who he was. In a way, that was annoying. In another way, it was a relief. In spite of everything televisors and pundits could do, he managed to escape into anonymity every now and again. Even his fancy body paint meant less here than it had on Tosev 3.

“Give me your arm, please,” the physician said. Atvar obeyed. In all his time on Tosev 3, he hadn’t had to obey anyone, not till he got the summons to return to Home. He’d given orders. He hadn’t taken them. Now he did. He hissed as the jet of air blasted drugs under his scales. The physician sighed at his squeamishness. “You cannot tell me that really hurt.”

“Oh? Why not?” he said.

His reward was another injection, and another. Presently, the physician said, “You are tolerating the procedure very well.”

“Good.” Atvar’s mouth fell open not in a laugh but in an enormous yawn. Whatever else the physician did to him, he never knew it.

When Glen Johnson woke, he needed some little while to realize he was awake and to remember he’d gone into cold sleep. Something here was emphatically different from the way things had been on the Lewis and Clark, though. He had weight. He didn’t have much-only a couple of pounds’ worth-but it was the first time he’d had any since the Lewis and Clark got out to the asteroid belt. The Admiral Peary stayed under acceleration all the time.

“Here,” a woman said. “Drink this.” Dr. Blanchard, he thought as his wits slowly trickled back into his head. Her name is Dr. Blanchard. She handed him a plastic squeeze bulb. The liquid in the bulb had weight, too, but not enough to keep it from madly sloshing around in there.

It tasted like chicken soup-hot and salty and fatty and restorative. And he needed restoring. He had trouble finishing the bulb, even though it wasn’t very big. Sucking and swallowing all but drained him of strength. “Thanks,” he said. “That was good. What was it?”

“Chicken broth,” she answered, and he would have laughed if he’d had the energy. Little by little, he noticed he was hooked up to a lot of electronic monitors. Dr. Blanchard checked the readouts. “Sleep if you want to,” she told him. “That seems normal enough.”

“Seems?” he said around a yawn. He did want to sleep. Why not? The habit of a lot of years was hard to break.

“Well,” she answered, “we haven’t thawed out a whole lot of people yet. We’re still learning.”

He yawned again. “Why am I one of your guinea pigs?” he asked. If she answered, he didn’t hear her. Sleep reclaimed him.

When he woke again, he felt stronger. Dr. Blanchard gave him more chicken soup, even if she primly insisted on calling it chicken broth. He found out her first name was Melanie, right out of Gone with the Wind. She disconnected him from the monitors. He looked at his hands. His nails seemed no longer than they had when he went under. He felt his chin. His face was still smooth. “This beats the heck out of Rip van Winkle,” he said.

“I thought so, too.” There was a familiar voice. “Then I found out what I’d have for company.”

“Well, well. Look what the cat drug in.” Johnson yawned again. Talking still took an effort. Getting his mind to work straight took a bigger one.

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” Mickey Flynn replied with dignity. “I have better reason, too, I daresay.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Johnson said. Another yawn came out. He wondered if he would ever feel awake again. He looked around. The chamber where they’d revived him wasn’t big enough to swing the cat he and Flynn had been talking about. “Where the devil are we, anyway?”

“The middle of nowhere,” Flynn replied. “And I mean that more literally than anyone has in all the history of humanity. We’re more than five light-years from the Sun, and we’re more than five light-years from Tau Ceti, too.”

Even in Johnson’s decrepit state, that sent awe prickling through him. But then he asked, “Why wake me up for this? I don’t know anything about flying the Admiral Peary out here. I’m the in-system pilot.”

“Two reasons,” Flynn said. “One is, I wanted to see if you were still alive. Present results appear ambiguous.”

“And the horse you rode in on,” Johnson said sweetly. The fog was beginning to lift-a little.

“Thank you so much,” the other pilot replied. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I wanted to see if you were alive. If by some mischance you weren’t, that would make me in-system pilot and change the revival schedule. So I needed to know. You went into cold sleep earlier than I did. The techniques have been improved since.”

“That’s ’cause you’re the teacher’s pet,” Johnson said. “Healey couldn’t wait to put me on ice, the son of a bitch.” He didn’t much care what he said. That was probably an effect of coming out from under the drugs, too.

“I could call that a slander on the whole of the Hibernian race,” Flynn said. “On the other hand, seeing that it’s Healey, I could just nod my head wisely and say, ‘You’re right.’ All things considered, I have to go with the second approach. However Irish the man may be, a son of a bitch he is, and that without a doubt.”

Back on the Lewis and Clark, he never would have admitted such a thing. Of course, back on the Lewis and Clark he had to deal with Lieutenant General Healey. Now he must have been sure the bad-tempered officer was as far behind them as the rest of the Solar System. More than five light-years…

“You said there was more than one reason to wake me up now,” Johnson observed. He remembered. He was proud of himself for remembering. That said something about how fuzzy his wits had been before.

Mickey Flynn nodded. “That’s true. I did.”

“What’s the other one?” Johnson asked.

“In my ignorance, I thought you might be interested in seeing what the sky looks like out here as we turn the ship,” Flynn said. “No matter how good we get at flying between the stars, this isn’t something a whole lot of people will ever get to do.”

“I should say not!” Johnson exclaimed, eagerness blazing through him no matter how weak and woozy he felt. “Most of the passengers will stay frozen from start to finish.” He turned to Dr. Blanchard. “Can I go up?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Can you?”

“We’ll find out.” He tried to lever himself off the table where he lay, only to discover he was strapped on. Melanie Blanchard made no move to set him free. It’s a test, he realized. If I can’t undo the straps, I don’t deserve to do anything else. His fingers were clumsy and stupid. They took longer than they should have to figure out how the latches worked, but they did it. He sat up, torn between triumph and worry. “My brains will come back?” he asked her.

“They’re supposed to,” she said, which struck him as imperfectly reassuring.

The Admiral Peary ’s acceleration produced barely enough weight to keep him on the table. When he slid off, he glided ever so slowly to the metal floor. He would have had to go off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote to do himself any serious damage. He bounced from the floor toward Flynn. “Lead on, Macduff.”

“That’s, ‘Lay on, Macduff.’ ” Flynn looked pained. “Don’t tamper with the Bard.”

“At this late date and this distance, I doubt he’ll complain,” Johnson said.

“Oh, so do I,” the other pilot said. “That’s why I’m doing it for him.”

“Helpful,” Johnson observed, and Flynn nodded blandly. Johnson went on, “Well, anyway, show me. Show me around, too. This is the first time I’ve been conscious-as conscious as I am-on the Admiral Peary. Would be nice to know what I’m flying.”

“You don’t ask for much, do you?” Flynn brachiated up the hatchway. The starship’s tiny acceleration wasn’t enough to worry about, not as far as motion was concerned. Feeling like a chimpanzee himself-an elderly, arthritic, downright spavined chimpanzee-Johnson followed.

The Lewis and Clark had had observation windows fronted by antireflection-coated glass. The Admiral Peary had an observation dome, also made from glass that might as well not have been there. Coming up into it was like getting a look at space itself. Johnson stared out. Slowly, his jaw dropped. “Jesus,” he whispered.

Mickey Flynn nodded again, this time in perfect understanding. “You’ve noticed, have you? It does hit home.”

“Yeah,” Johnson said, and said nothing else for the next several minutes.

There was no sun in the sky.

That hit home, sure as hell, like a left to the jaw. Johnson understood exactly what it meant. It wasn’t that the Sun was hiding, as it hid behind the Earth during the night. When it did that, you knew where it was, even if you couldn’t see it. Not here. Not now. There was nothing but blackness with stars scattered through it. And the closest of those stars was light-years away.

“And I thought the asteroid belt was a long way from home,” Johnson murmured at last. “I hadn’t even gone into the next room.”

“Does make you wonder why we thought we were the lords of creation, doesn’t it?” Flynn said. Johnson hadn’t thought of it that way, but he couldn’t help nodding. Flynn continued, “Look a little longer. Tell me what else you see, besides the big nothing.”

“Okay,” Johnson said, and he did. He knew how the stars were supposed to look from space. Not many humans-probably not many Lizards, either-knew better. As Flynn had said he would, he needed a while to see anything else by the absence of a sun. But he did, and his jaw fell again.

The outlines of the constellations were wrong.

Oh, not all of them. Orion looked the same as it always had. So did the Southern Cross. He knew why, too: their main stars were a long, long way from the Sun, too far for a mere five or six light-years to change their apparent position. But both the Dogs that accompanied Orion through the skies of Earth had lost their principal stars. Sirius and Procyon were bright because they lay close to the Sun. Going halfway to Tau Ceti rudely shoved them across the sky. Johnson spotted them at last because they were conspicuous and didn’t belong where they were.

He also spotted another bright star that didn’t belong where it was, and couldn’t for the life of him figure out from where it had been displaced. He finally gave up and pointed towards it. “What’s that one there, not far from Arcturus?”

Flynn didn’t need to ask which one he meant, and smiled a most peculiar smile. “Interesting you should wonder. I had to ask Walter Stone about that one myself.”

“Well, what is it?” Johnson said, a little irritably. Mickey Flynn’s smile got wider. Johnson’s annoyance grew with it. Then, all at once, that annoyance collapsed. He took another look at that unfamiliar yellow star. The hair stood up on his arms and the back of his neck. In a very small voice, he said, “Oh.”

“That’s right,” Flynn said. “That’s the Sun.”

“Lord.” Johnson sounded more reverent than he’d thought he could. “That’s… quite something, isn’t it?”

“You might say so,” the other pilot answered. “Yes, you just might say so.”

Tau Ceti, of course, remained in the same place in the sky as it had before. It was brighter now, but still seemed nothing special; it was an intrinsically dimmer star than the Sun. Before the Lizards came, no one had ever paid any attention to it or to Epsilon Eridani or to Epsilon Indi, the three stars whose inhabited planets the Race had ruled since men were still hunters and gatherers. Now everyone knew the first two; Epsilon Indi, deep in the southern sky and faintest of the three, remained obscure.

“When we wake up again…” Johnson said. “When we wake up again, we’ll be there.”

“Oh, yes.” Flynn nodded. “Pity we won’t be able to go down to Home.”

“Well, yeah. Too much time with no gravity,” Johnson said, and Mickey Flynn nodded again. Johnson pointed back toward the Sun. “But we saw this. ” At the moment, it seemed a fair trade.

Kassquit swam up toward consciousness from the black depths of a sleep that might as well have been death. When she looked around, she thought at first that her eyes weren’t working the way they should. She’d lived her whole life aboard starships. Metal walls and floors and ceilings seemed normal to her. She knew stone and wood and plaster could be used for the same purposes, but the knowledge was purely theoretical.

Focusing on the-technician? — tending her was easier. “I greet you,” Kassquit said faintly. Her voice didn’t want to obey her will.

Even her faint croak was enough to make the female of the Race jerk in surprise. “Oh! You do speak our language,” the technician said. “They told me you did, but I was not sure whether to believe them.”

“Of course I do. I am a citizen of the Empire.” Kassquit hoped she sounded indignant and not just terribly, terribly tired. “What do I look like?”

To her, it was a rhetorical question. To the technician, it was anything but. “One of those horrible Big Uglies from that far-off star,” she said. “How can you be a citizen of the Empire if you look like them?”

I must be on Home, Kassquit realized. Males and females on Tosev 3 know who and what I am. “Never mind how I can be. I am, that is all,” she said. She looked around again. The white-painted chamber was probably part of a hospital; it looked more like a ship’s infirmary than anything else. Home, she thought again, and awe filled her. “I made it,” she whispered.

“So you did.” The technician seemed none too pleased about admitting it. “How do you feel?”

“Worn,” Kassquit answered honestly. “Am I supposed to be this weary?”

“I do not know. I have no experience with Big Uglies.” The female of the Race never stopped to wonder if that name might bother Kassquit. She went on, “Males and females of the Race often show such symptoms upon revival, though.”

“That is some relief,” Kassquit said.

“Here.” The technician gave her a beaker filled with a warm, yellowish liquid. “I was told you were to drink this when you were awake enough to do so.”

“It shall be done,” Kassquit said obediently. The stuff was salty and a little greasy and tasted very good. “I thank you.” She returned the empty beaker. “Very nice. What was it?”

She’d succeeded in surprising the female again. “Do you not know? It must have been something from your world. It has nothing to do with ours. Wait.” She looked inside what had to be Kassquit’s medical chart. “It is something called chicknzup. Is that a word in the Big Ugly language?”

“I do not know,” Kassquit answered. “I speak only the language of the Race.”

“How very peculiar,” the technician said. “Well, instructions are that you are to rest. Will you rest?”

“I will try,” Kassquit said. The sleeping mat on which she lay was identical to the one she’d had in the starship. Why not? A sleeping mat was a sleeping mat. She closed her eyes and wiggled and fell asleep.

When she woke, it was dark. She lay quietly. The small sounds of this place were different from the ones she’d known all her life. Along with the noises of the starship’s ventilation and plumbing, there had been lots of tapes of random sounds of Home. But she knew all the noises on those by now. Here, her ears were hearing things they’d never met before.

Something buzzed at the window. When she looked that way, she saw a small black shape silhouetted against the lighter sky. It moved, and the buzzing noise moved with it. She realized it was alive. Awe washed through her again. Except for males and females of the Race and a few Big Uglies, it was the first living thing she’d ever seen in person.

She got to her feet. Slowly, carefully, she walked toward the window. Her legs were uncertain beneath her, but held her up. She peered at the creature. It sensed she was near and stopped buzzing; it clung quietly to the window glass. As she peered at it, she realized she knew what it was: some kind of ffissach. They had eight legs. Many of them-this one obviously included-had wings. Like most of them, it was smaller than the last joint of her middle finger. Home had millions of different species of them. They ate plants and one another. Bigger life-forms devoured them by the billions every day. Without them, the ecosystem would collapse.

Kassquit knew all about that from her reading. She hadn’t expected to find any ffissachi inside buildings. She especially hadn’t expected to find one inside a hospital. Didn’t the Race value hygiene and cleanliness? She knew it did. Her experience on the starships orbiting Tosev 3 had taught her as much. So what was this one doing here?

As she stood there watching it, it began to fly and buzz again. Its wings beat against the window glass. She didn’t suppose it understood about glass. Everything in front of it looked clear. Why couldn’t it just fly through? It kept trying and trying and trying…

Kassquit was so fascinated, she thought she could have watched the little creature all night. She thought so, anyhow, till her legs wobbled so badly she almost sat down, hard, on the floor. She also found herself yawning again. Whatever went into cold sleep, it hadn’t all worn off yet. She made her way back to the sleeping mat and lay down again. For a little while, the ffissach’s buzzing kept her from going back to sleep, but only for a little while.

When she woke again, it was light. Sunlight streamed in through the window. The ffissach was still there, but silent and motionless now. Before Kassquit could look at it in the better light, the technician came in. “I greet you,” she said. “How do you feel this morning?”

“I thank you-I am better.” Kassquit pointed to the window. “What is that ffissach doing there?”

The technician walked over, squashed it against the palm of her hand, and then cleaned herself with a moist wipe. “They are nuisances,” she said. “They do get in every once in a while, though.”

“You killed it!” Kassquit felt a pang of dismay at the little death, not least because it took her by surprise.

“Well, what did you expect me to do? Take it outside and let it go?” The technician sounded altogether indifferent to the ffissach’s fate. There was a stain on the inside of the window.

“I do not know what your custom is,” Kassquit answered unhappily.

“Do you know whether you want breakfast?” the technician asked, plainly doubting whether Kassquit could make up her mind about anything.

“Yes, please,” she answered.

“All right. Some of your foods came with you on the starship, and I also have a list of foods from Home you have proved you can safely eat. Which would you prefer?”

“Foods from Home are fine,” Kassquit said. “I am on Home, after all.”

“All right. Wait here. Do not go anywhere.” Yes, the technician was convinced Kassquit had no brains at all. “I will bring you food. Do not go away.” With a last warning hiss, the technician left.

She soon returned, carrying a tray like the ones in the starship refectory. It held the same sorts of food Kassquit had been eating there, too. She used her eating tongs as automatically and as well as a female of the Race would have. When she finished, the technician took away the tray.

“What do I do now?” Kassquit called after the female.

“Wait,” was the only answer she got.

Wait she did. She went to the window and looked out at the landscape spread out before her. She had never seen such a thing in person before, but the vista seemed familiar to her thanks to countless videos. Those were buildings and streets there, streets with cars and buses in them. The irregular projections off in the distance were mountains. And yes, the sky was supposed to be that odd shade of dusty greenish blue, not black.

Kassquit also looked down at herself. Her body paint was in sad disarray-hardly surprising, after so many years of cold sleep. As she’d thought she would, she found a little case of paints in the room and began touching herself up.

She’d almost finished when a male spoke from the doorway: “I greet you, ah, Researcher.”

Reading his body paint at a glance, she assumed the posture of respect. “And I greet you, Senior Researcher. What can I do for you, superior sir?”

“I am called Stinoff,” the male said. “You must understand, you are the first Tosevite I have met in person, though I have been studying your species through data relayed from Tosev 3. Fascinating! Astonishing!” His eye turrets traveled her from head to feet.

“What do you wish of me, superior sir?” Kassquit asked again.

“You must also understand, it is later than you think,” Senior Researcher Stinoff said. “When you came to Home, you were kept in cold sleep until it became evident the starship full of wild Tosevites would soon arrive. We did not wish to expend undue amounts of your lifespan without good reason. That starship is now nearly here, which accounts for your revival at this time.”

“I… see,” Kassquit said slowly. “I thought that, as a citizen of the Empire, I might have had some say in the timing of my awakening. I made it clear I wished to become familiar with Home as soon as possible.”

“Under normal circumstances, you would have,” Stinoff said. “In your case, however, how can circumstances be normal? And I thought that, as a citizen of the Empire, you would recognize that the needs of society take precedence over those of any one individual.”

He had a point, and a good one. Aggressive individualism was a trait more common and more esteemed among the barbarous Big Uglies than in the Race. Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. “That is a truth, superior sir. I cannot deny it. How may I be of the greatest use to the Empire?”

“You have direct experience with Tosevites.” Stinoff was kind enough or clever enough to keep from reminding her again that she was a Tosevite. He went on, “Negotiations with these foreigners”-an archaic word in the language of the Race-“will not be easy or simple. You will work on our side along with Fleetlord Atvar and Senior Researcher Ttomalss.”

“Oh?” Kassquit said. “Ttomalss is here, then?”

“Yes,” Stinoff said. “He was recalled while you were on the journey between Tosev 3 and Home. He has spent the time since his revival preparing for the coming of the Tosevite starship.”

Ttomalss had more time to spend than Kassquit. That hadn’t seemed to matter when she was younger. Her own time had stretched out before her in what seemed an endless orbit. But it was not endless; it was spiraling down toward decay, burnout, and extinguishment-and it spiraled more quickly than that of a male or female of the Race. Nothing to be done about it.

“I was told this would be a starship from the not-empire of the United States,” Kassquit said. Stinoff made the affirmative gesture. Kassquit asked, “Do we know the identities of the Tosevites on the ship?”

“No, not yet,” the male from Home replied. “They will still be in cold sleep. The ship is not yet in our solar system, though it is close.”

“I see,” Kassquit said. “Well, it may be interesting to find out.”

When Sam Yeager returned to consciousness, his first clear thought was that he was dreaming. He knew just what kind of dream it was, too: a dream out of some science-fiction story or other. He’d read them and enjoyed them since the first science-fiction pulps came out when he was a young man. The elasticity that reading science fiction gave his mind was no small part of how he’d got involved in dealing with the Lizards to begin with.

This dream certainly had a science-fictional quality to it: he didn’t weigh anything at all. He was, he discovered, strapped down on a table. If he hadn’t been, he could have floated away. That was interesting. Less enjoyably, his stomach was doing its best to crawl up his throat hand over hand. He gulped, trying to hold it down.

I’m on my way to the Moon, he thought. He’d been to the Moon once before, and he’d been weightless all the way. So maybe this wasn’t a dream after all.

He opened his eyes. It wasn’t easy; he felt as if each one had a millstone on it. When he succeeded, he wondered why he’d bothered. The room in which he found himself told him very little. It was bare, matte-finished metal, with fluorescent tubes on the ceiling giving off light. Someone-a woman-in a white smock hung over him. Yes, he was weightless, and so was she.

“Do you hear me, Colonel Yeager?” she asked. “Do you understand me?” By the way she said it, she was repeating herself.

Sam nodded. That was even harder than opening his eyes had been. He paused, gathered strength, and tried to talk. “Where am I?” The traditional question. He wondered if the woman heard him. His throat felt full of glue and cotton balls.

But her nod told him she’d got it. “You’re in orbit around Home, in the Tau Ceti system,” she answered. “Do you understand?”

He nodded again, and croaked, “I’ll be a son of a bitch.” He wouldn’t usually have said that in front of a woman, especially one he didn’t know. He still had drugs scrambling his brains; he could tell how slow and dopey he was. Had he offended her? No-she was laughing. Bit by bit, things got clearer. “So the cold sleep worked.”

“It sure did,” she said, and handed him a plastic drinking bulb. “Here. Have some of this.”

Clumsily, Sam reached out and took it. It was warm, which made him realize how cold his hands were, how cold all of him was. He drank. It tasted like chicken broth-and tasting it made him realize the inside of his mouth had tasted like a slit trench before. He couldn’t empty the bulb, but he drank more than half. When he tried to speak again, it came easier: “What year is this?”

“It’s 2031, Colonel Yeager,” the woman answered.

“Christ!” Sam said violently. His shiver had nothing to do with the chill the broth had started to dispel. He was 124 years old. Older than Moses, by God, he thought. True, he remembered only seventy of those years. But he had, without a doubt, been born in 1907. “The starship took off in…?”

“In 1995, Colonel. It’s called the Admiral Peary. ”

“Christ,” Sam said once more, this time in a calmer tone. He’d been two years old when Admiral Peary made it to the North Pole-or, as some people claimed later, didn’t make it but said he did. He wondered what the old geezer would have thought of this trip. He’d have been jealous as hell, was what occurred to him.

More slowly than it should have, another thought crossed his mind. He’d gone into cold sleep in 1977. They’d kept him on ice for eighteen years before they took him aboard the starship. It wasn’t just because he was an expert on the Race, either. He knew better than that. They’d wanted to make sure he stayed out of the way, too.

And they’d got what they wanted. He was more than ten light-years out of the way. If he ever saw Earth again, it would be at least two-thirds of the way through the twenty-first century. To heck with Moses. Look out, Methuselah.

“I’m Dr. Melanie Blanchard, by the way,” the woman said.

“Uh-pleased to meet you.” Sam held out a hand.

She gave it a brisk pump, and then said, “You won’t know this, of course, but your son and daughter-in-law are aboard this ship. They haven’t been revived yet, but everything on the instrument panels looks good.”

“That’s good. That’s wonderful, in fact.” Sam still wasn’t thinking as fast as he should. He needed close to half a minute to find the next question he needed to ask: “When did they go under?”

“Not long before the ship left. Biologically, your son is fifty.” Dr. Blanchard talked about Jonathan’s age. With a woman’s discretion, she didn’t mention Karen‘s.

“Fifty? Lord!” Sam said. His son had been a young man when he went into cold sleep himself. Jonathan wasn’t young any more-and neither was Karen, dammit. Sam realized he had to catch up with a third of their lives. He also realized something else: how mushily he was talking. Dr. Blanchard had been too discreet to mention that, too. He asked, “Could I have my choppers, please?”

“You sure can.” She gave them to him.

He popped them into his mouth. He hadn’t worn them in more than fifty years… or since yesterday, depending on how you looked at things. “That’s better,” he said, and so it was. “I can hardly talk like a human being without ’em, let alone like a Lizard.”

“I understood you before,” she said. “And there were other things to worry about.”

Like what? he wondered. Answers weren’t hard to find. Like making sure he was alive. Like making sure he still had two working brain cells to rub against each other. If they’d hauled him more than ten light-years and ended up with nothing but a rutabaga… Some of them wouldn’t have been too disappointed.

Before he could get too bitter about that, a man’s voice called from a hatchway leading out of the room: “Anybody home?” Without waiting for an answer, the man came gliding down into the chamber. He was about sixty, very lean, with a long face and graying sandy hair cropped close to his head. He wore a T-shirt and shorts; the shirt had a colonel’s eagles pinned to the shoulders. “You’re Yeager, eh?”

“Last time I looked-but that was a while ago,” Sam replied. The other man grinned. Sam added, “You’re one up on me.”

“Sorry about that. I’m Glen Johnson.”

“Are you? I’m damned glad to meet you in person, Colonel!” As he had for Dr. Blanchard, Yeager stuck out his hand.

The other man took it. He didn’t have much of a grip. Even at seventy, even coming out of cold sleep, Sam could have squashed his hand without half trying. Maybe his surprise showed on his face, for Johnson said, “I spent more than twenty years weightless out in the asteroid belt before they decided to refrigerate me.”

“Oh. You were on the Lewis and Clark?” Yeager asked, and Johnson nodded. Sam went on, “I wondered why I never heard from you again after we talked when you were flying orbital patrol. Now I understand better.” He paused for more thought. “So they put you away in… 1984?” His wits were clearer, but still slow.

“That’s right.” Johnson nodded again. “How about you?”

“Me? It was 1977.”

They looked at each other. Neither said anything. Neither needed to say anything. They’d both gone into cold sleep-been urged, almost forced, to go into cold sleep-years before the Admiral Peary was ready to fly. The reasons behind that seemed altogether too obvious.

“Isn’t it great to be politically reliable?” Sam murmured.

“Who, me?” Glen Johnson said, deadpan. They both laughed. Johnson went on, “Actually, depending on how you look at things, it’s not that bad. They were so eager to send us far, far away, they gave us the chance to see Home.” He said the name in English and then in the Lizards’ language.

“Well, that’s true,” Sam said. “They can get some use out of us here, and we’re too far away to get into a whole lot of trouble.”

“That’s how I figure it, too,” Johnson agreed. “And speaking of seeing Home, how would you like to see Home?”

“Can I?” Sam forgot about the straps and tried to zoom off the table. That didn’t work. He looked at Dr. Blanchard. “May I?”

“If you’ve got enough coordination to undo those straps, you’ve got enough to go up to the control room,” she told him.

He fumbled at them. Glen Johnson laughed-not mockingly, but sympathetically. He said, “I’ve done that twice now.”

“Twice?” Sam tried to make his fingers obey him. There! A buckle loosened.

“Yeah, twice,” Johnson said. “They woke me halfway through so I could help in the turn-ship maneuver. Everybody here will get a good look at Home pretty soon. I saw the sky with no sun anywhere.” A certain somber pride-and more than a little awe-filled his voice.

Yeager tried to imagine how empty that sky would seem-tried and felt himself failing. But his hands seemed smarter when he wasn’t telling them what to do. Two more latches came loose. He flipped back the belts that held him to the table.

That was when he realized he was naked. Melanie Blanchard took it in stride. So did Johnson. Sam decided he would, too. She tossed him underpants and shorts and a T-shirt like the pilot’s. “Here,” she said. “Put these on, if you want to.” He did. He thought the underpants were the ones he’d been wearing when he went downtown to go into cold sleep. The shirt, like Johnson‘s, had eagles pinned to the shoulders.

“Come on,” Johnson said, and went up the hatchway.

Slowly, creakily, Sam followed. Johnson was smooth in weightlessness. He would be, of course. Yeager was anything but. A splash of sunlight brightened the top of the corridor. He paused there to rest for a moment before going up into the control room. “Oh,” he said softly. Here he was, resting like a cat in the sunlight of another star.

Tau Ceti was a little cooler, a little redder, than the Sun. Sam stared at the light. Was there a difference? Maybe a little. The Lizards, who’d evolved here, saw a bit further into the infrared than people could, but violet was ultraviolet to them.

“Come on,” Glen Johnson said again.

“I’m coming.” Sam thrust himself up into the control room. Then he said, “Oh,” once more, for there was Home filling the sky below him. With it there, below suddenly had a meaning again. He had to remind himself he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, fall.

He’d seen Earth from orbit, naturally. The cloud-banded blue, mingled here and there with green and brown and gold, would stay in his memory forever. His first thought of Home was, There’s a lot less blue. On Earth, land was islands in a great, all-touching sea. Here, seas dotted what was primarily a landscape. The first Lizards who’d gone around their world had done it on foot.

And the greens he saw were subtly different from those of Earth. He couldn’t have said how, but they were. Something down in his bones knew. What looked like desert stretched for untold miles between the seas. He knew it wasn’t so barren as it seemed. Life had spent as long adapting to the conditions here as it had back on Earth.

“I’m jealous of you,” Johnson said.

“Of me? How come?”

“You’ll be able to go down there and take a good close look at things,” the pilot answered. “I’m stuck here in the ship. After so long aboard the Lewis and Clark, gravity would kill me pretty damn quick.”

“Oh.” Sam felt foolish. “I should have thought of that. I’m sorry. You must feel like Moses looking at the Promised Land.”

“A little bit-but there is one difference.” Johnson paused. Sam waved for him to go on. He did: “All Moses could do was look. Me, I can blow this place to hell and gone. The Admiral Peary came loaded for bear.”

Ttomalss looked up into the night sky of Home. Some of the bright stars there moved. The Race had had orbital vehicles for as long as they’d been a unified species-a hundred thousand years, more or less. But one of these moving stars, the first one ever, didn’t belong to the Race. It was full of wild Big Uglies.

Which one? Ttomalss couldn’t pick it out, not at a glance. For all he knew, it could have been on the other side of the world. That hardly mattered. It was there. No-it was here. The Tosevites were forcefully reminding the Race they weren’t quiet subjects, weren’t quiet colleagues, like the Rabotevs or Hallessi.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t know this day was coming. He wouldn’t have been recalled to Home if it hadn’t been. But he’d been revived for years now, and nobody seemed to have any better idea of what to do about the Big Uglies than males and females had had before he went into cold sleep. That not only worried him, it also annoyed him.

Quite a few things about Home annoyed him these days, from the ridiculous appearance of the young to the way males and females here seemed unable to make up their minds. Nobody decided anything in a hurry. It often looked as if nobody decided anything at all. His time on Tosev 3 had changed him more than he’d imagined while he was there.

The psychologist’s mouth fell open in a laugh, though it really wasn’t funny. If you couldn’t make up your mind on Tosev 3, you’d end up dead-either that or hornswoggled by the Big Uglies, depending. You had to be able to decide. You had to be able to act. Here… This place felt like the back side of a sand dune. The wind blew past overhead, but nothing here really changed.

Ttomalss laughed again. Strange how living among barbarians could be so much more vivid, so much more urgent, than living among his own kind. The Race didn’t hurry. Till he went to Tosev 3, he’d thought of that as a virtue. Now, perversely, it seemed a vice, and a dangerous one.

His telephone hissed. He took it off his belt. “Senior Researcher Ttomalss speaking,” he said. “I greet you.”

“And I greet you, superior sir,” Kassquit replied. Here on Home, her mushy Tosevite accent was unique, unmistakable. “Activity aboard the Tosevite starship appears to be increasing.”

“Ah?” Ttomalss said. Even here, the Big Uglies on the starship were enterprising. “Is that so?”

“It is, superior sir,” his former ward replied. “Reconnaissance video now shows Tosevites coming up into the ship’s observation dome. And our speculations back on Tosev 3 appear to have been correct.” Her voice rose in excitement.

“Ah?” Ttomalss said again. “To which speculations do you refer?”

“I have viewed magnified images from the video footage, superior sir, and one of the wild Big Uglies appears to be Sam Yeager.”

“Really? Are you certain?” Ttomalss asked.

“I am.” To show how certain she was, Kassquit used an emphatic cough.

“Well, well.” Ttomalss had to believe her. Like any male or female of the Race, he had a hard time telling Big Uglies apart, especially when facial features were all he had to go on. He hadn’t evolved to detect subtle difference between one of those alien faces and another. Kassquit had. She did it without thinking, and she was usually right.

It worked both ways, of course. She’d once told him she recognized members of the Race more by their body paint than by differences in the way they looked. And wild Big Uglies even had trouble telling males and females apart from one another. To Ttomalss, differences in scale patterns, eye-turret size, snout shape, and so on were glaringly obvious. He and his kind had evolved to notice those, not whatever different cues Big Uglies used.

Kassquit said, “I wonder whether Sam Yeager’s hatchling is also aboard the Tosevite starship.”

“Time will tell,” Ttomalss answered.

“So it will.” Kassquit sounded eager, hopeful, enthusiastic. Years before, Jonathan Yeager had introduced her to Tosevite mating practices. Ttomalss was aware he understood those, and the emotional drives that went with them, only intellectually. Kassquit sounded not the least bit intellectual.

“Perhaps I should remind you that, as of the time when I went into cold sleep, Jonathan Yeager remained in an exclusive mating contract with a Tosevite female,” Ttomalss said. “In fact, they both appear to have entered cold sleep not long before I did, though I do not know for what purpose. This being so, if he is aboard the starship, his mate is likely to be aboard as well.”

“Truth.” Now Kassquit might have hated him.

Ttomalss silently sighed. He had once more underestimated the power of mating urges to shape Tosevite behavior. Those and the bonds existing between parents and hatchlings were the strongest forces that drove Big Uglies. Even Kassquit, with the finest civilized upbringing possible on Tosev 3, was not immune to them.

The other thing Ttomalss had to remember was that, if he underestimated those forces despite his extensive experience, other alleged experts on the Big Uglies, “experts” who had never been within light-years of Tosev 3, would do far worse. It was, no doubt, fortunate that he’d been recalled to Home. However important it was that he continue his work on Tosev 3, this took priority.

“May I ask you something, superior sir?” Kassquit spoke with cold formality.

“You may always ask,” Ttomalss replied. “If the answer is one that I possess, you shall have it.”

“Very well. Was it at your instruction that I was left in cold sleep for so long after reaching Home? I do not appreciate being used as nothing more than a tool against the Big Uglies. I have the same rights and privileges as any other citizen of the Empire.”

“Of course you do,” Ttomalss said soothingly. “But how could I have done such a thing? You left Tosev 3 for Home years before I did.”

Silence followed-but not for long. Angrily, Kassquit said, “How could you have done such a thing, superior sir? Nothing simpler. As soon as I went into cold sleep, you could have arranged to have the order sent by radio from Tosev 3 to here. Radio waves travel twice as fast as our ships. The order not to revive me at once could easily have been waiting when I arrived. The question I am asking is, did you send such an order?”

In many ways, she was indeed a citizen of the Empire. She could figure out the implications of interstellar travel and communication as readily as any member of the Race. Somehow, in spite of everything, Ttomalss had not expected that.

When he did not answer right away, Kassquit said, “I might have known. And yet I am supposed to work with you. By the spirits of Emperors past, superior sir, why should I?”

For that, Ttomalss did have an answer ready: “For the sake of the Race. For the sake of the Empire.”

“What about my sake?” Kassquit demanded. Despite her upbringing, parts of her were Tosevite through and through. By the standards of the Race, she was a pronounced individualist, putting her own needs above those of the community.

“In the larger scheme of things, which carries the greater weight?” Ttomalss asked.

“If the larger scheme of things is built on lies, what difference does it make?” Kassquit retorted.

That charge had fangs-or it would have, had it held truth. “I never told you I would not send such a request to Home,” Ttomalss said. “While you may put your own interests first, I am obliged to give precedence to the Race as a whole. So are the males and females here who concurred in my judgment.”

Now Kassquit was the one who needed some time to think about how she would reply. At last, she said, “Had you asked if I would accept the delay in revival, I probably would have said yes. I recognize the needs of the Empire, too, superior sir, regardless of what you may think. But it was presumptuous of you to believe you could decide this matter for me without consulting me. That is what gets under my scales.”

She had no scales, of course, but that was the Race’s idiom. She did have a point… of sorts. Remembering that he would have to try to work with her, Ttomalss yielded to the degree he could: “I apologize for my presumption. I should have asked you, as you say. I will not make such an error again. I will also try to keep any other member of the Race from doing so.”

Another pause from Kassquit. At the end of it, she said, “Thank you, superior sir. That is better than nothing. It is also better than anything I expected to hear you say.”

Ttomalss sighed. “You are not fully happy among us.”

“That is a truth, superior sir.” Kassquit used another emphatic cough.

“Do you believe you would be happier among the wild Big Uglies?” he asked. “That can in large measure be arranged if you so desire, now that they have come to Home.”

But Kassquit said, “No,” with yet another emphatic cough. “I am betwixt and between, one thing biologically, something very different culturally. This is your doing. There have been times when I was grateful to you. There have been times when I loathed you beyond all measure. There have been times when I felt both those things at once, which was very confusing.”

“I believe you,” Ttomalss said. “What do you feel now?”

“Are you still working on your research, superior sir?” Kassquit gibed.

“Of course I am. I always will be, till my dying day,” the male answered. He said nothing about Kassquit’s dying day, which was liable to occur first. “But I also want to know for my own sake-and for yours. Your welfare matters to me. It matters very much.” Now he let out an emphatic cough of his own.

Maybe his sentiment helped disarm Kassquit. Maybe that emphatic cough convinced her he was sincere. Slowly, she said, “These days, what I feel is that what I feel does not matter so much. You did what you did. Neither of us can change it these days. Far too much time has passed for that to be possible. I have to make the best of things as they are.”

“That strikes me as a sensible attitude,” Ttomalss said.

“It strikes me as a sensible attitude, too,” Kassquit said. “That is why I strive to hold on to it, but holding on to it is not always easy.”

Just before he asked why not, Ttomalss checked himself. Males and females of the Race were full of irrational behavior. The Big Uglies, from all he’d seen, were even fuller. Their hormonal drives operated all the time, not only during mating season. He sighed again. At bottom, the Race and the Big Uglies were both evolved animals. That they behaved like animals was no wonder. That they sometimes didn’t behave like animals might have been.

And now the Big Uglies were here. Ttomalss looked up into the night sky again. No, he couldn’t tell which moving star was in fact their spaceship. Which it was didn’t matter, anyhow. That they were here at all meant one thing and one thing only: trouble. And when had dealing with Tosevites ever meant anything else?