Rip thought of the data squirt that Gleef had just sent over, showing a ma.s.sive black weather front moving in from the west. From the looks of it, they'd be battered by gale-force winds for at least two days. There'd be no mining for anyone.

As the crew started to disperse-Tooe lingering longest, with several backward glances-Tau said quietly, "Ali. Jasper." And he flicked a look Rip's way, bobbing his head back toward the lab.

Seconds later the three of them were gathered in the lab. Rip collapsed into a chair. Ali lounged against the hatchway, his shoulders betraying his tension. Only Jasper seemed impa.s.sive as he bent and stroked Sinbad's notch-eared head.

"Dane is alive only because of whatever it is that has changed his biochemistry," the medic said without preamble. "His neurological system was just barely able to handle whatever kind of zap these creatures gave him, and his brain also survived-"

"Did he speak?" Ali cut in.

Jasper's head lifted.

"Yes." Tau glanced Ali's way. "I knocked him out again so I could start the repair work on the ligaments in his knee. He said that the Floater thing contacted him. No words. But he was definite about it. He said he sensed question, and he thinks it sensed his pain, because it withdrew very suddenly. All this within a second or two's perceptions, as he was in the midst of convulsions, but I am inclined-considering all the evidence-to believe him."

"Contact?" Rip repeated, and as his exhausted mind grasped at that, he said, "Sentient?"

"Possibly. But that's for later. The thing is, the rest of the crew, and the Traders, are going to want a report. It would be a mistake to let them believe they might survive a contact with this being, sentient or not. I am afraid, gentlemen, that the time has come to brief everyone on what has happened to you."

Rip nodded without speaking, and Jasper also gave a quick inclination of his head. They all turned to Ali, who stared down at the deckplates, his one visible hand white at the knuckles. Then suddenly he looked up, his smile twisted. "If we're going to be freaks-"

"Not freaks," Tau interrupted sharply. "Never that. Would you callTooe's clan-mates freaks? The Zacathans?"

"Freak humans-or are we human?" Ali asked bitterly.

"Humanness is an open set, haven't you learned that by now?" the medic shot back. "You grow, you change, or you petrify and die. The Tath, the Berrans, Siere, Tooe-all these are mammals, and could be called human; the greatest a.s.set of our species is its endless adaptability. You are individual, but you are not alone-unless you choose to be."

"Alone. I wouldn't mind my dreams staying in my own head."

"We can work with that. There are techniques-I've been reading. But you'll have to work with it."

Suddenly all the tension went out of Ali's slender frame. He looked up, serious for once. "All right. Tell them what you want. I'll do what you want-I'll flush the drugs down the recycler. But promise me I can keep my own mental borders, sometime, somehow, or I can't live with it."

"I promise," Tau said steadily.

Ali swung around and left.

Jasper nodded politely to the other two, and slipped out behind Kamil.

Rip lingered. "I promised Lossin a report."

"I'll com Siere," Tau said. "Tell him what I told the others. Go get some sleep. You've got enough facing you. I suggest you try to be awake when you deal with it."

Rip nodded and went out, heading for his cabin. His mind slid from Dane to the other problem-getting ore. Despite all their plans, and heroic efforts, both teams of Traders had only managed to acc.u.mulate seventy-five percent of what they had hoped to net. And it was obvious they would not be going out soon.

Rip thought about the North Star as he stretched out on his bunk. Incommunicado-in danger?

Ali wanted to be alone. Rip could have told him he was welcome to this feeling of isolation.

He closed his eyes, and drifted into uneasy dreams.

"All right, let's try again," Rip said, trying to control his own impatience. It was three days later-three frustrating days full of interruptions, questions, three emergency trips to help the Traders repair things broken by the ferocious series of storms that had been battering at them.

Ali made an impatient gesture. "This is-"

"We've heard," Dane cut in curtly.

No one smiled. Ali had been fluent and profane, especially as they all got tired. But the connection worked-or could work, if everyone concentrated. If they closed out other thoughts. If they focused. If they kept up their energy. They'd been working at it whenever possible for three days, and Rip knew it was not nearly enough.

"Once more," Rip said. "We have to get some kind of control if we're even going to attempt it with these Floaters."

"a.s.suming they won't just decide to annihilate us outright," Ali muttered.

"It was question I sensed," Dane said in a patient voice.

"Not maliciousness, or anger, or irritation, or any other human emotion." He paused, then spoke more slowly. "And urgency, too, I think."

"You can jettison the subtle hints." Ali gave them his twisted, derisive smile. "Admit it-this is like trying to skate in oils with your eyes blindfolded."

Jasper spoke suddenly. "It's more like trying to wrestle lightning."

They were all silent, each thinking out the implications. Rip knew that what maddened the engineering mind (besides the question of privacy barriers lowered) was that there were no instructions, no predictable results for the work they were attempting. For the engineer, this was intolerable; even when presented with an engineering problem which required modifications to what existed, or even new technology, tools, machines, physics all performed according to specs. There were laws, rules, measures.

But not now.

Rip knew it was easier for him and Dane. Dane had been trained to accept the fluidity of interaction as part of Trade. Motivations, expectations, goals, all could change from moment to moment. Navigation was a blend of the two ways of thought: there were'rules, but s.p.a.ce could-and would-surprise you. Adaptability was a survival mechanism in a good pilot.

"Again," Rip said, gathering their attention. "We know that we can't do anything unless we are in physical contact." The others nodded. This was one of the few givens. At least in this situation. The Floaters had to make physical contact, and the humans had found that their own connection was much less erratic when they were in contact.

They were crowded in Dane's cabin, around his bunk. Rip and Jasper had stools. Ali perched on the edge of Dane's fold-down desk. Each man now grasped the wrist of the man to his right. Immediately Rip became aware of. of what?

He made a conscious effort not to map onto the others his own expectations. What exactly was he aware of?

Emotions-like colors-were vivid from Ali. Fire colors. The reds and oranges of anger and impatience, the yellow of curiosity, the white light of his intense energy. Dane was blues and greens, like an ocean. One was aware of his focus, his interest, his regrets concerning his current physical limitations- the mining problems-the lack of contact with Jellico-the prospect of communicating with the Floaters. Dane was afraid they'd fail.

Jasper was pale colors, muted silvers, beige, ivory. His emotions were so distant one could sense only a whisper of them. The greatest sense-the only consistent one-was a profound reluctanc? to commit (or permit) trespa.s.s.

Rip, knowing that the jet tech would not like being first, said "Jasper."

The colors intensified for a brief flicker, blended-and Rip felt the sharpened focus of the others, waiting.

Jasper's concentration was a muted burn to Rip's nerves, then-slowly-an image took shape in Rip's mind: the Solar Queen, seen in the dock inside Exchange, glowing in the reflected light of the primary Mykos. Rip's own mind seized the image, then lost it when memory triggered his own flow of thoughts. He felt the others' focus disintegrate in the same way, and once again they got scattered.

Rip felt the grip on his left wrist loosen, and he dropped Ali's bony wrist and opened his eyes. "All right. We had it again-almost."

Dane said, "I think we need something more than a single image."

"But thinking words at each other didn't work," Ali said. "Or mostly didn't work."

"How about a sequence? Not a memory." Dane frowned in his effort to articulate new concepts. "But some kind of sequence that we can learn to follow while keeping our own thoughts from taking over the focus."

"Your turn," Ali said. "Do it."

Again they gripped one another, and waited. Rip felt that at least that much was becoming. not habit, but part of a building process. The image, when it came, was sudden-a piece of machinery. Rip tried to hold his thoughts and expectations at bay, but not with such concentration that he closed out the image. The machine flickered out-but he reached for it and got it again, and then as he watched it, a cog started turning, coming away from the parts it held together. Rip held his concentration, held it-felt the others holding, too, and excitement rippled through him- And he lost it. But waited. Once again the image took focus, and another part turned, as though being loosened by an invisible tool, and separated itself from the machine. Then the machine turned over, presenting itself from a different angle. Rip wondered if they were all seeing the same angle- and lost it again.

This time they all lost it.

"That was you, Shannon," Ali said crossly. "Dammit, this is like juggling water b.a.l.l.s."

"Heard you," Dane said. "Not in words, but you wondered if we saw it in three dimensions, each a different view, right?"

Jasper's expression lightened; apparently he'd caught that as well.

"Yes," Rip said'

"Then we can count that as progress," Dane said. "Now. My turn. It'll be a memory, but not an experience. See how long you can stay in it, and try to look at everything, because I think we should go round the circle and you try to image it back to the rest of us."

"Good idea," Jasper murmured. "But you'll have to work on not providing your own view when it's our turn to reflect it back."

"Right." Dane nodded.

Once again they took hold. Rip felt the familiar tightening in his temples, a headache threatening. He ignored it.

Again he waited, and a weird room took shape in his mind. The dimensions were not square, and there was no up/down orientation established by furnishings standing on floor and fixtures on walls and ceiling within reach of inhabitants. This room had furnishings on all walls, and the s.p.a.ce was further bisected by catwalks crisscrossing at odd angles.

Rip made himself observe, without thought, first one wall, then the next. He was trying to absorb the catwalks when he felt the others withdrawing, and suddenly the room was his own memory.

"Ali?"

The room came back-and for a few seconds Rip saw it with double vision, his own version and Ali's. He could not reconcile them, and dropped out. Cursing, Ali gripped his wrist tighter. "Again."

This time Rip worked on holding his own image at bay. He worked so hard that Ali's vision did not come through-and all three sensed it.

"Come on, Rip, concentrate," Ali snapped. "This is like having someone dragging at our ears."

Rip shook his hands free, rubbed his palms down his trouser legs, then once again connected. Then he closed his eyes and tried a mental exercise that Tau had given them from his research, the floating-on-the-sea. The image Ali sent replaced the sea, but this time Rip managed not to superimpose his own memory. He let it stay there, noting how Ali had managed to see the cabled catwalks as some kind of engineering gestalt; the furnishings were almost nonexistent.

Jasper then sent his image-they all felt him doing it. This time the focus was the computer complex that some unnamed person had constructed in one area. The consoles could be approached from several angles, something weird to gravity-accustomed Terrans.

Rip then sent his own image, noticing the others reacting to his own perceptions of the furnishings, and how they must be adapted to this or that being.

Put them together. The thought arrowed in from Dane- one of the rare moments they were all so attuned, without their own internal chatterers going, that they "heard" the words.

Rip worked to blend his image with the others, and for a moment they had it-then it crumbled.

Frustration succeeded, and awareness of mental fatigue and tension. AH was cursing again; Jasper was, of course, silent.

Dane shifted on his bunk, then said, "We're getting it. Slowly."

Ali grimaced. "This could take years."

"We don't have years." Dane said the obvious. "I've been thinking-nothing else to do sitting here-and I believe if we're going to have any luck at all with those creatures, it will be in not trying to project, but to receive. It's Craig's floating image we need to use."

"You mean we wait for what they might send," Rip said.

Dane shrugged. "All I know is, I didn't send anything during that one contact-of course. But the Floater did, which makes me believe they're used to communicating that way. Who knows? Maybe those times we saw on the tape were nothing worse than attempts to communicate, and not attacks at all."

Ali grunted. "Makes sense. What if there were sentient spiders that communicated by exchanging toxins? We'd be facing the same kind of problem."

Jasper said quietly, "So what you're saying is, we should try soon?"

Dane nodded again. "I don't know. I just don't think we're going to be much better prepared if we wait a week."

Rip said, "The next question is, whom do we permit them to touch? The obvious choice is Dane-obvious except for the fact that another seizure like that might do permanent damage-"

The com blinked, and Dane reached to tab it. "Thorson here."

"Report from Lossin." It was Johan Stotz. "He and Irrba ran a standard comcheck with the sh.e.l.lboat. Didn't get a reply. Went out to check."

Rip braced for bad news, thinking of pirates secretly landed-or one of the Traders turning on the others.

"And?" Ali prompted.

". sorry, Craig was talking. The boat's gone, along with the cave and the entire cove, buried under a multimegaton rock slide. Along with much of the ore we got on the last trip, which we hadn't transferred yet. So the ore we've refined so far is all we're going to get, and it's not enough."

No one said anything for a moment.

"But there's more," said Stotz. "Craig says there are Floaters outside the Queen-I just pulled up the external view, and you can see 'em. They're almost pressed against the vidcams."

Jasper stood up. His bleached skin was paler than ever, something Rip would have thought impossible. "If we're going to do it," he said, "let's do it now. I'll let them touch me."

Chapter Eighteen.

Craig Tau's voice came over the ship's com: "Siere reports that their camp is surrounded by fog, and they can see the Floaters hovering just beyond their trees."

Dane pulled himself up impatiently. He was heartily sick of not being able to move about with any kind of ease. "Put the external on, Ali?" He pointed to his console.

Ali tapped at the desk-computer console that he was leaning against, then shifted his weight so they could all see the screen.

"First lull in the weather for five days," Rip Shannon said, from his perch on Dane's snap-down cabin stool. "And right before that Dane had his encounter. Seems significant, doesn't it?"

"Except I wish we knew what kind of significance." Ali folded his arms. "They could be crowding around waiting to zap us. Maybe we're vermin to them!"

Tooe spoke up from the hatchway, where she was peering over Rip's shoulder. "They think question at Dane. Not 'Danger.' " She tapped her smooth skull. "Not 'Go Away.' "