"Out," Duncan ordered. "Please return to your own ship. We are about to go now."

It looked doubtful, and finally, easing past them, performed the suck of air considered polite among regul, smiled that gaping smile and waddled with stately lack of haste down the ramp.

Duncan set the gear down on the flooring and hit the switch to lift the ramp the moment the youngling was clear, and Galey shut the door and spun the wheel to seal it.

Duncan found himself shaking. He thought that Galey was too.

"What did they want?" Galey asked, his voice a note too high.

"Check out the ship before we lift," Duncan said. "Check out everything that could be sabotaged." And Galev stripped off the breathing mask and the visor and swore softly, staring at him, then flung them aside and set to work, began examining the panels and their inner workings with great care.

There was nothing, in the most careful examination, wrong. "Wish we could find something," Galey said, and Duncan agreed to that, fervently. The regul still waited outside.

Galey started the engines and slowly, testing out controls, turned the aircraft and hovered a few feet off the ground, running a course that vengefully dusted the regul craft, pa.s.sing close enough to send the regul who were outside scrambling and stumbling ponderously toward cover.

Senior officer, Duncan should have rebuked that. He did not. He settled into the cushion while the aircraft lifted, his jaw clenched, his hand gripping the cushion with such force that when he realized it, long after they were at alt.i.tude enough that they had options if something went wrong, his fingers were numb and there were deep impressions in the cushion.

"Game of nerves," he said to Oaley. "Game of nerves or whatever they were going to do, they didn't have time."

Galey looked at him. There were the patches of half a dozen worlds on Galey's sleeve, young as he was. But Galey was scared, and it was a tale that would make the rounds of the regular military of Saber, this encounter with regul.

"This is Stavros' business," Duncan told him, for Galey's sake, not for the regul, not even for Stavros. "The less noise made, the better. Take my example."

His reputation was, he knew, widespread among the regulars: the SurTac who had lost his head, who had gone hysterical and accused a high-ranking ally of murder. Doubtless it would stay on his record forever, barring Stavros' intervention, barring a promotion on Kesrith so high that the record could no longer harm .him and that was at present unlikely.

Galey seemed to understand him, and to be embarra.s.sed by it. "Yes, sir," he said quietly. "Yes, sir."

The lights of Kesrith base came finally into view. They circled the area for the landing nearest Flower, and settled, signalling security with the emergency code. Duncan unstrapped and gathered the photographic equipment from its cushioned ride in the floor locker. Galey opened the hatch and lowered the ramp, and Duncan walked down into the escort of armed human security with a relief so great his knees were weak.

Across the field he saw another aircraft come in, close to the Nom side of the airfield, where the regul might be closest to their own authority.

A security agent tried to take the equipment from Duncan's hand. "No," he said sharply, and for once security deferred.

He lost Galey somewhere, missed him in the press and was sorry he had not given some courtesy to the regular who had done so competently; but Flower's ramp was ahead, the open hatch aglow with lights in the surrounding night. He walked among the security men, into the ship, down the corridors, and to the science section.

Boaz waited, white-smocked, anxious. He did not deliver the gear to her directly, for it was heavy, but laid it on a counter. There was nothing for him to do with it thereafter. He had completed his task for the human powers of Kesrith, and sold what the mri counted most valuable in all the world. The knowledge of it, like that of the ovoid that rested here behind voice-locked doors, was in human hands and not in those of regul, and that was, within the circ.u.mstances, the best that he could do.

Chapter Three.

THE MAJORITY of Flower personnel were in for the night after the initial excitement of receiving the records. The labs were shut down again, the skeleton night crew on duty. The ship had a different quality by night, a ghostly hush but for the whisper of machinery and ventilation, far different from the frenetic activity in its narrow corridors by day.

Duncan found the prospect of a bed, a quiet night in his own safe quarters, a bath (even the chemical scrub allowable under rationing) utterly, utterly attractive, after a three-hour debriefing. It was 0100 by the local clock, which was the time on which he lived.

The lateness of the hour did not stop him from descending to the medical section and pausing in Niun's room. There was neither day nor night for the mri, who lay, slack and deteriorating despite the therapy applied to his limbs, in the influence of sedation. Luiz had promised to consider a lessening of sedation; Duncan had argued heatedly with Luiz on this point.

There was no response now when he spoke to the mri. He touched Niun's shoulder, shook at him gently, hating to feel how thin the mri was becoming.

Tension returned to the muscles. The mri drew a deeper breath, moved against the restraints that stayed on him constantly, and his golden eyes opened, half-covered by the membrane. The membrane withdrew, but not entirely. The fixation of the eyes was wild and confused.

"Niun," Duncan whispered, then aloud: "Niun!"

The struggle continued, and yet the mri seemed only slightly aware of his presence, despite the grip of his hand. It was another thing, something inward, that occupied Niun, and the wide, golden eyes were dilated, terrified.

"Niun, stop it. It's Duncan. It's Duncan with you. Be still and look at me."

"Duncan?" The mri was suddenly without strength, chest heaving from exertion, as if he had run from some impossibly far place. "The dusei are lost."

Such raving was pitiable. Niun was a man of keen mind, of quick reflexes. He looked utterly confused now. Duncan held his arm, and, knowing the mri's pride, drew a corner of the sheet across the mri's lower face, a concealment behind which the mri would feel more secure.

Slowly, slowly, the sense came back to that alien gaze. "Let me go, Duncan."

"I can't," he said miserably. "I can't, Niun."

The eyes began to lose their focus again, to slip aside. The-muscles in the arm began to loosen. "Melein," Niun said.

"She is all right." Duncan clenched his hand until surely it hurt, trying to hold him to hear that. But the mri was back in his own dream. His breathing was rapid. His head turned from side to side in delirium.

And finally he grew quiet again.

Duncan withdrew his hand from Niun's arm and left, walking slowly at first, then more rapidly. The episode distressed him in the strangeness of it; but Niun was fighting the sedation, was coming out of it more and more strongly, had known him, spoken to him. Perhaps it was alien metabolism, perhaps, the thought occurred to him, Luiz had adjusted the level of sedation, more reasonable than he had shown himself in argument on the subject.

He went to the main lock, to the guard post that watched the coming and going of all that entered and left the ship. He signed the log and handed the stylus back.

"Hard session, sir?" the night guard asked, sympathy, not inquisitiveness. Tereci knew him.

"Somewhat, somewhat," he said, blinked at Tereci from eyes he knew were red, felt of his chin, that was rough. "Message for Luiz when he wakes: I want to talk with him at the earliest."

"Recorded, sir," said Tereci, scratching it into the message sheet.

Duncan started through the lock, expecting it to open for him under Tereci's hand. It did.

"Sir," Tereci said. "You're not armed. Regulations."

Duncan swore, exhausted, remembering the standing order for personnel out at night. "Can you check me out sidearms?"

"Sign again," Tereci said, opened a locker and gave him a pistol, waiting while he put his name to another form. "I'm sorry," Tereci said. "But we've had some action around here at night. Regulations aside, it's better to carry something."

"Regul?" he asked, alarmed at that news, which he had not read in the reports. Regul was all that immediately occurred to him, and had he not been so tired, he would not have been so impolitic.

"Animals. Prowling the limits of the guard beams. They never get inside them, but I wouldn't go out there unarmed. You want an escort, sir? I could get one of the night security " "'

"No need," he said wearily. "No need." He had come in from the open, and though armed then, he had never thought in terms of weapons. He had walked the land in company with mri. He regarded no warnings of these men that were bound to the safety of Flower and the Nom, who had never seen the land they had come to occupy.

They could stand in the midst of Sil'athen and never see it, men of Galey's breed solid men, decent.

Unwondering.

He belted on the gun, a heavy weight, an offense to a weary back, and smiled a tired thanks at Tereci, went out into the chill, acrid air. A geyser had blown out irreverently close to Flower. The steam'made the air moist and clouded. He inhaled it deeply, not minding the flavor of it, found it grateful to walk the track by himself, in silence, without Galey. His head ached. He had not realized it before this. He took his time, and found nothing but pleasure in the night, under the larger of Kesrith's moons, with the air chill and the stars glittering, and far, far across the flats, lights illumined the geysers that spouted almost constantly. The land had become a boiling and impa.s.sable barrier, guarding the approaches to the ruins of the mri towers, that only the most intrepid of Boaz' researchers had scanned from the air.

Steel rang under his boots, the gratings that made firm the surface of the causeway. It was the only sound. He stopped, only to have complete silence for a moment, and scanned the whole of the horizon, the glittering waters of the Alkaline Sea, the lights of the city, the steaming geysers, the ridges beyond Flower.

Rock scuffed, rattled. The sound seized his heart and held it constricted. He heard it again, spun toward the sound, saw a shadow shamble four-footed down a ridge.

It hit the guard beams and shied back, whuffing in alarm. Then it reared up against the sky, twice the height of a tall man, a great, long-clawed beast.

The dusei are lost, Niun had said.

Duncan stood still, heart pounding. He reckoned the danger posed by these great omnivores, these natives of Kesrith, venom-clawed and powerful enough to rip a man to shreds. This one tried the beam again, again, disliking the sensation, but single-minded in its attempt.

A second beast showed on the crest of the slope, coming down-hill. Flower's spotlights came on, adding to confusion, her hatch open, men pouring out.

"Stop!" Duncan shouted. "No farther! Don't shoot!"

The dus tried the beam again, heaved his bulk forward, and this time energies of the defense system played along his great sides, useless. He broke through, reared up and screamed, a moaning, hollow cry that echoed off the walls of Kesrith's Nom.

A rifle beam cut the dark.

"Stop shooting!" Duncan shouted.

The second beast broke through, a sparkle of light against its sides, a stench of singed fur. They huddled together, the two invaders, backed rump to rump, and kept shifting nervously.

Niun's beasts.

Duncan saw them head for the ramp, toward the open door, where the men were saw shots fired. The beasts shied off.

"No!" he cried, and the beasts backed, turned and came toward him, snuffing the air. Back at the hatchway, men shouted at him. They could not fire; he was too close to the beasts. Lights played on them, blinding. The dusei, locked into their inquisitive obstinacy, paid no heed. They came, long-clawed feet turned in, claws rattling on the mesh, heads lowered, ursine monsters slope-shouldered, almost comic in their distracted manner.

The larger dus nosed at him, sniffed noisily from its pug nose. Duncan stood still, heart pounding so that the blood raced in his veins. The beast nudged him, nothing gentle, and he did not fall; it nosed his hand, investigated it with the mobile center of the lip.

And they circled one before him and then the other, shifting position in a strange ballet, constantly between him and the men with the rifles, uttering low, moaning cries. He took his life in p.a.w.n and moved, found that they moved with him. He stopped and they stopped.

They were surely Niun's beasts, that had come a long, hard journey from Sil'athen far longer a trek for them than for men's machines. And with uncanny accuracy they had found Niun, across a hundred miles of desert, and singled out the place that confined him.

He had seen dusei and mri work, had watched the beasts react, so sensitive to the voice, the gestures of the mri. He had seen the mri glance at the beast, and the beast react as if some unspoken agreement were between them.

He felt them against him, touching, giving him the heat of their vast, velvet-furred bodies. Nearly impossible to kill, the dusei, immune to the poisons of Kesrith's predators, vastly powerful, gentle and comic in their preoccupied approach to difficulties. He felt himself for a moment dizzy, the closeness of the beasts, their warmth, his exhaustion too much: he was for an instant afraid of the men with their guns, of the lights.

He thought of Niun, and there was another blurring, a desire, overwhelmingly strong, warm, determined.

The men, the lights, the guns.

Terror/ desire/ terror.

He blinked, caught himself with a hand against one warm back, found himself trembling uncontrollably. He began to walk, slowly, toward the open doorway, toward the security crew, who had their guns levelled, guns that could do little to a dus' ma.s.sive, slow body, much to his.

He felt the savor of blood. Of heat.

"No!" he said to the dusei. They grew calm.

He stopped within easy hailing of the security personnel.

"Get out of there," one called to him. "Get out of there!"

"Go back inside," he said, "and seal all the corridors except the ones that go down to the holds. Give me a way to a safe compartment for them. Make it quick."

They did not stay to argue. Two went inside, to consult with authority, doubtless. Duncan stayed with the dusei, a hand on either broad back, calming them. They sensed Niun and Melein. They knew. They knew.

He was safe with them. It was the men with the guns that were to be feared. "Go away from the door," he wished the remaining security men. "They are no danger to me. They belong to the mri."

"Duncan?" That was Boaz' female voice, high-pitched and anxious. "Duncan, confound it, what's going on?"

"They've come for Niun. They're his. These creatures are halfway sapient, maybe more than halfway. I want clearance to bring them inside before someone sets them off."

There was a flurry of consultations. Duncan waited, stroking the two ma.s.sive backs. The dusei had settled down, sitting like dogs. They, too, waited.

"Come ahead," Boaz shouted. "Number one bow hold, equipment bay: it's empty."

Duncan made to the dusei the low sound he had heard Niun make, started forward. The dusei heaved themselves to their feet and came, casually, as if entering human ships were an ordinary thing. But no human stayed to meet them: even Boaz fled, prudence overcoming curiosity, and nothing greeted them but sealed doors and empty corridors.

They walked, the three of them, a long, long descent without lifts, down ways awkward for the big dusei pa.s.sed with a slow, measured clicking of claws on flooring. Duncan was not afraid. It Was impossible to be afraid, with the like of them for companionship. They had searched him and had no fear of him: though at the back of his mind reason kept trying to urge him that he had been right to be afraid of the beasts, he began to be certain that the beasts were utterly at ease with what he was doing.

He came down into the hold, and caressed the offered noses, the thrusting ma.s.sive heads that, less gentle, could stave in ribs or break his back; and again came that blurred feeling, that surety that he had given mem something that pleased them.

He withdrew and sealed the doors, and trembled afterward, thinking what he had done. Food, water, other needs they had none, not at the moment. They wanted in. They had gained that, through him.

He fled, fear flooding him. He was panting as he ran the final distance to the medical wing. He saw the door that he wanted closed, like all other doors during the emergency. He opened it manually, closed it again.

"Sir?" the sentry on duty asked.

"Are they awake?" Duncan asked, with harsh intensity. The sentry looked confused.

"No, sir. I don't think so."

Duncan shouldered past him, opened the door and looked at Niun. The mri's eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Duncan went to the bedside and seized Niun's arm, hard. ' "Niun. The dusei. The dusei. They have come."

There was a fine sweat on the mri's brow. The golden eyes stared into infinity.

"They are here," Duncan almost shouted at him. Niun blinked.

"Yes," said Niun. "I feel them."

And thereafter Niun answered nothing, reacted to nothing, and his eyes closed, and he slept, with a relaxed and tranquil expression.