"What I want to know is, what's this important mission you're on?*' He saw the stubborn look come onto Hay- ward's face, and quickly said, "Or if that's Top Sphinx, how about, where the hell are we going?"

Keeping in mind. Barton was, that courses- ian be changed, f

Except on the great ship that brooded, immobile, on Sisshain, Barton had never seen a control area that this

418 '.

ship's didn't dwarf. On the rearview screens he could see that Tiiara was nearly twice as far behind as he would have expected in such short time; another few hours, and Hayward couldn't reach Hennessy with signals, even if he wanted to. And to give the kid credit, he seemed to have no such intentions in mind.

The screens that interested Barton were the ones with the map spread across them. He recognized the galactic Arm well enough, and a number of landmarks on it. The dust cloud with the pocket that hid Sissham's primary didn't show that sun, but the cloud itself was there.

And the Demu volume of space, the same version that Tarleton's maps had shown. Of course Barton had seen better data now, but this was fairly accurate. And then, down-Arm from Demu space, the wide belt, clear across the Arm, where no habitable planets existed. The Great Race bad somehow done that, according to the Demu Sholur, Keeper of the Heritage. But how or why, no one knew.

Still the map unfolded, reeling jerkily across the screens.

Below the dead belt, no data showed. But toward the far side of what was known, a dim light blinked. "That's our rendezvous point," said Honey Hayward.

"With what?" Barton shook his head, and heard Limila gasp. "We don't know anything, down there. Do you?

Because if this is some kind of wild-goose chase-and don't get antsy just yet, because if you do, I'll drop you, Hayward-I may have to change the plans."

"You can't! I mean you mustn't. It's terribly impor- tant-" Then, looking Barton in the face, Hayward slowly nodded. "I guess I'm going to have to tell you all of it."

"Now that," said Barton, "sounds like the best idea I've heard yet."

It began with rivalry between the two major branches of the Space Agency, keeping secrets from each other.

While one group worked to improve the Demu drive and help Tarleton get his forty ships together, the other went its own path and didn't give Tarleton the time of morn- ing. "But within days after your fleet lifted. Barton, they sent a ship out."

To where? To scout the dead belt, from the far side.

To try to get another angle on the Demu. But, trailing Tarleton's fleet, wasn't it a little late? No, because Group

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B made a breakthrough into a new principle, based only partially on the Demu drive, so that sizes and velocities went up a lot.

But why? Barton meant, why weren't these two prongs of effort coordinated? But before Hayward could answer, Barton shook his head, because he already knew why:

to some people, including most politicians, nothing was more important than revving up their egos and listening to the echoes.

But none of that crap was important now; Barton said so, and added, "The Demu are taken care of, but the horseshit isn't. I don't know what your mission is, yet, but so far you haven't convinced me that it's more important than getting to Tarleton, to give bun the han- dle he'll need to get the second fleet straightened out.

And fix things with Earth Base, too. So I think we. should get up to your control room and start figuring some course changes."

"But you don't know!" In a pale face, Hayward's cheek- bones stood out red. "The ship that went down-Arm, what they told us-"

"What they told you? You mean they got back already?"

The young man shook his head. "No, of course not., What they sent us, I mean. You see-"

For a moment, while he didn't understand yet. Barton had his hand on Hayward's arm. Then he did get it, and until he saw the cheekbones go pale, too, didn't- realize how hard he gripped and shook that arm. Then he let go. "You mean-you mean, Hayward, that those silly Group B sons-of-bitches had faster-than-light communi- cations? All along-and didn't tell Tarleton's group?"

"I-I guess so," From Hayward's expression, he wanted to be someplace else, if at all. "But / didn't know.

Not any of it. Until our captain played us the tapes, once we'd been diverted to Tilara to refuel for this mission, and then asked for a volunteer."

Barton shook his head; none of this was the kid's fault.

Couldn't be. So take it easy; ask, but don't yell. "Tapes, you said." And Hayward nodded. "You think, maybe I heard those, I might make a Uttle more sense out of this mess?" A

Hayward bounced back good; he smiled ^p-w. "I wouldn't be surprised."

The control area again. Quickly now. Barton noted 420 ".

the switching positions that indicated how major func- tions of subsidiary positions were multipled into the chief pilot's board. He didn't see how any one person, haywire multiples or no, could land this crate. But Hay- ward had lifted it, and navigation in free space was easier still.

He asked the one thing. This bucket's not to land;

right?"

Hayward's blond eyebrows raised. "How did you guess that?" Barton told him, and Hayward nodded.

"You're right; we make rendezvous in deep spacer then this ship's abandoned." Barton tried to speak, but for once the young man overrode him. "There's no choice;

we'll be out of fuel, nearly. Our tanks are only about one- tenth filled. And that's on purpose."

Estimating what full tanks would do, if Hayward were telling the truth, Barton shook his head. "Fuel to get where you showed me, though," he said, "is more than enough to land us on Sisshain. Or even swing a right- angle course change"-equivalent, they both knew, to an extra landing and liftoff-"and head for Earth." Frown- ing, Barton said, "So far, you haven't convinced me I shouldn't do one of those things."

Riffling through a bank of switches, the kid said, "That's what we're here for." The screen flashed a picture, but it blanked before Barton's mind caught the gestalt.

"Just a minute." More '"switch-fiddling. Then: "Hell with the official reports; they didn't get any action moving at Base, so probably they wouldn't with you, either- I'll run the bootleg tape that got us diverted to this mission.

It's mostly voice-only, not much picture, and that part's blurry." One final switch; then they waited. "One of the ship's Comm officers got this out, somehow. Obviously, it's no kind of official report; we don't know who the guy was trying to reach. Maybe Base knows, but they didn't send us the lead-in section. What's here, though, made quite a splash at Base. It does with me, too. Why don't you give it a fair hearing?"

Barton did. The tape began, and he listened.

421.

11,.

The Others

I have to start where it begins.

We named the planet Opal because you couldn't call it anything else. Approaching from sunward we got the full lighted disk on our screens, and there it hung, at about two million kilos, shining like the most glorious fire opal'

you ever saw. Even the brass back at Base, I'm told, when they got those first tapes cleaned up by computer enhancement, had to agree. Whatever official name had been planned for that world is off the books and forgot- ten.

I understand that in the first days of space travel, the thing a lot of people found most surprising was the direct live video coverage from the spacecraft and then from the moon. I expect they'll feel the same way about faster- than-Ught interstellar communications, now that the Labs found a way to make phase-velocity do some useful work and earn its keep. Someday, I wouldn't doubt, you can sit on Earth and talk with your field man a hundred light- years distant, and have him point his Phasewave set at a patch of weeds so you can tell him which ones to' take in for analysis. Or squat at home and watch aliens do colorful native dances, on "Galactic Traveler," Uvexm the Trivia. Not yet, of course. But soon, maybe, l^e-way progress keeps snowballing.

Our planet Opal had indigenes, but we didn't call them Opalites, even though it turned out later that we couldn't

422.

pronounce their own name for themselves. They started out as Opalites in the records, but that's another official designation that went down the drain. The Others are the Others, and that's that.

I was off watch when the initial down-party first saw and then met the Others. Lisa Teragni, my ship wife, com- ing back from breakfast while I was just getting up, gave me the news. Secondhand, because she hadn't been up in Comm herself. "But from what they say, Ren, I can't tell whether these Opalites are more like people, or more not." Xenobiology isn't her specialty; psychology is. "They have all the right number of arms and legs and eyes and ears, but I gather that nobody would ever mistake one of them for Earth-human."

I snapped my other boot closed. "Let me get a bite to eat. Then I'll take you to Comm and we'll both see.