Even if there's no locals on the screens at the moment, there'll be a tape or two, we can run." Understatement;

the place would be knee-deep in them.

Actually, we didn't get up to Comm all that soon.

Usually Lisa and I had our watch-skeds in sync, but we had two Comm people in sickbay and I'd been filling in odd watches, so we hadn't been together much lately. This seemed a good time to make up for it a little; Lisa was by no means the least favorite of the ship wives I'd had.

In fact, we were talking of making it permanent, though we knew that when it comes to advancement. Agency policy makes it tougher on people who insist on paired assignments. But then I never did expect to get rich, anyway. The boots came off again.

Up above, when we got there, Rigan, the Comm Chief, had the watch himself. He's a long, thin drink of anti-freeze, but the chill is Just his normal grade of man- ners. Once you figure that "I suppose it will do" is the highest praise in his book, he's all right to work for. The strongest condemnation he's likely to give is: "I think per- haps you might try it over again." You have to read him between the lines, and the lines are awfully close to- gether. So when I brought Lisa into Comm and he said, "I suppose it's all right," she took it as a hearty welcome.

Being a psychologist, she'd figured Rigan out in about twenty minutes. It took me six months.

She said, "Good morning. Chief. Ren thought we might be able to have a look at the Opalites."

' 423.

**We have pica," he said, "of the Others.** That was the first time I heard the term; sometimes I wish it had been the last. "You're certainly free to look them over. Sec- ond." In case the lead-in garbled, that's me: Comm- officer Second, Renton Bearpaw. The Bearpaw gets a lot of mileage from the clowns I work with, if I knock over a cup of coffee or anything, but it comes from a man who could kill a buffalo with a spear.

I checked the screens first; no aliens showed. A moving view above a tree-covered coastline-that would be the aux craft itself, that had delivered the down-party while we stayed in synchronous orbit, on its mapping run. Some- body was swinging us a hilltop panoramic; another field man showed close-ups of vegetation plus something that resembled a fat, furry grasshopper. A red face arguing into his pickup, and sweating; wherever the voice was go- ing, it wasn't to us. Maybe he was complaining about the heat. There were no Others in view, though; for them we

had to go to the still pies.

The trouble was that we expect man-shaped creatures to look human, and these didn't. Skin texture looks hu- man enough, and color ranges from a pinkish-beige to deep reddish-brown. The differences, though. First picture a human head. Now move the eyes up and out to Ihe extreme front comers, nothing above them but a protec- tive ridge. With independent articulation, those eyes have almost a 270-degree scan without even turning the head.

Which the Others can do, nearly front to back like an owl, or that carnivorous amphibian on Blaine's Mistake.

The ears are leaf-shaped cups, rounded, very mobile, halfway back on the skull, at eye level.

The back of the skull, the cheekbones, mouth, jaw, and neck all look a lot like ours. The nose would, too, except that it comes out of a convex area rather than having brows above and eye sockets to each side. linear that the Others have different numbers of teeth, top and

bottom, but you can't tell by looking.

The torso as such is proportioned slightly longer, nar- rower, and deeper than we consider normal. The arms aren't set where we expect shoulders; they mount -lower, move more freely, and can reach backward as easily as forward. The legs have a lot of pivot, too; they're sety/ide apart, not at the body's "corners" but a little above. And the Others aren't plantigrade, like us and bears; they toe- walk like dogs or horses.

424 /.

Let's see; what else? Well, they're mammals; the breasts are set so close together that they look more like one udder with two spigots. And on average height the Others are a little shorter than we are, not enough that it's always noticeable in individual cases.

Their hair is a fine, thick fur that grows only three or four centimeters long, in a strip along the median line of the head and body. About five to six centimeters wide, but coming to a point where it terminates. In both sexes, one end is just above the nose and the strip goes up over the head and down the back. With the female it comes down around and ends just below the navel, which is set about the same as ours. The male's fur continues on up the front of the body, and neck and chin, and stops on the lower Up.

We didn't get all this from the pies, just then, because ordinarily the Others wear a sort of loose, sleeveless tunic, And the pies were off on the fur's color, which varies from a bleached sandy hue to a bright copper-gold red, light or dark in accordance with skin tone. But we did get a fair idea of how the Others appeared. And Lisa's comment still held: it was hard to decide whether they looked more like people, or more not.

When Rigan sniffed and said, "Second? Don't you think it's a little stuffy in here?*' J tactfully escorted Lisa out, telling her I'd let her know how our watch-skeds meshed as soon as I knew it myself. Rigan takes a little trans- lation: "stuffy" means too many people. Often there are eight or ten working in Comm, and we were only six, including Lisa. But when the Chief said frog, I jumped.

Because he could have stood on status and refused to let her in at all. I've worked under worse than Rigan; few better, in fact.

It wasn't my watch, but I hung around, hoping one of the screens would show the Others. None did, so I left.

Lisa wasn't anywhere I looked; finally, I remembered it was her day for the weekly treatment she still needed for a recent injury, since she was the one who found out the hard way that the whatsit on Blaine's Mistake had close to 360-degree traverse at the toothy end. By the time she joined me in quarters she was due on watch; I gave her a kiss for later and went back to fiddling with a bread- board circuit I was working on. I hoped it was the pilot

425.

model for an automatic tuner for Phasewave Relay.

There's nothing like trying to work yourself out of a job.

On my next watch I did see Others live and direct.

Funny-first they'd look near-human, and then com- pletely alien. Not like Blaine's Mistakes. (Did the official tape mention that Blaine's own mistake was trying to push some peaceful-looking villagers around? As our first cas- ualty, he rated a fairly impressive gravestone.) Ignoring details like beaks and claws and iridescent scales, the Blaine's natives move like humans. The Others don't; un- til you see the particular grace and economy in any com- pleted action, they appear to be embarrassingly clumsy.

Later we found that they had the same feelings, of part-rightness and part-wrongness, about us. I guess that makes sense. ' '

Two days later, one of our ailing Comm techs was ticketed healthy, so I had fewer extra watches to work and could catch up on time with Lisa. And with the other sick case nearly recovered, soon Lisa and I could get back into full sync. About time, too,

So then Comm-First Btenkov, my immediate superior, broke his stupid leg. Well, that's the way Rigan put'it, and I had to agree. Blenkov had been down on Opal do- ing Comm for the aux boat. Somebody had to take over, and I got the nod.

I made a pitch to get Lisa assigned downside with me, but it worked no better than I expected. Maybe that's why it didn't work; I've never convinced my meager psi- powers to be on my side.

The down-party, including the aux boat, was run by Command-First Szabo, who was second only to Captain Soong on the whole mission. I'd always tried to stay away from Szabo; that one had a reputation for being daoper- ous, and I didn't want to test it.

Szabo didn't look mean-a tall, rangy, Greek-god type with more good looks than anybody needs, and the same for muscles. Smiling a lot-but going by rumor, nobody trusted that smile much. The words to keep in mind, the way I heard it, were "explosive" and "unpredictable."iiTo back them up, incidents were sometimes cited. ^ ^

This gets important later or I wouldn't be telling it. The trouble with Szabo, rumor had it, was that here was a highly intelligent, capable person who used to be a func-

426 /.

tional male and now wasn't It's on the records that he married when he was twenty, and fathered a child before the divorce a few months later. I heard several versions of what happened in between, but the parts that agree with each other boil down to this: Szabo got some kind of minor cyst or tumor, nothing serious, down near the prostate gland. Operating for it, the doctor made a glitch and cut the peripheral nerves that make sexual response possible. Lisa says it used to happen a lot with one of the kinds of prostate operations. The whole idea makes me cringe a great deaL

At any rate, Szabo wound up with all his equipment in- tact, but disconnected-absolutely no way it could work, any more than an unplugged computer terminal.

Szabo reacted hard. He was smart; nobody ever pinned the doctor's misfortune on him, and although killings show on his record, they're always in line of duty or self- defense. Usually with a commendation for him-pre- sented, Fd guess, by someone who wouldn't look Szabo in the eye because they both knew better.

He became the toughest, most iron-nerved and capable person I've ever known. And dangerous, because he was touchy about his difference; mention it in his hearing and you have real trouble. The existence of sex was an intol- erable insult; never remind him.

That's not too easy, all th^time.

When I hauled my kit onto the aux boat, Szabo met me. "Cheers, Command-First," I said. "Anything particu- lar that needs doing on here, with the Comm gear?

Blenkov was too full of needles to tell me much." As I hitched my stuff along the narrow corridor, Szabo fol- lowed.

"Nothing that I know of; it's all working. Bearpaw- have you heard, yet, what they think of the Others, ship- side?" He sounded worried; down-partywise, I didn't take that as a healthy sign.

"Not much, Szabo," I said. "But if there's anyone who's not confused, it's being covered up pretty well." You call him Szabo because ever since he lost sex he hasn't used his first name. To him, maybe, it means his former, com- plete self. Which hints at a strange kind of pride, driving him. Scary. But on impersonal things you can joke safely because it gives him a chance to be human, and he needs it. I didn't figure these things out by myself. Working

( 427.

around Szabo, a lot of the discussion behind bis back is how to keep Szabo happy. It seems to help.

"The down-party's confused, too," he said now. "I'm going down for a firsthand look." He shrugged, and gave that angelic smile I always wished I could really trust.

"Not that I'm trying to out-guess the experts, of course."

We entered the tiny control room. "So you'll be in charge of the boat, Bearpaw. On our way down, scan the mission instructions. Anything unclear about the mapping tour, let me know." He left, and I felt guilty about how relieved I felt.

Nothing tricky in the instructions, but I looked and found a couple of points I could ask about, because Szabo liked that. So it was another part of the S.O.P. of working with him, and for all I know, maybe he knew it and was amused. * '

We downed at a field base. I don't remember which one, by letter-designation. Once we'd worked out the rou- tine, on BIaine's Mistake after we crossed the dead belt that lacks inhabited planets, they all set up pretty much

alike.