The difference here was the attitude. Whatever I'd ex- pected to find,! didn't. Mostly, it looked as if the group was dragging its feet on studying the place, because what they'd learned already, they didn't like.

As Szabo's new Exec, I sat alongside him and looked official for the folks Upstairs on the ship while he read off his summary and fed pictures to the pickup. "Ifs ob- vious," he began, "that we're meeting a species and cul- ture quite different from ourselves. The Others-" For the first time, I saw Szabo's face color. "I mean the Opalites, of course. They're extremely puzzling to our

teams/'

Somebody Upstairs told him to cut the crap; actually, the phrase was: "Don't bother with details of nomencla- ture." So be it; the Others were the Others, and Upstairs

had signed the memo.

"Very well." Szabo nodded. Maybe he was on pickup, maybe not. "The Others simply don't fit our pattern.

Their language appears to be rudimentary, but they, learn ours with startling ease. Conclusion: they're highy^tele- pathic, and may have as great a grasp of the stfcalled *psi' powers as we have of physics. And possibly vice- versa-as little physics as we have 'psi' control."

428 , .

He cleared his throat "Apparently the Others dont fabricate their shelters or clothing; they grow them." Ha read a field team's summary; the way it translated through the jargon is that if the Others want a house or a tunic, say, they think at a bush and it grows what they I want. I've never beard that version contradicted, anyway.

A faint note of disdain came into Szabo's voice, as he said, "The Others seem to have no violent behavior pat- terns whatsoever." Maybe it wasn't disdain; maybe it was incredulity,

But skepticism, I couldn't mistake. "It's speculated that the Others can directly affect each other's emotions-and therefore, possibly, our own. I don't believe it, and in fact I intend to go to the nearest village as soon as possible, and test the hypothesis. For the moment, though, I have decided to postpone the test until more important mat- ters have been settled." Something about his logic, there, bother me, but I couldn't decide what it was.

"One thing is certain," Szabo went on. "The Others aren't primarily analytical-minded. They seem to operate largely on intuition, perhaps aided by their hyper-sensory talents, if those in fact exist." Well," I knew Szabo hated the idea that E.S.P. or whatever could be of any real use.

Maybe he had a bad case of my own problem, that any time my "psi" stuff shows up at all, it's wearing the other team's uniform. But I know it works right for some people, sometimes, and I don't begrudge them, much.

Szabo, though, took it all as a personal insult. Which made me nervous, now.

"The Others* culture," Szabo said next, "is apparently a hand-to-mouth affair; if they plan ahead, our people haven't been able to find signs of it. Food, housing, clothes-all seem to grow as needed, with or without con- scious control. The same, I'm told, goes for their art forms.

The most recognizable one was described as a cross be- tween painting and sculpture, with sound effects, and what they do is pat a mass of miscellaneous material roughly into shape, and go away and leave it. The next day, the thing is fully formed. No research team can ex- plain the phenomenon."

Looking uncharacteristically pensive, Szabo ended on the cheery note that the Others certainly seemed to be friendly enough. And if they weren't, we could blast them off the face of the planet if we wanted to. Not that we did want to, of course, he hastened to add. Somehow

, 429.

he didn't sound quite like the Szabo we knew and walked askance of.

The parley done, Szabo and I ate with the field crew and then I dossed down in the aux boat. But I couldn't sleep. What bothered me was that Szabo hadn't told the Upstairs brass the most worrisome thing he'd told me.

And why hadn't he?

What it was, a groundside team member working'alone would meet up with one of the Others, and then his or her squawktalker wouldn't answer for maybe an hour, sometimes longer. Then when a call got through, the party didn't seem to realize that contact had been broken, had heard no calls during the break, and didn't know what the caller was now perturbed about. And persons who'd had these lapses tended to look sidelong at other people who had also had them, but not to talk together.

It all made me wonder.

Szabo proposed putting somebody under drug-interroga- tion, and maybe get a few facts, but then he turned right around and talked himself out of it, "... until later."

Well, if he was blind and would not see, I was wearing pretty dark glasses, myself.

Next day it was time to get on with mapping' the coastal contours of the island-continent we were on. For some reason, the drill was to do the coast first and fill the rest in later. Blenkov got about halfway before he crunched his leg; the other half shouldn't take too long, I hoped, if we didn't run into complications. Famous last words.

Of the" other five people on the aux boat, my next-in- command was Elys Rounds, a Medic-3. Compared to my striking, big-boned Lisa Teragni with her half-share of Polynesian genes, Elys looked as bland as she was blonde, and as fragile as she was tiny. But since no little sugar- cookie would be carrying Medic-3 rating, I didn't go by looks. Well, she handled her watch duties fine, was a rair grade of navigator, superb at weapons control on the one incident we are not allowed to discuss, and of course a thoroughly competent medic. Evaluation Reports don't mention whether people are good in bed, so officially she will have to go unsung on that score. Unofficially, she

is very nice. ' ji

At the coast we picked up where Blenkov had left off, trying to make up lost time. Ten days saw us nearly

430.

caught up and close to halfway done with our leg of the tour. And that evening, watching for a good place to land for the night, I saw a village of the Others. For no particular reason, I set down near it.

We hadn't been avoiding the Others, especially, but we hadn't happened to run into them much. Once in a while the brief visit with a small group if it happened to be where we landed to take plant and animal samples- that sort of thing. They always seemed friendly enough;

my earlier uneasiness had simmered down. I was even getting used to the way they picked up our lingo so fast, and seemed to know whatever we might need in the line of help before we finished asking. Sometimes later it would strike me that we really hadn't got what we wanted, though Fd been fully satisfied at the time. I chalked it up to natural confusion of meanings; just because they learned fast didn't mean they got it all right.

Anyway, I landed dose by the village, and we but- toned up our procedures for the day. I called my daily report in to Szabo, to be relayed Upstairs. Then it felt like time for dinner. I was a little grimy and sweaty, so I went to spruce up some.

I was getting dressed again when it struck me that in- stead of another routine meal on the boat I could be visiting the Others and maybe learning something. I fin- ished dressing and went to try my idea on the rest of the crew. But they weren't there, in. the cramped galley. Elys sat alone. I said, "Where is everybody?"

"They've gone ahead, to the village. Shall we go now.

too?"

In an open clearing among the odd, organic huts ringed with flowering bushes, our people were being fed pro- fusely; we joined them. The food was delicious-steamy, delicately flavored meat; tangy fruits; crisp, chewy vege- tables. I drank a pale wine with a flavor that owed noth- ing to sweetness, and took a few whiffs from a carved, ornate pipe. That stuff sent my head around the cir- cuit, like the synthetic hash at my Mind Exploration class when I was fourteen. But it didn't lose me the way you can get lost at fourteen, because I'd already been there.

The people from the boat, though, seemed to be lost;

except for Elys, I didn*t see any of them. Elys and I sat with a few Others, everything so warm and friendly that

i 431

I couldn't imagine what all the worry had been about Well, in the morning I'd figure that out, and reassure Szabo, and Captain Soong fretting Upstairs.

But right now I hoped nobody would mind if Elys and I took ourselves off to a dark nook someplace. Great idea, so I turned to Elys. But she wasn't there. She was leaving the lighted area, leaving with a male of the Others.

I made to stand up and call to her, but my legs and voice vetoed the move. A female of the Others came near me.

I wanted to ask what was happening, but she handed me a cup of warm fragrant liquid, and when I caught the fragrance of it I had to drink. It tasted as spicy as it smelled. The alien female watched as I drank the cup halfway; then she touched my hand and I let her take the rest

Then this woman, this lovely woman of the Others, came to me, and I knew how mistaken I had been to think of her as alien. For I loved her, and lovingly we took each other. No matter the consequences or delusions, I can't regret that taking, for she was, then, the most beauty I had ever known. Part of that feeling is still with me, even though now I have a better idea what it means.

Elys, next morning, felt much the same way. We two could talk about it together, a little, because we were al- ready quite close. But I saw why field personnel, alone with one Other, who turned off their squawktalkers for an hour or two, would never say what had happened. No one wants to be thought insane.

When the rest of the crew had straggled back aboard, we lifted and got back to work. Everybody, I think, wanted to finish the map circuit in short order. So from then on, each day we started early and worked late.

Except for Elys and me between us, nobody talked much. I tried to clear the air, saying, "What the hell, it's no crime; we couldn't have known. And don't forget, it happened to all of us."

One woman looked across and glared at me. "Nothing happened. Not to me. If you say it did, you're a bar."

But when she'd returned to the boat, she'd had the same look of glazed reminiscence that everybody else had.

Her name was Krehbol, I remembered-"theresa Krehbol. She looked to be facing the end of her you^i with fear and anger, with ill grace. I doubted that at any time of her life she could have been called beautiful or pretty or

432.

even handsome, but I had seen her in pleasant moods, and then she was an attractive person. "All right," I said to her now, "if you say so, then nothing happened."

"You'd better remember that" So I gave it up. Krehbol was the only one who actively fought my efforts to get peo- ple to open up and rejoin the human race; the rest simply clammed it I couldn't see any way to help matters, really.

Especially after the night we landed not more than five kilos away from an Others* village, and in the morning, Krehbol was gone. With more of her gear than I'd have thought she could carry.