We looked for her; we Kited over to the village and asked the Others there. No luck; if they knew, they weren't saying. I called Szabo but someone else an- swered, "Hold on; I'll check Upstairs." And a few min- utes later the answer came. "Continue with your mission.

We don't have time or supplies to waste, hunting down a deserter."

I hope the Others have been kind to her. They can af- ford that much.

So eventually we finished the shank end of the land mass and approached our base camp. Now, I expected, I could report to Szabo and end the mystery, to some ex- tent And things might get back somewhere close to nor- mal, if there is such a thing.

Szabo wasn't there. The Others had him.

Upstairs, I gathered, was having diarrhea. Up or downside, nobody knew what to do. I was certainly no exception.

The main thing was, no one knew what had become of Szabo. or why. We didn't find out until later, but it will make more sense if I tell that part now. It was simple enough. Szabo got the cup treatment from a female Other, and when the most beautiful, the ever-lovely, got to him -well, his only possible response was to kill her. Being Szabo, as he was, what else could he do? That cup is strong medicine.

The Others couldn't have known; it's mostly on the subconscious level that they touch us and each other, and at that stratum Szabo was a healthy male; when the female Other went warm to him, she would have no idea she was pulling the pin on a live grenade.

At the time, though, official opinion had it that the Oth- ers had turned unreasonably hostile, that grabbing Szabo

* 433.

was only the first strike. Our orders were to round up everybody, and all the gear we could manage in a hurry, and cut trail back up to the ship in its sync-orbit. Using both aux boats, and I learned that Lisa, not by lier own choice, was assigned to the second one.

Once we were all Upstairs, having salvaged more of our equipment than I'd expected we could, orders were to sit there. Until we got word by Phasewave thqt Base had made up its mind what we should do. That's when I '

began to leam not to hold my breath until Base got around to put its responsibility where its authority is. Because Base made the great but natural mistake of leaving all decisions to our illustrious Captain Soong.

I hate to cut down a man who shares even a tinge of my own proto-Mongol gene heritage, but Soong is a book soldier. If the answer isn't in the book, he will sit- on the problem until one of them rots away entirely.

He can't have been this way all his life, because his rec- ord is good. One of the early astronauts, riding chemical rockets. Oh, not Mercury or Gemini or Apollo; he was on the shuttles, later, and was some kind of hero on a rescue , mission once. I*ve heard jokes that maybe he ran himself a little too heroically short of oxygen, that time, too long to keep his smarts going. My own thought is that prestige and political clout notwithstanding, the man's over the hill when it comes to decisiveness. It can happen. And commanding a ship, with Szaho next in line. would make anybody cautious.

Possibly by accident, Soong did one smart thing; he lifted us out of sync-orbit, apparently outside the Others'

hypothetical range of control. Because until we moved, I couldn't report what had happened in that clearing. And then I could, and along with all the other field personnel, spilled my guts as to what went on, downside, when the squawktalkers went off. Most of us got interviewed, any- way, and a summary was sent off to Base by Pba^awave,

I understand.

For what that's worth. Because then the two Others turned up on the ship with us.

Either they could teleport themselves or they'd stowed away in the aux boats and then hidden out for K while- Captain Soong leaned heavily on the latter ideal'in my opinion, it didn't support his weight too well.

The male, tall for an Other, ranked about medium on

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their color scale; his name was Dahil. The female was dark, of average height, and named Tiriis, or possibly Tries; I've seen it spelled both ways, but that's only in our alphabet. Far as I knew, I'd never seen either of them.

They greeted Lisa warmly, though, but she didn't re- spond; she turned and walked away.

I followed her to our quarters and tried to talk; she wouldn't say what was chewing her. Well, she'd been aloof and withdrawn ever since we got back to the ship, but people have a right to their own moods, so I hadn't pushed it-not that there'd been time to push much of anything. Our ship marriage had never been on an exclu- sive basis, so she wouldn't be clawed about Elys and me, downside, even if she'd had a chance to hear about that part. So for a time I stewed about Lisa's silence, because sometimes I can't see past my own nose, and it's not even all that long. And then I quit nagging, and we talked other subjects on a fairly friendly level, and I went back upship to see what I could learn.

At the open level outside the galley, from a little dis- tance I watched Dahil and Tiriis. Besides their simple hot-weather garb, all they'd brought with them that I could see was one pouch, each, of whatever passed for personal effects among the Others, and a big transparent "wineskin" filled with dark ggid liquid. Seeing it, I smelled spice; that color had been in the cup I drank.

Somebody ought to be warned, I thought, but with Szabo gone, Soong was the only one left to tell. Things were confused enough that I got to him at his business console without the usual red tape. But when I got there, he was giving one of his more fogheaded sets of orders.

By the time I'd listened through it, one of his guards asked me for my audience pass, so I'd blown my chance.

I'd heard, though. Soong's ideas of how to cope with the shipboard presence of Tiriis and Dahil went like this:

capture them, kill them, hold them hostage for Szabo's return, torture them for information, and call Base for ad- vice. In that order. I had no trouble guessing what he'd decide to do. Call Base.

He didn't get that far, because first he decided to inter- view the Others in person. The same way the moth de- cides to have a closer look at the nice flame. After they'd turned his friendlies on for him, Soong initiated very few

435.

calls to Base. And answered hardly any of the communi- cations from there, that he bothered to read.

Base, I expect, truly had its bowels in an uproar. Look at it their way. Reported aboard with us were two aliens, intentions unknown, with mental powers of unguessed extent, but obviously well out of the pea-shooter class.

And Soong wouldn't even answer questions.

Base couldn't order us home; they didn't want us home. Later I saw their order to Soong. to blow up the whole ship, including us, if necessary, to keep it out of alien hands. The captain didn't even acknowledge re- ceipt of that one. The potato was getting hotter, and Base was running out of cool hands to juggle it with.

So was the Comm center: Rigan and Blenkov and I and the rest. We had to say something to the repeated queries, which became more heated as no answers ap- peared. The pressure got to Rigan; he was driven to deliver one of his most devastating criticisms, right to Cap- tain Soong's face. "Sir, this latest communique carries a definite note of impatience." Soong brushed him off;

maybe the man didn't even get the point. When Rigan returned to Comm, he came perilously close to mutiny.

He said to me, "I'm not sure the captain understands the seriousness of the situation." For Rigan, that's mutiny.

Meanwhile, Dahil and Tiriis had the run of the'ship.

How else, when no one could hold a hostile feeling in their presence unless they allowed it? I wondered what they were doing. So did everybody else, except possibly the captain. I imagine he merely hoped they weren't doing anything, or that if they were, he wouldn't hear about it.

Elys figured it out. We saw each other fairly regularly now. Well, Lisa was coolly keeping herself from me and wouldn't say why, so ... "It's that magic elixir of theirs,"

Elys said-

"What about it?"

"Dahil's trying not to be obvious, but once or twice I've seen him talking with one of the women and offering a drink. Five gets you ten, it's out of his plastic sack of Hallucin-Ade."

"I think I see it coming, but spell it out."

"Sure you see it. Then they get lost for a whiles And next time the woman shows up-" &

"-she's not talking to anybody, much," I finished.

"Scheist on a shin splint 1 So that's what's wrong with

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Lisa." Suddenly I wanted to go find her, tell her it was all right. But it wasn't an appropriate time to rush away from Elys, so I didn't. "Is Tiriis playing up to any of the men?"

"Not that I've noticed," she said, and frowned. "One odd thing. Dahil ignores almost every woman who was on the down-party. Could that mean something?"

"Maybe that whatever Dahil has in mind, once is gen- erally enough. Indoctrination by seduction?" I shook my head. "We got nothing like that, and Tiriis leaving the men alone-no."

Then I had the idea. "If once is generally enough- Elys, has any woman taken the initiative, approached Dahil?"

"I don't know of any." Maybe t had a funny look on my face, because she pulled back, brows raised. "You mean me?"