Current project was the chemical approach to mental resistance. "You mean," Barton said, "get zonkedL-on the right stuff and you can tell the Others to scoff off? Put them out of commission?"

"Something like that," said Gyril. "Not to harm them, though; none of us wants that. And I prefsr te think those are our own feelings, not the result of mental influence." Well, Barton could go with that. Eawially since he had some ideas of bis own, as to what ^ -^ap- pening. To approach the matter as randomly as po:

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Gyril said, "I used nearly a hundred different drugs, labeled only with numbers assigned by chance." Any- thing from aspirin and caffeine through hash to L.S.D., Barton gathered. Somebody picked a pill or whatever, marked the number on Gyril's list, then started thinking anti-Others thoughts. The game was to see how near the person could get to the nursery before the Others changed that thinking.

"I tried Number 32," Bearpaw said. "Turned out to be coca extract. Twenty feet down the corridor, they had me purring like a pussycat. On the same stuff, some- body else stayed hostile all the way to the nursery door.

So the Others are playing the random game, too, right back at us."

"Of course," said Gyril. "But if we find something they can't block, no matter what, the game's over."

Maybe. But somehow. Barton wouldn't have bet on it.

The party broke up. Elys Rounds hadn't said much.

She looked older than Barton had expected, but he re- membered she'd had a tough time carrying her alien fetus. Bearpaw said, later, that she'd aged badly during that time but was slowly coming back from it. "She hates the scar, though-keeps her belly covered at all times. Gyril's studying up on cosmetic surgery, for when the scar tissue stabilizes." AnA Barton found himself wish- ing for Raymond Parr, who had done sucb a superb job on Limila, with worse to start from.

The trouble was, Barton thought, that these people were in a rut. They were trying to make some headway, sure, but after so many months they couldn't seem to find much urgency about it.

Then suddenly there was some. Barton was at Gyril's when the woman came bursting in with a full load of hysterics. After listening. Barton didn't blame her a bit.

She'd delivered a routine consignment of supplies to the nursery, but this time Dahil had pulled her inside and gone into his cup routine. With the usual results, of course.

"I won't go through that againi I'll kill myself" She wouldn't. Barton knew; several had tried that on the first round, but never succeeded. The Others simply wouldn't allow it.

Gyril seemed to have an idea, though; maybe in his trial-and-error way he'd learned a few things. He got the

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woman up on the worktable and began mixing a solu- tion, and filled a syringe. "Excuse us a minute. Barton."

As Barton, in the interests of modesty, went into the next room, Gyril was repeating, "It's only a minor infection, but we'd better take care of it."

When Gyril called him back, the woman was gone.

"What'd you do?"

The Medic-chief smiled. "The rigamarole was to throw the Others off the track, in case they were moni- toring. I filled her womb with a harmless colloid jpUy that solidifies at body temperature, then breaks down after about three days and drains out again. It has other uses;

I didn't invent it on the spur of the moment. But mean- while the fertilized ovum is stuck; it can't implant itself in the uterine wall in time to survive and multiply. She wont be pregnant."

Quickly now, Gyril used the intercom. Without ask- ing anyone for authority, he pulled all women off-nursery- delivery detail. He needed Szabo's okay to post male guards and keep women out of the nursery vicinity en- tirely, but before he obtained it, two unlucky women got the cup and the rest of it. Gyril had them come in im- mediately, but apparently the Others weren't ^bout to be fooled twice by the jelly thing, because he couldn't make it work. He kept getting the clumsies and spilling things. Modesty or no modesty, he got Barton in to help, and they both tried. Now Barton saw what the Others'

influence was like; he couldn't feel anything from o.utside himself, but he kept making mistakes. And he knew something was suppressing his natural anger at such frustration.

Finally Gyril faced the two frightened women and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I've tried my best, but I can't help you."

The younger one said, "You mean. we're stuck to bear Children again?" When Gyril nodded. Barton saw tears jarred loose. The other woman put an arm around the one who had spoken; without further words, they both left.

Gyril said, "It's the same as when we werrf trying to get the X-rays. And experience, it seems, is no help at all." A

s The next reaction that hit the ship was sometnfe^ the

Others couldn't stop; Barton saw what Bearpaw had 470.

meant about group concentration, because with everyone savagely determined that no more women would be im- pregnated to bear Children for the Others, things got a little bloody. Mark Gyril wrote the instructions and Elys Rounds checked them without advance knowledge of their contents, and absolutely nobody said anything out loud to help clue the Others as to intentions, while the men read those instructions off the various screens.

Lucidly, contraceptive implants weren't stuck very deeply into the muscle tissues. Most of the men cut them out of the women's thighs without making too much of a mess. Afterward, the Others didn't interfere with vari- ous medics' work in cleaning up the damage; there wouldn't have been much point in doing so.

Barton wasn't sure they all had the best answer, but it was one they could depend on. You can't get pregnant if you're already pregnant, they'd learned, the first time

around.

So for a time, with people hanging around in groups for mutual support and the hell with privacy, getting pregnant was the name of the game. Getting safely, hu- manly, pregnant. And mostly, they did, what with removal of the implants giving an immediate fertility back- lash. Including three who. Barton gathered from what Gyril said, had thought themselves past the capability but , wanted to be on the safe side, just in. case.

The Others' second round, then, gained them only the two victims that Barton and Gyril hadn't been able to help. Plus Tiriis, the female Other-a young man reported, much embarrassed, that when he delivered a consignment to the nursery, what he thought was a cup of coffee turned out not to be. Barton could take it from there.

"When the rush started," Bearpaw told him, "I sup- pose some of the younger studs thought it was the answer to their prayers. Not for long, though." He frowned. "It ^*''-sSSZ^'ie much fun making'love with a frightened woman who sees you only as a source of seed. And a lesser evil, at that."

Still, near as Barton could tell, the feeling on the ship was one of victory. At least the burden of fear was mostly lifted, Elys Rounds said once that she wouldn't bet against the Others being able to abort the whole lot and start

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over. But whether they could have or not, nothing of the sort happened.

Barton and Limila had talked it over and decided not to enter the sweepstakes, because she was by no means recovered from her injuries, so it could be dangerous for her to conceive. If she would ever have ability to bear child again; they didn't know.

They counted on two things. First, the normal Tilaran control over ovulation: Could the Others override it, or not? Second, if the Others could intuit Limila's difficulties, would they risk her safety? Lacking any solid answers, the two decided to stand pat. And didn't feel like hanging around in groups that were taking the other option, be- cause they didn't feel at home with them.

So one day Barton returned to quarters and found Limila sitting up in bed, nude, and rubbing her belly.

She looked wide-eyed at him, and said, "Barton, it may be we have made a mistake."

"What-?" The story came short enough. Knock on the door, and she opened it to admit no human.

Bearpaw's description of the Others, she said, was quite accurate. This one, male, had to be Dahil, andgthat was what he had called himself. And he had the cup with him, and its odor made her drink. "Before I realized ...."

"But how did he get here, past the guards?" Oh, sure;

if they could teleport up from a planet to a shipl Barton shook his head. This is what they got for not going along with the group thing. He didn't ask, "Then what?" But she told him, anyway.

"There is one thing I know," she said then, "and one that I do not. I think Dahil thought inside me and healed me; the long, nagging pain is gone now. The thing I do not know is, whether he and his cup overrode my own control of ovulation, at crisis moment."

Not liking it at all. Barton had to settle for that. Then he thought again, and decided that if she had it right about the healing, everybody was still ahead of the game.

He didn't say so, because right now she might not see it that way. .

Barton had had several briefing sessions wi Szabo, and by now he was beginning to feel m'

with the man. He realized that a lot of his came from what Bearpaw had taped about

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edition, and now he recognized that Szabo emanated ten- sion because on this ship, it naturally centered on him.