When the hailing came, Ab,dul Muhammed had the watch; the outsized Central African paged Barton imme- diately. Barton was in Compartment One, talking with the Tilaran woman Limila, his' "most needful person" in the Tilaran way of putting it. Both of them went to the con- trol room, hotfoot style. Barton caught his breath. "What's up, Ab^ul?"

The black giant gestured toward the viewscreen, and Barton saw three ships in delta formation, nearing fast.

"They called. Barton-well, one of them did so-and identified themselves. Ship Sixty-five and two others from Squadron Three of the second fleet. I identified us in return, and they asked to speak to Admiral Tarleton."

Abdul smiled. "I said he is not aboard."

Admiral, huh? Tarleton, now on Sisshain in charge of working out the kinks in the Demu peace treaty, com- manded the first fleet, all right But nobody, except Bar- ton now and then in a joking way, had ever called him "admiral." "What else did you say?"

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"That you command this ship and that I would call you. In the meantime I have kept the voice channel shut down." A buzzer sounded. "I would guess they are becoming impatient,"

Myra Hake had the comm panel; Barton nodded to her, and the tall, sandy-haired woman shook the bangs away from her eyes and made competent motiotas. The screen's view split, the three ships smaller m .their re- maining half and two men looking out of the other. One of them, the heavyset one, said, "You're Barton? Second in command of the first fleet?" Barton nodded, and the speaker turned to his wispy-looking blond associate. "He's the one. That takes care of a lot." Then, back to Barton:

"Start from the beginning and bring us up to date. Re- cording."

From the beginning, huh? From when Barton bad been snatched off Earth by the exoskeletal Demu and caged for eight years and escaped and brought a Demu ship back to Earth? And the first Earth fleet, forty ships under Tarleton's command, had set out from Earth to Tilara and allied with the people of that world, and with the Larka-Te and Filjar? And Barton taking a strike force to chase Hishtoo the Demu to Sisshain, and there finding the secret that forced the Demu to stop raiding, and stop carving other humanoids into the likeness of featureless Demu? Not hardly; this officious-sounding Chubby Boy had to know the first parts, or he wouldn't be here. But "beginning," to Barton, meant all of that. ;

He said, though, "You'll have it already, up to where I took off after Hishtoo and his two Tilaran hostages. We did save mem, by the way; Gerain and livaj) are aboard here. And then Tarieton followed with the combined al- lied fleets." He cleared his throat. "Everything after that is in my report, which will reach you through channels in due time." Barton hated to make reports at the best of times, and he'd sweat Mood over this one, because he had to leave out the secret of Demu psychological vulnerabil- ity so that no revenga-minded group could wipe the Demu out. He'd left out the mystery of the vanished Great Race that had left the great ship moldering on Sisshain. And particularly he'd omitted any suggestion that that huge monolith could be put into working shape in a relatively brief tame. But on the whole, he thought, it read plausibly.

"Report, hell," said Fatso. "Give me a sumairy, to

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pass back to the admiral right away. That's one reason we're out here."

"And why else, I wonder?" said Limila.

She said it softly, but the man on the screen must have heard. Red-faced, he said, "To stand outpost against a Demu attack; what did you think? In case the first fleet lost the war. So tell me what happened."

Well, why not? "It won't take long," Barton said. "The war's over before it started; we won it, bands down. On the Demu world Sisshain, Tarleton's in the saddle. But he's running an embassy, more, not an army of occupa- tion. The main job is to spread word to other Demu planets that the raiding is over and done with. Takes a lot of coordination, but that was always one of Tarleton's strong points." He paused. The heavy man's expression puzzled him. "Anything else?"

"That's not much detail, but-all right; thanks. Barton.

Well pass it on in. And right, now, you get an escort to Tilara. Just feel snug as a bug in a rug."

That half of the picture blanked; the view of the three ships expanded to fill the screen. As they matched veloc- ity with Ship One, Barton saw that these newer ships were larger than his by half, and had nearly the same edge in acceleration. Their central laser delivery tubes were bigger, too, which probably meant more power. And now that he noticed, around each center lay three periph- eral muzzles. As the ships closed to box Ship One in, he had a good clear view.

And wondered, why he being himself "took care of a lot."

He'd taken it easy. Barton had, on the run from Sisshain back to Tilara. Going the other way, chasing Hishtoo to stop that Demu from spreading warning of the first fleet's approach, he'd run Ship One close to max ac- celeration most of the way, and part of it full out He was no expert on space drives; he'd stolen one from the Demu and thus given Earth interstellar capability, but all he really knew about them was what he could understand of what the Lab boys told him, plugged into his somewhat obsolete studies in physics. And he'd never quite made his Ph.D., at that.

But he did know that things wear out, so returning from Sisshain he'd kept accel and decel at no more than half of max. Since elapsed time for a given distance was a recipro-

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cal square-root function of applied force, the trip hadn't taken all that much longer. Sixty-four days on the way out; coming back, maybe ninety. With the pressure off, he hadn't bothered to keep close track, once turnover was calculated and achieved. ^

It had been an odd trip in more than one way. Limila was pregnant and teething at the same time. Tfae preg- nancy was stUI early, not bothering her to any noticeable extent, and the teething was the eruption of tooth buds planted by Tilaran surgeons to replace the forty teeth the Demu had taken from her when they had her captive.

The flexible linings of the Tilaran dentures still, accom- modated the half-grown teeth, well enough. Maybe it was only Barton's imagination that made his tall, lithe, woman seem a little strange now and then. Well, if she wasn't entitled to a bit of oddness after all she'd been through, then who was?

He did wish she'd make up her mind, though, whether to take the scalp transplant available on Tilara when they got there, or stay with the Tilaran-styled wig to cover her Demu-inflicted baldness. It wasn't that Barton cared, ei- ther way; he merely wished that Limila would decide, so she could quit stewing about it. She looked fine to him right now; it no longer jarred him at all, that forward of the ears the Tilaran scalp is bare by nature.

It didn't bother him, either, that her transplanted breasts showed little if any sign of growing. They had come from a young girl, killed in a fall while rock- climbing, and the Tilaran surgeons had no idea whether they would grow to mature contours. Well, Limila didn't seem to sweat it much, and no doubt her bustline would develop as her pregnancy did.

It was the nearness of Limila's home planet. Barton thought, that set him musing on her possible^ problems.

Not a good time for it, really; he might have a few of his own to chew on. He looked around the control room.

Cheng Ai, the other pilot, who shared Cabin Four with Myra Hake, had come in; in low tones, Abdul Muham- med was bringing him up to date. Noticing Barton's gaze on him, Abdul paused, and said, "There is something, Barton?"

"Yeh. Let's pool what we noticed about those ships out there, best we can remember."

"I taped the view." Myra Hake said. "Run if on the

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aux screen?" Barton nodded, and again the three ships showed, closing in.

Barton pointed out the added laser outputs, and Cheng said, "I'm not sure, but to me the gasketing around the three extras, on each ship, looks like pivot mountings.

Which means traverse capability."

"Flex feeds from the exciter,*' said Barton. "Tricky job, but I can see how it could be done." The tape ended, and Myra began it again. "Now, then, what else do they have, or not?"

No hatches, Abdul pointed out, for the Larka-Te high- drive torpedoes. No sets of nodes. Limila said, to emit the Tilaran twin ion beam. "And the spitter for the Filjari plasma gun," said Cheng, "isn't there, either."

"Right." Barton had made the same observations, but it never paid, he felt, to do all the talking. Now was his turn. "Except for the extra lasers, they're equipped the same as we were when we got here. The Demu sleep-gun and the Shield against it don't use outside equipment, but of course they'd have both."

Limila touched his shoulder. "Why do you ask all this?

These ships are of Earth, are they not? So-"

Barton shook his head. "Not sure. Something about Fat Boy's manner, on the screen, maybe. But doesn't it strike anybody else as a little strange that those ships haven't been modified to add any of our allies' weapons?"

Before anyone could answer, the comm-panel alarm sounded and its screen lit.

The picture wavered, the colors were off by hundreds of Angstroms; still the face looked somehow familiar.

"That's a Tilaran frequency, not fleet," said Myra Hake.

But the party on the screen was no Tilaran.

The face was compact: no Tilaran leanness there, and a strong jaw. The hair was apparently curly and quite short; the contour of it bulked out only far enough to make a smooth line with the ears, and at the front it grew to frame an Earth-style forehead.

Barton motioned. "Open to answer on the other half of that pair of downside freqs, Myra. We're some distant, still, but--"

"I already did." Barton had to grin; he was always tell- ing this woman something, slightly after the fact.

"Good." Yes, the Send light was on. He said, "Bar- ton, speaking for Ship One, answering Tilaran call. Come

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in, Tuara." He repeated it a few times; when he saw the face on the screen change expression, he shut up.

"Hello, Barton. It's good to see you. Don't you recog- nize me?" He knew the smile, all right; when he'd first met this woman his instincts said the smile was prelude to being bitten. And the crisp, calm voice cinched the identification-attenuation and distortion notwithstanding.