The tools made no move as he came within their perceptual range. Now he could see that the one was indeed a construc-tor. It had the umbrella, the deeply grooved cortex and the ma-nipulator arms. The other two had only eyes and locomotors. Overseers? Recorders maybe?

"What is your purpose?" asked Br'sei in the most common command language.No reply. Br'sei repeated the question in four of the other command languages he knew, also with no result.

Frustration tightened Br'sei's bones. "Who made your pur-pose?

Engineer D'han? Engineer T'oth?" Neither name elicited any reaction. The tools stayed as they were, unmoving, unre-sponsive. Br'sei's crest ruffled. A tool should at least respond to its user's name. "Engineer P'tesk?

Engineer-"

"Ambassador D'seun."

Startled, Br'sei's wings flapped on their own, lifting him and turning him. Ambassador D'seun flew over a ridge in the high-land's wall and deflated until he was level with Br'sei and the tools.

"Good luck, Br'sei," said D'seun amiably. He spoke to the tools in a command language that Br'sei couldn't even recog-nize the roots of. The constructor touched the ambassador's headset. Br'sei realized with a start that he must be using a chemical link, something Br'sei hadn't seen in years.

"I would ask you what you're doing here, Br'sei," said the am-bassador, "especially as this is Highland 76, not 45. But I imag-ine you feel you have the right to ask me that question first."

"I don't wish to presume, Ambassador." Br'sei sank diffi-dently. "But yes, I do wish to ask that question."

The constructor drifted away from Ambassador D'seun, who spoke another few words of his convoluted command lan-guage. The constructor headed back to the crevices of the highland with the two overseers crawling after it.

D'seun watched them go until the tools could no longer be told apart from the crust. "At the moment, the tools are moni-toring the patterned radio wave transmissions between the New People and their transports, as well as their transports and their base." He swelled, just a little. "We need to refine our translation techniques. It still takes even our most adept engi-neers four or five dodec-hours to achieve what we think is an approximate translation of any given message."

Br'sei stared at the ambassador, framed there by the living highland."It is difficult to accomplish such a work from a dis-tance." He fought to keep his voice mild. "But you have said repeatedly that you do not want any tools within a mile of the New People, wherever they are."

Ambassador D'seun deflated slowly, as if he were too tired to keep his size and shape anymore. "I have wrestled with a great dilemma since we originally dropped the wind seeds onto this world, Br'sei. Now, you have the dubious honor of sharing it with me." He turned to face Br'sei. "But perhaps we should speak somewhere more comfortable?"

"If you wish, Ambassador." Patience, he told himself as his bones twitched. The only way you're going to get your answers is by waiting him out.

Br'sei had been helping to design the seeds for the candidate worlds when he first met D'seun. Br'sei was young for an adult, having been fully declared in his eightieth year.

Back then, there were still debates raging over what the na-ture of the seeding should be. Should it be a wide variety of or-ganisms, both useful and strictly supportive, to make sure the candidate world would accept a range of life? Or should it be a single organism so that when it did begin to spread, there would be fewer interactions to calculate when the overlaying began?

Br'sei had been of the opinion that broad-seeding was the correct method, and his experiment house was working with two dozen different microcosms to show the differences in ef-fect between broad-seeding and mono-seeding.

Then D'seun had flown up to the door without sending ad-vance notice and asked for a tour and an appointment with Br'-sei. Because D'seun was a speaker then, he got both.

The experiment house was an old, wise workplace with heavy screens and thick filters to keep its interior air absolutely sterile. Its cortices were complex and well grown, each able to monitor its crystalline microcosms for hours without supervi-sion or correction, leaving the engineers free to work on pro-jection and innovation.

Br'sei led D'seun from cosmos to cosmos, showing him the hardiness of the broad-seeding in the miniature ecosystems as opposed to the flimsystrains of mono-seeded cultures.

"The broad-seeding provides its own support system, you see, Speaker,"

said Br'sei as they paused to study yet another micro-cosm. The sphere's lensing sides allowed them to see through to the microscopic organisms thriving in the simulated cloud.

"Yes." D'seun pointed his muzzle at Br'sei. "But that is not truly the point, is it?"

Br'sei remembered how his crest had spread at those words. "Forgive me, Speaker, but that is the entire point."

"Forgive me, Engineer, but it is not," D'seun replied. "The point of the initial seeding is not to establish life, but merely to establish that life is a possibility. First we establish that life can exist on a world; then we survey that world carefully, under-standing it thoroughly in its pure, prelife state.

Then, and only then, can we start laying out the basis for a new canopy, one we design and supervise in its entirety." He turned his gaze back to the microcosm, deflating a little as he did. "We have acted too often without understanding. We must not do that with our new world. I fear we will have only one chance to make this plan of ours work."

Br'sei had felt himself swelling at that point, ready to argue, but the speaker's words flew ahead of his. "What I see here convinces me that you and yours have a tremendous under-standing of how life can be built and layered. Your life-base designs are strong and rich." D'seun whistled, pleased. "I would like to talk to you about providing members for the ini-tial teams, as well as engineers and designers for when New Home is found."

The implication that brushed against Br'sei was that this dis-cussion would take place only if Br'sei agreed to the idea of a mono-seeding. The speaker did make several excellent points, and the idea of Br'sei and his own team working on the foun-dations of New Home was a powerful lure.

"I think I could be convinced, Speaker," Br'sei admitted, fan-ning his wings gently to keep himself close to D'seun. "Let me bring some of my engineers, and let us discuss this. Some new microcosms may need to be designed."

"Thank you, Engineer Br'sei," said D'seun, and the words sank deeplyinto Br'sei's skin. "Bring your people. Let us think about what we may do together."

In the end, with Br'sei's help, D'seun had triumphed. As a result, Br'sei and his team, which he picked out with D'seun's help, were given the most promising world to seed with a mono-culture of their own design.

It had worked and here they were, with D'seun as ambas-sador and Br'sei as collaborator.

Br'sei's wings faltered slightly as that thought filtered through him.

"I have been thinking, Engineer Br'sei." D'seun banked into an updraft.

The warm air from the highland with its delicate taste of life lifted him high. "We say 'Life spreads life' all the time, but we do not ever hold still long enough to think what that should really mean."

"Should mean?" Br'sei's crest ruffled and spread flat, helping him keep an even path in the turbulent wind from the high-lands. Pockets of heat and cold bumped against him, making him have to work to keep his position steady relative to the ambassador. If he was not careful, he would be trapped by the same eloquent arguments D'seun had used on the youngsters. "Not 'does mean'?"

"On Home, I would have said 'does mean.' " The updraft spilled D'seun into the cooler air and he drifted down again until he was level with Br'sei.

"But here we are dealing with new possibilities. Here we can say 'should mean.' "

Br'sei deflated just a little. The ambassador's words were like a storm wind. They could sweep you along to an unknown destination before you even realized you were in a current too strong for you to fight.

"And have you decided what 'Life spreads life' should mean, Ambassador?"

"Not yet." D'seun cupped his wings and hovered in place in a relative calm. "But I am wondering if it involves surrounding yourself with things that do not live."

"What?" The single word burst out of Br'sei before he could even think about what he said.D'seun dipped his muzzle. "Their transports, their base, they do not live. They are metal and ceramic without any living component I can find, and I have looked carefully."

"But that's..." Br'sei searched for a strong enough word and found nothing. He gathered his thoughts again. "They are other. Their life is different from ours," he said, trying to give his words weight, but all the time he was thinking, Their home does not live? How can it care for them? How can they care for it?

D'seun glided close to him. "The question is, are they life we can live with?"

Br'sei deflated reflexively as the last sentence touched his muz-zle. "Do you think they are insane, Ambassador?" Insanity was the gravest accusation that could be made against another being, worse than greed, worse than jealousy. Insanity meant they would ravage the life around them and that they would have to be stopped before they could damage the larger balance.

D'seun's bones bunched tightly and he sank. "I don't know, Engineer. I do know they frighten me."

"Then why-"

D'seun's teeth clacked but his amusement was grim. "Then why did I fight so hard for this world? Because this is the world where our life can exist, Br'sei. The only one we have ever found where it can."

Their home does not live. Br'sei rolled his eyes upward, as if he thought to see the New People's base floating overhead, drawn by the thought. The New People had not been his study or concern. His time had been spent with the highlands, the clouds, and the wind seeds. Even so, someone in the team should have told him about this.

Unless an ambassador told them not to... But that was too much even for Br'sei, and he did not struggle when his thoughts swerved back to the New People. Do they isolate themselves from life, or do they just need to isolate their kind of life? How can we know?

"I have worked hard to keep this knowledge quiet, Engineer Br'sei,"

said D'seun, as if he read Br'sei's thoughts. "There are those who wouldtake the facts of how the New People live and create a panic to spread across all the winds of Home. Am-bassador T'sha, to begin with."

Br'sei shook himself. "Do you have so little faith in your col-leagues, Ambassador?" he asked, being deliberately blunt.

"No." D'seun swelled. "I have so much experience with them. T'sha is rich. She hands out promises as if they were guesting gifts. She does not want this world for New Home be-cause of the New People. I have managed to block her so far, but what if she were able to cry insanity?" A single beat of his wings brought him towering over Br'sei. "Would any of the People be willing to run from insanity toward insanity?" Now their muzzles touched and the ambassador's words sank deep into Br'sei's skin.

"How long does Home have left for us, Br'sei? Twenty years? Forty? How long will it take before a new world can support us in all our billions?"

"At least fifty years," admitted Br'sei.

"So, we have no time to waste in panic and argument."

"But-"

"But if the New People are insane, they must be treated as such."

D'seun let himself drift away. "If they are not, they must be treated as such. Right now, we know only three things- that they have no legitimate claim on this world, that we can-not decide on their sanity until we understand them better, and that we cannot waste time looking for yet another candidate world."

Br'sei's bones bunched together. He would have plummeted had not the warm plumes from the highland cradled him. "I am not so sure, Ambassador."

D'seun dipped his muzzle. "Of course not. These are not small thoughts.

This must all be digested and studied from all angles. But tell me this: you do truly agree that action without knowledge will lead to disaster?"

"It can," admitted Br'sei.

"And you do agree that we have no time to waste in the cre-ation of New Home?"Br'sei dipped his muzzle. "I have seen the cities rotting too, Ambassador. I heard your tale of Gaith. I am aware our time is short."

"Good." D'seun flew over him, letting his hands graze against Br'sei's crest. "Then give me this much. Do not panic Ambassador T'sha when she comes. Do not tell her how much we know." He turned on a wingtip. "And help me understand the New People. With knowledge, your doubts and mine will all be resolved. We will not be fumbling and flapping in our helplessness, as we must on Home, where the diseases and their progeny have flown too far ahead for us to ever under-stand, let alone overtake.

Here, we must always know how to proceed."

We must always know how to proceed. Br'sei let D'seun's words echo inside him. He wanted to believe that was possi-ble, but sometimes he doubted it. What he did know, however, was that D'seun had convinced himself of the Tightness of his words, and a mere engineer would not change Ambassador D'seun's mind.

Ambassador T'sha, however, might be able to, and if she couldn't change D'seun's mind, she might be able to sway the Law Meet, which even D'seun could not ignore.

But Br'sei would have to steer a careful path. If D'seun did not think Br'sei was convinced, the ambassador would find a way to have him removed from the team. That was very much D'seun's way.

"I shall work with you, Ambassador." Br'sei inflated himself until his size was equal with D'seun's. "Together we will see what we can find."

I do not, however, promise you will like what I will do with what we find.

It was not until they had returned to the base and dispersed to their separate tasks that Br'sei realized D'seun had never an-swered one question about the tools near the New People.

Chapter Five

A fresh United Nations flag dominated the rear wall of the pas-senger clearing area. Its sky blue background made a stark contrast to the soft, shifting reds and golds that the walls had been set for. Ben was glad to see, however, that Helen had drawn the line at welcoming banners.

Ben stood beside Helen and Michael. The assorted Veneran department heads ranged past them in a ragged line. Beyond the hatch, they could hear the soft whirs and bumps of the docking corridor extending and clamping itself to the newly ar-rived shuttle.

"Here they come," announced Tori from the control booth.

"The intercom better be off in the corridor," muttered Helen.

"Tori knows what she's doing," Michael assured her, somewhat absently.

Ben said nothing. He was too busy dealing with his own emotions.

Anger, irrational and completely out of proportion, seethed inside him. He feared that if he had to open his mouth, it would all come spilling out in an unstoppable red flood.

God, I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

The last time he'd seen the U.N. come into a colony, he'd been in a holding cell, watching lines of neatly dressed judges and bureaucrats arrive with their armed escorts. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all there to deal with the "criminals" who had "broken the rule of law in Bradbury." He remembered the fear he'd felt, wondering what would happen to them all now, and the deep shame at that fear.

None of the people standing next to him now knew about that cell or that he had ever lived on Bradbury at all. He'd man-aged to disconnect his records from that past and that person. But he could not disconnect his memories, even if there were times he wanted to.

Like now.

The hatch cranked itself open. Ben's stomach clenched itself involuntarily. Get over it! They're just tourists. They're going to be rumpled and gravity dizzy and slightly stupid, like any other crowd ofEarthlings.

Edmund Waicek, the man Ben considered to be the most dan-gerous member of the C.A.C., had cheerfully sent Venera's gov-erning board a list of their invaders. Ben had to admit, Helen had worked her end quite well.

It could have been a lot worse.

The first two down the ramp Ben recognized as Robert Stykos and Terry Wray, the media faces. Their job was to cre-ate the in-stream "news" presentations on the U.N. investiga-tion of the Discovery. Both had been restructured to look exactly average, only more beautiful. They might have been brother and sister, with their coffee-and-cream skin, big brown eyes, and shoulder-length black hair (hers pinned under a bronze scarf, his pulled back into a ponytail under a red beaded cap). But where Stykos was tall and broad, Wray was petite, almost elfin. Both wore glittering camera bands on their foreheads and command bracelets on their wrists.

"Mr. Stykos, Ms. Wray." Helen, in full public relations mode, stepped forward and shook their hands. "Welcome to Venera Base. I'm Dr. Helen Failia. Allow me to introduce my associate, Dr. Bennet Godwin, who is our head of personnel and chief volcanologist..."

So it began. Stykos and Wray both looked long and hard at him, making sure their cameras got a good image of him smil-ing and shaking their soft hands. Lindi Manzur, the architect, beamed up at him as if she'd never met anyone more fascinat-ing, except maybe Troy Peachman (was that a real name?), the comparative culturalist (whatever that was), at whom she kept glancing fondly as he followed her down the line, shaking everybody's hands with a kind of firm enthusiasm that came with practice.

What have you two been doing for the past week and a half? he wondered snidely.

After them came Julia Lott, the archeologist, a sturdy fireplug of a woman with a square face and tired eyes. She was fol-lowed by Isaac Walters who looked so uncomfortable that Ben had to wonder if he'd ever left Mother Earth before.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw Grace Meyer smile broadly and step forward from the line.Oh, right, this is the biologist, he thought as he passed Wal-ters down to Michael.

Next, a tall, pale woman in artistic black and white swept up the line.

Veronica Hatch, here to look at the laser and pro-nounce judgment. In contrast to Walters, she seemed ready to parachute down to the ground and start digging in.