"You could not . . . flog her yourself, gently?"

"f.a.n.n.y Mae says that wouldn't work. It has to be done with violence . . . and the intent to create intensity of anti-love . . . or it won't work."

"Oh. How odd. You know, McKie, I believe I could use some of your water, after all. It's the heat in here."

Any conversation is a unique jazz performance. Some are more pleasing to the ears, but that is not necessarily a measure of their importance.

-Laclac Commentary

There was a popping sound, a stopper being pulled from a bottle. Air pressure dropped slightly in the Beachball, and McKie experienced the panic notion that Abnethe had somehow opened them onto a vacuum which would rain away their air and kill them. The physicists said this couldn't be done, that the gas flow, impeded by the adjustment barrier within the jumpdoor, would block the opening with its own collision breakdown. McKie suspected they pretended to know about S'eye phenomena.

He missed the jumpdoor's vortal tube at first. Its plane was horizontal and directly above the Caleban's spoon bowl.

A Palenki arm and whip shot through the opening, delivered a lashing blow to the area occupied by the Caleban's unpresence. Green sparks showered the air.

Tuluk, bending over his instruments, muttered excitedly.

The Palenki arm drew back, hesitated.

"Again! Again!"

The voice through the jumpdoor was unmistakably that of Cheo.

The Palenki delivered another blow and another.

McKie lifted his raygen, dividing his attention between Tuluk and that punishing whip. Did Tuluk have his readings? No telling how much more of this the Caleban could survive.

Again the whip lashed. Green sparks glimmered and fell.

"Tuluk, do you have enough data?" McKie demanded.

Arm and whip jerked back through the jumpdoor.

A curious silence settled over the room.

"Tuluk?" McKie hissed.

"I believe I have it," Tuluk said. "It's a good recording. I will not vouch for comparison and identification, however."

McKie grew aware that the room was not really silent. The thrumming of Tuluk's instruments formed a background for a murmur of voices coming through the jumpdoor.

"Abnethe?" McKie called.

The opening tipped, gave him a three-quarter view of Abnethe's face. There was a purple bruise from her left temple down across her cheek. A silver noose held her throat, its end firmly in the grip of a PanSpechi hand.

Abnethe, McKie saw, was trying to control a rage which threatened to burst her veins. Her face was alternately pale and flushed. She held her mouth tight, lips in a thin line. Compressed violence radiated from every pore.

She saw McKie. "See what you've done?" she shrieked.

McKie pushed himself away from the wall, fascinated. He approached the jumpdoor. "What I did? That looks more like Cheo's handiwork."

"It's all your fault!"

"Oh? That was clever of me."

"I tried to be reasonable," she rasped. "I tried to help you, save you. But no! You treated me like a criminal. This is the thanks I got from you."

She gestured at the noose around her throat.

"WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?".

"Cheo!" McKie called. "What'd she do?"

Cheo's voice came from a point beyond the arm gripping the noose. "Tell him, Mliss."

Tuluk, who had been ignoring the exchange, busying himself with his instruments, turned to McKie. "Remarkable," he said. "Truly remarkable."

"Tell him!" Cheo roared as Abnethe held a stubborn silence.

Both Abnethe and Tuluk began talking at once. It came through to McKie as a mixed jumble of noises: "Youinterstellferederhydrowithgenlawnma.s.sfulexecufrom . . ."

"Shut up!" McKie shouted.

Abnethe jerked back, shocked to silence, but Tuluk went right on: ". . . and that makes it quite certain there's no mistaking the spectral absorption pattern. It's a star, all right. Nothing else would give us the same picture."

"But which star?" McKie asked.

"Ahhh, that is the question," Tuluk said.

Cheo pushed Abnethe aside, took her place in the jumpdoor. He glanced at Tuluk, at the instruments. "What's all this, McKie? Another way to interfere with our Palenkis? Or did you come back for a new game of ring-around-your-neck?"

"We've discovered something you might like to know," McKie said.

"What could you discover that would possibly interest me?"

"Tell him, Tuluk," McKie said.

"f.a.n.n.y Mae exists somehow in intimate a.s.sociation with a stellar ma.s.s," Tuluk said. "She may even be a stellar ma.s.s -- at least as far as our dimension is concerned."

"Not dimension," the Caleban said. "Wave."

Her voice barely reached McKie's awareness, but the words were accompanied by a rolling wave of misery that rocked him and set Tuluk to shuddering.

"Wha-wha-what w-w-was th-th-that?" Tuluk managed.

"Easy, easy," McKie cautioned. He saw that Cheo had not been touched by that wave of emotion. At least, the PanSpechi remained impa.s.sive.