EXCURSION FARE

Several curious events were in the news that year, but young Dag and Philippa had been too busy to notice. And right now they were overwhelmed beyond thought of all else.

They were dying, or about to die, all alone in the reaches of the north-cm Atlantic Ocean.

“Letting up,” Philippa gasped through crusted lips.

Feebly, she began to bail again. She was wedged into the rope-holds of the swamped, inflated raft that had been the passenger-pod of their balloon. In the gray-churned sea around her writhed bright tatters, all that was left of Sky-Walker.

They had been driven down into the ocean fifty screaming hours ago.

“No,” Dag croaked from the other end of the pod, his voice startlingly loud in the sudden quiet. The wind-shriek had dropped, and the hail of spume upon them was subsiding. “It’s only the eye. We’re in the eye. Look up.”

She looked and saw, above the great storm-walls curving away on either side, a strange gray-yellow patch of clear sky. It seemed to be evening, far away up there. But she could see, too, that the clear patch ended; dimly in the distance, the terrible storm-walls joined again. Beneath them would be raving, driving mountains of sea, air that was smashed and flying brine. The North side, too—worse even than what they’d miraculously lived through. Now the miracles were over.

“We can’t—possibly—”

“No. Oh, god, f—k it,” Dag groaned for the hundredth time. “This wasn’t supposed to be here. ‘Degenerated into a low’—aaagh!” He gave a bitter bark, and in the increasing calm, pried loose their last canteen and crawled over to her with it.

“Might as well finish this.”

As they drank, pale sunlight touched them. “Good-bye, sun,” Philippa whispered very low. They grasped each other in numb arms and kissed deeply.

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“I got you into this. I got you into this/* Dag said into her neck.

“It’s all right, darling.” Her lips were too cracked for her to speak clearly.

A big brownish flap of something dead slithered over the swamped side, washed away again. She shivered harder. “Do you think … I’d want you to be alone in this?”

There was clearly no hope, but he pulled away and crouched up to wrench loose and jettison the remains of the heater-struts that were weighing down one side of the raft. Their transceiver had doubtless long since ceased bleating out its SOS. He started to send it over too.

“No,” Philippa protested weakly.

He tried to grin at her—a salt-crusted, sodden, red-eyed specter—and let it be, even straining over to straighten the antenna and give the emergency generator a few more cranks. Then he collapsed down in the water before her, grasping her cold legs with water-wrinkled hands. She dropped her futile bailer and clumsily caressed his head and shoulders, pulling him up into her lap. The sun-gleam had gone; they were both shivering uncontrollably now.

Over his head she could see the oncoming wind-wall, the end of the eye: great yellow-black spume-walls, racing from right to left.

“Let’s … let’s hold together now.”

“No,” he said unclearly. “Better chance if we balance it.”

She nodded. They both knew there was no chance; he made no move to leave her. A burst of rain hissed onto them, mingled with a last light-ray. The roaring, howling mountains of death loomed louder, nearer. Already their raft was starting to move with it. As they waited for the end, Dag mumbled incomprehensibly: she caught the repeated word prove and held him tighter. He was affirming for the last time the deep dream, the drive that had powered their attempt: that lone human beings were still free to achieve high adventure, free to master fate, and defy the edicts of an overorganized world… .

Their pathetic little raft was already tossing in the first great chop before the roaring, racing mountains took them. Dag had forced himself away from Philippa when the raft was almost doubled end-over-end, but she had made her frozen fingers tie a rope from his waist to hers, and he had stretched his numb legs to clamp his feet around her ankles.

Darkness was all but on them now. The roaring grew. The tossing and spinning became more violent. Soon the first torrent of water broached

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over them. As they surfaced again, each struggled simultaneously to breathe and to see if the other lived.

Suddenly he heard her cry out so loudly that it pierced the storm. A terrible fear for her took him—and then he heard it too: through the howl and slamming came the pound of a powerful engine.

An instant later a blinding light poured on them through the spume, lost them, and came back from windward.

The two young people had only a momentary glimpse of something huge and white rising and falling alongside a few yards away, when a cable shot over their heads and their pod lurched, tilted, folded in on them and physically flew, struck something that might have been a plunging gunwale, and tumbled them out half smothered and drowned, onto a solid floor.

Quick hands cut them loose, a white-capped bronzed face with the name Charon in gold on the visor looked briefly down at them, then vanished. Great sobs were racking them both. They tried to say “thank you” through the spasms at half-seen grayish faces in the gray light as they felt themselves piled onto a bunk. Presently they realized the bunk was sodden, and more green water suddenly poured into what they saw was a cockpit.

The strange craft had seemed utter safety, steady as a rock, after the helpless raft, but they now could feel that she was pitching wildly. They were in fact far from safe yet; they were only in a lifeboat, with a hurricane still upon them. But they could feel no more fear, only trust in the tall white-clad man at the helm, and in his quick, silent crew.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” the tall man said now. “Give “em masks.”

Scubalike masks were pressed over their faces. Philippa’s head was gently pulled away from Dag’s neck. She offered no resistance, but only reached for Dag’s arm just as his hand found and gripped hers.

“Breathe. Breathe,” ordered an accented voice.

The mask-air was fresh and sweet. The last thing they remembered was a swiftly increasing motor-roar, and a heave as if the lifeboat were planing up on foils as she drove into the gray-lit gale.

They came to in the beds of a pleasant room; only a calm, almost imperceptible engine-throb, and the slight swaying of the sunlight on the window-curtains, told them they were still at sea.

Dag twisted and groggily scanned a discreet panel displaying dials, lights, an outlet marked Oxygen, and then located Philippa in the next bed. Her dark eyes were on him, glowing and merry with love.

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“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. Watch it, you’re hooked to a zillion IVs. The thing is—uh, oh!—” She retched noisily into a yellow basin she was holding.

“Are you okay? Hey, Phil!”

“The problem is,” she continued with great dignity as the spasm waned, “you have to throw up a lot of salt water. Your basin’s on the stand there. Maybe nausea won’t hit you.”

But it did; he grabbed his blue basin just in time, discovering in the process that his ribs on one side were bandaged and so was one knee.

When he could look up again, a red-haired nurse was in the room.

“You kids both with us again? I’m Anna Boyd.” She wasn’t pretty, but she had a great smile. She produced two shot-glasses full of green, syrupy-looking liquid.

“Drink this now, it’ll help.”

“Where are we? What day is this?” Dag asked.

“Tuesday. The rest later—here’s Dr. Halloway. Drink up.”

They drank, looking over the rims of their glasses at a middle-aged, slightly rotund man with sandy hair and very bright eyes. The name on his lab coat breast pocket said Charon. A little like a big chipmunk, Dag thought. But his eyelids were very heavy, and before Halloway could finish checking the knee-bandage, he was drifting off. He had just time to hear Philippa call sleepily to him, “We’re on a hospice ship.”

Halloway smiled and nodded. “That’s right.”

But his patients were already lost in sweet, dreamless sleep, their bodies busy repairing the endless days and sleepless nights of Sky-Walker’s end.

At one point during the night, Dag woke to dim lights and saw, or dreamed, a tall man in gold-braided whites standing by Philippa’s bed. This bothered him a little, until he saw that the man was looking, not at Philippa, but at something or someone beside him, by the foot of his own bed. A child? No—the presence moved away and became a blurred or veiled shape in a wheelchair. A vague sense of disquiet stirred in him, but then he remembered “hospice ship,” and the wheelchair seemed somehow appropriate. The presence said something very deep and blurry. But Dag couldn’t concentrate. Almost sure that this was all a dream, he let himself slip off the corner of consciousness, still grateful for their comfort and safety. Phil’s okay, was his last half-thought.

Next day was blurry too, and emotional. One moment they thrilled again to their finding by the great hospice ship’s lifeboat, and the next they collapsed into sadness and wept into their broth and custard at Sky-Walkers fate.

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“It was m-more than just an adventure,” Philippa repeated. “We wanted to p-prove, to prove what one person can, to show you still can, that we c-could—”

“We were … crazy,” Dag said in a bitter, flat voice. She’d never heard him so down. It roused her a little.

“That was a freak,” she said. “Anybody can be hit by a freak thing. It doesn’t mean …”

They were silent awhile, weighed down by reaction to the long nightmare.

Then Dag started to say something, but she got there first, in a tentative, little voice like a kid’s. “We could … do it again.”

He sat bolt upright, then painfully rose from his bed and moved over to hers.

“Do you mean that, Phil? Think. Would you really?”

She nodded hard, her lips set.

“We can. I mean, we will… . You can’t have two freaks.”

“You really would?” He reached for her, grunting with the pain of his rib. She nodded hard, hard.

“Even if we have three freaks. Dag, we’re going to.”

“Oh[ my god, my darling … it’ll be hard.”

“So it’s hard.”

He choked up again.

“We’ll call it the D-defiance.”

“Yick.”

“Okay, okay. The Horatio H. Fish-Flattener.”

They giggled through tears, holding each other, thinking of the long hard year ahead—years, maybe. Raising the money. The talk-talk-talk. But they would succeed. Somehow they would. They’d start right away, while some of the stuff they needed to work with was still around.

Then Dr. Halloway descended on them with two nurses and a battery of tests, chasing Dag back to his own bed in mock scandal. He seemed extra-cheerful, a happy chipmunk. Halfway through the second tissue sample it occurred to them why. Typically, Philippa said it. “We must be some of the first healthy patients you’ve had in a long while, Doctor.”

Halloway looked up, suddenly sobered. “That’s right. My lifework is spent with the dying.”

“People you can’t help.”

He grunted. “Well, I can help some. I don’t mean save them, I mean we’re learning a lot about how to make dying—also an important part of life—go better. For instance, we’ve come light-years beyond the old

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Brompton cocktail, though we still call it that. Here on the high seas— great old phrase, isn’t it?—we’re not subject to the stupid drug laws of any nation. We can experiment with whatever seems promising for the patient. Only prejudice on our parts makes this gloomy work, you know. One of the last taboos. Because doctors hate what they can’t fix. But I must say you certainly are a pair of splendid young specimens, especially after what you went through.” He patted a bandage on Philippa’s shoulder. “It does me good to see healing like that. One forgets.”

Dag squinted at him, wondering if maybe Halloway would like to find and extract some kind of magic health-juice out of them for his patients— real mad-doctor stuff. But he didn’t look crazy, just hard-working and pleased.

“When do we get up? It better be tomorrow or we’ll start to go sour on you.”

“Tomorrow you take a walk on the ward. With Miss Boyd.”

“I want to see the ocean,” Phil said.

“I’d think you’d have had enough of that. But okay. I guess I really have got into the habit of over-caution. I’ll tell Anna Boyd to take you out on deck. If the weather’s fine.”

“Overcaution,” Dag said sneakily, and Halloway laughed.

Next morning Anna Boyd brought them each a new blue hospital jump suit with Charon emblazoned in bright yellow on the breast pocket and presently led them through what seemed a mile’s maze of corridors. Pleasant carpets, paintings (“By patients,” she told them), doors ajar from which came normal-sounding voices and a laugh or two in the distance— nothing seemed like a hospital, except for the occasional IV stand or oxygen-breather outside a door and the number of nurses, male and fe-\ male, passing by.

Only twice did they pass doors from which came sounds they didn’t like. One was open; they edged gingerly past the rasping sobs and were startled to hear the weeping change to “Hello!” They looked in; a sobbing old woman in a dressing gown held the hand of an even older woman on the bed. She was sobbing too, but her free hand was waving to them. Nurse Boyd herded them to the doorway.

“H-hello,” Philippa essayed.

The old woman peered at them. “You’re not dying?” she asked hoarsely.

“No.”

“Not yet,” Dag added.

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“Good!” She blew her nose and said, “So young! But you will someday. When you do, I hope it’s as nice as this.”

Her companion had pulled herself together enough to nod and add, “That’s right,” through a teary smile.

They stared helplessly, noticing a male nurse standing in the shadow by the port.

“I mean it,” the older woman rasped. “Oh, we’re just crying because of —somebody we both knew. He didn’t have all this, you see. He . . ,” She choked up, forced a grotesque smile. “Sometimes it’s hard, remembering. But it’s better to let it out.”

“I see,” Philippa said gravely.

“Bye now, dears. Thanks for stopping.” Her companion lifted one age-warped hand in the ghost of a farewell wave. Her other hand clutched some knitting.

They went quickly on, into a sunlit lounge with someone’s easel in the corner.

“I think I know what she meant,” Philippa said in a low voice.

“Me too.” Dag’s tone echoed hers, and he took her hand and pressed it briefly. They needed no more words. They had in fact met each other in the visitors’ lounge of the hospital where her father and his grandmother were dying of cancer.

The experience had been almost more than they could bear. The once-loved people, now helpless bodies who waked from inadequate “sedation” only to scream in agony … the gray back wards, where the nurses came ever slower and less frequently, and the doctors scarcely at all … the insane laws denying certain drugs on the grounds of preserving the dying from addiction … and deeper yet, the unspoken fear for self—that this was how one would end.

And now they were on a hospice ship—on one of the controversial death cruises itself, where no one but the dying were allowed. Immoral swindle or genuine benefaction? Well, they would see.

“They tried to keep them secret at first, didn’t they?” Dag asked. “What was it—oh, yes, the La France, sixty thousand tons.”

“The S.S. Gabriel now,” said Anna Boyd.

“I guess it was very hard to get on then. They had quotas for rich people, and middle income, and charity. And no relatives.”

“They still do. There are a few relatives, though, for the very young and very, very old patients.”

They were passing a poster offering short shore trips at the upcoming

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ports of call. There was a photo of a green and white bus that looked familiar. Had they observed some of the “death trips” without knowing it?

“Hey, we’re going to North Africa,” Phil said.

“Yes, we’ve found people enjoy the tours—wherever the narcotics laws are, er, negotiable. The Sphinx is very popular, even with stretcher people.” Anna Boyd smiled warmly.

“What happens if someone dies?”

“We do the best we can to handle the situation tactfully. S.A. Hospice Ltd. is good at that. Now—there’s your sea!”

Strong glass doors opened onto a section of open deck that looked like a pleasant patio hung with live plants. Heavy storm shutters by the rail were folded back. It was a beautiful day.

They made for the rail and craned over, fascinated by the surge of water below along the great ship’s sides. By peering they could just see the gleaming bow-wave curling out, and sternward, the tremendous churn of her wake. Refreshed by the breeze and sunlight, reveling in the huge ship’s mastery of the element that had so nearly killed them, they didn’t notice that someone else had come out, until a horrid fit of coughing made them turn.

The man was obviously a patient, a small, bone-thin man whose jump suit hung slack over his collapsed chest, with sunken, haggard eyes above his handkerchief. The coughing ceased; he grinned almost frighteningly and tottered to a bench.

“Hi! You’re the kids who made the balloon trip, right?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. Crazy. I like it.” He turned away to complete another ghastly coughing fit. When it was over he gasped, “Told me—you were here. Sure am glad I met you.” His eyes were going from Dag to Phil and back, hungrily yet somehow happily. “Rosenthal’s the name, by the way. Not that it matters. Doc says I’ll probably die tomorrow or Saturday, but I sure don’t feel it. I used to be a CPA. Tell me, how was it? Was it worth it to you?”

“Oh, yes.”

They went on to tell him a bit about ballooning, the wonderful part before the storm, the silent flights over waving people they could call to, the birds that came with them. Unconsciously they swung into the back-and-forth duet they had used so often in interviews, while their eyes tried to grasp the reality of the macabre figure before them.

He seemed delighted by every aspect, from the charm and wonder of

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this old-new way of flight to the smallest detail of their precarious financing.

“So you’re going to try again, eh?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Good for you. Geez, am I glad I lasted long enough to meet you.”

A second, very small nurse had come out, carrying a nautical wooden tray of crystal wine-goblets. Anna Boyd, who had been listening from the rail, stepped forward.

“I feel pretty good, Shirl,” Rosenthal croaked at the tray-bearer.

“And that’s the way we want to keep you.” She handed him a goblet. “Down with it, Mr. R.”

“I was just kidding.” He drank it quickly. “Great stuff, but they sure could improve the flavor.”

“We’re working on it. I brought you something to help.” She set the tray down by Anna and produced a packet of Life Savers and something else which she slipped quickly into his breast pocket. It looked suspiciously like a cigarette.

“Ah, Shirl, you’re an ange. When I get up there, first thing I do is make sure you’re in the book.”

“And how do you know you’re going up there, Mr. R.?” Shirley asked mischievously.

“No doubt whatsoever. Can you think of any place they must need a CPA more?”

In the general laughter, Dag and Phil had been looking curiously at the beautifully set tray.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Shirley whirled and snatched it up again. “This you stay strictly away from, kids. The big no-no. Not even a lick at an empty glass. It’s a Brompton cocktail with a few improvements that have side effects. One taste and you’re up the wall for life.”

She grinned at Rosenthal, took his glass, and trotted back inside.

Anna Boyd stepped back to the rail. “Hi, look. Porpoises!”

Rosenthal got up to see too. Self-consciously giving him space, they leaned out to watch the sleek olive bodies playing in the bow-wave, apparently scornful of the mighty ship bearing on them.

“Ah, glorious!” Rosenthal tried to breathe deeply and was doubled over by coughing. Back on his bench, he grinned ruefully. “Funny. Maybe you kids can figure it out.”

“What?”

“All this.” Feebly, he waved one bony hand around at the charming patio, the great ship in general.

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“I can figure out ordinary costs. Top quality, every little thing. And the Charon used to be the United States, she’s a fuel hog. Plus—I was on three or four hospital boards before I got sick—I couldn’t begin to cost out this kind of care. And I know I paid full price—in fact I kicked in double, my heirs are richer than god and don’t give a damn. Even assuming twenty percent of the others did the same, it doesn’t begin to add up.”

Phil and Dag looked about speculatively, but their work with Sky-Walker offered no basis for any such extrapolations.

“Plus—” Rosenthal held up bony fingers to count. “This Society Anonymous Ltd. has the S.S. Mercury, that was the QEII the S.S. Gabriel, you know her; the Queen Mary that was once a museum is now under work as the S.S. Saint Martha; plus the old Michelangelo and the Da Vinci are in drydock for rebuilding. I think they have options on every damn thing afloat over thirty-five thousand tons. I know because I bumped into a couple of get-rich-quick medical outfits that want to jump in. This S.A. Hospice is not about to let that happen, no way. God knows, they may even raise the old Queen Elizabeth, she’s down off Singapore.”

He paused for a brief coughing bout.

“I tell you, it doesn’t begin to add up.”

The two young people could only frown thoughtfully.

“They must have an angel,” Philippa offered.

“Hey, that’s good.” Rosenthal grinned. “Don’t make me laugh, you trying to kill me?” He laughed anyway, and only coughed a little. “Well, just a thought to leave you with.”

“Time you two wunderkinden went home,” said Anna Boyd.

“Great meeting you, fantastic. And keep on flying, hear?”

“We will, Mr. R., and—”

Anna Boyd hustled them out before the farewells could become awkward.

As they walked back along the serene corridors, Philippa observed quietly, “Brave New World?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Remember the death ward—and roses and kids and candy, all sweety googoo. And some awful drug—I mean, weren’t they all spaced out?”

“Yes. To think the mother didn’t even know her son. Or didn’t care.”

“This place isn’t like that though. Those old ladies, they weren’t spacey, they were remembering. And Rosenthal was sharp.”

“And their feeling bad about whomever, that was rational. But it’s so hard to believe … Miss Boyd—”

“Anna, to you.”

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“Anna, is Mr. Rosenthal really going to die tomorrow?”

“He wasn’t supposed to last to yesterday, my dear. We don’t know what he’s breathing with.”

“Lung cancer, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and badly metastasized. The only thing we’ve noticed is that people who aren’t in pain, and have interests, sometimes seem to last just a little longer. Pain helps to kill, you know.”

“Lung cancer,” Dag said. “Look, I don’t mean to talk out of turn, but, well, you had to have seen it too. …”

Anna frowned, then suddenly understood. “Of course. Shirl’s cigarette. She slips him one every few days. Naturally Dr. Halloway okayed it first.”

“But—”

“But why not? If he can have some pleasure. Mostly he just carries the thing around and finally lights it and sniffs the smoke.”

“And coughs like mad?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I’m starting to understand it,” Dag said slowly. “Granted, these people really are all absolutely one hundred percent dying—they are, aren’t they, Anna? No maybes, no cures possible?”

“No maybes,” she told him. “There’s a screening board. The decision has to be unanimous. I think there was one long remission case on the first cruise—it was a four-year-old girl; kids are the hardest to judge. But she went, on the second trip, while they were still arguing. Those whom I feel sorry for are the ones the board turns down, wrongly.”

“Oh, my god, little kids,” Phil murmured.

“Okay,” Dag went on. “So they’re absolutely one hundred percent goners. So then the rule is that whatever makes a person feel good is okay. If it really makes him happy—I mean, as herself or himself. Whether he or she goes happy on Monday instead of being miserable or hurting to drag it out to Tuesday doesn’t count. Right?”

“That’s right, my dear.”

“Of course, it could be a problem,” Phil said thoughtfully, “if, for instance, a person is an alcoholic.”

“That’s right too—in theory. Luckily we don’t get alcoholics, so far. But even if we did—it’s strange, but in practice, things are often simpler. You can always think up a good theoretical dilemma; but what we actually have to deal with just about solves itself, with common sense… . And now we have arrived at the practical issue known as your bedroom, and I’ll bet somebody has trouble not going to sleep in his or her dessert.”

She would have lost her bet—the dessert was delicious—but not by

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much. The wisdom of their young bodies took over, and afternoon merged into all-night in a sweet, dreamless, drugless blur.

Early next morning they discovered that all their own clothes, plus what few possessions had been salvaged from Sky-Walkers pod, were neatly cleaned and stored in their closet. Even Philippa’s bright scarf was there.

“Hey, let’s get dressed! Then they’ll have to let us out.”

They were out of hospital garb and into their own in two minutes. Just as Philippa was cinching the belt that made her army fatigues a showcase for her tiny-waisted, healthy body, Dr. Halloway walked in.

“Well, well, well.” He looked them over, twinkly chipmunk. “And where do you two think you’re going?”

Dag stuttered for an instant, then inspiration struck. “Well, sir, we were going to ask you something. We met Mr. Rosenthal yesterday. Somehow he knew who we were, and he wanted to hear all about the balloon flight. He seemed to enjoy it too. So I thought I’d ask you if some other patients feel that way. If you like, we could stroll around the decks and chat with anyone who cares to. And of course it’d be better to do so in our own clothes. Or is that a no-good thought?”

“Far from it! In fact it’s a delightful meeting of the minds.” Halloway’s merry grin contained only the faintest, most benevolent suspicion that Dag had just made up the whole escape plan. “It’s amazing how word gets around this ship—I’ll never understand it. You two are the sensation of the cruise. Everybody wants to see you, and half of them want to ask questions. Just strolling around wouldn’t do at all. I’ve already talked to Captain Ulrik, and he’ll be delighted to hear you’re ready to give a little talk.”

“Oof,” said Philippa. “Some people are too smart.”

Halloway winked at her.

“But it’ll have to be done on a slightly more organized basis, to give the nonambulatories their chance. There’s a nice big enclosed patio back of the main swimming pool; and it’s obvious from your speed in getting dressed that you’re both up to standing on a bench for a few minutes. There’ll be a PA there too. Do you think you could be ready to give them a little story of your flight, and answer a few questions, by, say, four this afternoon?”

“Oh, Dag,” Phil said reproachfully. “I can’t, I just cannot.”

“Well, why not, Phil? We’ve done it a million times. All but the storm part. And you can do that, it’s fresh in our minds.”

“Fresh?! Oh, you—”

“Now, now, now,” chuckled Halloway. “Remember, my dears, this is

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one audience which”—his face sobered for a moment—“cannot take many postponements. Wouldn’t it be a shame if a person who is very interested and able to hear you today should be, shall we say, too sick tomorrow?”

“Oooh,” said Phil, and then muttered rebelliously, “That’s blackmail. But—okay”

“Good girl.” His twinkle was back. “Then I take it we’re all agreed. I’ll put the word out for four o’clock. But I’d like to collect you about three— there are a few very special people you should meet first. And now how about choosing a nice nourishing lunch?”

At three sharp Halloway and Anna Boyd ushered them out through still another corridor, which ended at the old main staircase, now largely converted to a wheelchair ramp. They seemed to be near the bottom; the hospital was evidently deep in the center of the Charon—for maximum stability, Dag guessed.

“Want the elevators?” Anna asked. “How’s that knee?”

“No, thanks—he needs the exercise,” Phil answered for him, a trifle tartly. She had not quite forgiven Dag for getting her into speechifying, which she loathed.

As they climbed up, they noticed that advantage had been taken of the high old ceilings to install a number of mezzanines. The first three landings featured a number of tastefully curtained-off chambers. Glimpses into some of those with drawn drapes revealed altars of various forms, the soft glow of candles. Chapels.

“We have provision here for nearly every faith,” Halloway told them. “I would have said every one, but last voyage we had a Bahai, and a member of an obscure Albigensian sect, which required some speedy new construction. I’ve suggested to Ulrik that we better be prepared for an altar to the Unknown God, as the old Romans were.”

“Or Goddess,” said Phil.

“You’d be surprised what we have in that line already. What’s the problem, Dag, knee acting up?”

It was, slightly, but Dag wasn’t in the mood to confess in front of Phil. Instead he pretended interest in the heavy seals on the entrance to the mezzanine they were passing.

“The oxygenation ward,” Anna Boyd told him. “We can do that another day; it only has two patients, both in rather bad shape now, and you have to wear special static-free clothing.”

“Is—Mr. Rosenthal there?” Phil asked as they climbed on, “or …”

“No, he’s still with us, believe it or not. We got him to carry a portable

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respirator, so he gets some oxy from time to time. He’ll be there, you’ll see!”

“Here are my first specials,” Halloway said, leading them off the stairs and down a hall furnished with oddly low benches.

The “specials” turned out to be children.

About twenty of them were in the lounge; they ranged from toddlers to a girl and two boys who might be fifteen. Scattered through the group were four adult women and a man, all in civilian dress—doubtless some of these few parents permitted aboard.

Not many of the kids showed any obvious signs of illness; they were reading or drawing, or listening on earphones; two were constructing a wooden village, and one fat child was industriously disassembling a digital clock. Indeed, had it not been for the occasional roll-bed or wheelchair, and a certain quiet aura of maturity, they could have been any randomly assorted group waiting, say, in a dentist’s office. Only the ravaged faces of the parents told another story.

Anna Boyd explained that Dag and Phil were the balloonists saved from the sea, and she introduced them around—so many Terrys, Kevins, Karens, and Jennys that Phil lost count. Dreadful to think that these ordinary names were soon to be inscribed on a stone headmarker or on the bronze plate of an urn.

“Phil and Dag are going to tell us all about their trip and the wreck in the big storm,” Anna said. “It’ll be in half an hour up by the pool. We can send some people to help you get there. Do any of you want to come?”

There was a chorus of assents, some very feeble. Philippa noticed that the plump little clock-dissector, whose name was Mike, only scowled.

A woman was sitting by a roll-bed containing one of the teenage boys. His assent had been soft-voiced, but his eyes were luminously eager. Now his mother spoke up.

“Dr. Halloway, I think this is most unwise. The exertional tire Terry much too much. He can’t possibly go.”

The boy on the bed turned a beseeching face toward her. “Mother! Can’t you understand? It doesn’t matter.” His voice, when he raised it, screeched and gurgled in his chest. “I’ll be dead soon, dead. Maybe next week. Then I’ll be getting all the rest there is. Meanwhile this is something I want to do. And it doesn’t matter if I’m tired, it doesn’t matter if I break both my legs. I can do anything I want to now, because soon I’ll be dead! Dead, deadr

“Ohhh—oh, no—my darling baby,” the mother wailed hysterically. “Don’t make jokes. Don’t even think it. It’s all a horrible mistake, you just

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need more rest and the right medicine. I’m going to take you off this dreadful boat. I won’t let you die—I won’t have it! You’re going to live, my dearest! Live!”

“Die!” he croaked, grinning horribly, his voice a deliberate mockery of hers. He panted for a moment and then said, in his former quiet tone, “Dr. Halloway, you’ll see I get there, won’t you?”

Halloway nodded. He was writing swiftly in a notebook he carried.

“Not to worry, Terry. You may find your mother resting when you get back.”

A smile of great sweetness lit Terry’s face, and he lay back, exhausted.

Meanwhile there had been some interactions between Nurse Boyd and other patients, which Dag and Phil had missed. Anna said something to Halloway, and he made another short note in his book.

As they turned to go, the fat little clock-disassembler, who had so far shown no interest, presented himself somberly in their path. Philippa smiled at him; she couldn’t tell whether his fat was normal or an outward sign of disease. He offered no response, but said to her in a surprisingly deep, loud, challenging voice: “I betcha don’t know the pithagean therein.”

Taken aback, Philippa replied, “Uh—do you mean the Pythagorean Theorem, Mike?”

“Betcha don’t know it.”

Phil glanced wildly at Dag, at Halloway and Anna. No help. “Well, if you do mean the Pythagorean Theorem, it’s—wait a minute—yes: It’s ‘The square of the hypotenuse of any right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.’ “

“All right,” the child said, still scowling. “I’ll come.”

“Glad to have you,” Dag said somewhat acidly. But the boy, who might have been around six or eight, had stumped back to his clock.

“That Mike,” Anna half sighed, half grinned as they left the children’s lounge. “You wouldn’t believe it—I’ll miss him… . Oh, wait; you go on ahead. They weren’t all there. I better check on Tammy and Jane. Tammy’s father may be acting up again.”

They went on to the last of the “special” people, who turned out to be eight very, very aged and frail people in roll-beds. All but one were women. And beside each bed sat another of the relatives, in civilian clothing, and all extremely old themselves. Quite probably daughters—or in a few cases a son. Again it was the same scene: the grief-ravaged faces of the relatives— the first such faces Dag and Phil had seen on Charon, they realized— contrasting with the serenity or even gentle cheerfulness of the patients’.

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Dr. Halloway introduced them around, his voice loud. “These are our near-centenarians,” he told Phil and Dag. “Or wait, you’re a real centenarian, aren’t you, Mrs. Tombee?”

“I am,” stated the old lady firmly. She appeared to be part black. “I made it. Last July.”

“And have any of you heard of this young pair of balloon flyers we saved from the sea? They’re going to be telling their story upstairs in a few minutes. If any of you feel like coming, we’ll bring you up, or if any of your children here would like to go, I’ll send someone in to take their places.”

There was a general chorus of negatives from the “children.”

“Oh, yes.” Another old lady spoke up feebly. “Lucy tells us all about it. Come over here, girl, so I can see you. And you too, boy.”

Phil and Dag moved from bed to bed, turning around self-consciously, and once or twice even bending over to be felt by shaking, gnarled old fingers.

“I’m glad I saw them,” the lone old man said huskily. “But going upstairs—I don’t think so. Can’t see much, probably couldn’t hear, might fall asleep.”

This provoked a trembling flurry of laughter from the other patients.

“Tell you what,” Halloway more or less shouted. “We’re going to make a tape—a tape recording—of the whole thing. Now you’ve seen them. Any of you who want to can play over the tape with your earphones any time.”

“That’d be just fine,” a third old lady wheezed. “We’ll probably never do it, but we’ll always think we could. Good-bye, young people. Be careful.”

This sentiment was generally echoed by those who had followed it, except for another aged patient who hadn’t spoken before. “I want to go upstairs and hear it,” she declared in a surprisingly firm voice.

There followed another version of the scene with Terry and his mother; this time it was her old daughter, at least eighty herself, tearfully, angrily, repeating, “It’ll tire mother so!”

But the outcome was different. The aged patient gave in. “If I go up there, Effie’ll have to come,” she said crossly. “And she’ll get exhausted and probably make a scene. And I’ll have to leave halfway. You be sure and send that tape, won’t you, Doctor H.?”

“I will,” he promised her. “And maybe we can have a little chat about things.”

“I’d be grateful,” Effie’s mother said and lay back, worn out, while her daughter fussed at her.

“One of our real dilemmas,” Halloway told the young people as they

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returned to the stairs. “I’m not a man who often dreams of arranging fatal accidents, but—Ah, Anna, what news of Tammy and Jane?”

“Jane just wants to go on reading, but Tammy’s got the problem with her father. You’ll have to send Flink and his boys in there too.”

Halloway made another notation as they climbed the last flight. “You carry on, Anna; I’ll be along. Oh, you kids, that reminds me. I don’t want you to get a shock. You know they fished up strips of your gas bag or whatever along with you. Well, you may see your raft, or maybe some hunk of Sky-Walker with the name, by the bench where you’ll be talking. That bother you?”

Dag and Phil glanced at each other.

“Thanks for warning us,” Phil said quietly.

Halloway took himself off, and Anna led them along immaculate sunlit decks to a large glassed-in solarium by the aft-pool. Inside was warm and light, and so jammed with arriving patients and their attendants and equipment—some had roll-beds, IVs, and oxygen tanks—that no individuals stood out.

They were grateful for Halloway’s warning when they saw the huge red and yellow name-sheet of Sky-Walker hung above a large low bench at the center of one side.

“Hop on up,” said Anna. They did so, and presently from nowhere a grayish arm stretched up through the throng bearing two hand-held mikes.

“You … cahn using these?”

“Oh, yes!”

The sight and accent of the little crewman brought back to Philippa in vivid detail their rescue amid the terrors of the great storm. She found it no longer threatened her badly, so perhaps she could deliver a good talk after all. Much as she hated speaking, it was her belief that audiences deserved the best she could do.

Dag led off with his usual fine balloon-enthusiast speech, spiced with his unquenchable zest and vision—and throwing in as many interesting figures and ratios as he could recall for little Mike’s sake—-while she faced and organized her memories: the hours of limping just above the wave-crests, throwing everything overboard—the fantastic updraft that carried them almost to the stratosphere and threatened to freeze or strangle them in vacuum even as it saved them—only to be followed by the more terrible smash-down finally, all the way into wild water, the butane heater drowned, the bell of Sky-Walker collapsing over them so they had to cut free for air—and then the four—four!—dreadful days and worse nights of sheer survival in the foundering raft; the last pause in the storm’s eye, and

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then what would have been the end had it not been for the miracle of the hospice ship’s lifeboat.

Apparently she did it well—she ended to clapping, cheers, pounding of canes.

In the after-chat, Dag added, “That transmitter must have kept functioning to the very end. When I get back I’m going to kiss the guy who made it.”

“Let her kiss him!” An old voice cackled—-and Phil was able to spot and wave at Rosenthal, now crumpled in a wheelchair and feebly waving back through his coughs.

Dag’s eye had been caught by two figures quietly leaving through a side-door at the back—a tall, erect figure in whites, accompanied by someone veiled, in a motorized chair. He nudged Phil. “Captain Ulrik came to hear us.”

“Who was that in the wheelchair with the captain?” he asked Anna on their way back, after over an hour of questions had finally emptied the solarium.

“Oh, some big shot on the permanent staff—Dr. T., we call him. Head of Multidisciplinary Research. Nothing to do with actual medical practice, like Halloway. The Big Think. He’s the one we could get the use of a nuclear reactor from, or a super-computer if we needed it. Outside research projects come in through him, I believe. … He was in some bad accident, even his face is all messed up, poor man. He’s always wearing those cover-ups the few times I’ve seen him. I imagine he finds the privacy of ship life more peaceful … Well, that was quite a show, kids. I think a good early supper and some beddy-bye are the prescription. Get those combat clothes off and have a tray in bed. How about it?”

They couldn’t have agreed more.

When Halloway came in to congratulate them, Phil was drowsing over her pecan pie. Halloway seemed enthusiastic over the effect of the speech on his special people. “And the tape is good, “he told them. “You really get beautiful technical work here. Old Mrs. Brattle, the one who wanted to go, has listened to your part three times, Phil—hey, Miss Philippa, open those eyes a minute—and Mrs. Tombee is running hers.”

“How about the kids? That little fat boy?”

“Great. Mike announced he is going to design an improved balloon. You know”~Halloway was abruptly serious—“I think we have a real loss coming there. He’s only five, you know. Late five. He’ll die too young for any serious work he might have done.”

“Five!”

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“Yeah. We had to give him the College SAT math section to get a score.” Halloway sighed. “Speaking of losses, I don’t know how this’ll hit you, but you have to get used to remembering where you are. Terry—the boy with the mother, remember?—he died about an hour after he got back on the ward.”

“He died? Oh—but did we—did we—?”

“Did you kill him? Of course not. His disease killed him—helped along by his mother. Almost his last words were, Tm so glad I heard them/ See? We always get a few people who go after any excitement. Often the more pleasant the event, the higher the after-rate. Terry was just one of four so far tonight … it’s as if an unpleasant thing—like, say, the time a dead patient’s mother got away and went berserk, dashing all over the wards, making scenes—it was exciting enough but it didn’t satisfy people as a last experience. They seemed determined to outlast it. And then something nice gives them just the right feeling or memory; they feel they can let

go”

Dag and Phil stared at him; this was something to absorb.

“Four people have died—”

“But we—”

“Not to fret.” Halloway stood up and his voice took on a good-doctor authority they hadn’t heard before. This was a new aspect of him: The friendly-chipmunk disguise dropped for a moment, revealing the strength at the core. “We all have to grow up, you know. The child refers everything to itself as cause… . And”—his tone softened—“I think it will make you feel better to know that the highest death-rates we have come after a really first-rate serious musical evening. You’re nowhere near that!. … Good night, now.”

They didn’t talk it over much; Halloway had said it all. Serious, but in no way depressed, they sank into another night of marvelous sleep.

Sometime after midnight Philippa roused to use their bathroom. Automatically putting on her robe, she felt unusually alert—perhaps they really were getting “slept out.”

In this she was not alone.

When she returned, Dag was in her bed, two muscular arms reaching for her. She melted toward him, and then an impulse of mischief rose in her. She laughed and bolted over behind his bed, which was near the door. He leaped after her onto that bed, erect and wild-looking in his inadequate hospital gown. Oh, god, she loved him!

But mischief still held her, and since she still wore her robe, she ran out

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into the corridor, expecting him to delay for his robe to give her time to hide. Instead he came bounding straight out after her into the empty corridor, making a horrible face as he lunged to grasp her.

“Rapist!” she called out, loving him in every fiber. But youth and some archaic zest of the chase carried her fleetly down the silent halls. If he didn’t care, she didn’t either; she tucked up her robe like Atalanta and flew giggling up a small ramp-way, pursued by her laughing and swearing naked incarnation of the male. Clearly, when he caught her there would be no return to their room—so, womanlike, as she sped she kept an eye out for a clean stretch of carpet, and at least a corner that would afford minimal privacy.

Up and up—he was gaining fast, and her own desire was gaining faster —the carpet was deep and unused-seeming here, and the next landing was a corner! She saw a shallow niche in the wall just as she came to it_7 stopped dead, and pressed herself into it, eyes shining, one hand to her mouth to stop her laughter, should he pound on past.

He rushed up the last bend after her, so aflame with love that to her eyes the absurd gown was the tunic of a running god. Oh! He was here, upon her—passing! She could all but feel his breath as she backed hard into the niche.

Just as he went by he saw her, whirled, and reached with a soft triumphant laugh. She pressed back to fling herself bodily at him.

—And the niche behind her gave way.

She half fell, half staggered backward, into what she assumed was a broom-closet, or something of the sort, and was amazed to find herself in a very large, palely lit space before a great translucent wall with double doors in it. The oxygen ward, was her first thought. But the air here was half gagging her—it was quite abnormal

Then she found that the niche door had closed behind her. The whole wall containing it was curtained, or upholstered in some way. There was a set of large official-looking double doors much farther along in the wall, but that way would take her farther from Dag. She wanted the little secret service door. But her half-fall and spin had disoriented her, and she couldn’t make out any edge outlines. She began to feel about and push frantically.

Just as panic started, she realized that Dag must of course be frantically searching for her on the other side—it was only a question of moments and he would find his way in too. She should warn him not to let the niche door close.

Meanwhile her sexual glow had receded a bit under the impact of

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strangeness, and curiosity—one of her dominant traits—was taking over. So she turned with her back to the wall and looked about.

Not ten feet from her stood a rolling bed, completely canopied in translucent greenish netting or plastic. Behind the curtains she could see a small dark figure—why, it was a black child, sitting up cross-legged and staring at her with white-rimmed eyes!

Evidently it was waiting to be rolled into the big closed ward. Perhaps she had frightened it terribly when she crashed through the wall?

She smiled. “I’m sorry. I just fell in. It’s all right.”

The child’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Instead she saw what seemed to be its arm, making a beckoning gesture at her.

Momentarily forgetting about Dag, she approached the canopied bed. The curtains were quite opaque, when light was not behind them. Was this some particularly difficult breathing problem? She raised a hand and waved hello to the child.

It continued to beckon. When she did not respond further, it reached up and parted the curtains beside it a crack, and she bent and looked in, smiling.

As she did so, she heard the sound of the niche door opening behind her and called out, “Don’t let it close.”

But her warning ended almost in a squeak—her eyes had taken in the creature sitting under the canopy, and her world was turning upside down. At first she thought the child was hideously deformed—so deformed as to be beyond even the most dreadful of side show freaks. Everted organs, extra limbs—she could scarcely bear to look. But it’s bright eyes held her, and then she felt its touch—her hand, too, had been at the curtain-slit, and the child had grasped her wrist.

Had its grasp been rough or greedy, she would have jerked loose and run to Dag. But its touch was very gentle, delicate, and fragile-feeling.

Meanwhile her eyes and brain were busy, were bringing her one overwhelming, convincing message: this was no deformed human child, if indeed it was a child at all. Nor was it any earthly animal. Her breath choking in her throat, trembling from head to foot, she understood.

The creature before her, actually grasping her hand, was an intelligent being of no race that ever walked on Earth. An alien, an extraterrestrial. At her first full sight of it, the antique phrase “an imp of Hell” had flashed through her mind; and she almost screamed out. But that feather-light touch seemed to quench terror. Instead she simply looked.

The creature was not human “black,” but deep blood-crimson, with bright vermilion spots, and accessory organs that pulsed. Its nose was an

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intricate red vertical slit; the mouth was sharply triangular, with an extraordinary number of tiny sharp bluish teeth; there was no chin or lower jaw. But the eyes! They were very large, and what she had taken for white rings extended threadlike into the pupils, which were great star-shaped black abysses, surrounded with flecked jewels of many colors. Beautiful …

In the short time she had to look, she was never sure how many limbs it had, save that there were far too many, of different lengths. Afterward she recalled one prehensile member that might have been a foot, holding a pen.

Meanwhile the creature was examining her wrist and hand with great but gentle thoroughness. It turned her hand, flexed and wiggled her wrist, fingers, and thumb, stopping at the slightest resistance: it put its eyes close to skin, nails, and palm-lines, smelled carefully between the fingers, even nibbled with exquisite delicacy at the forearm skin. Between its teeth something very hot—perhaps a tongue—touched her. It seemed prepared to continue up to her elbow and beyond.

At some point during the reeling and reshaping of her world, she realized Dag had come behind her. He bent to look in. As he did so, she heard his breathing change. As he went through the realizations she had endured, she could feel emotions jolting him. Almost at once he grasped her arm to pull her away.

“N-no,” she whispered. “It’s gentle. Listen—go look inside those big glass doors. I don’t think it’s any oxygen ward, I think I see … more …” A belated shred of common sense came to her. “Just take a peek. I bet we’re not supposed to be here.”

He walked over to the translucent wall, behind which moving shapes could be glimpsed as they momentarily came near the glass, and cautiously opened one door a crack. Instantly he began to cough. But still he stared in.

“Oh, my god—” she heard him explode.

“What?”

“Different—they’re all different—”

A growing murmur of strange sounds began coming from beyond the open door.

“I want to see.” She spoke directly to the creature who held her arm, pulling gently back. “Will you please let me go now?” It stared. “You have beautiful eyes,” she said. “But please, may I go?” She tugged again, a little harder.

What the response would have been she never knew.

A squad of ten short, grayish crew members materialized through the

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“official” doors and surrounded them. “No-o, no-o,” one said to Dag, pulling him from the glass doors. It was the only sound any of them made. Her arm was abruptly drawn from the red-imp’s grasp—it made no protest —and its curtains were firmly closed. In instants they found themselves being marched up a curving ramp. No doors opened off it. Six led with Dag; four followed with Philippa.

Dag had made one or two attempts to struggle—he said afterward it was like fighting with an oversized granite bowling ball—and Phil tried to pull away from the hands on her arms. But their grip, though not tight or painful, felt like stone bracelets too.

Up and up they went, Dag becoming increasingly discomforted by his nudity.

“Listen, can’t you fellows lend me some pants? Or even a towel or a rug?”

No response whatever.

“I think they’re aliens too,” Phil called to him. “Our clothing customs probably don’t mean a thing.”

“Yeah, but I have a feeling we’re about to meet some humans,” he called back. “Can you spare that robe?”

“I think you’ve just broken the chivalry record,” Phil told him. “If they give us a chance, you can tie that gown thing around your middle. And if I can, I’ll give you the one I have under my robe and we can build you sort of a dhoti.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I forgot you don’t have a real nightie under that, and I feel pretty weird. We’re going to get some kind of chewing-out—it’s a hell of a note to take with no pants.”

“Just tell yourself you’re Socrates or Alexander the Great—you’d be well-dressed.”

“Hey, you realize we’re way above deck level? I think we’re being taken to the bridge. Oh, god.”

“But we didn’t do anything or hurt anybody. And we’ll keep what we’ve seen a secret if they want.”

“I have this feeling that they want just that, all right. We may get dumped in solitary, and disembarked in Macao… . Hey, I can see the top of the ramp around the next bend.”

But at that moment they were turned aside and marched into a long, narrow, quiet, dim room, one seemingly just under the bridge. It was divided into two halves by a boxy enclosure which might have been a stairwell to the bridge. The end they were in was bare, save for a few unused-looking chairs and a table, but they could glimpse what looked like 150 BYTE BEAUTIFUL

a highly functional office at the other end. It was empty of any other people. Two of their captors stationed themselves on each side of the central structure to block access to the office part. The rest left, as ever, in silence.

The tall, bronzed man whom they had first met in the lifeboat—whom they knew now as First Mate Ted Brandt—came in from the ramp.

“Well, youngsters, you’ve certainly bought yourselves a mess of trouble. Captain Ulrik and the professor will be along soon.”

His voice was hearty, but indefinably lacking in some normal human resonance; it sounded in some way dead. They had both noticed this before, but put it down to the press of work and fatigue. Now they were not so sure, and it made them uneasy.

But Dag had a more urgent matter on his mind. “For god’s sake, Officer Brandt, can somebody lend me some pants before the party?”

Brandt snorted, seemingly having just noted Dag’s state. He said something very fast in a strange tongue to one of the guards, and the man trotted out the ramp door. Meanwhile Philippa was protesting to Brandt.

“I don’t understand, sir. We didn’t do anything at all—we only looked. I know we didn’t hurt anybody. That—that person wanted to touch me. The only thing I can think of is that our breath or something spoiled the air—is that it?

“No,” Brandt said. His face was flushing; his voice mocked hers savagely. “You didn’t ‘hurt anybody’ … you ‘only looked.’ “

“And of course we won’t say anything about their being there or anything they don’t want us to. We really can keep secrets. I mean, important ones.”

Brandt stared at her in explosive silence, his face changing complexly, as if something chronic had begun to hurt him deep inside.

“Oh, you’ll keep their secrets, all right.” He shook his head in mock wonder. “Babies! Oh, god, goddamn babies I fish for now! Listen—”

He was interrupted by the return of the guard, bearing, to Dag’s disappointment, another hospital robe like Philippa’s. But he put it on and at once felt better and more assertive.

“Officer Brandt, sir, I don’t know exactly what you’re saying or what we’re into here. But there are a few laws, and plenty of people know we exist.”

“Oh, yes. Human laws.” He took a deep breath. “Now listen, kids, and listen good. In a couple of minutes the Captain and—another person are going to be talking to you. Catch every word they say and believe even word they say. It won’t be repeated. Don’t argue. Don’t protest. You have

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some growing up to do, very, very fast. Start by understanding that our total human concepts of right and wrong, or what’s important, don’t apply here—any more than do a goldfish’s. And that you’re being talked to by a person who can eliminate this planet, or our entire solar system, and regard it at worst as a budgetary nuisance. There’s only one thing that applies here, and that’s whatever that person happens to want. As for your yatter about keeping secrets, he’s not about to endanger one iota of one project by putting it in the power of any person—any person whatsoever—to mess up. Now, lesson one. You tell me: What kind of people are absolutely guaranteed-certain to keep a secret?”

There was a moment’s pause.

“D-dead people,” Dag said.

“I see at least one of you is getting the idea. You can also add in people with their brains cut out. Living vegetables.”

“But that’s like the Mafia!” Philippa protested.

“Little girl, compared with these jokers, the Mafia is a bunch of nursery delinquents. They could pick the Mafia up like a chicken and wring its neck tomorrow if they wanted. Unfortunately, they don’t want. But that’s not a bad place to start your thinking, baby.”

“Wait one minute,” Dag said. “You’re alive, and I don’t think your brain’s been cut out. Are you telling us this bunch of aliens is taking over the world—and you’re helping them?”

Brandt’s face was now very sweaty, but it had lost its flush and was becoming clay-covered. He took out a bandanna.

“Take over the world? They couldn’t care less… .” He mopped his face. “This is … hard for me to talk about, even when it’s okay… . No. Just the opposite. They don’t want to change anything. We just go right on, like always. Except there’re a few things we can’t do, like start a nuclear war. Or invent an FTL drive, maybe… .”

He mopped his pale face again, looked at his watch.

“Then what are they doing that’s so secret they kill people?” Philippa asked.

Brandt drew a couple of painful breaths, and they could see the sweat spring out on his lips again. “Studying … just studying us. You ran into the students’ floor, that’s all.”

“Then what’s the big secret?”

“Use—use your heads. … I can’t talk anymore. They’ll be here in a minute or so … use the time to grow up all you can.”

He half sat on a corner of the table as if recovering from an ordeal

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“One thing,” Dag said. “Is the other person, the professor—is he that person in the wheelchair, all covered up?”

Brandt nodded tiredly.

Phil and Dag had drawn very close together during Brandt’s speech.

“Remember, Phil,” he said to her in their “special” voice. “We made it through the storm. This is just a different storm. Can you keep your cool and watch for every wave or break, like we did then?”

She nodded silently, Yes; her eyes large and grave.

“Time’s up, kids.” Brandt went to the central enclosure and opened it, revealing indeed a stairway. White-clad legs could be seen descending.

The two young people instinctively straightened their shoulders and stood side by side as Captain Ulrik entered the room. Quietly Dag’s hand found hers and gripped it.

“Professor Tasso’s on his way, sir,” Brandt said.

The captain nodded and took up a position facing the ramp door.

“I’ve had a little talk with them, sir. They’re of course very sorry, but I explained that’s beside the point.”

Ulrik glanced over at the pair, lips tight. “Good. I hope we need waste no time on emotional irrelevancies. Your apologies are registered. It remains for Professor Tasso to determine what he wishes done. I hope it has been explained to you that he’s not kindly, nor is he cruel. In past instances, he has been as decent as he could be in human terms, given his priorities. His priorities and interests are simply not ours. And they are totally paramount.”

“Captain Ulrik, sir,” Philippa said shyly, “may we ask, are you human? I mean, not an alien too?”

The captain smiled frostily. “Why, yes, I am, little miss. But that won’t help you.”

“Oh, I realize that, sir. I was just curious… . And of course if you are, I wonder why, I mean, why you’d do all this for them.”

He stared at her, and they glimpsed in his eyes a fanatic gleam, like a distant light across the waves of night.

“I have no family… .” he said slowly. “And I doubt if you can understand this, missy. There are men who would sail a load of devils to Hell for the permanent command of a ship like this … and I’m one of them.”

“I think I do see, sir.” Her voice was soft. “It’s like Sky-Walker was to us.” Dag covertly squeezed her hand. The captain’s posture had relaxed ever so slightly. Dag decided against a question he was going to ask.

A brief moment of silence—and then one of the guards jumped to the

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big ramp doors and opened them wide. The large canopied wheelchair rolled into the room.

“Professor Tasso,” Officer Brandt announced formally.

Even at close quarters, little of the alien could be made out behind the greenish translucent canopy, save that he seemed to be very tall and of superficially human form. The veiling material was a little thinner or clearer over the face region, revealing occasional glimpses of light, inhumanly long eyes, but no suggestion of nose. In the silence, a tank fastened beneath the chair seat hissed very faintly; there was a not-unpleasant chemical odor in the room.

The frighteningly long eyes had completed a brief inspection of Dag and Philippa. “Well, Ulrik,” a cool inorganic voice said from somewhere near the wheelchair arm, “your impulsive act … has caused … trouble. You should have consulted … with me … first/*

The voice was accentless, with odd pauses. Dag decided it was some kind of super-voder. He wished he could hear the alien’s own voice.

“In this particular case, Professor Tasso, it would have made no difference/’ The captain spoke at normal speed, in his natural tone. “Their SOS —the emergency signal—was widely received. We were in a thickly traveled sea-lane, and the Charon was known to be the closest ship. Had I failed to respond, it would have attracted great unfavorable attention, possibly an investigation. It is an inviolable law of the sea to respond to such an SOS, and, for your information, one which I personally will not violate as long as I remain in command of this vessel.”

“Perhaps … I should know more of these laws of your . . sea before I receive … any more surprises.”

It might have been only the voder, but there seemed to be a very faint donnish or academic humor to the alien’s remark. The exchange did not seem to be really hostile. Dag and Philippa felt a faint revival of hope.

The next words dashed it.

“Now as to what is to … be done with … you. I can offer … you two choices. You may elect to die … as soon as you choose, but certainly before we reach the next port. When, Ulrik?”

“Next Friday. Eight days.”

“And there … would be no difficulty, Mr. Brandt?”

“No, sir. Like the Doven case. A fatal accident.”

“I would dislike too many fatal accidents on my ship,” Ulrik put in. “Instead I suggest an apparent suicide. Motive, despondency over failure of their ambitious flight, and no finances or some other impediment to

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repeating the attempt. This would also be acceptable to human public opinion, of which they have attracted a great deal.”

“Approved,” said the voder voice. “Perhaps I should assure you two that your … actual—as opposed to reported—deaths would be—is humane your somewhat … curious term?”

Dag and Philippa were forcing themselves to remain unemotional, composed. In this they were aided by the growing conviction that they were in a nightmare from which they must soon awaken. In this state they were able to notice again the flavor of the academic in the aliens words. Philippa in particular was reminded of a professor she had long suffered with. Dag was reminded of another aspect of bureaucracy, and recalled that this creature was in charge of what must be a fairly major and expensive research project.

But could an alien—an alien—be compared with and treated like a human type? Each, in frightened silence, summoned courage to try the only clue each had.

Meanwhile the passionless voice was outlining their second choice. To be released freely, but only after a brain operation which would extirpate all memory of the aliens aboard.

“Officer Brandt mentioned this alternative, sir,” Philippa said. “It appeared to us that an operation which would surely remove all traces of our memories would be so extensive that we would be in pretty bad shape afterward. Not ourselves. Is that correct?”

“There does appear to be considerable … deficit,” the alien voice replied. “Four such operations have been done by one of our people—Dr. Halloway is not involved with us—and while all the patients lived, only the third appears to have been very successful. In this case … the individual achieved independent life in some form of … motor maintenance work, I believe. He had been previously occupied in … some aspect of your … music. The problem is that your brains, like some of ours … display considerable redundancy, so that extensive … separate incisions are required… . But doubtless I go beyond the limits of your understanding.”

“On the contrary, sir,” Philippa said bravely. “I have received some training in neurology while in school, and I understand exactly what you mean by brain redundancy. From the scientific viewpoint—the human scientific viewpoint, of course—it’s a great pity that your student’s actual experimental work could not be published. It would have created intense human attention and settled many theoretical arguments. Or started new ones,” she added daringly.

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From the canopied figure itself came a totally new sound—a sort of rhythmic squeak. Could it be laughter?

“Very good/’ said the voder. “Captain Ulrik, am I correct that this one of the pair is a young … egg-bearer, ah, female?”

“You’re very expert, sir,” Dag interjected, equally daring. “Many humans find it difficult to distinguish us without more clothing cues.”

Again a brief, strange bell-note from within the canopy. But the metallic voder voice continued unchanged. “I had not been informed that your young, and females in particular … were intelligent enough to hold converse.”

“Sir.” Dag dared the ultimate—what was to lose? “If I may deduce that your human contact have been limited to humans like Captain Ulrik and Officer Brandt, that is, to mature males of highly specialized but very narrow interests, there may be much—uh—behavioral information about humans which has not been available to you.”

“Possible,” said the voder. “Um. Ahem. But now remains your choice.”

“Sir, in order for us to choose more promptly, may I ask one more question? I can guess the demands on your time, and I hope I am not asking too much.”

“Is it … relevant—and not too long?”

“Sir, we have already caused trouble, and we want to make amends by cooperating and being rational and helpful in every possible way. But we humans have a peculiarity—maybe a primitive weakness—and we find it almost impossible to function, to make decisions and do as we’re told, unless we have at least a rough idea of the most important facts around us. You and your research group are the overwhelming mystery in our situation. Now, without some understanding of the simplest facts, we will deteriorate so quickly that it really would be a time-saver and a help to those who have to deal with us if you could spare a moment now. Because only you can do it.”

“That seems rational—and you are not the only race with this need. What are your main unknowns?”

“Well, if we could have merely the barest outline of what you intend to do to our world, we could die or undergo surgery quite calmly. For example, we gather that you wish your presence here kept secret. Is this because you plan a massive change in our world, or, conversely, because you wish to observe us unchanged, and knowledge of your presence here would certainly alter our behavior? We see also that this is a very large, beautifully run, innovative project. Is it so large that all hospice ships carry your study teams?”

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“And why our world?” Philippa put in. “You know countless other worlds, while we know only ours. So we’re painfully confused: what could there possibly be about us worth your while to study? It must be just that we’re so ordinary, a super-average. Or is there some unique thing here?”

“That too is rational, given your premises.” The being paused and made an obscure movement beneath the canopy, then spoke rapidly over his shoulder to a guard, who left the room at once.

Meanwhile Dag and Philippa exchanged glances. Phil knew Dag’s blood was running as icy as hers; he knew that the same knife twisting in his vitals was agonizing her. But he was proud of her. “Grow up,” Brandt had ordered. Well, they had grown. From free human beings they had “grown up” to helpless captives, “specimens” of a world that itself had changed from being unique and free and its own master to being merely one of many planets dominated by alien powers. From life they had “grown up” to accept their own on-rushing deaths, for each knew that the other would never endure becoming a brain-cut zombie.

And they had grown even further—to the shared, tacit realization that their mere deaths would accomplish nothing but leave this outrage unchanged. Whereas their intact life, on any terms, might hold some crazy hope. So—from playing the game of nightmare, which had worn thin and abandoned them, they who prided themselves on free expression had grown into the courage of the slave’s guile, and were playing for their very lives with only the weapon of sycophancy, likely to win nothing but the pain of encouraging a world-eating monster to explain its plans for cooking and garnishing their Earth.

“It’s true that your type of world and culture is ordinary, but you are a unique find. In every other such world we know of, your Wrrg—let us call it your Alpha cycle—or the much rarer cycle we may call Beta—has run the full course. Apart from a very few tertiary late-starters where life is only just emerging, we have found usually only the Alpha remains: Blasted cinders, with perhaps a few surviving forms of no interests, such as your crab-grass. An essentially dead world.”

“You mean, from nuclear war, sir?”

“Yes. They were self-destroyed. That’s your most probable, or Alpha, cycle. Then there is also the rarer Beta, or entropic, cycle, where war has been somehow avoided, but where unchecked population growth has consumed all resources and destroyed all possibility of change. There the once-intelligent dominant species exists in some irreversibly degenerate form in huge, though periodically ravaged, numbers, with no other species left alive except a few simple external and internal parasites of no evolutionary

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potential. Some of them hang on for a surprisingly long terminal phase, but we mostly find the Beta planets dead too. They’re quite unmistakable.

“Your planet is thus a unique find. Not only is it preclimactic, but the Alpha and Beta processes are both underway simultaneously, one might say, in competition with each other. And because of your unusual history, your development is so unbalanced that you show limited areas where entropic degeneration is almost complete, especially in urban enclaves like, say, Calicut—while in other areas, like North America and Roosh, the Alpha demolition is almost ready to let go. Additionally, a host of other areas in every conceivable intermediate stage, or combination of stages, right down to your so-called wildernesses. Unparalleled! The sociobiologi-cal equivalent of watching a star go through its climactic stages before our very eyes.”

“Sir,” Phil asked, “does this mean you plan to sit by and watch us destroy ourselves? Your interest is in seeing which of the Alpha or Beta deaths win out?”

“Oh, by no means. I am disappointed with your lack of vision—although I must say I’ve seen high-placed administrators make the same error… . Oh, my, no—that would be a terrible loss to science!”

At some point during this exposition, he had done something to the voder which caused it for moments to speak in tones throbbing with electronic emotion. Under different circumstances the effect would have been grotesquely funny. Here no one smiled.

“The proper scientific approach is quite the opposite. The incomparable scientific value of your condition dictates that we must maintain it intact just as long as we possibly can, so that generations of students may profit. Nothing fundamental must change—the delicately balanced potentials, with every variant tendency coexisting, must be preserved at all costs. And with very small, imperceptible interventions here and there, this is easily doable. For instance, maverick nuclear strike attempts simply encounter malfunctions. Fully entropic areas can easily be limited in spread. Lines of activity which totally deplete one resource or another can be diverted, or the supply covertly replaced. Massive conventional land warfare can be quashed overnight by disease. Overhomogenization can be checked in any number of ways. Interesting Utopian efforts can easily be undercut if they become too successful. The accidental loss of pivotal culture complexes can be prevented. And all on a minuscule budget and with personnel requirements near zero. The only necessity is for constant, informed watchfulness—and most of this is achieved by the very activities which different student observers automatically provide! Nor is a hundred per—

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cent effectiveness required—changes within certain limits are certainly permissible, and desirable, as long as the overall balance is retained. One might say that never has as great a scientific object been presented along with virtually all means of observing and preserving it, at so small a cost… . ‘Watch you destroy yourselves? What an appalling thought!”

Midway through his speech, Dag—who had had some limited experience in obtaining grants—recognized what he was hearing—fragments of the oft-rehearsed expository enthusiasm of a high-level project application for a long-range, big-budget grant. Somewhere in the unimaginable bowels of an interstellar research hierarchy, was there a dossier, a computer address for a Project Earth, by whatever name or number it was called? The mere thought gave him the coldest shudder yet.

“And moreover”—Professor Tasso was wrapping it up—“your peculiar development has left a number of other interesting species still alive, some actually with evolutionary potential. It might not be beyond the realm of fantasy one day to observe man’s replacement by an entirely different intelligent species! This would probably require some administrative assistance, budgetary considerations, and so forth; but since such events have been known or deduced to have occurred, to observe one actually taking place would be a scientific and educational event of the first magnitude.”

“What wonderful vision!” Dag heard Philippa say, and made himself chime in too. “I shall be really quite resigned to dying tonight, after having heard such an inspiring plan, and even glimpsing it in action.”

There was a slight pause before Professor Tasso’s voice asked, “Your choice, then, is to die? But—tonight? It seems a bit abrupt.”

“Oh, no,” said Dag. “We could never be content with life as brainless subhumans—especially after having heard you. And it’s characteristic of our race that this type of decision is best carried out quickly.” He turned to Captain Ulrik. “We can write the suicide note right away, sir, and even let a few nurses or somebody see us being despondent and so on, if you wish. I’m sure you have something lethal handy. Or we could take some sleeping pills—break into Dr. Halloway’s cabinet, if you wanted—and just jump overboard. Nice moon too.” He turned back to Professor Tasso. “But you know, sir, I’ll be a bit sorry to leave you, and all this. It’s so wonderful. And that alien who felt Phil seemed really interested in actually touching a human. And of course we were fascinated too. It made me wonder for a minute if we could somehow find a role as specimens, on the same terms as Mr. Brandt here, not seeing any other humans. But you’ve undoubtedly considered all that, and no use bothering you further.”

“That’s right,” Phil said. “And, my, it was interesting to feel his inter-

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est. A nice last memory. Oh—if it isn’t one question too many, after you’ve been so kind. As Dag asked, are all the hospice ships like this?”

“No. Only this one so far,” the alien replied. The voder voice sounded a little abstracted. “Although if the research interest continues to grow— you’re a … very popular subject, you’ll be glad to know—we may have to have another. And I may say the purely human interest in the hospice movement has taken us by some surprise—it’s creating its own budgetary problems!”

“Well,” Philippa offered, “if you’re getting many big hospice ships, why not have a small, fast, all-alien ship and disguise it as a supply and service vessel? You could have a sister ship that actually was a support ship; you’ll surely be needing one soon.” She checked herself apologetically. “But of course you’ve thought of all that. Still if we’d been around, we certainly could have warned you to expect the human part to go like a bomb!” She chuckled shyly. “Maybe you do need an average specimen or two to give you access to typical human responses, the way our marketing researchers maintain a panel of human samples.”

The alien made another of his undecipherable personal squeaks, or moans, all the while staring at her. The voder remained silent. After a moment or two Officer Brandt stood up, followed by Captain Ulrik. The alien guard moved toward the doors.

“Well, good-bye, sir. And the best of luck,” Dag said, heart in mouth. There was another tiny pause.

“A moment, Ulrik.” The voder was normally cool again. “Halloway’s report … am I correct in recalling that these two young humans are of excellent health, intelligence, and so on?”

“First rate,” the captain answered. “You couldn’t easily find a better pair.”

“And they’re from a mutually compatible subgroup? Presumably fertile?”

“In theory, yes, sir. But they’re untried. As you doubtless know, human fertility varies. In this case, all we can say is that there is no known impediment.”

The alien’s voder made an inconclusive sound.

“I believe I wish to discuss something, first with the captain and then with my staff. Meanwhile”—his uncanny long eyes slid to Dag and Philippa—“I wish you to allow me to revoke my permission to die as soon as tonight. Brandt will conduct you both to some comfortable place where you will have complete privacy, and see you get good meals and beds. It is possible, even probable, but in no way definite, you understand, that I may

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have a third alternative to offer you. That is to be evaluated and decided on its merits to us. Then I shall indulge in the custom of my race and visit you at sunrise to announce my decision. That will not defer your deaths unendurably, if my decision is negative or you still so elect, will it?”

“No, sir,” Dag said. “I believe we can hold out. However, could I ask Mr. Brandt the favor of supplying some musical recordings, or reading matter? We aren’t likely to sleep much.”

“Mr. Brandt, you will supply everything they wish, excepting contact with any others. If this is all, you may go now.”

“Good-bye, sir,” they said in unison. “And however it turns out, good luck and thank you,” Phil added.

Brandt said something quietly to Ulrik and received his assent. Then he led them out and down the ramp to a small unnoticed door, which gave onto a utility deck studded with ventilator shafts and gratings. They were startled to find it seemed to be midafternoon, a cheerless gray day.

Totally disoriented, tired beyond ordinary exhaustion, they followed Brandt numbly, barely aware that a squad of four small crewmen brought up the rear. These simply followed along, untouching, until Philippa stumbled over a cable and found herself being courteously and briefly upheld.

When it seemed that they must have walked at least a mile, they came to covered stairs leading up to a high, largely glass-enclosed crosswalk, a sort of shadow-bridge, across the stern. Their escorts opened the stair doors, and they climbed effortfully behind Brandt, to come out into a long narrow white-carpeted room, not unlike the subbridge they had left, except that there was no office nor other signs of occupancy. Through the glass walls the great gray track of Charon $ wake was hypnotic.

Four more crewmen arrived, struggling in with a nonhospital bed. More largely white furniture kept appearing as if by magic before their benumbed gaze. The last load featured a stereo record player and sound system, and several attractive ferns and flowering plants in white pots. The sad gray day outside was now only a foil for summery coziness within.

“Fantastic,” Dag said dully.

“Is this your doing, your selection, Mr. Brandt?” Phil asked. He nodded. “You have lovely taste.” She stared at him hard; he didn’t meet her eyes.

“Oh, Mr. Brandt, how did you ever get into this?”

“I was doing three ninety-year consecutives, in a max security federal brig.” He looked directly at her then. “Ulrik knew me, and thought I’d work out. They fixed it so I died. There’s a headstone back of Clintonville that’s ten years old. I don’t guess I’ll ever get to see it, not that I care. We only do absolutely essential shore trips, see; most of the supply and refitting

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are done right at the pier. People come on, of course. Before every port they reinforce the hypnotic clamp; you may notice we’re a little strange then. If you’re around, that is.”

“If we’re around,” Dag echoed somberly. “Listen, I wish we had something to leave you. Your getting us out of that storm will be one of the great things I’ll think of at the end. Sorry we had to mess up on you.”

“Take my scarf, Mr. Brandt,” Phil said. “I’ll try to get it to you. You can use it for a bandanna.”

“Ah, for s—t’s sake.” He started out the door, then paused. “There’s a better-then-even chance, kids. If you want it. You really did a job on the professor. I admit, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“You did it, Mr. Brandt. We took your advice. If there is a chance of— of life as laboratory hamsters, it’s due to you.”

“Ohh, great flying turds of ducks—t!” Swearing hideously, he started down the stairs, turned back to stick his head in. “Since you like my advice, here’s one last piece: if any of your thinking involves escaping, now or ever, forget it. Just save your skull power and forget it. / know.”

He was gone.

With one accord they turned to each other and simply held together, human heart to heart, in a long silent communication without words, without passion, while the room darkened around them. Ultimately Dag started, staggered, and discovered he had been sleeping on his feet, with Phil, asleep too, holding him up.

What seemed to have waked them was a soft, persistent knocking at the door. It turned out to be a crewman bearing a tray of steaming bowls of oyster stew and plates of big fresh strawberries.

They were young and stunned by despair; forced to believe, yet scarcely able to grasp, that the deepest premise of normal human life, the independence of their world, was a delusion. Now this reality had been turned inside out, revealing the great cancer of alien intervention. And for them there would be no more Sky-Walker; all dreams had died. Tomorrow’s sunrise would bring only confirmation of their own imminent deaths, or— perhaps more dreadful—the offer of life as the study objects, playthings, of nonhuman monsters.

Life? Would it be even life, lacking all freedom, even all privacy? If they bore or were forced to bear young, their children would be for the prying fingers, lenses, noses of unknown aliens, subject perhaps to unthinkable experimentation. Their very acts of conception and birth would be open to the view, perhaps the interference, of their masters. Was this life?

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They could almost find it possible to envy ordinary humans the pathetic freedom of their ignorance.

And yet—though it was far indeed from their dream of conquering the winds of a free Earth—they were not without one very small victory: all on their own and unarmed, they had met the enemy, diagnosed a weakness, and used it to manipulate the inscrutable, all-powerful master of their fate. They had made him acknowledge them as something slightly more than mere “specimens”; had at the least caused him to reconsider, to take unanticipated action recognizing their existence.

If sunrise brought only his refusal and their forced deaths, they would go knowing their killer was not wholly content. And if he brought an offer of life, they held it in their power to negate his plans, to die by their own free choice.

Such was their victory: a slave’s triumph, tiny, gained by ignoble guile, but real—how very real, only those who have fought from total helplessness and nonbeing can know. They had no idea what they would choose or suffer, come morning, but meanwhile they were alive and young, and not without pride.

They ate the excellent oyster stew and strawberries, finding also crisp greens with vinegar, hot buttered muffins, cheeses, milk, and a small bottle of cold sparkling wine.

By tacit consent they didn’t discuss their own plight then. Only with his mouth full of cheese did Dag say thoughtfully. “On the brink … that must mean they think it’s a close thing with us.”

“We all think that.” Phil poured the wine.

“But how do they keep us that way?”

“Hmm. Hey—that earthquake in Iraq or wherever. Could they do that, to stop the wars?”

“Sure. What’s a little pinch of earthquake-juice?” He sobered. “We didn’t read enough news. Remember that big fire that got zapped in New York, and that crazy oil find off New Zealand? And those so-called nuclear misfires—maybe they were all them.”

“And the fog-bank over the whales,” Phil added. “He said something about saving some other species, remember? … And that funny place on, what, New Caledonia everyone decided was a sacred Moslem thing. Maybe that’s where they land! Nobody’s allowed near, and that big mosque-building could be anything.”

“I bet you’re right. My god… . Well, I guess that does supper… . Phil, come sit by the window. Let’s just sit close.”

“Oh, darling. My darling …”

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There was of course no more sleep for them that night. For the first hours they sat with room lights dimmed, watching a magnificent full moon rise toward the zenith and simply vacillating. They were so deeply together that speech needed only fragments.

“Fertile/’ Dag or Philippa would say now and then, knowing that in the other’s mind would unroll images of a laboratory hamster giving birth under the eyes—and fingers—of a dozen kids.

“Maybe not right away,” one would comment.

“Hardest on you,” Dag would add each time. Once he said, “No worse than human gynecologists, maybe. But what if it—if they—grow?”

“Pass along secret tradition?” Phil speculated.

“Possible,”

“Or persuade them it has to be adopted out,” Dag suggested. “My aunt could take one… . Lots of possible stories. Like, we had brain messed up by wreck. No oxygen. Charon kindly consented to let us end days here. Too far gone to visit. But you get pregnant, see. Kid’s okay.”

“But persuade them? How?”

“Tell them we all die, or kid dies, without humans. Get sick, starve like Gandhi. … If we’re good little hamsters, they might not want to lose us. If it’s perfectly safe for them, baby can’t talk. Use it only for really major stuff, though.”

“They don’t know very much,” Philippa said.

“Yet-Now and again one of them would say simply, “It’s cleaner.”

And the other, sharing the overpowering yearning for a quick, near end, would agree with increasing relief. “Right.”

Occasionally one or the other would say, “No friends.”

“Interesting to meet aliens?”

“Medical students don’t socialize with hamsters.”

“Still . . r

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think that Captain Ulrik really knows very much either,” Philippa commented. “He’s just a sailor.”

“Brandt’s got more to him. But he’s morbid.”

“Yes.”

Considerably later Philippa said, “I can’t get over that ‘on the brink.’ That’s how they want us—forever on the brink.”

“All the brinks,” he said, reaching for her again. Sometime after midnight they had rather solemnly decided to make better use of what was either their last night of life or of privacy.

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Later still, he made quite a long speech: “What’s beyond the brinks is a lot worse, I gather. Maybe Earth should be grateful. Gives us time. Some people might find a different way.”

“Wouldn’t they stop it?”

“Only if they recognized it. Administrators get old, students get sloppy. We’re the only representatives of our race here, maybe we could help. Unlikely, of course.”

“But … it’s the only game in town.” Philippa was rubbing his sore knee. “After all, they’re alive. Their worlds must be okay. How? Could we find out?”

“That could be really important,” Dag said slowly. “I mean really. To us humans.”

“But then what? Send out secret messages? Notes in bottles?”

“1 don’t know. Something. Oh, no use, I guess.”

“No… . Regardless; it’s still the only game in town,” Phil repeated stubbornly. “Only it’s dirty work. Like this afternoon, Dag … flattering them. Yassuh, Boss… . Dirty, dirty.”

He reared up and caught her bare shoulders, looking deep into her eyes.

“Which is the real challenge, darling? An hour ago I was pretty sure we’d just go. If we get the chance to stay, you’d have to bear all the s—t part. Of course I’ll be with you all they let me, but I might have trouble not killing some damn freak. But nobody can help you through some of it”

“They couldn’t back home either. … I feel like you do about the challenge and maybe our duty. But I think it’s pretty hopeless too… . But so was Sky-Walker.”

“Listen, sweetheart”—only in their most serious moments did he use the old, old endearment—“this may all be beside the point. But if we get the chance, the toughest part falls on you. So I want you to decide which. I’m with you all the way either way.”

“Oof. Okay.”

When the first light grayed the ocean, they were sitting by the big windows, watching the phosphorescence fade slowly from sight in the wake.

“Cleaner.” Philippa sounded final. “A clean good-bye.”

“Right,” he said slowly.

They held hands quietly. The light grew. The high top overcast turned pink. Suddenly it parted here and there to reveal bright blue beyond.

” That little tent of blue that prisoners call the sky,’ ” Dag quoted.

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For the first time tears really threatened them. But suddenly Philippa drew herself up. ” *For each man kills the thing he loves?” She took up his quote, sarcastically. “Stupid crap. An elderly faggot in Reading jail. F—k it. Let’s stick to our own words.”

He laughed, deep and free, even if for the last time. “My great woman. God, I love you.”

“And me you. Listen—about the ‘clean good-bye/ The clean part is okay. But I’m not sure I settle for the good-bye. Dag, I just don yt know. You decide.”

“Maybe we won’t have to, is as far as I get. Hey! I just thought of another way to try: … which would you be most disappointed about if we had to do? Or maybe, if we couldn’t do?”

Phil gave a surprised grunt, and they stared hard at each other, aware that the light was growing fast. The eastern horizon was clear; a great neon-orange blur showed where the sun would shortly rise.

“If we … gave up, I guess …”

Suddenly from the corners of their eyes they saw movement in the blinding glow on the deck. They wheeled and stared intently, hands gripped.

It materialized into a crewman trotting toward their staircase with a tray. Steam was rising from little jugs and covered dishes. He disappeared below them, and presently they heard him ascend and quietly open the door. The scent of hot coffee drifted to them. He went out.

Still they stared at the deck, only now and then glancing at each other, then back at the big white deck-well from which would come their fate: death, or the offer of deathly life. Behind it the orange glow changed to a blaze of gilded white. An intolerably bright diamond chip was suddenly on the horizon, blinding them momentarily.

When they could see again, a big translucent-green canopied wheelchair was rolling toward them. Their fate, but no clue. Suddenly, from the doors behind it, Brandt’s arm appeared. He held his hand up, finger meeting a thumb, and the arm vanished.

“Okay,” Dag said. They both breathed out hard.

They were human, and young and brave. They knew they would find a way to try something, to try some way out for themselves or others. Now they had their chance.

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