Thousandstar by Piers AnthonyPiers Anthony

Thousandstar

Cluster series, book 4

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1: Alien Encounter

Chapter 2: Triple Disaster

Chapter 3: Space Race

Chapter 4: Holestar Abyss

Chapter 5: Threading the Needle

Chapter 6: Planet Eccentric

Chapter 7: Nether Trio

Chapter 8: Site of Hope

Epilogue

Prologue

She was lank and lithe and startlingly fair of feature for her kind, and as she ran her hair flung out in a blue splay. Her skin was blue, too, but light and almost translucently delicate. By Capellan standards she was a beauty.

"Jess!" she called, as she intercepted the blue man. "What are you doing home?"

He grinned, his teeth bright against the blue lips. He was beardless and small, as like her in size and feature as it was possible for a male to be. "I thought you'd never ask! It's a saw, of course."

She kissed him with the barely platonic passion typical of this Solarian subculture, her teeth nipping warningly into his lip. "Did you flip out from the training exercise? If they catch you—?" She paused, her features hardening prettily. "What saw?"

He stepped back, ran one thumbnail along the translucent wrapping, and allowed it to fall open, exposing the machine. "A genuine top-of-the-mill heavy-duty self-powered laser," he announced proudly. "Now we can hew our own timbers for the summer house. Bet we can carve the first ones this afternoon."

"Jess," she said, alarmed. "You didn't—" But she knew from his aura that he suffered no abnormal guilt.

"Of course I didn't steal it," he said, flashing a mock glare at her. "I bought it outright. It's more legal that way. It's ours, Jess, all ours! Isn't it a beauty?"

"But Jess—we can't afford—"

"Girl, the trouble with you is you have no confidence," he said with jubilant sternness. But there was something in his aura, an excitement that communicated itself to her via their interaction of auras. "Would I waste money?"

"Jess—you didn't remortgage the castle? You know we're on the verge of broke already. We can hardly pay our retainer, Flowers, or finesse the taxes! Besides, you need my countersignature to—"

"Remortgage, heavenhell!" he exclaimed. "I paid off the old mortgage, O ye of little wit." Even his aura was teasing her with its strange excitement.

"Come on. I can only chew so much joke in one swallow. What's the real story, Jess? Are the creditors on your tail?"

He settled into a serious expression, but still his aura belied it. "Well, Jess, you have to void the safety latch, like this, so the thing will operate. Then you set it for the type of cutting you require, which we can skip because it's already set at the standard setting. Then you switch it on and—"

"Jess!" she exclaimed peremptorily. This time her aura gave his a sharp nudge.

"Jess," he replied equably.

"Jess, pay attention to me!"

"Jessica, don't I always? What little I have to spare?" His eyes were blue mirrors of malicious innocence.

"The money, Jess—the money."

"Now isn't that almost just like a woman," he chided her. "Here I have this superlative expensive laser saw, quite fit for royalty, and all she cares about is the morbid mundane detail of—"

"Jess, do you want me to start being difficult?"

He shied away with a look of horror he could not maintain, dissolving into laughter. "Oh, no! Anything but that, Jess-ca! Anything you can do, I can do better, except that! Oh, I can't stand you when you're difficult. That's what the X chromosome does, all right; it is jam-packed with diffi—"

"That's not true!"

"Oh, it's true! Too too true! You are the most difficult creature in System Capella! You—"

"I was referring to the other thing, Jess. That I can do better than you."

He glanced at her, seeing her vibrant in her petulance. "That doesn't count, Jess. That's inherent in the sex. To be fair we'd have to survey my liaisons against yours, and compare partner-ratings. I'd bet I—"

"I was talking about the artistry," she said, fending off the baiting. "You can't make a decent holograph freehand."

He held up his hands in the millennia-old Solarian gesture of surrender.

"Acquiescence, sis. Two things. Holograph and difficult. If I'd been the female aspect of the clone, I'd have them too, though."

"If you'd been the female aspect, Jess, you wouldn't have squandered credit we don't have on a saw we can't afford, to build a summer house we'll never use because we'll be evicted for debt from the estate. Now out with it, and don't try to lie, because you know I can feel it in your aura."

"That's the one thing about a cloned aura," he complained. "No decent secrets.

Not until one clone abdicates his heritage and deviates too far to—"

"The money, Jess," she prodded.

"Well, if you must pry, in your female fashion—it's the advance on the mission."

"What mission? You're still in training!"

"Not any more. They needed an anonymous Solarian with intrigue expertise, and I needed a quick infusion of credit, so—"

"Who needed? For what? Where?"

"Thousandstar."

She stared mutely at him.

"Segment Thousandstar," he repeated, enjoying her amazement. "You've heard of it? Farthest Segment of the Milky Way Galaxy, twenty thousand parsecs from here, give or take a few light seconds? All those non-human sapients crowded into—"

"I took the same geography courses you did. We have just as many sapient species here in Segment Etamin. What about Thousandstar?"

"So the advance is twenty thousand units of Galactic credit, and a similar amount upon successful completion of the mission. This saw was only five thousand, and our old mortgage twelve thousand, so we have three thousand left—"

"I can handle the basic math," she said faintly. "But that fee—"

"Well, I admit it's small, but—"

"Small!" she exploded. "Will you get serious? It's a fortune! How could a nit like you, Jess-man—?"

"But it's firm, Jess-girl. All I have to do is show. So I don't even need to complete the mission successfully, though of course I'll do that too. You won't have to go out selling your favors anymore."

"I don't sell my—" She broke off, retrenching. "Don't try to divert me with your spurious slights! Why would Segment Thousandstar advance twenty thousand Galactic units to an anonymous Solarian clone?"

"Hey!" he cried with mock affront. "Don't you think I'm worth it, Jess?"

"You're worth a million, if you marry the right aristocratic clone girl and preserve the estate," she said coldly. "That's why I don't want your head on the royal execution block. You're no wild giant like Morrow who can get away with—"

"Ah, Morrow," he said. "What I wouldn't give for his muscle, money, and moxie, not to mention his cute wife—"

"Now stop fooling around and cough it out!"

He coughed it out: "Jessica, I don't know. The mission's secret. But it's legal.

It came through Etamin and Sol."

"Through the Imperial System and the mother world," she said softly. "It has to be legitimate. Unless Andromeda's started hostaging again."

"Impossible. Melody of Mintaka fixed that, remember? For the past century there's been no hostaging; the host controls the body, no matter what the aura of the transferee may be, unless the host lets the visiting aura take over.

Anyway, Andromeda's no threat; the Milky Way controls all Andromeda's Spheres."

"True," she said uncertainly. "But it must be a dangerous mission. Really grotesque, to warrant such a fee." She turned to him, and he felt the unrest in her aura. "Jesse, you and I are closer than any two other people can be, except the same-sex clones, and sometimes I think we're actually closer than that, because we have been forced to concentrate on our similarity so constantly. If I lost you—"

He tamed his enjoyment momentarily, meeting her with equivalent candor. "That's why I bought the saw, Jessica. I knew you'd go along. It's not a waste of credit; it will pay itself back within a year, slicing out all the boards and timbers we need. This is the break we've needed to put our family back into its aristocratic mode. The seed of Good Queen Bess will flourish again."

"But the mission! All that credit for a secret job! Why is it secret, Jess?

Because they know you'll die?"

"I asked about that. I have a cunning mind, remember; that's part of my training. Mortality expectation is five percent. That's not bad, Jess. One out of twenty. So when I go on that mission, I have a ninety-five percent chance of survival—probably ninety-eight percent for someone as smart as me—and a hundred percent chance of keeping the advance credit. So maybe the chance of successful completion is small—I don't know—but at least I'll be home again, and we don't need that matching payment. The advance alone will solve our economic problem.

I'm willing to take that miniscule risk for the sake of our castle, our estate, our family line. Without that advance, we stand a thirty percent chance of a foreclosure on the property. You know that. Royalty is no longer divine. We may derive from Queen Bess, but our family power has been fading a thousand years, because we've become effete. System, Sphere, and Segment have waxed while we have waned. The universe does not need aristocracy anymore. Now at a single stroke I can restore our status—or at least give us a fair chance to halt the erosion. Isn't it worth the gamble?"

"I don't know," she said, biting her lip so that it turned a darker blue.

"There's something funny about this deal. You didn't get this assignment through merit, did you?"

He did not bother to inflate his wounded pride. "No, there are lots of qualified candidates. But two thirds of them wouldn't take a blind mission at any price, and of the remainder I was the only one with royal blood. Royalty has pride, more pride than money or sense; they know that. We won't let them down when the mission gets hard, because we are allergic to failure. It's bad for the image.

So I was their best bet: a qualified, foolhardy royalist."

"Foolhardy—there's the operative term. Jess, I don't like this at all!"

He laughed, but his aura belied him. "Come on, let's make the first beam while we consider."

She smiled agreement, troubled.

They took the saw to their mountain stand of purple pine. The old royal estate possessed some of the finest standing timber on the planet. Some of the pines dated from the time of Queen Bess, who as legend had it had taken jolly green Flint of Outworld as a lover, conceived by him, and settled this estate on the produce of that union. Regardless of the validity of this dubious historical claim, it was a fine estate. The castle still had the old dragon stalls and the equally impressive giant bed, where the green man was reputed to have performed so successfully. Unfortunately, that phenomenal two-hundred-intensity aura had never manifested in Flint's successors, and with the passing of the formal monarchy the proprietors had become virtual caretakers of the estate.

When the Second War of Energy burst upon the Cluster, a thousand Solarian years after the first, there had been no high-aura hero from this Capellan realm to save the Milky Way Galaxy. Instead Melody of Mintaka had come, an alien, unhuman creature transferred to a Solarian host. She had done the job, and she was indeed another distant descendant of Flint of Outworld via non-human line, but the luster of Sphere Sol had dimmed, and System Capella had become a virtual backdust region.

That was part of what passed through the minds of the unique male-female clones Jess as they approached the stand of purple pine. To be an anonymous remnant of a once-proud System of a once-great Sphere—there was a certain dissatisfaction gnawing through the generations. The male wanted to achieve some sort of return to notoriety, if not to greatness, and the female, though more cautious about the means, desired a similar achievement.

Jess started the saw. The laser blade leaped out, a searing white rod terminating at a preset distance. "Stand clear," he said, but his sister-self needed no warning. She was afraid of that short, deadly beam.

He approached a tree. Not one of the millennia trunks, for those were monuments, but a fine century individual. Its bark was as blue as his skin, its needles deep purple. "Where's the lean?" he inquired.

She surveyed it, walking around the trunk, her breasts accentuating as she craned her head back. She was highly conscious of her female attributes, because only here in the seclusion of the estate could she ever allow them to manifest.

No one outside knew her for what she was. "No lean," she decided. "It's a balanced tree."

"I don't want a balanced tree! I want one that will fall exactly where I know it will fall!"

"Take another tree, then. One that suits your temperament."

"Unbalanced... temperament," he murmured. Then he lifted the saw. "I believe I'll trim off an excrescence or two here," he said, making a playful feint at her bosom with the laser.

She scooted backward. "You do, and I'll trim off a protuberance there," she said, indicating his crotch. "Your bovine girl friend wouldn't like that."

He cocked his head. "Which bovine?"

"That cow Bessy, of course."

"Oh, that bovine." He shrugged. "How about your lecherous commoner buck, who thinks you're a chambermaid? Now there's a protuberance that needs trimming!"

"Don't be jealous. Nature grants to commoners' bodies—"

"What they lack in intellect," he finished for her.

"You have a tree to fell."

"Um." He set his saw against the trunk just where the tree began to broaden into the root, and angled the laser blade slowly across the wood.

"It's not working," the girl said, concerned.

"That's what you think, you dumb female," he said with satisfaction. He angled his cut back without removing the beam from the tree. The bit of white visible between the saw and the tree turned red. "Oops, I'm going too fast; the blade's dulling. Slowing, rather. It's molecule-thin; the visible bar is only to mark the place. Still, there's work in burning through solid wood; you have to cut slowly, give it time. There." The beam had converted back to white.

"But there isn't any cut," she said.

He ignored her, angling up. In a moment the beam emerged. The tree stood untouched. "Now take out the wedge," he told her.

"Sure." Playing the game, she put her hands on the trunk where the imaginary wedge of wood had been sliced out, heaved with exaggerated effort—and fell over backward as the wedge came loose.

Her brother-self chuckled. "Now get your fat posterior off the grass and straighten your skirt; I'm not your protuberant commoner-friend. I'm going to drop the tree there."

She looked at the wedge in her hands, then at the gap in the trunk. The edge of the cut wavered somewhat because of his unsteady control, and one section was ragged where he had pushed it too fast. That was why the wedge had not fallen out of its own accord. There was no doubt the laser had done it. She hoisted her slender derriere up. "That's some machine!" she remarked with involuntary respect.

"That's what this mission means to us," he said smugly. "I've got three days leave before I report; I want to get that summer house built."

"In three days?" she asked incredulously. "We can't even set the foundations in that time."

"True, the saw can't do it all," he said, reconsidering as he started to cut from the opposite side of the tree. "You may have to put the finishing touches on it while I'm away. Give you something to do when you're not polishing your claws. The mission only lasts ten days or so. It's good payment for that time."

"It certainly is," she agreed, involuntarily glancing at her neat, short, unpolished nails. Her suspicion was reasserting itself. "There has to be a catch."

"So maybe it's an unpleasant mission," he said, his eye on the progress of the cut. "An obnoxious transfer host. A giant slug made of vomit or something. I can put up with it for ten days. And if the mission is successful, and I get the completion payment—" He glanced at her and the beam jerked, messing up his cut.

"We could afford a marriage and reproduction permit for one of us, nonclone. No more fooling around with sterile partners."

"Yes..." she breathed. "To be free of this ruse at last. To have meaningful sex, a family, security—"

"Recognition, status," he added. "Timber."

"Timber?"

"That's what you say when the tree's falling."

"Oh." She skipped out of the way as the pine tilted grandly.

The crash was horrendous. Purple needles showered down, and a large branch shook loose and bounced nearby. The sound echoed and reechoed from the near hills. The base of the trunk bucked off the stump and kicked back, as though trying to take one of them with it to destruction.

Brother and sister selves stood for a moment, half in awe of what they had wrought. Even a comparatively small tree like this had a lot of mass! A large one would shake the very mountain.

Jesse hefted the laser. "Now for the beams," he said, his voice calm but his aura animated.

"Beams? How many does that saw have?"

"Idiot! I meant the beams of wood. Measure off a ten-meter length, and I'll hew it now."

"Doesn't it need to season?" she asked. "Suppose it warps?"

"Don't you know anything, cell of my cell? Purple pine doesn't warp. It hardly even woofs. Or tweets. It merely hardens in place. That's why it's such valuable wood, that has to be protected by being included on grand old estates like ours.

So that only selective cutting is done, to thin the groves, no commercial strip-cutting. We want to hew it now, while it's soft."

"Oh." She was of exactly the same intelligence as he, and had had the same education, but that particular fact had slipped by her. Sometimes they had substituted for each other during boring classes, so one could pick up sundry facts the other missed. She was beginning to diverge more obviously from her brother, and the mask of identical garb in public would not be effective much longer.

She brought out her measure, touched the little disk to the base of the trunk, walked along the tree until the readout indicated ten meters, then touched the trunk again. A red dot now marked the spot.

He trimmed the base smooth, then severed the trunk at the ten-meter mark. The log shifted and settled more comfortably into the spongy ground. Now he fiddled with a special control, adjusting the saw. "Actually, I'm doing this for you.

I'll have to marry another aristocratic clone; you'll get to pick a real person to family with."

"Want to bet? There are more males of our generation than females. That's why they operated on me to turn me female, hedging the bet. I'll probably have to marry the clone, while you get to graze among the common herd."

"There is that," he agreed. "I must admit, there are some commoners I wouldn't mind hitching to. Clonedom is seeming more sterile these days; so few of our kind have any real fire or ambition. They're mostly all socialites, forcing us to play that game too. Stand back, doll. This can be tricky."

The laser beam shot out way beyond its prior length. He aligned it with the length of the log, then levered it slowly so that it made a burn in the bark from end to end. He moved the beam over and made a similar burn, a quarter of the way around. Then he readjusted the saw and used the short cutting beam to trim an edge lengthwise along one line. A meter on the saw showed him precisely what orientation to maintain to keep the cut correctly angled.

"You know, someday the other clones will have to find out about you," he remarked as he worked. Jesse was never silent for very long. "We can't keep it secret forever."

She knew it. She had nightmares about premature, involuntary exposure. Yet she responded bravely enough: "If you find an aristocratic spouse soon, we can. It would be nice to save this hedge for another generation, protecting our line.

Once the other clones catch on, they'll all be doing it, and our line will have no advantage."

He nodded soberly. With four cuts, he had a beam roughly square in cross section, ten meters long. The irregularities of his trimming only made it seem authentically hand-hewn. "Where could we get a finer ridge-beam than that?" he asked rhetorically.

"Nowhere," she answered, impressed.

"Still mad at me for buying the saw?"

"No, of course not."

"Five thousand credits—you could buy a lot of silly perfume for that, to make commoners think you're sexy."

"I'll take the saw."

He grinned, pleased. "Make that literal. You hew the next beam. Why should I do all the work?"

"And the castle mortgage paid off," she said, liking the notion better. "That's the first time our family's been solvent in a generation."

"Still, considering the danger of the mission—" he teased.

"Oh, shut up!"

"Now you know how to turn it on and off, Jess. The saw, I mean. It's not heavy, just keep your arm steady and your dugs out of the way; don't let them dangle in the beam."

"I don't dangle, you do!" But she accepted the saw, eager to try her skill. She had, of course, been raised in the male tradition, and there were aspects of it she rather enjoyed, such as hewing beams.

"I don't dangle when I'm with someone interesting." He took the measuring disk and marked off another ten-meter section. "Sever it here."

She started toward him. "The trunk, not me!" he protested, stepping back with his hands protectively in front of him.

She shrugged as if disappointed and set the saw at the mark. The laser moved into the woods. "I can't even feel it!"

"Right. There's no recoil, no snag with laser. Just watch the beam, make sure it stays white. With this tool we can saw boards, shape columns, polish panels, drill holes—anything! I plan to cut wooden pegs to hold it together, along with notching. This saw has settings for carving out pegs, notches, and assorted bevels and curlicues; you just have to program it. We can build our whole house with this one saw!"

"You're right," she said, no longer even attempting to be flip. "We need this machine. It is worth the credit. You just be sure you report for that mission on time!"

"Precious little short of death itself could keep me away," he assured her. "And the Society of Hosts insurance would cover the advance, if I died before reporting, so even then you'd keep the money. But it's not just the money I'm doing it for; I'm tired of this dreary aristocratic life. I want real adventure for a change! I want to go out among the stars, travel to the farthest places, experience alien existence, see the universe!"

"Yes..." she breathed, envying him his coming adventure.

"You just make sure I wake up in time to report for transfer when—"

The log severed before she was aware of it. It dropped suddenly and rolled toward them. It was massive, half a meter thick at the cut: weight enough to crush a leg. Jessica screamed in temporary panic and swung the valuable saw out of the way, her finger locked on the trigger. Jesse grabbed for her, trying to draw her bodily out of harm's way.

The wildly shifting laser beam passed across his spine. His shirt fell open, cleanly cut, but for a moment there was no blood. He fell, his arms looped about her thighs.

The rolling log stopped short of his body, balked by the chance irregularity of the ground. Jessica, acting with numb relief, drew her finger from the trigger, turned off the saw, set it down carefully, and caught her brother under the arms as he slid slowly facefirst toward the turf. "Oh, Jesse, are you hurt?"

But even as she spoke, she knew he was. His aura, which really merged with hers, was fluctuating wildly. The beam, set to cut wood, had touched him only briefly—not enough to cut his body in half or even to cut his backbone, but sufficient to penetrate a centimeter or so. Elsewhere it would have made a nasty gash in the flesh; across his spine it was critical.

His body was paralyzed, but he retained consciousness and speech. "Jess—" he gasped as she rolled him over and tenderly brushed the dirt from his face. "My aura—is it—?"

"Jess, the beam cut into your spinal cord," she said, horrified. "Your aura is irregular." She knew the extent if not the precise nature of the injury because the sympathetic response in her own aura touched her spine, lending a superficial numbness to her legs. His aura irregular? It was an understatement.

"I'll call an ambulance." She fumbled for her communicator. The health wing would arrive in minutes.

"No, Jess!" he rasped. "I may live—but hospital'd take weeks! I have only two days."

"To hell with two days!" she cried, the tears overflowing. "You can't go on that mission now! Even if you weren't badly injured, your aura would never pass. It reflects your physical condition. It has to be fully healthy to pass, you know that! I'll take care of you, I promise!"

"Kill me," he said. "Say it was part of the accident Just pass the laser across my chest, slowly, so as to intersect the heart—"

"No!" she screamed. "Jess, what are you saying?"

"The insurance—death benefit—only if I die, it covers—"

"Jess!"

"Jess, I can't renege on that mission. The advance would be forfeited, the insurance invalid, and we'd lose the whole estate and the family reputation.

Have Flowers pick up the body; he'll cover for you. He's been in this business a long time, he's doctored family skeletons before, you can bet on it, and he's completely loyal to us. He'll do it. I'd rather die than—"

"Jess, I won't do it!" she cried. "I know Flowers would cover for us. I don't care. I love you, clone-brother! I don't care what—"

But he was unconscious; she knew by the change in his aura. He had fought for consciousness until his message was out, then let go.

She brought the communicator to her mouth—and paused, comprehending the position they were in. The first flush of emotion was phasing into the broader reality of their situation. She could save her brother's life— for what? For a remaining life of poverty and shame? He had spoken truly! He was a joker, but never a coward. He would prefer to die. Now, cleanly, painlessly, with a certain private honor, leaving her to carry on the reputation of the family and maintain the millennium-old estate. She knew this—for his aura was hers, his mind was hers, and she shared this preference. They were aristocrats! If she had been injured in such a way as to forfeit honor and fortune together, death would seem a welcome alternative.

She could do it. She had the nerve, bred into the royal line, and because she was royal, she would not be interrogated. Her word and the visible evidence would suffice. Flowers would employ his professional touch to make the case tight. She could kill her brother-self, and save the family honor and fortune.

It was feasible.

Yet she did love him, as she loved herself. How could she face a world without him? Though he might later marry, and she also, with one being royal and the other becoming a commoner, they would always be closest to each other, clone-siblings.

She had to decide—now. Before his metabolism adapted to the injury, making a biochemical/aural analysis possible that would show the separate nature of her act. Now, this minute—or never.

Jessica picked up the saw and held it over Jesse's body. She knew the expedient course—yet her love opposed it with almost equal force. Was there no way out?

Chapter 1: Alien Encounter

Heem of Highfalls emerged from the transfer chamber and followed the HydrO ahead of him toward the acclimatization wing. Another HydrO host rolled into the transfer chamber behind him. The operation had to move with precision; there were more than three hundred HydrOs to process as nearly simultaneously as possible.

Yet Heem moved without vigor, hardly perceiving his surroundings. A squirt of flavored water struck him. "Thirty-nine! Are you conscious?"

Heem yanked himself to a better semblance of awareness. "Yes, yes," he sprayed.

"Merely adapting to my transfer-guest."

"Then get to your chamber. You have bypassed it."

So he had. He was up to forty-two. Heem reversed course and moved to thirty-nine. He picked up the vapor taste of it and rolled into its aperture.

The chamber was small and comfortable. The air was fresh and neutral, with plenty of free hydrogen. "You have three chronosprays before release," the room informed him.

Heem collapsed. In his subconscious he dreamed the forbidden memory. He was a juvenile again, among his HydrO peers. In that secret time before he metamorphosed into adult status. He was rolling with his siblings in the beautiful ghetto of Highfalls, bouncing across the rock faces, through the chill rivulets, and around the huge soft domes of the trees. They were racing, their jets growing warm with the competitive effort.

Hoom was leading at the moment. He had the strongest torque jets and usually gained on direct-land terrain. Heem was second, closely followed by Hiim. Haam trailed; he had a clogged jet and it hampered his progress.

Heem had been gaining jet strength recently and had always had finesse in liquid. Today was especially good; his metabolism was functioning better than ever before. Now Hoom was tiring, becoming too warm; his conversion efficiency was declining slightly. Heem remained relatively cool, yet was putting out more water; he was gaining. The feeling of victory was growing.

Hoom, as leader, chose the route. Hoping to improve his position, he plunged into the highfalls itself.

It was an effective tactic. Heem plunged in after him, and suffered the retardation his cooler body was liable to. He lost position. But soon his liquid finesse helped him, enabling him to recover quickly, and he was gaining again.

He caught up to Hoom, then passed him as they emerged from the water.

"Lout!" Hoom spurted. He fired a barrage of jets at Heem in an unsporting maneuver. Some of them were needlejets that stung. Heem, alert for such foul play, fired one needle back, scoring on Hoom's most proximate spout as Hoom's own jet faded.

"Cheat!" Hoom sprayed, enraged. He fired another barrage which Heem countered with another precise shot. Heem had the most accurate needles of them all.

Now the others caught up. "No fighting, no fighting!" they protested.

"He needled me, trying to pass!" Hoom sprayed.

For a moment, the audacity of the lie overwhelmed Heem, and he was tasteless.

Thus it seemed he offered no refutation, and that was tantamount to confession.

But Haam was cautious about such judgment. "I did not taste the initiation of this exchange," he sprayed. "But it was Hoom, not Heem, who needlejetted me at the outset of this race, clogging my jet."

Perceiving the shift of opinion, Hoom took the offensive again. "What use in winning a race, anyway? We have raced every day, now one winning, now another.

How does it profit us? Which of you has the nerve to roll up to a real challenge?"

"Why roll to any challenge?" Hiim inquired reasonably. "We have no needs we cannot accommodate passively. So long as there is air, we are comfortable."

"You may be comfortable," Hoom replied. "I want to know what lies beyond this valley. Are there others of our own kind, or are we alone?"

"Why not go, then, and report back to us?" Hiim asked him.

"I do not wish to go alone. It is a long, hard roll over the mountain range, perhaps dangerous. If we all go together—"

"I find difficulty and danger no suitable challenge," Hiim sprayed. "It seems foolish to me to risk my convenient life in such manner."

But Heem found himself agreeing with Hoom. "I do not entirely relish the roll up the mountain slope or the prospect of drastic shift in environment," he sprayed.

"Yet my mind suffers dulling and tedium in the absence of challenge. I value my mind more than my convenience. Therefore I will undertake the roll up the mountain with Hoom."

Hoom was uncommunicative, caught in the awkwardness of being supported by the party he had fouled. It was Haam who sprayed next. "I too am curious about the wider environment, but disinclined to undertake the enormous effort of such a roll. I would go if I could ascertain an easier mode of travel."

"Make it really easy," Hiim scoffed. "Ride a flat-floater."

There was a general spray of mirth. The flatfloater was a monster whose biology was similar to their own. It drew its energy from the air, merging hydrogen with oxygen, with a constant residue of water. But its application differed. Instead of using jets of waste-water to roll itself over land or through the river, it used them to push itself up into the air a small distance. This required a lot of energy; in fact the force of its jets was so strong, and the heat of its conversion so great, that a large proportion of its elimination was gaseous.

Water expanded greatly when vaporized, so that the volume of exhaust was much larger than the volume of its intake. Hot water vapor blasted down from it, billowing out in disgusting clouds, condensing as it cooled, coating the surroundings. The sapient HydrOs stayed well clear of the flatfloaters!

Hoom, however, was foolhardy. "Why not?" he demanded. "The upper surface of the floater is cool enough, where the air intakes are. It indents toward the center.

We could ride safely there—"

It might just be possible! Their analytic minds fastened on this notion. But almost immediately objections developed. "How would we guide it?" Haam asked.

"How would we get on it—or off it?" Heem added.

Hoom found himself under challenge to defend a notion he had not originated, for indeed if a flatfloater could be harnessed, it could surely take them anywhere rapidly—even over the mountain. If he could establish the feasibility of the flatfloater, he could make them all join the traveling. "The floater is stupid.

When it feels distress, it flees it. We could needle it on the side opposite the direction we wish it to go, and it would flee— carrying us along."

They considered, realizing the possibility.

"And to board it," Hoom sprayed excitedly, "the floater descends to bathe itself, for it has no jets on its upper surface and the sun dehydrates it.

Periodically it must immerse itself in water. We have only to lurk at its bath-region and roll aboard as it submerges. To deboard we must simply force it near a slope and roll off the higher side. Since the floater is always level, the drop to ground will be slight."

They considered further, and it seemed feasible. Hoom had surmounted the challenge of method; now they were under onus to implement it. Since none came up with a reason to refute this course of action, they found themselves committed.

Heem was excited but not fully hydrogenated by the notion. He wanted to explore, but feared the possible consequence. So he went along, as did the others. The physical race had become something else, and Hoom had retained the initiative.

Given the specific challenge, they set about meeting it without immediate emphasis on the long-range goal. They located the spoor of the flatfloater, in the form of taste lingering on vegetation and ground, diffuse but definite. They traced it in the direction of freshness, locating the floater's favorite haunts.

It preferred open water, not too deep, with no large growths near enough to disrupt the takeoff. That made approach more difficult.

They decided to lay in wait underwater. It was more difficult to breathe in liquid, since it was in effect a bath of their own waste product, but there were tiny bubbles of gas in it that sufficed for slow metabolism, for a while. In flowing water it was possible to remain submerged indefinitely, for new bubbles were carried in to replace the used ones, and the non-hydrogenated water would be carried away. However, flowing water tended to be cool.

The advantages and disadvantages were mixed. Their ambient taste would be diminished by the reduced rate of metabolism necessitated by the limitation of hydrogen, and the surrounding water would dilute that taste, and the slow current would carry it away, until their precise location was virtually indistinguishable. The danger was that if the wait were too long, they could be cooled to the level of inadequate functioning. This had happened to a former peer; he had soaked himself in chill water to abate a fever, had slept and never awoken. He remained there now, functioning on the level of a beast, his sapience gone. It had been a cruel lesson for the rest of them: one of many. Do not suffer your body to cool too far, lest the upkeep of your sapience deteriorate!

Heem remembered a time when thirty or more sapients had inhabited Highfalls; now only the four of them remained.

However, the season was warmer now, and the river was more comfortable. Heem wondered about that: what made the seasons change. The heat of the sun beat down throughout the year, yet in the cold season it came from a different angle and lacked force. Obviously the cold inhibited the sun, whose presence they knew of only by the heat of its direct radiation against their skins, or possibly the different course of the sun inhibited the season—but why was there a change?

Heem had pondered this riddle many times, but come to no certain conclusion. The answer seemed to lie elsewhere than in this valley, perhaps across the mountain range. The more he considered the ramifications of this project, the more he liked it. Surely there was danger—but surely there was information, too. Since ignorance had caused most of the deaths of his peers, especially the massive early slaughter before the thirty he remembered had emerged from anonymity, knowledge was worth considerable risk.

They settled under the water at the site, hoping the monster would come soon.

Heem, required to be still and communicative for an indefinite period in the proximity of potential danger, found his thoughts turning to fundamental speculations. Where had he and his siblings come from? How had they known how to intercommunicate? What was their destiny?

The third question had an obvious and ugly answer: they were destined to die.

Most had succumbed already. Perhaps escape from the valley was their only hope of survival. Heem felt his own mortality, the incipience and inevitability of death. Was there any point in opposing it? Why, then, was he opposing it?

But he rebounded from this line of thinking. He must be suffering the chill of the water, of immobility. He raised his metabolic level slightly, hoping the increased flavor diffusing about him would not be noticeable to his companions.

Maybe they were doing the same.

Now he pursued the other questions. Communication? Somehow they had always known how to spray and jet and needle flavor at each other, and quickly learned to interpret the nuances of taste to obtain meaning. Certain flavors portended certain things, as was natural. Sweetness denoted affirmation, bitterness negation. From that point, the shades of taste flowed naturally to ever-greater definition. Why this was so seemed inherent in the nature of the species.

What was their origin? They had all appeared together in the valley, as nearly as he could ascertain. All had been physically small; he knew that because landmarks, boulders, and such things that had once seemed large now seemed small, and it seemed reasonable that it was the living things who had changed.

All had been able to fend for themselves from the outset, lacking only the cautions of experience. Any could have saved themselves from any of the demises that had taken them, had they possessed Heem's present knowledge then. Surely they had come, innocently, from somewhere—but where? There was no answer; that was beyond the beginning.

There had to be an origin, he decided. Sapient creatures did not appear from nowhere. Otherwise more creatures of his kind would have appeared. This had not happened. So it seemed they had all been spontaneously generated in one single burst of creation. Or they had all been placed here, and left to their own survival. Heem found the latter alternative more convincing. That explained what had happened, but not why. Why would anyone or anything do this?

No matter how he reasoned it out, Heem could not roll up with an explanation he liked. Whatever had done this thing was evil. If he ever found opportunity to fight back—

The monster was coming! Heem felt the vibration in the water, separate from the vibration in the air, as the thing settled low. The massive jets blasted down into the water, initiating turbulence that was uncomfortably forceful. Only jets of phenomenal power could create reaction of this magnitude, and it was growing rapidly.

Heem was abruptly afraid. He had suppressed his nervousness before; now it burst out into uncontrolled random jetting. All his small pores opened, and the sphincter muscles of his body forced his reserves of water out. It was a panic reaction, accomplishing nothing except the depletion of his immediate motive fluid.

With an effort he controlled himself, and became aware of the diffusing taste of the exudates of his companions. They had wet down too, though that was anomalous here within water. That reassured him considerably. Almost enough to make him want to roll on, on through this wild scheme.

The flatfloater was gliding in for its submergence much faster than any sapient creature could. Before Heem could formulate some objection, some reason to quit this project, the huge disk cut into the water and planed down. The turbulence was suddenly terrible. Bubbles swirled by in such profusion as to make froth of the water. Heem was rolled right out of his niche by the bubble current and wafted upward a short distance. He drifted momentarily in the eddy, perceiving his companions in similar straits, before stabilizing. But he realized that this was fortunate, because otherwise he could have been stuck directly below the settling monster. Its weight would not be oppressive, buoyed by the water; but if it remained long, the four of them would have been trapped. The warmth of its gross body might keep them from cooling to the point of deterioration, which was good, but the low hydrogen of its elimination could stifle them.

The floater drifted to the bottom. The eddy drew Heem in toward the creature's surface, and this was another excellent roll. With minimal guidance, Heem was able to sink onto the upper surface of the disk. His companions did the same.

They had in this surprisingly simple fashion achieved the first stage of their objective.

Yet the remainder hardly seemed promising. It was one thing to contemplate riding a floater, but quite another to do it. The many uncertainties of the venture loomed much larger now. How would they stay on, if the monster maneuvered violently? Suppose it did not respond to their guidance?

The floater gave them little time to reflect. Its intakes were on the upper side, and though it lacked the acute perception of the sapients, it could hardly miss their presence in this case. Alarmed, it jetted upward, its progress slanting because of the resistance of the water. The current across its surface became fierce, but at the same time the suction of its large intakes held them against it. They could not roll off—not while the floater's metabolism was active.

The flatfloater rose out of the water with a burst of meaningless spray.

Sapients sprayed only for communication, emitting multiple fine jets of water flavored with the chemical nuances that constituted meaning. It was an effective mode. If the neighbor to be addressed was too far distant for spray, a specific squirt could serve as well; in fact, such solitary jets were employed when the conversation was private. Once the residue flowed off the receiving skin, it lost its meaning in the welter of background contaminants, leaving news only that there had been communication. Thus public and private dialogues were matters of focus. Especially pointed or private messages were needled, as with insults during a fracas.

Heem had pondered whether a better system could exist, and concluded that this was unlikely. In fact, he suspected that intelligent dialogue would be almost impossible by any other means. The fact that none of the animals or plants had either sapience or precise communication mechanisms bolstered his view. Sapience and language and refined taste went together.

But such conjectures were out of place amidst violent action! Airborne, the floater was now fully aware of its burden, and did not seem to like it. Their four bodies had to be hampering its intake, though the majority of its pores remained uncovered. The monster cut its jets, then fired them all at once, bucking with horrible force.

Haam, nearest the rim, lost purchase and rolled off. Heem picked up the spray of Haam's despairing exclamation, for they were now high up. The fall would surely be fatal. The sapients of Highfalls were now abruptly reduced to three.

Again Heem experienced a wash of emotion, as though he had been doused with burning liquid. (This had happened once, when he ventured too near a source of hot water in the valley. Two companions had perished then, but his burns had been survivable. It had been just one more episode in his education.) Who had been responsible for Haam's demise? Not the floater, who only reacted to the unfamiliar burden on it. Not Hiim or Hoom or Heem himself, who only tried to get out of this dangerous valley. Who but the mysterious entity who had deserted them here!

The floater, under the impression it had dislodged its burden, smoothed its flight and settled nearer to land. Even with its great strength of jet, it could not maintain high elevation long. Its most effective traveling mode was close enough to the ground so that the backwash of its gaseous emission provided additional buoyancy. That was why they had not anticipated the kind of hazard Haam had experienced: fall from a height. What other surprises were coming?

There was a spray on Heem's skin, distorted by the velocity of air passage.

"Guidance," the spray communicated, once he made it out. It bore Hoom's stigma.

Ah, yes. In the excitement of this adventure, he had forgotten that they planned to control the direction of motion of the monster. Could it actually be done?

After a brief exchange, they decided to let Hoom make the first try, since it had been his idea. Hoom flattened himself, overlapping more intake area of the floater, so that he was better anchored by suction, and let fly with what was calculated to be a painful needle jet.

The reaction was immediate and formidable. The floater took off exactly as they had surmised, but much more powerfully than anticipated. Hiim, caught unprepared, ripped free of the suction and dropped off the back. He did not even have time to make his despairing spray, or if he did, it was lost in the wind.

Would he survive? It was possible, depending on the terrain he struck and his velocity of impact. Possible, but not likely. HydrOs had soft bodies, easily damaged by concussion. More than one of Heem's former siblings had destroyed themselves by rolling accidentally into rocks and splattering themselves across the landscape.

Now they were two. Heem and Hoom clung by staying flat against a broad section of suction. Soon the monster slowed, satisfied that it had escaped its threat.

It was terribly stupid.

They relaxed slightly and surveyed the terrain. They were moving through the merged tastes of the exudates of hillside plants, and the trace reduction of atmospheric pressure verified the elevation. The mass of the moving floater compressed the air ahead of it, and waves of this compression reflected from the irregularities of the landscape. In short, they had an excellent vibration-perception of the scene to buttress the typical taste of it.

Heem was sorry his friends had fallen off, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was all too likely to be the next. He did not know how he could get off the back of the monster safely—and after what had happened, he didn't want to. If he desisted now, all their effort and losses would have been in vain. He had to go on, to taste the other side of the mountain. Hoom had come to a similar conclusion. "We cannot guide this creature to any gentle halt," he sprayed. "We have to go on until it tires."

Heem angled a moderately sharp jet into the hide of the floater. The monster veered, fleeing this new irritation. They had control, of a sort.

"Up, over the mountain," Heem sprayed. "We have to know—what lies beyond."

Unwittingly responsive to their directives, the flat-floater jetted up the slope.

Heem broke from his memory-dream, sweating. His body was soaked with the fluid of his meaninglessly leaking jets. Why did he have to keep remembering? Not only was it illegal, it was quite awkward. He knew with a sick certainty that he would soon experience the continuation of that memory, and he hoped it wouldn't happen at a bad time.

Now he had a more immediate concern. Still semiconscious in the acclimatization chamber, Heem reviewed his situation. He had been fleeing the confinement and danger of his home valley, there in his memory-dream; now he was still fleeing it, in a more complicated fashion. He was in trouble with the law/custom and had to get off-planet soon. The technological equivalent of a flatfloater was a spaceship; instead of escaping one valley, he had to escape one planet. Only through this specialized mission could he get a ship. So he had volunteered for host-duty, and qualified on the basis of his background, and entered the transfer chamber to receive his transfer aura—

And instead had received a staggering aural blow. Only sheer determination had carried him here before consciousness departed. What had happened?

He knew what had not happened. He had not received his transferee—and without that alien aura, he would be disqualified for the mission, and be planet-bound.

That was doom.

He had wasted half his private orientation time, just recovering from the shock.

He had never tasted news of a transfer failure like this before. Normally a transferee either arrived safely with the host, or it bounced, in which case the host felt nothing. The days of warring between transfer and host were over; Melody of Mintaka of far Segment Etamin had arranged that. Today the host-entity always had control. He could yield it to the transfer identity, but could take it back at will. The transferee could not knock him out. Therefore how could the act of transfer hit him like that?

Could it have been a function of his malady? Another aspect of the thing that had cost him his combat ability? He had been one of the leading combat specialists of his kind, owing to his superlatively sharp and accurate needles.

He had become one of the few who could expect to overcome a healthy Squam in fair encounter. Normally a HydrO could beat an Erb, and a Squam could beat a HydrO, and an Erb could beat a Squam, making a vicious circle in this local eddy of the Segment. But exceptional individuals could break that circle, and Heem of Highfalls had been one. That was why he had qualified for this mission.

The mission was shrouded in secrecy, no faintest taste of its specific nature seeping out. But it was rumored that it involved Planet Ggoff, in a neutral tract of Segmentary space. Fifty or more of the thousand species of Thousandstar might survive and reproduce on Ggoff without technological aids, but there were only three within convenient access range, so those three were the obvious hosts: Erb, Squam, and HydrO.

Logic filled in much of the rest. There was something on Ggoff that virtually every species in the Segment desperately wanted, so by Segment custom more binding than war, a competition was being held. It might be a good Iridium mine, or a safe mutation-inducing chemical, or a superior and useful species of vegetation; protocol was the same. Competitions were the chief source of Segment entertainment and status, and the near presence of one caused waves of excitement to wash through local Systems. It had been Heem's fortune that a competition utilizing HydrO hosts had occurred at this time; without this avenue offplanet, he would have been sunk in a dire mire.

Of course he had fashioned much of this luck himself. He had remained in hiding while keeping constantly alert for any means of departure, and had made sure no news of his disability reached the administration files. He had waited to file for the competition until the last mini-chronospray, so that there would not be time for the Competition Index to assimilate his legal compromise before approving him.

"Time to proceed to mission orientation and transfer verification," the chamber sprayed.

Already! That jolt had disrupted his time sense, too. Not only did he lack a transferee, he had no notion how he was going to proceed.

Only one thing was certain: he had to get into the competition. Because he had to have a spaceship. He could not roll offplanet by his own jets!

The competition participants were moving toward the indoctrination rendezvous.

Heem rolled out of his chamber and joined the throng. The liquid of group motion was washing over the floor as each person jet-rolled forward, confusing individual identities. That was good; Heem did not wish to meet anyone who knew him.

But such confusion would not help him get through the transfer recheck. There would be no anonymity there! The moment they discovered he had no transferee, he would be voided for the competition—and subject to the local law. He had to pass this mountain, lest he perish in the valley.

The passage debouched into an assembly chamber. The HydrO hosts spread out across it and occupied depressions in the floor keyed by impregnated taste. Heem found niche 39 and settled into place exactly like a legitimate host. He was fortunate that the indoctrination came before verification. Now he had a mini-spray more time to think. He had, in effect, to devise a way of riding the floater out of this valley, bypassing transferee verification.

The large ceiling public-spray system blasted on. The mechanically flavored spume wafted down like the effusion of a flatfloater, raucous and barely intelligible.

Heem's immediate neighbor, number 38, jetted a semi-private groan at him: "Why the rot can't they fix their churned-up nozzles? This is a pain in my skin!"

Heem jetted back a needle of agreement, but his mind was elsewhere. How could he pass the checkpoint without a transfer aura? He might finesse it, for the personality, claiming he was spraying for his visitor. But there could be no fooling the aura-pattern analysis of the machine.

"YOU WILL BE (UNINTELLIGIBLE) IN ORDER DURING THIS (UNINTELLIGIBLE) BRIEFING,"

the froth proclaimed.

"Shall I fill in the blanks?" 38 inquired acidly. "You will be dismembered in order during this disgusting briefing."

Heem squirted a polite chuckle. HydrOs did not have members, so this was either a peculiarly obscene implication, or an image drawn from the mind of 38's transferee, who could indeed be a membered species. Regardless, the translation was clever.

Could Heem profit by the confusion engendered by the poor public spray?

Unlikely; the machines didn't care about communication, just auras.

"The outline of the competition is this," the public spray continued, abating its volume and gaining clarity in the process. There had been too much water in the spray, before. Machines normally became more intelligible as they flowed, cleaning out pockets of dead fluid and contamination. "Nominal three hundred thirty-three host-transfer sets of three physical species will proceed individually to spaceport where sixty-six single-entity space vessels await arrival of entrants."

"Sixty-six!" 38 jetted. "That's only enough for one in five of us!"

One in five. So this was to be a stages competition, with established elimination points. That made Heem's situation rougher yet. He had thought that all qualified HydrO entrants would receive spaceships, and would rendezvous at Planet Ggoff for the competition proper. But it seemed there was to be a contest for the ships themselves.

He could not afford the slightest delay in processing, for only the first entities to reach the ships would make the cut. Once he got offplanet, it wouldn't matter much if he didn't make the next cut; he would be on his own.

Right now he had to move—fast. Somehow. He could not simply roll out early and go for the spaceport; they would have safeguards against that sort of thing.

"This start is being duplicated at the selected sites in colonies Squam and Erb," the public spittle continued. "The total number of ships is two hundred, fairly divided between the three hosts. Those who acquire ships will jet off for a planet preprogrammed in the guidance systems. The specific route can be modified marginally by the participants; some will arrive earlier than others.

At the landing site there will be fifty single-entity tractors programmed for the competition objective."

"One in four!" 38 squirted. "That reduces it to one in twenty, onsite."

"They have to reduce it to one in a thousand before it finishes," Heem needled irritably. "That's the object."

"Swish, that's right," 38 agreed, surprised.

But the public spray was still spuming. "Onplanet, you will proceed as rapidly as possible to the site. The tractors will require one refueling en route; fuel is available in limited quantity at selected stations. We anticipate that only ten tractors will achieve the objective, perhaps less, perhaps none."

"Then the competition intensifies," 38 needled.

"Why not let your transferee jet for a while?" Heem needled back. "Let him stretch his limbs."

That taste-faded his loquacious neighbor. None of the hosts were giving away the identities of their transferees. If it were known who represented what Star, a given contestant's liabilities could be fathomed, to his disadvantage. For example, the citizens of System Mebr were glassy, easily shattered in their natural state; they tended to shy away from rocky terrain, even when occupying hosts who were not shatterable, such as HydrOs. If Heem had to compete with a Mebr, he would try to force it into a canyon. But if he thought it was a Mebr, and went the rocky route, and it turned out to be a mineral-eating Tuvn, Heem would be the one at a disadvantage. Tuvns became highly excited by the presence of naked rock and put on their greatest energy in canyon situations. A competing HydrO could get himself splattered, crowding such a creature. So this competition would begin with the strategy of knowing one's rivals. And 38 had already given away part of the nature of his transferee.

Heem himself was secure in that sense. No one could fathom the liabilities of his transferee—because he had none. That was the greatest liability of all.

"Swoon of Sweetswamp, report for verification," a taste drifted through. Heem was irritated; private calls were supposed to dissipate without impinging on neighboring sites. The public spray descended on all, but spot needles were strictly one-person efforts.

"Are there any questions?" the public spray inquired. Then, after a pause: "We are in receipt of several questions, which we shall answer in order. First, what is the object of this competition? Answer: that information is classified. You will be informed when you are in flight to the target planet."

Now Heem got a squirt from one side and a drift from the other: "Probably hunting sapient flatfloaters in hostile wilderness." "Swoon of Sweetswamp, number 40, report for verification. Second jet."

Why didn't Swoon of Sweetswamp answer? He was likely to find himself washed out of the contest before it even started. His transferee-Star wouldn't like that!

"Sweetswamp, roll your hulk over there!" Heem jetted at the errant neighbor.

There was no response. Heem was tempted to let Swoon wash out, but decided to give him one more chance. He jetted out of his niche and rolled the short distance across to nudge the inattentive HydrO—and found the spot empty.

No wonder Swoon hadn't answered his summons! Swoon was absent from his assigned place. Probably he had gotten confused and settled out of place, in niche 4 or 400 instead of forty. That had been foolish. Of course a foolish HydrO would be a poor host, and would wash out of the competition rapidly, so perhaps it made no difference. Only one of the thousand would prevail, and the sooner the fools were eliminated, the better it would be for the real contenders.

Except that Heem himself, no fool, was just as likely to wash out now as was Swoon. Because there seemed to be no way to get past the transferee verification. How ironic that he, who for all they knew was the most able entrant-host, should be eliminated by a transfer malfunction. Had he been in Swoon's situation, he would not have squandered his chance like this!

"Swoon of Sweetswamp. Third jet. Report for verification, or forfeit."

Suddenly Heem rolled rapidly from this region. He had a notion, a slim chance hardly worth tasting, but if it worked—

He rolled up to the nearest open verification alcove. "Swoon of Sweetswamp reporting as summoned," he squirted.

"Put your transferee on," the alcove jetted impersonally.

"Transferee communicating," Heem squirted after a pause. He made the squirt deliberately sloppy, as if an alien mind were operating it.

"State your home-Star, transferee."

"I will not!" Heem squirted, almost missing the alcove receptor-surface in his supposed clumsiness. "I will not give away my nature to your government. Use your programmed aura cross-check; that is all that is permitted."

The beauty of it was that if the machine malfunctioned, Heem would be through verification. But if, as was far more likely, the machine showed that only a single aura occupied this body, it would be Swoon of Sweetswamp who was disqualified, not Heem of Highfalls. In this manner he could gamble and lose without paying the penalty. Of course, he would still have to figure out some other way to fool the machine, but he would worry about that in due course.

Maybe they didn't really have aura readouts here; they might be depending on self-identification. So if he could pretend that—

"You are Heem of Highfalls," the alcove jetted. "What are you attempting?"

The taste of success dissipated. They had cross-checked his aura, and nabbed him. Now all he could do was ad lib. "Swoon's name was called, and he was absent, so I tried to cover the taste for him so he would not be unfairly eliminated."

"Swoon is a friend of yours?"

"Indubitably." He could hardly afford the truth. "Of course, we are competing against each other—that is, our transferees are—but here at the initial stage we are cooperating. You know how it is." But he knew the machine would not know how it was.

"You are lying, Heem. You were not aware that Swoon is female."

This was no machine jetting! The anonymous interviewer was entirely too clever, setting traps for him. But Heem fought it through: "So I tried to get processed before my turn. My transferee wants to win this competition, for his Star."

The alcove sprayed out a rude profusion of mirth. "For his Star? Not likely!"

Something was wrong here. All the HydrOs were merely hosts for the representatives of the Thousand Stars. Why should his endorsement of the obvious be so humorous—unless the interviewer knew he had no transferee? Yet why continue this dialogue, in that case? They should just roll him out. So Heem waited without responding, knowing they had caught him—and that they had something else in mind. He knew there was heavy politicking in any Segment competition, and possibly he was about to get a taste of it here.

"You are aware that three species are serving as hosts for this engagement," the alcove jetted. "Roughly one third of the thousand are HydrO. All are good, healthy, apt specimens, approved by the Society of Hosts; there is no foolishness there. But there is one exception. No entity with a criminal record is permitted in a competition."

Oh, they really had him!

"You, of course, are the exception," the alcove continued. "The law awaits you outside. You lack Society of Hosts approval. Your entire career betrays an unscrupulous and low-cunning personality. You possess a combat skill that is suspicious; you could not maintain it legally. You made application to enter this competition under false pretenses. In summation, you are a disreputable entity."

"You were aware of that when you admitted me?" Heem inquired, surprised.

"It was your primary recommendation."

The wrongness magnified. "I am not certain I comprehend your direction."

"A little individual background, Heem. You are aware that there are approximately one thousand entrants to this competition, utilizing three host species, the Star of representation determined by the transfer entity."

"I am aware," Heem jetted nervously. Why were they repeating this basic information? Had they nulled his transfer deliberately, punishing him?

"But the three host species—what of their entrants?"

"Same applies," Heem sprayed. "Transfer in another entity of the same species, to be the representative. Two minds are still better than one, if their skills are complementary."

"Or use the host as the representative, and transfer in an alien expert."

Heem considered that. "Could be quite a combination! If you transferred a renegade Squam into a dominant HydrO host, he'd be a potent competitor against both Squams and HydrOs."

"Precisely. Odds against the success of that combination would decline from one in a thousand to one in one hundred or so, perhaps ever lower, with the right combination."

"Still, one chance in a hundred is a long one. Any one of the thousand could do as well merely by cheating a little."

"Oh, there is no cheating in a Segment competition," the interviewer squirted hastily. "That would lead to voiding of any success achieved."

"Could be hard to watch every detail, though," Heem suggested, intrigued by the theoretical situation. "This thing is basically a race, and I've been in enough local races to know that the winner is seldom completely clean." He remembered how Hoom had needled him, back in the juvenile stage at Highfalls. His experience in subsequent life had shown him this was typical; the scrupulous seldom finished first.

"You are an excellent racer," the interviewer jetted in an aside. "This was salient in your profile."

"Are you implying I am unclean?"

"The Competition Authority does not accept unclean individuals. We merely have need of a completely competent representative, with the strongest motive to succeed. Naturally we will tolerate no evidence of wrong-rolling, but since it would be an embarrassment to Star HydrO to have a winner with a soiled record, a pardon for your past activities has been filed. You are completely clean."

Now Heem was catching on. "You are entering me as the Star HydrO

representative?"

"I thought that was understood. Surely you realized that your transferee is extra-Segment, though you covered that information beautifully."

Extra-Segment? Heem set that aside for the moment. "And if I happen not to overcome the odds—"

"It is possible that a clerical error would be uncovered, voiding your pardon, and you would again be subject to local System justice."

The taste was coming through more clearly. "And if I should, just by way of farfetched example, be caught employing unclean means in the competition—"

"The Competition Authority would deal with you in its own fashion. We certainly would not support such behavior."

So he had been admitted to the competition because of his record, and was expected to employ his nefarious skills to win for Star HydrO, without being caught. They had certainly given him an incentive: glory, honor, and a clean record if he won without fouling out; confinement or worse if he failed.

"I believe I comprehend the situation," he jetted, subdued.

"We rather thought you would, Heem."

"But a great deal depends on the transferee." There seemed to be no reason now not to advise them of the failure; they would merely put him through the machine again and be sure the transfer took, this time.

"Do not underestimate your transferee," the alcove jetted. "He is a highly trained and motivated Solarian of Segment Etamin, apt at riddles and competitive strategy. We estimate that his presence will quadruple your chances for success.

As you sit, you should have one chance in twenty-five to win—and perhaps you will be fortunate enough to improve on that."

By cheating. Yes, he just might accomplish that; he did indeed know many little trick rolls of the trade that could not be readily exposed as illicit. "There is just one problem—"

"We realize that it is difficult at first to come to terms with a completely alien mind, and the Solarians are as alien as any in the Galaxy," the alcove jetted. "By the same token taste, the strategy directed by this entity will be virtually incomprehensible to your Segment Thousandstar competitors. Learn to employ this alienness to your advantage, and—"

"Verification is complete except for those eliminated by default," the public spray proclaimed. "Prepare for onset of competition."

"But for this first stage, your own expertise is best," the alcove finished hurriedly. "Now return to your niche for the onset of the competition. Do not fail us, and we shall not fail you."

A pretty direct reminder! "I'm trying to jet you that your alien Solarian transfer never—"

"If you miss the initial keying, you are unlikely to obtain a ship."

Heem realized that an alien transferee would have little notion of local conventions, so would be no help in the first stage of competition. What could a Solarian of Etamin do in the Sphere of Star HydrO? He did not need the Solarian expert. Not to get offplanet. Once he had a spaceship, he wouldn't need the Solarian anyway. If he washed out of the competition, he could set down somewhere else, anywhere else but here, and they would never bother to extradite him. So what did he care if his transfer had failed? With no visiting mind to prod him, no inter-Segment involvement, he was on his own. That was the way he preferred it.

But he was dawdling, wasting invaluable time. Heem rolled swiftly back to his assigned niche. He should consider himself lucky that they had been so concerned with the cleverness of their hold over him that they had forgotten to verify his transferee aura. Maybe his attempt to borrow Swoon of Sweetswamp's identity had served him well, even in its failure. The anonymous interviewer had outsmarted himself. The authorities did not have a punishing hold on Heem; they had the illusion of a hold. Heem reached his niche and settled in. "Ascent is correct,"

the public spray announced. "Biim of Broadsea is granted the key to the sixth ship."

There was a winner—evidently the sixth. Heem had missed five successful responses, in the little time he had delayed, and had no idea of the pattern that might be developing. That put him at a crucial disadvantage, lowering his chances of success. He could wash out right here, before ever getting started.

The one thing he could not afford.

"So you are back," his neighbor jetted. Not the communicative 38, who was now concentrating on the competition, but the one who had been absent before. Number 40, Swoon of Sweetswamp. The female he had tried to impersonate, who had never answered her summons for verification.

"Descent is incorrect," the public spray proclaimed. "Maan of Makerain is disqualified." There was a brief pause, then: "Hard is incorrect. Soft is incorrect. Kreep of Kinglake and Toot of Tangspray are eliminated. Please depart promptly."

So Ascent was a winner, but Descent and Soft were losers. Not enough information yet for him to form a notion of the pattern. He had to get a listing of the prior winners and losers so he could compete on an even basis. "Swoon, would you provide me with a rehearsal of the prior—"

Her jet struck his skin before he finished. "You stole my verification! Now I can't compete!"

"Bold is incorrect," the public spray announced. "Deeb of Deepocean is retired."

"I did not steal your verification!" Heem protested.

"Yes you did!" she countered furiously, her jet warm with emotion. There was a special female flavor to her emissions that would have been quite interesting in another circumstance. "Fuun informed me you had rolled for my summons."

Fuun must be the loquacious 38 on the other side. Infernal loudsquirt! "I merely tried to cover for you. But they fathomed my identity. Your qualification has not been compromised." Yet if she had missed verification, she had been eliminated by default.

"Joy is incorrect," the public spray wafted. "Haav of Healthjuice is dismissed."

"I don't believe you," Swoon jetted, but there was a tinge of doubt. "I was delayed by a malfunctioning door on my chamber, and only arrived here as the concepts commenced."

"Then you are not at fault. Go to the verification alcove," Heem urged. "It is not yet too late." He hoped. "But first give me the data."

"Dense is incorrect," the spray announced. "Poon of Puddlelove has washed out."

She hesitated then decided. "I will give you the data— after I qualify. So if you attempt to betray me again—"

Heem did not debate the point. "Advise them Heem of Highfalls rolled you to them. Hurry."

She rolled out with dispatch, for she was as eager as he to win a spaceship.

There was a pause. Six entrants had been eliminated in succession, so the others were getting more conservative. Once a contestant committed himself to a guess, he was either a winner or a loser; he had no second chance. It was evident that the odds against a right answer by pure guess were at least six to one, since that was the ratio of failures to successes he had noted so far. But the odds would be much better for a smart entity, or for a pair of entities (host and transferee working in tandem), and Heem did not care to gamble that so many others would wash out that any ships would be left over for easy taking. Even if there were ten ships remaining, and all entrants washed out except himself, he would still have to fathom the key before he got a ship. If he took a day to do it, he would be so far behind the other ships that he would never catch up before the race was over. So he had to fathom the pattern and get his ship early.

"Grief is incorrect," the public spray sprayed. "Fuun of Flowjet is finished."

"May the monstrous amorphous Deity spray poison acid on us all!" 38 sprayed explosively, and there was a neighborhood stir of shock at his obscenity. "Joy was third, so I was sure the antonym had to be sixth."

"But the concept at issue now is the seventh," the HydrO behind Heem sprayed in a stage whisperjet.

"And the sixth was Ascent," another sprayed. "That was the antonym to none of the prior concepts."

"Dry skin!" Fuun swore scatologically as he rolled away. "I misremembered and misfigured! What a dehydrant am I!"

"On that, at least, he is correct," another sprayed.

Nevertheless, it was valuable information for Heem. Now he knew that Joy had been third, and suspected that there had been at least one pair of antonyms among the others. Joy third, Ascent sixth. Descent had been wrong, so there could not be adjacent antonyms. Probably the key lay elsewhere. If only he had the full list!

"Brittle is correct," the public spray came. "Mees of Mistfog has Ship Seven."

Ascent followed by Brittle. What did the two have in common? They were two entirely different types of concept. Heem's mind labored vainly to spot something obvious. It couldn't be that successive concepts had to differ in nature, because then several of the guesses following Ascent would have been correct. Hard, Soft, Bold, Joy, Dense, Grief—three were descriptions of physical properties, three related to feelings or personality of living conscious entities. Brittle clearly fit into the former category. Why, then, was Brittle correct, while Hard, Soft, and Dense were incorrect? And how had Mees of Mistfog fathomed the distinction? The guess had come after a fair pause, as though Mees had taken time to figure it out. What did Mees know that Heem didn't?

Obviously, the first correct and incorrect guesses: Mees knew them, Heem didn't.

Heem had to have them, but did not want to betray his ignorance by inquiring of another contestant. Any of them might inform him incorrectly, so as to cause him to eliminate himself by a miscalculated guess, and perhaps make it easier for them. There was no rule against discussion and cooperation, but ultimately each entrant had to be for himself, and for his represented Star. No one could be trusted.

Where was Swoon of Sweetswamp? Could he trust her? He would have to! She obviously was not the brightest HydrO extant, or she would not have gotten lost coming to her niche. He was sure it had been confusion, not door malfunction, that had delayed her. She would need help getting a good guess. He would give her the correct sequence occurring during her absence, and she would give him the correct original sequence. If he could crack the code for himself, he could do it for her too; two answers were as easy as one. If she gave him incorrect information, it would only wash them both out. So she could probably be trusted.

"Power is incorrect," the spray announced. "Sheev of Shadylake is out."

This was awful! Heem, ordinarily apt at this sort of thing, could not get a jet on it. If he was too late getting the early sequence, too many others would solve the pattern before him.

"Justice is incorrect. Food is incorrect. Descent is incorrect," the spray sprayed, following with the names of the unsuccessful entrants.

"Humor is correct," the spray then came. "Bloop of Blisswater has Ship Eight.

Direction is correct; Poos of Peacepond has Ship Nine. Sour is correct; Zaas of Zoomjet has Ship Ten."

Three in a row! Obviously one person had found the key, and given it to his friends, so that all three had won together. Much more of that and all the ships would go in a few big rolls! Yet these three would now find themselves racing against each other; their friendship would suffer rapid attrition. Since each host had a different transferee, representing a different Star, there could be no long-term collusion.

"Ocean is incorrect," the spray announced. "Season is incorrect. Hate is incorrect. Love is incorrect."

Four more washouts in rapid order. That could be a group who had cooperated and lost. But the key remained opaque. With a sequence of ten winners and several times that many losers, Heem should be able to determine the pattern. If only he had all the data!

There was another pause, a long one. Evidently the other contestants were as confused as Heem. That was good; that would give Swoon of Sweetswamp time to get verified and return to her niche. It was also bad; all the ships already acquired were zooming off to the rendezvous, becoming more and more difficult to catch.

Heem waited impatiently, making little restless jets that rolled him about within his niche, rotating his body in place. Baffled by the mystery of the pattern, his searching mind veered off, and he found himself remembering again.

He had been in a kind of competition before, as mystifying as this one, and somewhat more final in its decisions. The competition of juvenile survival. He remembered how he and Hoom had ridden the back of the flatfloater as it jetted powerfully up the slope of the mountain range beside Highfalls. Their companions Haam and Hiim had fallen off, and now the two of them were the only sapients remaining in the valley. They had to know whether they were alone, or whether others like them existed elsewhere.

The flatfloater wavered, not liking the tremendous effort of the climb. Heem needled in on the lower edge of its disk, and it shot forward again, seeking to escape the irritation. Again Heem appreciated the stupidity of the monster, which made it so readily subject to manipulation.

Was it possible that the two sapients were also stupid, being manipulated by some power beyond their comprehension? Surely the valley of Highfalls had not been stocked with hundreds of their kind, most of whom would die at the outset, only to have them all die out eventually! Yet it had almost happened, and might happen yet.

With amazing swiftness, the taste of the top of the range approached. It was uncomfortably dry up here, and the air pressure was low, causing his body to fluff out. The ambient taste of vegetation was diffuse. Heem did not like it, but was determined to go on. He knew now that they could not have made it by themselves; only the gross power of the floater sufficed. Even that would fail if they did not surmount the ridge soon, for the monster was tiring. It too was suffering from the rare air; fragments of its body were falling off, propelled by the uncontrolled expansion of its gases. Heem and Hoom were both working hard to keep it moving; soon even the sharpest needles would not be enough.

The flatfloater balked. Now all their prodding was vain; the monster's jets were exhausted, its body overheated to the point of shutdown. It crashed into the slope. Heem and Hoom rolled forward and off, jetting desperately to regain equilibrium and avoid a competing collision.

In due course Heem rolled to a stop, his body half-flattened against the tilt of the ground. The wind was cold against his skin, the taste strange. Perhaps it was some breed of swamp vegetation, fuzzed by distance.

Swamp? This draft was coming down the mountain. Was there swamp up there?

Hardly! Where, then?

It had to be from the far side. A draft across the strange swamp, with its different flavor, up over the mountain ridge, down this side. If he rolled into the draft, he would find that swamp. All he had to do was keep rolling until he got there; the wind would guide him.

Beside him, Hoom was reviving. "Do you survive, Heem?" he sprayed weakly.

"Yes," Heem replied. "We must go on."

"We must go back! This diminished pressure is awful! The air is dry and cold."

"Because we are near the top of the ridge! A little farther, and we will crest it. The flatfloater has done all it can; we must not throw away what it has given us."

"I'm tired," Hoom protested. "I cannot climb anymore; I must roll down."

"Then roll alone. I will cross the mountain."

"But suppose you never return? I would be alone in the valley!"

"Yes," Heem jetted forcefully, starting his roll uphill. He was bluffing; if Hoom did not come...

Reluctantly, Hoom joined him. Heem made a private jet of relief. He had not wanted to risk this venture alone, yet had not wanted to give it up so close to success. Now he had won; he had assumed the leadership, and Hoom would have to follow.

They forged up the slope. Abruptly the ground leveled, then angled down. They had crested the ridge! They had been virtually at the brink. What irony if they had given up when the flatfloater did!

There was a lesson in this, Heem thought. One must not give up an effort prematurely; success might be incipient, though it seemed otherwise.

What a relief to roll downhill! The slope was steep, forcing them to brakejet firmly, but progress was excellent.

"We made it!" Hoom sprayed jubilantly. "We conquered!" He seemed to have forgotten his prior reticence. But that was the way Hoom was; his attention span was brief. He never brooded on the ultimate meaninglessness of things the way Heem did.

For example, Hoom was now happy to be rolling downhill. Heem was concerned what they might encounter at the base of this slope. The valley of Highfalls had its perils, enough to eliminate all but two of possibly two hundred original HydrOs who had started there. Could this nameless new valley be any safer? Probably it was worse, for them, because they would not be familiar with its perils.

Yet this venture had to be made. Whatever the meaning of life might be, this exploration would help him to discover it.

The slope leveled, but the ground was too high yet for this to be the base. A variance in the mountain, after which the descent should resume.

Suddenly both of them blasted water violently forward, coming to a halt. There was something strange, alien, and horrible ahead. Both of them knew instantly it was an enemy. It exuded a taste of sheerest menace. They also knew they could not fight it; the thing was too horrible to oppose. Their only choice was to flee.

They tried. But progress up the steep slope was agonizingly slow. The thing rolled up behind them—no, even more horrible, it did not roll, its locomotion was part of its alien quality. It did not jet, it—it slithered. Heem had never imagined such a means of transport, but the faint, awful taste of this thing's presence evoked memories buried in his evolution. This creature—it had been the implacable foe of Heem's kind for an interminable time!

"Cease your struggle, HydrO prey," the jet of the alien came. Even its communication was oddly sinister. There was a cold metallic flavor. The alien did not use jets for communication; Heem knew this too. Therefore this command was impossible—yet it had come.

Heem ignored it, naturally. He jetted so hard he practically flatfloated up the slope. Hoom was right beside him. Terror gave them strength.

"Cease, lest I destroy you," the alien jetted.

Hoom had enough attention left to loft a hurried spray at Heem. "How can it jet?

It has no jets!"

"With my machine, HydrO prey!" the alien jetted. "Last warning: desist or die."

But Heem knew with the certainty of thousands of generations of his kind—it was amazing how self-realization came at a moment like this!—that there was no way to trust this alien. "Divide!" he sprayed, warned by that instinct. He jetted at right angles to his former course and rolled to the side, separating from Hoom.

Even as he did so, there was an explosive spray from Hoom. "Oh, it burns!" Then nothing—and Heem knew his friend was dead.

Heem dodged again, changing his angle of escape with his strongest jet. Then the alien's machine-jet grazed him, just touching a small patch of his skin.

"Oh, it burns!" Heem sprayed and collapsed. It did burn, but his exclamation was more cunning than pain, a ploy of desperation. Let the alien assume he was dead; perhaps the killing shot would be withheld. It was his only chance.

He felt the slight vibration of the ground as the alien approached. It came to Heem first, its body emitting its faint but awful taste. It was difficult to fathom the nature of this dread creature, but as it came near the separate small indications of its mechanism evoked the instinctive memories in Heem's mind. The thing was long and slender, an undulating rope of flesh tapering into a rough point at either extreme. There was armor on it, mail formed from bone: the hardened tissue employed by some animals to stiffen and shield their anatomies.

It moved by shoving its smooth, hard torso against irregularities in the ground, and sliding its dry scales past these irregularities. It was, Heem realized, a bit like rolling; instead of employing sensible jets of water to push its body around and forward, it employed natural objects. But it remained a horrifyingly alien mode of propulsion.

The thing slithered up to Heem, who dared not squirt even the tiniest jet. He knew, again by instinct, that he would only remain alive if this monster thought him already dead. He had to stay dead to stay alive!

The thing lurked beside him, a ghastly alien presence. Heem no longer had volition; even his hydrogen absorption was suspended. The monster unfolded three gross limbs, their nature shaped in Heem's mind by sound, ambient taste, and instinct memory. Pincers extended, three sturdy metallic claws, grasping Heem's vulnerable body, hauling one section of it into the air. Yet Heem did not react.

For a moment the monster held him there, pincers cutting cruelly into Heem's tender flesh. The taste-ambience was much stronger now, evoking a vivid picture of this creature's nature. The bone-plates were intricately overlapped and interlocked so as to be highly flexible and invulnerable to any needlejet. The appendages were sensitive to vibration in much the fashion Heem's own skin was, so the thing could—could—here another concept struggled and finally burst out: a discreet new sense. The thing could hear. Hearing was more than feeling, operating at a greater distance. The creature could perceive its environment by hearing rather than tasting; its scales were impervious to sapient communication—no, that was confusing.

The thing had no jets, yet it had jetted. Instead it had a machine, which Heem now realized was a construct of inanimate substance that squirted intelligible jets. Thus the monster could talk despite its lack of natural means. By putting acid in that machine, it could burn and kill. Heem's skin still hurt fiercely from that glancing jet.

The monster opened its pincers, letting Heem drop. It slithered across to locate Hoom. Vibration commenced, and a terrible taste drifted across. The awful exudate of fresh wounds in HydrO flesh.

The thing was cutting up Hoom's body with its pincers! Hoom's natural juices were squirting into the air, spreading the horrible taste of death. By vibration and taste, Heem was treated to the most terrible experience of his career. The monster, not satisfied with killing his friend, was now destroying the body!

The utter alienness of this action made Heem's jet apertures lose control, and some of his reserve water leaked out. Still he could do nothing, not even move.

Efficiently, the monster reduced Hoom's body to juicy pieces. Then the most sickening thing of all occurred. The thing extruded its own internal membrane and spread it over Hoom's pieces. Heem tasted the vile acids; their vapors burned his skin anew. A poison jet was bad enough, but this complete inundation was appalling. What possible purpose could there be in it? Nothing in his experience accounted for anything like this. His instinct-memory offered no clue; whatever it was was too horrible even to comprehend.

Heem's discomfort was growing. He had to breathe or he would perish anyway.

Cautiously he took in air, circulating the molecules of it through his system.

Energy was harvested, and water flowed, restoring his power. But what good did this do him? The alien could shoot him down again with that mechanical jet. Heem stayed still.

The ghastly process of demolition continued. Heem found himself becoming inured to it; it was impossible to maintain a condition of total horror indefinitely.

Hoom was dead; he had accepted that, and with the flow of energy through his system he was better able to tolerate it. The experience and memory were awful and would remain so, but Heem could at least function. He had, after all, tasted the deaths of his companions many times before, from many different causes.

Suddenly he realized that the alien was temporarily restricted. How could it move rapidly, while its insides were outside? Perhaps it could still use its weapon, but it could not pursue a rolling object.

To wait here was to risk getting cut up and destroyed in the manner Hoom had been. There was really no choice. The alien had thought Heem dead, since it lacked proper taste; when Heem remained limp, he had been set aside while the other victim was verified. The alien was not omniscient; it had to check things physically. So Heem had fooled it—and now might escape it.

Heem blasted out his jets, initiating a violent roll down the slope. If the acid did not strike him in the first moment, he should escape it entirely. And—it did not strike. He had fooled the enemy and won his freedom.

Now he was rolling down the steep incline, much faster than was comfortable or safe, yet he dared not brake. Better the risk of getting smashed against a rock, than of waiting for an acid bath!

But as he became assured of escape, his concern about his high-velocity roll grew. He had to slow, but his momentum was such that his jets seemed to have no effect.

Still the slope catapulted him down. Heem bounced, his skin abrading. A welter of tastes impinged on his awareness: animals, plants, minerals, not-quite familiar. The tastes of this strange valley, only a little different from Highfalls, yet remarkable because it was the first foreign valley he had known.

A region he could live in, if he could only enter it safely.

He tried again, without effect. The slope was simply too steep! Now he tasted the spume of broken water. There was a river here, rocky, with falls, like that in his own valley; he would smash into it and die, for water could not sufficiently cushion his present plunge.

Heem jetted with all his strength to one side. His plummet veered, and he rolled on a slant down the mountain. Now at last he could gain a little purchase. He veered further, beginning to catch the ground; in a moment he would be rolling back uphill, and gravity would help stay his motion. Why hadn't he thought of this before? He slowed, curved—

And dropped off another ledge, one that ran parallel to his original line of descent. He jetted wildly in all directions, accomplishing nothing, and splashed into deep water.

Dizzy, exhausted, he struggled to the surface—and could not maintain the elevation. Slowly he sank down into the depths, losing all control. There was hydrogen here, plenty of it, but he lacked the energy to process it properly at this depth. He was in danger of drowning.

Then something bumped him. Dazedly he tasted its ambience—and discovered the stigma of another of his kind. But Hoom was the one who remained, and Hoom was dead!

The strange HydrO shoved him out of the water. Heem cooperated feebly. There was something very strange about this person. It was a stranger, certainly, probably a HydrO of this valley. But also—

As they emerged from the water, Heem realized what it was. His rescuer was female—the first Heem had ever encountered. Suddenly a new universe had opened to him.

Chapter 2: Triple Disaster

"Wake, Heem," the female jetted peremptorily.

Heem snapped alert. It was not the female of his memory, but Swoon of Sweetswamp of nowtime. "You qualified?" he jetted anxiously.

"I did. You squirted truth. When I invoked your name, they removed me from forfeit and verified me instantly."

"You took long enough to return," Heem jetted irritably.

"How would you know? You were unconscious."

"Pain is incorrect," the public spray sprayed. "Zuum of Zestcloud is out. Plan is incorrect. Baas of Basewater is through."

"Give me that data," he sprayed.

"Three is incorrect," the public spray announced.

"Very well," Swoon agreed. "Here is the list of correct entries. Hard, Soft, Joy, Dense, Tedium, Ascent, Brittle, Humor, Direction, Sour."

"Diffuse is correct," the public spray announced. "Diis of Delightfog possesses Ship Eleven." There was a spray of sheer jubilation nearby as Diis vented his joy.

Heem considered the elements of the puzzle, at last prepared with complete information—but was distracted by another announced wrong guess. It was hard to concentrate on the growing list while keeping up with all the wrong guesses, yet he knew he could not afford to ignore those errors. "Swoon, we have reconciled our difference of the moment," he jetted. "But we both have lost time. Suppose we cooperate further?"

"This is sensible," she agreed. "For this stage of the competition only."

"Agreed. We work together to fathom the key, then derive two answers. Once we have our ships, our deal is over."

"Agreed," she jetted. "Are you apt at puzzles?"

"I am. But I need a ready recall mechanism for the rejects."

"I have an excellent memory. That makes me an apt space pilot, but a poor riddler. You cogitate; I will recall."

Heem rolled into it. Obviously there was a pattern of concepts, no two of which repeated. Hard, followed by Soft—two extremes of physical properties. Then a shift to a new variety of concept, Joy, followed by—Dense? Why not Sadness, or Grief, or Misery? If one pair of extremes was correct, why not another?

Maybe no one had thought to guess the opposite of Joy, so a new concept had been introduced instead. He could check that now. "Swoon, what were the error-guesses for Ship Four?" He hoped she was correct about her excellent memory.

"Sorrow, Grief, Pleasure," she jetted immediately.

She did indeed have a good memory! It probably did help her in piloting, for there were many details of fuel economy, energy absorption, and trajectory that were greatly facilitated by ready recall. Heem's own piloting was excellent, but he depended on experience and intelligent exploitation of momentary realities, rather than on his merely ordinary memory. He could do with less memory yet, since the illegal juvenile recollections were a constant liability for him.

But he could not afford the liability of that distraction now! His theory had just been disproven. Either Sorrow or Grief should have sufficed, but both had been rejected.

Could it be a number sequence, with concept irrelevant? Every fourth guess was accepted as correct, after three rejections? That would neatly eliminate three quarters of the contestants, guaranteeing that a sufficient number would remain to fill the available ships. A very simple formula—but there was no requirement of complexity here. Any entity who caught on could win his ship, regardless.

"What were the errors for Ship Three?" he jetted.

"Fear is correct for Ship Twelve," the public spray announced. Annoyed, Heem blotted out the rest; he needed to fathom the pattern of the early answers, then verify it with the subsequent ones that Swoon would retain for him.

"Fuzzy, Brittle, Bold," Swoon replied. Three errors. Good. He already knew there had been three for Ship Four. "What errors for Ship Five?"

"Diffuse, Hard, Soft."

Three more! Hard and Soft had been specific repeats, automatically void. But they counted as errors, setting up the next.

"Errors for Ship Six?"

"Joy, Hard, Soft, Thick."

Four errors. There went that theory! Unless it were progressive, the number growing as the game continued. "How many for Ship Two?"

"None," she jetted. "The first two guesses were correct."

So there had been zero errors, zero errors, three, three, three, four—not hopeful. "Errors for Ship Seven?"

"Think, Bold, Descent, Hard, Soft, Joy, Grief."

She had certainly been paying attention! Six errors, including three repeats of prior winners. The stupid guessers kept trying those repeats, not catching on.

But soon the stupid ones would be eliminated, and the repeats would stop. Except that any guess before the assigned number would be wrong, so it made no difference. But how did six errors fit the pattern? This was not an even progression. Was it that the wrong guesses had to match or outnumber the prior totals? Then why had six guesses occurred, when four or five should have sufficed? Also, at that rate, all the contestants would be eliminated before all the ships were taken. And—

"They are making more correct guesses now," Swoon advised him worriedly.

"Fifteen ships have been taken. Sixteen."

"I'm rolling on it!" Heem needled back, then picked up his thought. He had just found two overwhelming flaws in the error-count theory. He had himself tasted a run of several correct guesses in succession, so he should have known from the outset that wasn't it. And even had that not been the case, that system would not work. As soon as enough contestants caught on to it, no one would volunteer the wrong guesses. The competition would roll to a halt, as all waited for others to eliminate themselves. There had to be some way to have many successive correct guesses.

"Five more correct ones," Swoon jetted. "Too many are catching on; haven't you solved it yet? They'll roll out of ships!"

Heem suppressed an irate blast. "Two thirds of the ships remain." But he was worried. Too many other contestants, able to work on the problem with full information from the outset, were fathoming the pattern and gaining their ships.

Twenty more ships might be taken suddenly.

Back to concepts: the identical ones did not repeat, but what about variants?

Hard and Soft were physical properties; so was Dense. But the sequence was Hard-Soft-Joy-Dense. If Dense was right, why had another physical property, Brittle, been ruled wrong, while Joy had been accepted in its place? Followed by Tedium-Ascent-Brittle. And Brittle had been rejected before. How was it that an invalid concept had become valid?

The key could not be in the number of rejections or in the particular concepts.

It had to be in the order of the concepts, so that any concept became wrong when out of place. Now what was that order?

"Seven more ships!" Swoon jetted despairingly.

Heem washed her out of his perception, along with the public spray's pronouncements. He was beginning to get it; all he needed was uninterrupted thought. First, he had to analyze and classify the concepts. Then he had to formulate a theory of progression. Then he should verify it by predicting to himself the nature of several forthcoming correct guesses. Finally he had to make his own guess—before the supply of ships was exhausted.

He worked it out, calling on the increasingly nervous Swoon for data on occasion. There were seven or eight categories of concept: physical Properties, such as Hard, Soft, Dense, Brittle, and Diffuse; Sentient Feelings, such as Joy, Tedium, Humor, Fear, and Courage; Special Motion such as Direction, Aslant, Plunge, Rotation, and Arrival; Taste Sensation, such as Sour, Sweet, Pungent, Savory, and Insipid; Fluid Matter, such as Rain, Sea, Moist, Dry (i.e., absence of fluid), and Liquid; Number, such as One, Two, Three, Four, and Five; Sapient Qualities, such as Wisdom, Stupidity, Sanity, and Craziness; and several stray concepts that could not yet be classified with assurance because there were too many examples of each. Concept categories tended to merge at the edges, as did tastes when the fluids bearing them mixed.

Now the order: the first two were Physical Properties, the third a Sentient Feeling, the fourth another Physical Property, the fifth another Feeling, the sixth a Direction, the Seventh another Physical Property. Did he have a pattern here? It was hard to tell.

Analyze it mathematically, he thought. Let the first class of concepts be A, the second B, the third C. Use exponents to indicate repeat concepts.

Heem paused. Had he really thought that? That was not the way his mind ordinarily worked! He knew of the symbol-conventions of Galactic notation—A, B, C—but did not think in them. This pressure was having a strange effect on him.

Nevertheless, it was a good thought.

He made a mental list of the successful concepts, classifying each as a mathematical notation. Taste A, taste B, taste C, and so on, eliminating for the moment the actual concepts so that the pattern, unobscured by meaning, could emerge. That's it exactly.

There he was, tasting to himself again, encouraging himself. Perhaps this atypical mannerism stemmed from the lingering disorientation of his failed transfer-hosting. He hoped it would not interfere with his performance.

Onward: Hard-Soft-Joy-Dense-Tedium became A-A-B-A-B. He did not bother with the exponents after all; A-A1-B-A2-B1 seemed to be superfluous refinement, so far.

He could taste the pattern quite well without it.

Now what about the next five concepts? Would they be a repeat of the initial sequence, or a variant, or a continuation of a developing sequence? No time to conjecture; he would have to translate the raw data directly into the format and see. The concepts were Ascent-Brittle-Humor-Direction-Sour. Categories C-A-B-C-D. No repeat of the first five-concept pattern.

Well, there was no reason the sequence should be in fives; that was just for his convenience in organizing. Consider them all together: AABABCABCD.

Suddenly a repeating subsequence leaped out at him: ABC-ABC. Preceded by AAB, followed by D. What sense could be made of that?

It was pointless to struggle with it when so much more data was available. He had Swoon jet him the next ten concepts, and translated them into taste categories with increasing proficiency. Diffuse-A, Fear-B Plunge-C, Sweet-D, Rain-E, Elastic-A, Courage-B, Rotation-C, Pungent-D, Sea-E. And there it was, beautifully, stupidly simple: a concept progression!

Reverifying, he worked it out. A-AB-ABC-ABCD-ABCDE-ABCDE. The next one the twenty-first concept had to be F—a new category. A Sapient Process, or a Number, or something else—anything but a repeat category.

"Give me the concept for Ship Twenty-one," he jetted.

"Nine," Swoon answered promptly.

Victory! The category of Number, new to the progression. "Now feed me the remaining ships, slowly," he jetted.

"Rare," she jetted back, and he translated that to A. "Caution." He rendered that B. As she continued, he hardly perceived the specific concepts, so readily did they become taste-designates. C-D-E-F-G, and then a new sequence in the progression: ABCDEFGH. And another: ABCD—

"Where's the next?" he needled irritably.

"That's it!" Swoon jetted. "Forty ships taken! Have you solved it?" Anxiety was beginning to blur her communication, intruding irrelevant tastes.

"Yes. The next one will be an E concept, followed by—"

"What?" Her jet was pure confusion.

Oops—he had squirted her with his notational symbols. "A concept relating to Fluid Matter, that has not been used before, like—"

"Liquid is correct," the public spray sprayed.

"You've got it!" Swoon jetted jubilantly.

"I just lost it," he responded. "I didn't make that formal guess; another HydrO

did, and he got the ship. The others are catching on rapidly."

"Five is correct," the spray announced. "Stupidity is correct. Victory is correct."

"There went F, G, and H," Heem jetted in alarm. "We've got to grab our own ships before the entire next sequence goes!"

"Yes!" Swoon agreed. "Give me a concept!"

"It has to be a new category. Maybe an Abstract Relation, like Strength—"

"Virtue is correct," the public spray came.

"That too; that's category I," Heem jetted. "The next eight will be easy."

"I will settle for the next one," Swoon jetted.

"A Physical Property, but not one that's been used before."

"How about Light, the opposite of Heavy? Heavy has been used, but not Light."

"That should roll it," he agreed.

"If this is wrong—" She squirted with needlesome force into her niche-receptor.

There was a pause.

"Light is correct," the public spray sprayed. "Swoon of Sweetswamp has won Ship Forty-six."

Swoon practically melted. "Thank you, Heem, thank you! I will repay you for this! Catch up to me at the target planet—"

But Heem had little faith in such gratitude. "Only one can win the competition,"

he reminded her.

"The competition is not yet over. Perhaps there will be occasion to cooperate again." She doused him with a jet of intensely erotic suggestion and rolled out of her niche. She was off to collect her key and her ship.

Heem took a moment to reorient. Swoon might not be the cleverest concepts-riddle manipulator, but she certainly had sex appeal!

He was now free to win his own ship. That should be no problem. The next concept should be B—

"Humility is correct," the public spray announced. "Arrival is correct."

They were going rapidly! Forty-eight ships of out sixty-six total. The next would be—

"Rich is correct. Czeep of Czealake has Ship Forty-nine."

He had better figure ahead several ships, so as to be ready when his chance came up. Right now he was guessing correctly, but losing out to others who were responding more quickly. He would try three ships ahead. Rich had been a D

concept; E-F-G—he needed a G. G was— he paused, ransacking his memory—G was Intellectual Faculties, like Wisdom and Stupidity. Had these specific concepts been used? Probably. So he had to take something different like Eccentricity.

That had an original feel. Eccentricity—his ticket to space!

"Stream is correct." There were now very few wrong guesses; only those who knew they had fathomed the pattern were expressing themselves. The ships were going swiftly. "Six is correct."

Now it was up to G—his turn. Heem started his jet—

And balked. His jet clogged, the fluid dribbling down his skin meaninglessly.

What had happened? It wasn't like him to clog in the crisis!

It's a repeat, he thought suddenly. A void response!

"Sanity is correct," the public spray came. "Prosperity is correct."

A repeat! Quite possible, for he had hardly assimilated the concepts themselves.

He had translated them to letter-tastes automatically, depending on Swoon of Sweetswamp to recall the specifics—and now she was gone. He could not trust his memory on any of the repeat concepts!

"Vice is correct. Knyfh is correct."

Two more ships gone—the fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth. Only eleven left—and though he had fathomed the pattern, his memory was suspect! He had perhaps two chances in three of choosing correctly on any single one —but he hardly wanted to stake his freedom on those odds! He wanted to be certain. What was he to do now?

"Firm is correct. Maat of Mainstream wins Ship Fifty-six."

The fifty-fifth concept had been Knyfh—evidently the new category J, Cluster Geography. Segment Knyfh had been at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy defense, during the Second War of Energy. Probably the next J concept could be any of the other Galactic Segments—Qaval, Etamin, LoDo, Weew, even Thousandstar itself. But this was too obvious; a number of contestants would fathom it, and be waiting for J to roll around again, and it would be pure chance for him to get his answer in first. He could not jet his answer in one moment beforetime; an answer out of place was a wrong answer.

"Excitement is correct. Departure is correct. Spicy is correct."

Three more ships gone—and Heem could have taken any of them, had he dared risk a repetition. He still could not risk it! According to his understanding of the pattern, the sixty-sixth ship would represent a completely new concept. While the others were jetting over the second J concept, he should needle in with the K concept.

The problem was that K, sixty-six, was the last ship available to a HydrO host.

If he lost that one, he lost everything.

"Exhilaration is incorrect. Seven is incorrect." Two bad guesses. What was required was an E concept, relating to Water, while these related to Emotion and Number—B and F. Other contestants were getting nervous, afraid they would lose out by failing even to try for the remaining ships in time. Well, good, the more fools who washed out, the fewer to interfere with his own guess at the end.

Heem was abruptly tempted to take his chance on this next ship. Had Ocean been used? Lake? Sea?

"Lake is correct," the public spray proclaimed. "Soop of Soulwet has won Ship Sixty."

Six ships to go! He could have won Ship Sixty if he had only jetted Lake. But supposing he had jetted Sea, and it turned out to be a repeat? In fact, he was almost sure now that Sea had been used, back in the first or second E. He had to stick to his decision: a completely new concept-category for Ship Sixty-six.

That remained his last and best chance.

"Six is incorrect. Seven is correct."

Someone had forgotten and reused a number—as Heem might have done. The next guesser had quickly rectified the situation, and gotten the ship. The remaining contestants were under pressure, as Heem himself was; they were making stupid mistakes. But that was their problem; he had to be concerned with his own. What was a completely new concept-category?

"Eight is incorrect. Crazy is correct. Success is correct."

There went Ships Sixty-two and Sixty-three. Three ships left—and Heem's mind was blank. Where was his new category? He had to have it now!

"Justice is correct. Potency is incorrect."

Curses! Two ships left—and he could not force his stalled mind to come up with the category! Should he take his roll at the next-to-last, since no one had—

"Etamin is correct. Jool of Jeweluster has Ship Sixty-five."

Now! Now! Or forever lost! Yet he could not—

Idiot! It's Potence!

But Potence was a repeat; he had tasted it used!

No! Use it now!

"Novagleam is incorrect."

Potence. Now!

Confused, Heem yielded. Better to wash out on a bad guess than to wash out without even trying. But even as he jetted, he knew others were doing the same.

All through the chamber, needles were being fired.

With despairing certainty he tasted the concluding public spray. A group of others had jetted before he had! One of them was sure to have the answer.

"Frustration is incorrect. Jubilation is incorrect. Spray is incorrect.

Thousandstar is incorrect. Ten is incorrect. Sickness is incorrect. Sand is incorrect. Potence is correct. Heem of Highfalls has won the final ship. All others are disqualified."

Numb, Heem rested in place. Potence was not a repeat; it was an advance guess, the taste in his mind jetted. Out of place, therefore wrong—before.

Hardly believing it, Heem lurched out of his niche and rolled to pick up the key to Ship Sixty-six.

The key was a simple yet unguessable taste-code that would admit him to Ship Sixty-six and no other. Heem rolled rapidly out to it, jetted the key, and rolled up the ramp that opened out to him. He entered the ship, squeezed into the control chamber, and settled into the acceleration cup. No one but a HydrO

could use a HydrO ship; the bodies of other sapients differed too grossly. He jetted the TAKEOFF button. The ship's acceleration panels closed in about him, sealing the chamber; water flooded the compartment, and the huge gaseous jets blasted at the ground. Like a flatfloater, the ship hurled itself into the sky.

Heem could do nothing for the moment. The ship would remain on automatic pilot until it achieved escape velocity; only then would the controls be returned to the passenger. Initial acceleration was always a compression; fortunately the HydrO physique, when properly supported, was ideally suited to it. Only a creature who could survive in fluid could accelerate rapidly; other forms were severely handicapped, lacking the ability to use hydraulic support for living tissues. Yet somehow many other species had achieved space.

That thought put Heem into a muse: how had his kind really come to space? The HydrO species could hardly have evolved for it—on the surface of a planet. Yet this almost perfect adaptation to the conditions of space could hardly be coincidental.

No, of course it was not coincidental! The awareness of outer space had not come easily to the HydrO kind, because the radiation of stars was not directly perceivable to HydrO senses. A star could not be tasted; it had no characteristic vapor, no vibration; it could not be touched. The home-Star, HydrO, was perceived through its caloric ambience; it heated the land and air by day. This, of course, had been the key, though Heem had spent his juvenile state on a colony world, and had never tasted the environs of Star HydrO itself. If a thing that was too far away to be touched made the difference between comfort and discomfort, that thing was important enough to be studied. Suppose Star HydrO were to depart or fade? It had been necessary for Heem's ancestors to roll into a situation where this could not happen.

So those ancestors had studied Star HydrO, and discovered marvelous qualities in it. Generations were lost in the pursuit of this knowledge, but in time the conceptual framework was secure. Star HydrO not only related to day and night (i.e., the alternating periods of warmth and cool), it bore on the seasons of the year, and the larger cycles of climate. The perfection of this comprehension was fraught with error, but at the end of that long roll, the nature of the modern universe had become quite clearly flavored.

The HydrOs had realized that there had to be other life in the universe, just as there are other Stars. Nothing appeared alone; like juveniles in a valley, there were always one or two hundred. Indeed, there were ancient ruins within System HydrO, unmistakable remnants of the onetime presence of a highly technological alien species. On a planet orbiting another star (a star was a great radiating ball of gas; a Star was a star with an associated sapient life-form) within Sphere HydrO were the remnants of an entire life-ecology, once flourishing but now completely obliterated. Painstaking analysis of the traces indicated that the aliens had utilized other perceptions than taste. They seemed to have been able to perceive directly the reflected radiation of the stars. Since such radiation, according to HydrO research, propagated directly and rapidly—far more so than the vapors and currents of taste—this had enabled the aliens to react much more swiftly to stellar phenomena. In fact, this ability might be a formidable asset to spacefaring creatures, and might even be of use on the surface of planets. So the HydrOs had developed machines to perceive this radiation, and translated it to the molecules of taste, coding it much as Heem had coded the concepts of the contest. This had led to an enormous increase in astronomical information.

'I can't see!' he thought despairingly.

What? Of course he couldn't see; that was the term for the direct perception of radiation of certain wavelengths, that only machines and aliens seemed to have, as though to compensate them for their inadequate resources of taste. No HydrOs could duplicate the feat, had they desired to; the instruments were quite satisfactory to make the effects of radiation comprehensible. If he were ever deprived of his sense of taste, he would have reason to despair; but why bemoan the lack of an alien perception?

'I'm blind!' he thought again.

Blind: a manufactured term relating to that deficiency of radiation perception.

It might, in a crude manner, resemble tastelessness—at least to a species so foolish as to depend on radiation perception for primary awareness. Such loss might be very disturbing. But not to Heem, who had never had such ability, and never desired it.

Maybe this was some anomaly of his thinking, spawned by the pressure of acceleration. Heem had been to space before without any problem like this, but it was possible that his secret incapacity touched this too. Was he suffering a lapse of sanity?

"I can feel, I can taste," he sprayed, though his spray could hardly be effective in this water ambience of acceleration. He remembered waiting for the flatfloater, long ago as a juvenile, and feeling a similar restriction. "That is all I require."

'Not you, idiot! I'm the one who's blind!' Was he jetting to himself? He had always been full of thoughts, but seldom tried to spray them to himself, before.

'I never realized it would be like this! No eyes, no ears—I'm locked in a dark and silent cell. I'm going crazy!'

"So I am jetting to myself," Heem jetted, answering himself in the same fashion.

"If I am losing my sanity, as I suspect, at least I am doing it in space instead of in confinement." Technically there was nothing quite so confining as space travel; no claustrophobic creature could pilot a spaceship. But beyond that close and pressured metal lay the glorious vastness of space, the ultimate in unconfinement. "But why am I so concerned about—what were those organs of radiation?"

'Eyes! Ears! To see and hear. How can you stand it, blind and deaf, without even hands?'

"Hands! The only creature I have encountered with such awful appendages is—"

'All sapient creatures have hands! Or opposed thumbs, or the equivalent. So they can handle tools, build buildings, operate machines, so they can develop Cluster-level technology.'

"This is not my thinking!" Heem jetted violently. "I may be losing my taste perspective, but not my common sense. HydrOs have no hands, yet we are among the most technologically advanced species of Segment Thousandstar. Here I am, piloting a HydrO spaceship—no-handed."

'Of course it's not your thinking. It's mine. I never thought it would be like this!'

The taste of comprehension flooded across his surface. "The transferee! It arrived after all!"

'It—I mean I—arrived almost dead. I'm hardly conscious now. I'm operating solely on temporary nerve; in a few hours, if I'm not out of this nightmare, I'll collapse entirely. I can operate on nerve for a little while; I can endure anything so long as I know it's temporary. But Once my strength gives out—'

"That's why I was not disqualified by the Competition Authority! I had another aura!"

That's the way transfer works, isn't it? What did you expect?'

"I expected a visiting personality. I received a near-knockout blow."

'Me too,' the transferee jetted. Except that it really was not a jet. It was an internal communication most resembling a thought.

"You're—the Solarian? Trained in intrigue?"

'Have you had transferees before? Is it always like this?'

"I have not hosted before. But none of the other hosts seemed to have trouble. I thought I had received no aura. But you have not answered: are you the Solarian?"

'I am Solarian.' There was a complex wash of thought and feeling, indecipherable.

"Control your reactions!" Heem needled. "When you think a dozen alien thoughts at once, I cannot decipher any of them!"

'Well, at least I have some privacy.'

"You weren't transferred to my body for privacy! We have a competition to win!"

'Well, yes, I know about that. And I've been helping, I think.'

"Helping! By knocking me out just before the opening challenge?"

'Knocking you out!' the alien responded indignantly. 'I barely fought back to partial consciousness in time to solve the concept-pattern—and the effort made me lose consciousness again. The horror of blindness—'

"You solved the pattern? I analyzed it, and—"

'And tried to disqualify yourself with a repeat, then balked at the final concept as though you had a death wish. I don't have a death wish! I had to jam the winning concept through your stalled alien brain, or whatever it is. Do you have a brain?'

It was a serious question. "If by that you mean an organizing intelligence, I do. It is diffused through my body, relating to every aspect, as it should. Are Solarians differently organized?"

'We certainly are! We have a head, with most of our specialized organs of external perception there, next to the brain, up where they can be used most effectively.'

"Up? You have a—a permanent upper side to your body?"

'Of course we do! Don't you?'

"Of course not. How could anyone roll, if one side had to be always up?"

'Who would want to roll? Oh, don't answer that! What are you doing serving as host, if you don't know the nature of your transferee?'

"What are you doing transferring, not knowing you were entering a sightless host?"

'Touché,' the creature agreed. 'But I asked first.'

"The identities of the transferees were kept secret, so that no favoritism could be applied. I was not aware that I was to be the HydrO representative, until the presentation. All I know of Solarians is that they are a wild, undisciplined species, given to low-cunning plotting and warfare." He paused. "No offense intended to you, Transferee."

The Solarian's burgeoning anger converted to mirth. 'No offense, slugball! It is an apt synopsis.'

"We shall be some time in initial maneuvers. We must acquaint each other with ourselves, so that we can integrate properly for the competition. The other competitors had time back onplanet to do this, but we are late. When the ship achieves escape velocity and a stable trajectory, it will acquaint us with the location of the target planet and the nature of the quest. Then we shall be very busy, for we are the last ship to take off. We shall have to pilot with consummate skill so as to pass three quarters of the other ships and gain a tractor on the planetary surface."

'We? I know nothing of spaceship piloting!'

Heem had feared that. "Then we must come to an understanding before then, so that I will not be distracted. I am an excellent pilot, but there will be a considerable challenge."

'Yes.' The alien paused. 'There is something you should know, and something I must know.'

"Make your statement and query efficiently, then."

'I—am an imposter. I'm not qualified for this mission.'

"Impossible. You were transferred. That could not be a mistake. Segment Etamin would not cheat in a matter like this."

'I—the real transferee was unable to perform. So I— substituted.'

"Impossible," Heem repeated. "They don't accept unqualified substitutes."

They did not know. I used the identity of the proper person.'

"The machine would not have transferred your aura. There is no way to deceive an aura verification. I should know; I was trying to do it myself, not long ago."

'My aura is—very similar to his. The machine couldn't tell the difference.'

"Something's rolling very strangely here. Solarians may be backward, but not that clumsy. Obviously you are the entity selected and sent; it could hardly be otherwise, considering the verifications applied at your end and this end.

Unless you are a construct of my tortured imagination. Is that what you are jetting? That you are not real?"

'I am real. I am Solarian. I am a transferee. But I am not the one trained for this mission. Not the one who was supposed to be sent here. I'm sorry.'

Heem pondered, becoming intrigued. "Now I can appreciate why I might choose to imagine that I had a transferee; it might give me valuable confidence to proceed with this mission. I can taste why such an invented visitor would try to convince me of his authenticity; the ruse would not be effective if I did not believe. But I can not perceive why such an invention would attempt to discredit himself. That would only subvert—"

'Himself?'

"Yes, himself. I am not questioning your validity, you are. By insisting on an obvious flaw in your story. So—"

'Oh, figure of speech. Male-person singular, standard convention.'

Heem let that roll by. The transferee was attempting to divert him with quibbles, while the significant matter receded. He picked up the taste again.

"So I doubt you are from my imagination; my mind is too logical to account for you. That means you must be real."

'What do you mean, too logical for me? I am every bit as logical as you are!'

"That is what we are in the process of ascertaining. I accept you as real, but your logic is suspect. You claim that you deceived an undeceivable machine."

'I did deceive it!'

"Are you not aware that no two auras are alike, and that the machines type the auras infallibly? Otherwise they could not transfer them."

'Yes, of course I'm aware. But this is a special case.'

"It would have to be extraordinarily special."

'It is.'

"In fact, you would have to be identical to the original subject. Which means—"

'Not me personally. My aura—that is what is identical.'

Heem did a mental roll of equilibrium. "No two auras are identical. Each aura differs precisely as the entity with which it is associated differs. That is why the entity can be recreated in a foreign host, because the truest identity lies in the aura, not the body. You claim you are not the original subject. You also claim your aura, the source of your identity, is—?"

'Yes. That is the unique aspect.'

"And you also claim to be logical?"

'I am a clone!' the Solarian exploded in a taste overload.

This rolled Heem back somewhat. "A clone! A person identical to another, fashioned from the same genetic pattern. A split personality. I suppose that could work, theoretically."

'And in practice.'

"You claim you are cloned from an adult Solarian?"

'No, cloned at conception. We were born as siblings.'

"But the aura is changed by experience. By the time you metamorphosed, you would be too far apart to fool the machine."

'We were raised together, sharing all things. Our auras constantly interacted, evening out any developing distinctions. We were not identical—far from it!—but machines aren't geared for clones.'

"Yet you lack the training and abilities of your clone-brother? I find it hard to believe that you could be close enough to fool the machine, without being close enough to do the job."

'I possess the same potential, but not the specific training, much of which was very recent. I don't think the machine was looking for differences in the area where those differences existed. But it may have interfered with the actual transfer.'

"So that you arrived slightly out of phase, and knocked us both out!" Heem jetted, comprehending.

'I'm sorry.'

"You're sorry! You almost wiped me out of the competition!"

'I really had no choice. My clone-brother had accepted the commission, spent the credit, then when he got hurt—'

"You rolled in to cover his error—at least until the technical situation was met."

'I realize this is unfair to you. But we were desperate. Our whole way of life—my alternative was to kill my brother, to abate his commitment without prejudice—'

"I comprehend."

'So if you want to be angry—'

"Solarian, I would have done the same in your situation. My own sibling died, enabling me to survive, but my demise would not have helped him."

'You are not enraged?'

"I am here on false pretenses myself. I had to get offplanet in a hurry, so I took the only route available. The competition—though I knew I did not qualify."

The transferee was amazed. 'You did the same thing I did!'

"I did. So I can hardly blame you for that. You seem to be my type of personality, even though your body may differ drastically from mine." He reflected on that, remembering the various hints the Solarian had jetted about those differences. "I really do not know what the physical form of a Solarian is."

'Not like the HydrO form, I assure you! We have muscle and bone, and carry our head high, and have arms and legs and hands and eyes and ears—'

"Awful!" Heem sprayed. "You taste almost like a—" He hesitated, not wanting to produce the repulsive concept.

'Like what?' the alien demanded. 'I noted that note of revulsion. Like pickled sewage sludge—awful taste!'

"How do Solarians derive their life-energy?" Heem temporized.

'We eat food, of course, like any other creature.'

"Not HydrOs. Not the Erbs. Not a hundred other Segment species."

'HydrOs don't eat?' the alien jetted incredulously.

"We absorb hydrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere and combine them, with release of energy, on a controlled basis. That fuels our metabolism, and the residue is OH2."

'Water, you mean? H2O? Your waste product is water?'

"Hardly a waste. We use it for propulsion, combat, communication, manipulation of objects, perception, cushioning of impact—at this very moment we are cushioned by—"

'Flavored water for speech!' the alien sprayed, amazed. 'I never would have thought it possible!'

"Not only possible, but practical. For communication and life-style. HydrOs can exist and function on any planet where a suitable atmosphere and temperature exists."

'But I thought it took more energy to separate the oxygen and hydrogen in water than could be obtained rejoining them.'

"We don't separate them from water. We draw the elements we need from the air, using enzymes to process them efficiently. It is by far the readiest source of energy, and the trace impurities we utilize to build body mass."

'I guess it works. You're here; that proves it. Maybe your atmosphere is different from ours.'

"Perhaps. Hydrogen is very common in the Cluster, but I can't vouch for strange systems like Sol. We HydrOs are the elite of the Segment Thousandstar sapients, in contrast to—"

'You're hiding something! I can feel it in your system.'

"In contrast to the eating species," Heem continued unwillingly. "Who are our natural enemies."

There was a period of tastelessness. 'You mean it?'

"I mean your kind as you describe it—the eyes, ears, appendages, eating orifices, and other allied organs—most nearly resemble the species we know as the Squams. They lack the eyes, but apart from that—"

'Oh, I caught that awful emotion! You really do hate the Squams. Not only as a species. Personally!'

"I have reason," Heem sprayed.

'You must have. I can feel the taste burning through your whole body. But I don't even know what a Squam is! Why don't you show me a mental picture?'

"A what?"

'A picture. An image, so I can see—' She rolled to a halt. 'Oh, I understand.

You don't have eyes. You don't even think in terms of sight. You only know of that sense through the contacts your species has had with other Galactic creatures. You can't make a picture!'

"I can make a taste pattern," Heem offered.

'Very well. Try that. I am very good at analyzing patterns. We call it art. I work in holographs, in three-dimensional art. Art is a property centered in the right hemisphere of the brain, complementing the logic of the left.'

"Hemispheres? Your brain is in several parts?"

'Never mind that now. Just make the pattern.'

Heem projected the taste of the dread Squam as it fed on his sibling-juvenile Hoom. The pattern of horror still revolted him—and that was the origin of both his success and his failure, as an adult.

'I'm suffocating,' the alien sprayed. 'It's horrible! But I still can't see it!'

They had a problem of communication. The Solarian seemed not to comprehend something unless he could visualize it, while Heem had only taste to offer. They discussed the matter, going over the Squam memory in detail, and finally the Solarian began to comprehend. 'I'm forming a mental picture now. It's not a direct translation of your memory, but more of a reconstruction from what I am grasping intellectually. That monster is not at all like me. It's a snake—a snake with arms, and no real head. I have legs, while it doesn't, and I don't spew out my stomach—Heem, if you could see me, you'd see how little I resemble your Squam.'

"Project a taste-pattern of your physical self," Heem jetted amenably.

The alien tried, but all that came through was a mélange of peripheral flavors.

The alien had no more mind for taste than Heem had for sight. 'It's lucky we can even communicate,' the Solarian jetted at last.

"Meaning transmission is a separate function, integral to all sapients," Heem jetted. "Transferees never have language problems. I am not certain why we are having any communicatory problems; it is my understanding that even creatures with grossly differing life-styles and modes of perception normally mesh perfectly in transfer. Your impersonation of the original Solarian scheduled for this mission may account for it."

'It may,' the Solarian agreed. 'There is something else, however.'

"You are full of little surprise rolls! First you are unqualified, then you resemble my worst enemy. What now?"

'You—does your kind have sexes? Male and female?'

"Yes, we are a bisexual species."

'And you—you are of which sex?'

"Male, naturally."

'That—is what I was afraid of.'

"Afraid? Did you crave to have a neuter host?"

'No. You see, I am female.'

"Impossible!" Heem exploded. "Cross-sexual transfers do not occur. It must be a confusion of nomenclature."

'Cross-sexual transfers are not supposed to happen,' she jetted. Actually, she was probably sounding or lighting, but he perceived it a jetting. 'They even use transfer as a definition of sex, in questionable cases. As when an individual of a species changes back and forth at different stages of life, now male, now female, like the Mintakans. If a given aura arrives in a male host, it's male.'

"Agreed. Therefore, what you term female must in fact be male."

'Do males bear offspring, among your kind?'

"No. Females do that."

'I—do that.'

"You claimed you were a clone of a male!"

'I am. One detail was changed, after the cloning."

"Some detail! You could not consider yourself the same person, after that!"

'I had little choice in the matter, since it happened when conception was only hours past.'

Heem ignored her strange time-unit. "You would have grown completely apart from your other half!"

'No. We were raised as siblings, as I said before. We were treated identically.

I was called male, so there would not be any fuss—but Jesse and I knew, always.

When we matured, we lived apart from our peers, and anonymous to our neighbors.

Which was not hard to arrange, since we were of the royalty. Our auras changed together, constantly interacting. Really a single aura with two bodies.'

There was an uncomfortable pause. "The transfer should not have taken," Heem jetted at last. "You should have arrived in a female host, or bounced."

'That's what I assumed would happen. If the transfer took, I would occupy a female host, or at least a neuter one, of Segment Thousandstar, and my brother's onus would have been abated. He had only to report for transfer; no more was guaranteed. If I bounced, then it would signify that the Thousandstar host had not been adequate, and the advance payment would forfeit to Jesse. I expected to bounce—and thereby save our family fortune without actually undertaking a mission for which I was not qualified.'

"They will know—the Society of Hosts will know that your body is female, when they exercise it."

'We prepared, just in case. Our old estate retainer, Flowers, was to take the body home for care, so no one else saw it. Lucky thing we set that up, I suppose!'

"But the fact that transfer did occur—to a male host! This can not be explained."

'It seems unique, certainly. My arrival was painful to us both; I must have come close to bouncing, but didn't quite make it. I still feel the effect; your system is basically hostile to my aura. I think the clone-factor must have made the difference. My aura was close enough to fool the machine, so it sent me through as a male, and your system had to accept me as a male even though I was not. Am not! Since the original entity, before cloning, was male, I could be considered as a male with an added X chromosome. Really, Jesse's aura is awfully close to mine. In the circumstances—'

"Your logic is female. It must be so," Heem jetted limply. "That would account for the initial unconsciousness we both suffered, and for the trouble we now have communicating. It is not that you are alien; it is that you are female, and therefore the most alien creature of all. Your mind does not operate in comprehensible fashion."

'In the circumstances, I'm disinclined to argue. I have brought three disasters upon you, and I don't know how to mitigate any of them.'

Heem rolled those disasters around in his mind. First, an unqualified individual, thereby serving as a liability instead of an asset, when he desperately needed an asset. Second, a creature of an anathema-species: one that consumed food. Third, a female. Three things in ascending order of mischief.

Yet was he blameless? He too was unqualified for this competition, and to her he was the anathema alien without the organs of perception she required, and she had no more desire to occupy a male host than he had to have a female transferee.

'That's kind of you to think that, but—'

"I wonder," Heem jetted slowly. "I had a desperate need to get into space, and I knew I needed a transferee. I must have encompassed any aura that came, overriding the natural cautions of my system. It could be as much my fault as yours."

'I do prefer your logic to mine,' she admitted.

"And you did accomplish what I required," he continued. "They must have verified my aura and yours, and approved me for the competition while I was still trying to devise a scheme to slip through without a transferee. So I made it to space after all. But now—"

'Now my presence is hampering you,' she said. He now found it easier to stop attributing her communication to jets; she simply did not jet or spray, even in her mind. She spoke. She seemed to become more intelligible as he accepted this alien reality.

"I really had little hope of winning the competition anyway. I am satisfied to be offplanet, with or without a transfer aura. But I do not know how you will return to your natural body if we leave the competition."

'I have to return!' she cried. 'I couldn't stand to be blind and deaf all my life!'

"To do that, we will have to win the competition. That will not be easy."

'But only one person can win. Don't all the transferees get to go home, after it is over?'

"They should. But I personally do not dare return to my home-planet for the retransfer of my visitor. You would go home—but I would be perpetually confined.

I joined the competition to get away from that fate."

'But if we win the competition—'

"Then I will return as a hero, my criminal record pardoned. They have given me a considerable incentive."

'Then it's decided. We both have incentives. We win the competition!'

"Solarian—"

'Jessica. That's my name.'

"Jessica Solarian—this competition may be more hazardous than you appreciate. We could both perish."

'I understood it was a low-risk mission!'

"It is supposed to be. But I have had news of prior competitions. If the objective is important, the participants get highly competitive. A certain amount of intrigue, even violence occurs. It is not supposed to, but it does."

'Oh,' she said faintly. 'But maybe this objective is not so important.'

"Perhaps. We shall soon know. The ship is stabilizing; we have almost achieved escape velocity."

'Um,' she agreed nervously. 'So we may face real action. Look, Heem, we should get to know each other, so we know how to integrate. It could make a big difference. Exchange memories, compare notes, values—'

He had had enough of this. "No!" he jetted. "Go away!"

'I can't go away. You know that. I'm stuck here in your body until we get to an aura transfer machine, besides which, I genuinely want to help. I feel responsible—'

"I don't want your help!"

'Well, my help has been forced on you. You shouldn't have signed up for this mission, if you really didn't want—'

Heem needled an intense negation at her.

'Hey! That hurt!' she protested.

"Then be tasteless. Silent. I don't want to be aware of your presence when I begin piloting this ship."

'Well, you needed my help before, and I think you'll need it again. Since my own welfare is tied up in this just as much as yours—'

Heem, furious at her persistence, needled angry loathing at her.

Jessica bounced it back at him. The impulse washed through his mind, disgusting him.

'See, I can do it too!' she said. 'I can make your mind just as miserable as you make mine. And I will, if I have to. But I don't want to have to.'

"What do you want?" Heem demanded. A part of him wondered why he had turned so negative, and another part of him did not want the answer.

'Just to get to know you. So I know what I'm involved in. Really know, instead of just that you're—'

"No!"