'Versus the short roll of dying without fighting!'

Heem yielded to her encouragement. "We have nothing to lose by making the attempt."

'Oh, Heem, I'm so proud of you, I could kiss you!' And she sent an oddly stimulating impression of physical contact through his awareness.

"What was that?" he demanded, astonished.

Abruptly she was diffident. 'Just an expression of—of encouragement. About navigating the channel—'

"Your memory-dream," he persisted. "The copulation ritual of your species—there was that action therein. Token contact of bodies—"

'Like your needlejets of greeting between sexes. I suppose it is analogous to—to your nonreproductive sex.' There was a warm flush of taste in the background of her thought, an embarrassment that was not unpleasant. 'I think I'm blushing.'

"What is that?"

'Never mind. Now I want to get us oriented on vision. Are you with me?'

Heem let her carry it. "I am with you, alien."

'Good. Now what we have to do is get your nerve-signals translated into visibility. I am sight oriented. You have piloting ability. We have to merge your pilot reflexes with my sight reflexes, and navigate by sight. It is reflex, not information, that is the key. The mode of interpretation. Because the human hand-eye coordination—well, this should greatly facilitate our maneuverability.'

'I will humor you,' Heem sprayed. He did not want to admit that he now found life appealing. And that kiss—

'Good. Now try to look through my perception. You've done it before, some; this is just a bigger dose. Identify with me; think the way I do. And look.'

Heem tried. He recalled the brief flashes he had had, seeing things. He wanted to succeed. But it was quite fuzzy.

'Now look ahead to the space between Star and Hole,' she continued brightly.

'Maybe you'd better taste it first, and I'll try to translate. Then you pick up on my perception.'

Heem tasted the jets of his perception net. Jessica fumbled with them, struggling to reformulate the information in her imagery. 'See, the star tastes bright, uh shines bright, light, beams, hurts eyes there on the left. Oh, you roll, you don't have up or down or left or right so much. Well, I do; orient on mine. Hole is black nothingness, there to right, a gap in the optic. Like heaven and hell, but they're both hell for us, two gross gravity wells and we have to thread the needle—do you know what a needle is? No, of course not It's a sliver of metal or something that pokes through material, carrying a line along after it, that's the thread, that's our lives in this case—we thread the needle through right where the light impinges upon the night, that shade of gray.

Omigosh, that's not just light, that's a storm! Huge swirl of gas or dust or something, marking the no-man's-land zone, and we've got to go through it, it marks our channel, it is the material to be sewn, it will shield us from the killing radiation I hope, I hope...'

Heem tasted it, trying to shunt through her interpolation. It didn't work.

'You're resisting, Heem, I can feel it,' she said. 'Are you still upset because I'm female?'

"Yes. I don't belong in your mind any more than you belong in mine." But again, that kiss...

'Look at it this way, Heem: how would you rather die, as a private individual, or with a snooping alien female in your mind, knowing your most secret, final masculine thoughts and guilts?'

"I am already subject to the latter," Heem jetted tightly.

'But you haven't died yet. Wouldn't you prefer at least to die clean, by yourself?'

"I would." Yet though she had expressed it well, it was not as true as it had been. He objected to her sex, but now he realized that there could be an intriguing aspect to it.

'Then you'll have to share my mind in order to get rid of it. I can't say I like this any better than you do, but maybe females are more acclimatized to male intrusion of one sort or another. I want to live—and if that means I have to suffer my mind to be violated, then so it must be. Maybe I felt otherwise, before I actually faced death and sifted out my realities. Now get in here and use my synapses, my perceptions—or we'll both be stuck with the least private of destructions.'

Heem could not refute her. He tried again, forcing his perception to mesh with hers, allowing his taste to be distorted into alienness. His whole system revolted, yet the alternative of an unprivate death loomed worse, now that she had pointed it out.

Yet, oddly, he suspected he would not have been able even to make the effort, if she had not endorsed his fundamental treason. She appalled him—less than before.

So he could strive to free himself of her, because his alienation from her had diminished. It might not be total anathema to die with company—

'Heem, are you paying attention?'

He oriented on that nebulosity between the extremes of Star and Hole, for that was indeed the region they had to traverse, where the two gravity wells balanced precariously and the storm buffered the terrible radiation. It tasted turbulent, a tidal storm, shifting as the swirling matter of the two monstrous origins shifted.

'No, you're tasting it,' Jessica protested. 'You've got to see it. Here, follow me. I have two eyes, so I can see depth—at least I could when I had eyes—never mind. I'm not seeing too well myself, yet, but I know it can be done. What counts is that I have the mind for it, for visual perspective and detail. You can see depth—fix that in your mind. What is further away looks smaller, though you know it isn't. There's debris ringing the Hole, because there's no solar wind to waft it out; a comet would have no tail, coming in here. So a lot of gas is pushed out from the Star, and clouds in around the Hole; it can't just fall in, see, because of the angular momentum, just as we can't fall in. We have to spiral in—and therein lies our salvation, because if there's one thing that can counter the power of a black hole, it's the power of a larger star. That Hole is really quite small, only a few kilometers across, I'm sure, could we but see it as it is, smaller than a mere planet, smaller than a moon, but intense, yes, oh, yes, intense, while the star is thousands, maybe millions of times as large. The gravity well of the Star is bigger, much bigger, it actually surrounds that of the Hole, in fact the whole Hole is in orbit about the Star, or at least they orbit a common center—am I repeating myself?—and we must pass through that center in a straight line—'

"Not a straight line, babbling female," Heem corrected her. "A parabolic curve, perhaps, balancing the forces. See, the interstitial nebula curves partly about the Hole, enclosing it in a—"

'In a quarter moon—'

"We have to navigate that curve at high velocity."

'You saw it!' she cried in a delayed reaction. 'You said "See"!'

"I—saw it," Heem agreed dubiously. He had been distracted by her patter and he had jetted carelessly. Yet he had used her mode of communication.

'Concentrate, Heem! Make it come clear! You're so close—oh, I could kiss you again!'

"Don't do that!" Heem sprayed. But not as forcefully as he might have.

She laughed. 'I'm teasing you. I wouldn't really do anything as awful as that.

See—see that moonshell area, that sort of bowl cupping the Hole—if you can see it, you can navigate it, because you are an expert pilot. All you need are information and reflexes. You can do it, I know you can!'

Heem tried, but the momentary flash he had had, had faded. "I am not certain I really—whatever it was, is gone."

'But you did have it, Heem! I'm sure! Try again!'

He did, but got nowhere.

'Very well—we'll have to approach this obliquely,' she decided. 'Let's—I'll tell you what, we can exchange images. You were beginning to see in the memory passages; you can take it further now.'

"First allow me to orient the ship," Heem jetted. He maneuvered carefully, aligning the ship with the nebula-bowl taste, then let it drift. He was conserving fuel, now that he might have need of it.

'Now—I'll visualize key scenes from my past, and you taste scenes from yours, and we'll try to get them both aligned with sight,' she said. 'I don't know if this is scientific, but I have a gut feeling about it. Once you can see your own past, you should be able to see anything— and there's our key to survival. Maybe I'll be able to taste my own past too, and get some idea what is entailed.'

"It must be accomplished before we reach that cup-nebula," Heem jetted. "Once there, I shall have to guide this ship through, and prevent it from falling into either gravity well. Small adjustments will be critical. If I fail, all else is for nothing."

'How much time do we have?'

Heem did some translating. "I judge two chronosprays—about an hour, as you reckon time. We have been approaching steadily, and are now accelerating in free-fall; our approach will be extremely rapid, compared to our past velocity."

'An hour!' she exclaimed. 'Well, let's get right on it, then!' She delved into her first vision, rolling him along.

Jessica faced her brother defiantly. "Jesse, I absolutely refuse to go through that ever again! That awful cow—how could you?"

Her clone-brother spread his hands placatingly. He was a slight but handsome young man, with dark blue hair falling in curls to his light blue neck, his eyes a matching blue. His features were even, almost nondescript in their regularity.

There was nothing typically aggressive or masculine about him. Which was, of course, a blessing, for her facial features were identical. Yet when she donned a feminine wig, she was fully female.

"That cow is quite a conquest, Jessica. If you were a man, you'd understand. Not the sort I'd care to stay with, but hoo-hoo! What a place to visit!"

"Well, I'm not a man, and I don't understand! Why should I have to cover for your slumming? I've got a life of my own to lead, you know!"

"Not as my clone, you don't."

"Damn you! You always bring that up! Suppose you had been my clone? It's easier to delete an X chromosome than to add one."

He raised one eyebrow. "That depends, clone-sister dear, on the technology. In this case they found it more feasible to merge the X factor from another sperm cell in the same bank with the cloned embryo, so—"

'I don't see it,' Heem complained. 'I taste the dialogue, but the color of fur—of hair—it isn't working.'

"It's just the beginning," Jessica told him. "Just the initial alignment. Go into your memory, and I'll try to—to make it visible. We'll keep switching back and forth, until we connect."

The arena was in neutral territory: the tropic region of the Erbs. Erbs filled the spectator section, their roots twining eagerly into the supportive soil.

They enjoyed watching Squams battle HydrOs.

Heem rolled out to encounter his opponent. The dispute concerned five valleys along the boundary: were they to be controlled by HydrO or Squam? Squams had been surveying the region, presuming they would possess it; Heem had experienced part of that effort. Which was why he was here; he had a very special motive.

This match would decide whether Slitherfear's labor paid off for the Squams.

It was not, unfortunately, Slitherfear who was to fight this duel, but another Squam champion. The creature slithered forward with confidence, almost disdain, knowing that no HydrO could hurt a Squam. But no Squam had encountered a HydrO

with the motive and experience Heem possessed...

'No, not that memory; that's too much action and not enough scenery. We need strong visual imagery, color, texture. Go back to Highfalls.'

Heem went back to Highfalls, though he would have liked to show off his victory over the Squam champion—the event that had made Heem a hero among his kind. For a while.

He recalled the taste of his awakening under water, realizing that he had survived his encounter with Slitherfear, but had failed to kill the Squam. The taste of the surrounding water was soured by his awareness of that failure.

'But water can be seen, too,' Jessica said. 'It's greenish, sometimes blue—'

"Tastes green," Heem jetted.

'No, no! Looks green. Like this.' And she conjured the vision of the small lake on her human estate. "Green." She made an annoyed mental headshake. "Oh, now I've taken over the memory! This is supposed to be your vision. I'm just the observer." She concentrated. "Here, I'll retreat to the background—ah, like this.'

That was an interesting effect, that shifting of taste nuance. "Like this?' Heem repeated, imitating her retreat.

'Get back to your memory!' she snapped.

He rolled clear of the water, trying to taste its greenness or see its wetness.

He returned to Slitherfear's camp. As he had feared, the Squam was gone, along with all his equipment except for the broken machine Heem had knocked over. The cave was empty.

But perhaps he could find the Squam again, and kill him. Heem now knew other valleys existed, and knew how to make flatfloaters carry him there. And, perhaps, he knew how to fight a Squam. Maneuver the creature to an awkward place, where a fall could occur, and disable his appendages, then shove—

The scenery, Heem—what does it look like?'

Heem concentrated on the taste of the ground, water, and plants. Some oil substance had leaked from the fallen machine, flavoring the dirt.

'Look at it. Like this!' The taste of purple pines with green-scented needles came, superimposed over the valley of Morningmist. Or purple needles with green-flavored wood.

But when he tried to see it, he merely slipped into that scene. Jessica and her brother were going through the forest of their estate, garbed as females. Jesse was honoring his deal with her, covering for her in the guise of a female.

However, it was evident that he was far from appalled at the prospect; he regarded the episode as a game.

"No, I don't want to go into that!" Jessica protested.

'But I think I am beginning to see—'

"No!"

'For one who needled me to sacrifice my mental privacy—'

"Oh—I suppose I deserved that. All right, Heem, if you can see it, you can watch it. My first sexual tryst, as a female."

'I can't see it,' Heem admitted. 'There are strong currents of taste, but—'

"It wasn't much, anyway," she said, relieved. "Jesse teased me for months after that about cows and bulls, geese and ganders, sauce and saucy. He had a point. I did it, but I didn't enjoy it. Casual sex—it just isn't my—I mean, there should be some depth of emotion—oh, you're a male, you wouldn't understand!"

'Correct.'

"Later on, he covered for me at a clone's party. We got along better after that; we understood each other better. You'd think that clones would understand each other from the outset, but our experiences were diverging, and the sexual difference..." She faded off.

'I wish I could see—you,' Heem said.

"Why Heem!" she exclaimed, flattered. "Even though you think of me as a Squam?"

Heem rolled away from that. He now thought of her as a person; actual vision of her would merely confirm her alienness. He had thought to set her back, knowing her aversion to being perceived without her apparel, but he had set himself back. He did want to see her, and not as a Squam. He had little interest in alien sex, so her episode was not important, but to perceive her more clearly as she was—why did the notion attract him?

He retreated to his own memory. As he left the valley of Morningmist and came up over the mountain ridge to a broad highland of distinctive flavors, and perceived the traces of unfamiliar HydrOs, he suffered disorientation. He slowed the flatfloater, then rolled off it. What was wrong? He was unable to concentrate, to function, but it was an internal rather than external malaise.

He rolled to a halt.

For a long time he lay where he had stopped, his awareness fading in and out.

His mind pulsed with strange concepts. What... why...? 'Heem—what's the matter?

Are you ill?' He did not respond to the nagging thought. His whole past seemed to be swirling about him, vaporizing and coalescing confusingly. His youth in the valley of High-falls, the deaths of his siblings, his entry to Morningmist, Slitherfear...

'Heem, that nebula is getting awfully close! If we don't achieve vision and put the ship under power soon—'

Moon of Morningmist, the joyous discovery of copulation, tragedy, the campaign against the dread Squam...

'I can't do it myself! I'm no pilot, Heem. You've got to snap out of it!'

Heem tried to marshal his thoughts. Increasingly it seemed to him that he had been operating on too immediate a basis, dealing with the details instead of the whole. He had fought a single Squam, physically, when he should have nullified the entire framework that brought such an enemy to a HydrO valley. He had refused to seed the valley, because that would have repeated the horror of his own development; he should have sought the origin of the Squam, so as to halt all such invasions. There could be some parent-of-Squams somewhere, sending the creatures out in myriads to decimate valleys; that was the place to strike! In fact, immediate personal action seemed generally futile; understanding had to come first. Had he understood the nature of the Squam at the outset...

At last he was discovered by other HydrOs. "This tastes like a recent metamorphosis," one sprayed. "Verify it," the second jetted.

The first jetted directly at Heem. "What is your identity?"

"Heem of Highfalls," Heem jetted weakly, remembering a taste that had almost faded out.

"What is your purpose?"

Purpose? Heem strove to remember. There had been something about a deadly enemy, killing—but it faded as he sought it. "My purpose—" Somehow, everything seemed irrelevant. Formulate, formulate! "My purpose—is to facilitate understanding."

Was that right? Somehow he was unable to orient on anything specific. He couldn't remember...

"Welcome to adult status, Heem of Highfalls," the HydrO sprayed. "Roll with us, and we shall introduce you to civilization."

'Metamorphosis!' Jessica exclaimed. 'Yet—'

"That's it!" Heem sprayed. "I must metamorphose again. Into awareness of sight!"

'But I don't understand. In our Sphere, caterpillars metamorphose into—'

"All HydrOs metamorphose into adult stage, forgetting the events of their juvenile stage. Thus no mature HydrO has any subjective awareness of youth or age, of inception or destruction. At metamorphosis he enters a new universe: civilization. Now I must enter the universe of sight."

'But you do remember—'

Abruptly, he was into her. His awareness coursed through her aura. She made a little scream of violation, but stifled it. For this was what she had been urging him to do.

And he could see. The immediate tastes of the little ship became immediate sights. The control buttons had elevations and shadows and depths, highlighted by the glow from the ambient-radiation-detection port, the glow of the light of the Star. The walls had nozzles and irregularities and—

'Color, too. See it in color, Heem!'

And shades of gray, with patches of green, left by the receded acceleration bath.

'I meant outside. Look at the cup-nebula.'

Heem concentrated—and in another vertigo of sensation he perceived the nebula, saw the bowl. The thing was opaque, cloudy, nebulous—as of course it should be!—but he perceived it with a clarity impossible to taste. He saw depth; the near side really did seem larger than the far side, yet this distortion lent a grandeur he could not otherwise have appreciated. He saw convolutions of gas and dust strewn out by the opposing forces of the gravity wells, ranged in partial orbits about the Star and Hole. Their Star sides were bright, their Hole sides dark, and they seemed to be roiling like the bodies of monstrous, deformed Squams, their motion frozen in this moment of his looking.

"I see it," Heem jetted. "It is a new dimension of perception, alien, horrible, beautiful."

'Now you can navigate it!' Jessica exclaimed. Her voice lacked the definition it had once had, for he had taken over much of her aura, but her diminished presence was encouraging. 'Just as you navigated the concept-pattern to get this ship! You can steer this vessel right through the twilight zone and out the other side.'

Heem almost believed he could. Certainly it was a worthy challenge! Still, he had to caution her: "This will be an extremely difficult passage. It has never before been accomplished by my kind."

'Because your kind never had sight before!' she said enthusiastically. 'Vision is the language of astronomy. Even when you're tasting the sprays of the ship's instruments, you're really seeing—because the ship's sensors are optical. They have to be. In my own body I could see the stars directly. So now we're doing a double translation, from sight to taste and back to sight. And we can do things with sight you just can't do with taste, because it is virtually instant. So I know we can—'

"Enough," Heem needled. "The odds remain unfavorable."

But now he had his chance and his challenge. Heem concentrated, using her vision, making it his own. He saw the glints of planetary fragments orbiting about the Hole; in fact there were great rings of it, illuminated on the Star side, crystalline faces sparkling prettily. There were perceptible currents within these rings, bands of discolor that reflected the stresses acting on them. Well out from the Hole, the rings were rough and bright, as of large fragments; in toward the horror-sphere of non-light, the rings were fine powder, their rocks ground to minute particles by the catastrophic force of the tide.

For the law of the tide dictated that the closer to the primary an object orbited, the faster it had to move, and in a gravity well as intense as this, the near sides of rocks had to move faster than the far sides, sundering the whole.

And the ship, too, would be sundered by that dread force, if the ship got anywhere near that radius. Might be torn apart anyway, it the conflict between Star and Hole was too great. Unless they passed the critical zone rapidly.

Rapidly enough.

They were falling in toward the Hole, accelerating in a free-fall spiral. Heem oriented his jets and put the ship under power. First, he had to correct the direction of fall, so as to intercept the bowl-nebula of the interaction zone.

Second, to pass as fast as possible. Even if the tide were not devastating, the radiation would be. He could see it now, that intense, burning brightness from the Star. This was no region for living creatures! Fortunately, a little power went a long way, when the merging gravity wells of two stellar objects were drawing the ship in.

Now the great rings of matter began to shift, as the ship's motion changed the angle of view. Perspective—the marvel of changing view, suddenly doubling the reality of the sight. The rings wound about like monstrous pythons—Jessica's image of a Squamlike Solarian monster—seeming to take on life. Both Star and Hole expanded ominously. But so did the nebula-storm. It was apparent that Heem could score on it. With perception like this, guidance was no problem at all.

But now that turbulence seemed more formidable. Could they survive those awful forces of interaction?

'Of course we can!' Jessica replied to his doubt, her voice fault but hearty.

'Goose it up to top speed and thread the needle, Heem!'

She certainly had confidence! This was flattering but foolish; that needle was needling through colossal opposition.

The radiation was growing worse. Much of it, Jessica clarified, was not in the visible spectrum, so her awareness of it was no greater than Heem's. But it was there, heating the ship, hurting his body. He would have to select a course that put as much dust and gas as possible between the ship and the Star—and that meant skirting perilously close to the Hole. The smallest misjudgment would lock them into the Hole, where not even the proximity of the Star could cancel its power.

As they approached the critical nexus, the view changed more rapidly. The turbulence nebula, dwarfed by the monstrous blinding disk of the Star, in turn dwarfed the tiny Hole. But it was the Hole that was their greatest danger. Heem nudged the ship slightly toward it, to skirt it as closely as he dared, driven by the intolerable radiation.

Wisps of dust passed to the starward side, putting the ship in shadow; even so, the heat was oppressive. His body really had no adequate way to dissipate that heat, since it penetrated from the outside. The tide, too, half-neutralized by the conflicting pulls, added its subtle discomfort. His body was not being torn apart, but he well knew that an intensification of this sort of stress could do it. More likely, it would break the rigid ship apart, exposing Heem's soft body to the rigors of unshielded space. That made the sensation more uncomfortable than it was, objectively. Subjectively. The little ship was not designed to withstand stresses of this type.

The nebula loomed. Now Heem saw every detail of its ominous configuration. It was virtually still, on this scale, but his motion helped him to perceive it as if it were in motion on his own scale. Matter and energy were leaking out from the Star and swirling into the Hole; the nebula was merely the region of indecision, with material piling in on one side, but also falling back to the Star. But more of it fell into the Hole, leaving the hollow of its loss. What was it like, inside that bowl? 'Oh, the heat!' Jessica cried. 'Maybe it's cool in there!' Then they plunged inside the bowl, still accelerating. Abruptly the light was gone. Heem, so recently introduced to vision, suffered momentary shock. "I can't see!"

'I know the feeling,' Jessica agreed. 'But you can still taste your other indicators. It's just a cloud, blocking off the external radiation, but nothing inside the ship has changed. Meanwhile, the cloud is shielding the ship, letting us cool, cutting off the deadly radiation.'

The ship shuddered and rocked. "A storm-cloud!" Heem sprayed.

'We won't be in it long,' she said reassuringly. She was amazingly calm.

And they were out. But not in light. They were in the great shadow of the cup.

On one side the turbulent clouds reigned; on the other side a ring of stars showed. In the center of that ring the stars turned reddish, pale, fuzzy, and finally disappeared. Their light could not pass closer than a certain range, so there was nothing. Just a great black blot. The Hole.

Heem drew his attention away from that dread well and focused on the stars. He had never seen them before. Not this way, with direct vision. They scintillated in their myriads, mostly whitish, some bluish or reddish, some bright, many dim.

They filled the universe—

They were gone. The nebula had closed in about the ship again, cutting off everything, for his arc was broader than that of the bowl. Again a storm current shook the ship, and Heem had to look to his controls. The balance between Star and Hole remained precarious.

Then he became aware of something else. Something missing. "Jessica?"

As from a distance, she answered. 'I am here, Heem.'

"Are you well? Your presence seems marginal."

'I—think so. When you entered my aura, I—there's nothing of me here except aura, so—I think I'm suffering sacrifice of identity.'

"Alien, I did not intend to destroy you! I understood you wanted me to—"

'Yes, yes, I did, Heem. I urged you to use my perception, all of it, right through to the color. I just didn't realize—how thorough it would be.'

"I will withdraw."

'No! You must see! You must guide the ship out of here before the opposing gravity wells and tides and radiation and storm currents destroy us!'

The ship emerged from the nebula. There was external sight again. "I will try,"

Heem agreed. "We remain under acceleration. Now I must maintain the balance, far enough from the Star to avoid destruction by radiation, far enough from the Hole to retain escape velocity. If I do that accurately, and the fuel lasts—"

'Oh, you can do it!' she cried. 'I know you can. I'll just get out of your way and let you pilot.'

"Agreed." This was remotely similar to column maneuvering, but the alternatives were more deadly. If he did not perform within tolerance, one menace or the other would engulf them.

The key, now, was fuel. He needed to win free of the well of the Hole and still be able to close and land on a planet. It depended on the accuracy with which he had threaded the needle. There was no safe side; Star and Hole were waiting to claim him, depending on the side he veered to. Now that he was no longer driving in, he would not fall in immediately; there would be a decaying orbit about Star or Hole, but the end would be inevitable.

Now he had to discover just how accurately he had navigated, utilizing his new sense of sight. He cut the drive. The ship continued on in free-fall, moving away from the nebula but losing velocity. Soon his instruments would indicate deviation, and the bad news would be in. The damage had already been done, either by his misjudgment or by the turbulence of the nebula. He was waiting for the extent of it to manifest.

And—the signs looked good. The Star-Hole complex retreated, more slowly each moment, but he had considerable residual velocity. The radiation eased. The ties subsided. It seemed that his velocity was sufficient—if his direction were correct.

As the ship moved on, the signs became clearer. He was off to one side, toward the Hole. But his new vision and its attendant judgment showed him that the ship's trajectory would carry it far enough beyond the Hole so that the larger ambience of the Star would dominate. He might even have to skirt the Hole more closely. Thus he had a conflict between his normal awareness and his sight-awareness. It was not merely a different perception, but a different mode of comprehension. Jessica's human mind had an alien system of logic. Heem decided to gamble on it.

As he concentrated on the trajectory, watching for the opportune moment to make a course correction, stray wisps of memory fleeted past his consciousness. The death of the estate-holder, a grandiose funeral service, inheritance of the title—yet these things meant nothing to him. His kind had no subjective awareness of death, not in adult life, therefore no rituals of passage. HydrOs had no property, therefore no inheritance. These were memories of the Solarian mind. He had infused it so thoroughly that Jessica's memories were like his own.

Very like his own—for his were forbidden. No true adult HydrO remembered his juvenile state. Heem's metamorphosis had been incomplete, and that made him a non-adult. Similarly, the memories of a female alien should normally have been forbidden to him.

Now her state merged with his and with the present problem. In space there were deadly forces exerted on the fragile ship; only by balancing them could the ship pass safely. Heem had been drawn by the force of his cultural crime, balancing it against his species' need for his special talents. Jessica and her clone-brother, hiding the secret of their alternate-sexedness from their associates, had suffered loss of material resources. The estate was bankrupt; they had discovered this upon inheritance. So Jesse had gotten a job—the entire concept was devious for the HydrO mind, but equated roughly to Heem's own assimilation of this present challenge. When Jesse had been unable to complete his commitment, Jessica had done it for him. Balancing one set of needs and risks against another. It all merged into the present; it was all consistent.

And—his instruments shifted slowly, at last coming into conformance with his visual intuition. He had been correct to trust his new perception; the ship had been on course. A prior correction would have thrown it off, wasting fuel, perhaps eventually sending it into the Star to be destroyed. With a surplus of fuel, a second or third correction could have been made, but in this instance the tolerance was too narrow; any wastage of fuel could be fatal. Only through Jessica's perception, and the coordination of a mind to which that perception was natural, could this guidance have been accomplished. He had needed vision to verify that he needed to do nothing.

"We have won," he announced. "Vision enabled success. We shall be able to make planetfall."

There was no response from the alien.

"Jessica," he needled, alarmed. "Where are you?"

He felt a faint presence stirring, but there was no vigor in it. Oh, no! Had the tide and radiation and stress damaged her aura, fading it out before its time?

Or had she yielded up what remained of her being to enable him to see, to make his final judgment? At what price had he accomplished his victory?

"Alien female!" he sprayed. "We have our differences, but I did not mean to abolish you! I—I value your presence. How may I restore you to health?"

Still she did not respond. Heem checked the ship's course once more, then turned all his attention inward.

"Jessica, I took your sight; let me give it back. It is a fine perception, it saved us, but it is yours. I took your aura; take it back. I affronted you; I apologize. You are no Squam, you are a valiant and feeling entity. Do not fade out. I need your companionship."

At last she spoke, as from beyond the Star. 'I think I— overextended myself, and lost consciousness. Are we—how is the—?'

"We are successful!" Heem sprayed joyfully. "We shall survive! Your vision did it."

She was stronger now. 'Oh, I was so afraid.'

"But you were so certain I could do it! It was your confidence that kept me going!"

'Thank God for that!'

"Do you mean you thought I could not do it?"

'Oh, no, Heem. But I did fear, foolishly—'

She had feared strongly, and not foolishly, he realized now. Yet she had bolstered him with confidence, enabling him to do what he would otherwise have felt impossible. That realization stirred something strange in him. When he thought her absent, he had experienced a sensation of loss of surprising intensity; now he experienced a gratitude that verged on—but the concept was amorphous.

'I appreciate that feeling, though,' Jessica said. 'We have been through a terrific experience, together.'

But he was too tired now to explore that. He had expended considerable energy of his own, and with the let-down of effort the fatigue hit him. He had to rest, and so did she. He withdrew from her ambience, and the last of the sight-awareness faded from him. "The ship is on course; we can rest for some time," he sprayed, and allowed himself to roll to the stasis of complete relaxation.

'Yes,' she agreed, and there was something ineffable about her manner, and pleasant.

He dreamed, and now the dreams were visual. He saw a hillside decorated with pretty flowers and tall purple pines, and beside him was a presence that reminded him of Moon of Morningmist. But he could not see her, quite.

They intersected the column of ships at an angle. Using their new vision, Heem observed the tokens through the ship's perception. The situation was not good for the HydrO hosts; the first three ships were Erbs, and the next six alternated Squams and Erbs. Then, far back in the column, the HydrOs became more prominent.

"Sight makes a potent difference," Heem sprayed. "Erbs have sight, and they dominate the race. We can only consider ourselves fortunate that the remainder of the race will be onplanet, where taste is an advantage."

'But they aren't really Erbs and Squams and HydrOs,' Jessica said. 'They are only hosts for the other entrants of Thousandstar.'

"Still, if HydrO hosts do not perform well, it will be a negation for our species, and our influence in Thousandstar politics will diminish," Heem jetted.

"We can be sure the true Erb and Squam representatives are present in that lead column."

'And the true HydrO representative is about to be,' she said. 'Our shortcut really worked! Where will we place?'

Heem surveyed the column critically. "Twentieth. That is comfortable."

'Not as comfortable as first would be.'

"More comfortable than first. The earliest arrivals will have to contend with the vagaries of the equipment and the landscape. There will be accidents, foul-ups, delays. Those best qualified to race in space will not be best on rough planetary terrain. I warrant that none of the first ten pilots will finish in the first ten to reach the Ancient site."

'None but you, Heem! You have wilderness experience!'

"I do. But I want to be lost in the pack, profiting from the leading contestants' follies. Then, at the later stage, I will exert myself. There is still a lot of racing to be done."

'That's for sure!' she agreed.

Heem jetted a course correction so that the ship angled to merge obliquely with the column. The ship remained in freefall, thus decelerating without the use of fuel. But as it converged with the column, fuel would have to be expended, for the retreat from the Hole was over.

'Do we have enough fuel left?' Jessica inquired worriedly. 'I know you said we did, but now that we're at the point—'

"We have plenty," he assured her. "Thanks to your vision, I judged the nebula passage so well that I used only half what I might have. We could decelerate late, and move safely up to fifth or sixth place, but I prefer not to advertise the extent of our success. So we will phase in with absolute minimum deceleration, somewhat shaky, obviously so battered from our pass between Star and Hole that we represent no serious competition."

'Heem, that's unscrupulous!'

"Yes. But legitimate. The longer we seem to be a minimal threat, the better will be our chance of eventual success. This is not a polite social matter. This is a savage competition for possession of an Ancient site."

'You have the mind of a Solarian.'

"I presume you regard that as a compliment."

'I do.'

"Then it must be one." The emotion he had experienced before, and put aside, came back more strongly. "I dreamed of you, but could not see you."

'I know.'

"Physically, you most resemble a Squam, with your limbs and hearing and the appalling habit of eating. Squams are anathema to me. In addition, you are female."

'I am.'

"Yet I find myself—not sufficiently appalled. Your mind—is more like mine, despite the grotesqueries of your species. When I feared you had departed from me, I suffered."

She was silent, but he could tell from her mood that she understood. It was beyond reason for a HydrO to approve of anything remotely resembling a Squam, but in this case something less stringent than enmity was in order. Maybe he should regard her more as he did the Erbs, alien but neutral, no real threat to him. She shared the perception of sight with them, after all. Yet she was not neutral. And not really alien, anymore. Why did he think of her now as he had once thought of Moon of Morningmist? It could not be simply because she was female, because he was largely indifferent to most females.

He had the feeling that she understood more about this than he did, but was holding her reaction aloof. Why?

Now Jessica spoke. 'The Erbs—you have thought very little about them. But we'll be encountering them personally, on Planet Eccentric, won't we? Along with the Squams?'

"Correct. We have had the intellectual challenge, and the piloting challenge; on planet we shall have the physical challenge. It will have its grim aspects."

'I believe it! I have some notion what a Squam is, thanks to your flashbacks, and I think I can help you there. Because I do, as you have so kindly pointed out, have certain points of resemblance. But I know nothing at all about the Erbs. If you could visualize one for me—'

Heem tried. He juggled their new sight to formulate a vision of a single Erb: a plantlike creature whose roots gathered water and minerals, a massive stem, and a splay of leaves that could fold into a dense cone.

'That's all? A sunflower with a folding flower? How does it live? I mean, it can't live on just water and minerals, can it?'

"HydrOs live on just hydrogen," he reminded her.

'I still haven't quite accepted that, either,' she admitted. 'But if this Erb is a type of plant, it needs light too—'

"It opens its leaf-disk to collect starlight."

'Sunlight, you mean.'

"A sun is a star, yes. When there is wind, it catches this on the leaves, achieving torque, and stores the energy for future use."

'Like a windmill, I guess,' she said uncertainly. 'What about self-defense? Say a nasty Squam attacks it—'

"It folds its disk into a wedge and drills into the Squam's armor, splitting it apart. It is a rare Squam who can withstand an Erb."

'But then HydrOs—you don't seem to fear the Erb—'

"HydrO bodies are soft. The drill has no purchase. We merely fire hot needlejets into the Erb mechanism, disrupting its operation, or holing its stem. Erbs represent no threat to us."

'I see,' she said dubiously.

They limped into mergence with the column, in twentieth place.

"H-Sixty-six. Heem of Highfalls—is that you?" the taste net inquired. "How did you escape the Hole? We thought you had suicided."

"Salutation, H-Forty-six, Swoon of Sweetswamp. I perceived I could not achieve the first fifty, so I needled through the interstice between Star and Hole."

Heem knew the other ships were tuning in on the exchange, so he made the most of it. "I fear the radiation and the tide—" He let the taste fade out.

'Oh, that's sneaky!' Jessica said. 'They'll never worry about you now!'

"This is my hope."

'Heem, something about the way you say that—your attendant emotion—you're not doing this just as a tactic, are you. You're hiding!'

"I knew it was disaster to have an alien female in my mind," Heem jetted.

'Oh, come off it! We did just great together, even if I am still a little weak-kneed. After the Hole, what is there to worry about, in a mere competition?'

Heem made a mental spray of resignation. "My liability is now of concern to you.

It is proper to inform you of it before it manifests on the planet."

'Oh-oh. There is something I still don't know? Heem—does it relate to your problem fighting Squams?'

"It relates. I deceived the competition management. I cannot defeat a Squam in fair combat. And I will surely have to, to remain in contention for the victory."

'I don't follow that. You learned how to overcome a Squam before, didn't you?

You proved this, didn't you? Winning those five valleys for HydrO hegemony, one of which was Morningmist? You proved you were correct; your litter would never have survived in Morningmist, had the Squams taken over that region.'

"I did all that," Heem agreed. "Yet this was a sign of my ultimate failure. I was able to use what I had learned as a juvenile, to defeat that Squam in ritual combat, and I became a hero of my kind. But the memory that enabled me to succeed was illegal. When someone betrayed the guilty secret of my past, I was abruptly an outlaw. Yet no one had known my secret, not even me—for all memory of the juvenile state is wiped clean in the metamorphosis to the adult stage."

'But you just said—now wait a minute—you do remember! That's bothered me before.

You're telling me all the things you aren't supposed to remember!'

"This—is the other facet of my secret," Heem jetted reluctantly. "My metamorphosis turned out to be imperfect. At first I remembered nothing; then the horrors of the Squam seeped through, and I knew I had to—to master the Squam. I began to remember how. To needle into the limb-grooves with heat, causing the limbs to retreat, preventing the creature from attacking. Rolling it off a height so it would be crushed in the fall. There was varied terrain in the Erb arena, simulating a natural environment. I used it well. Thus I did what hardly any other HydrO could do: I defeated the Squam in combat. Only when I saw it defeated, and the Erbs were drawing it half-drowned out of the water, did I realize that it was not skill and tactics so much as memory that had done it.

That I was not truly adult. Were this known, I would be banished from my society until my complete metamorphosis occurred."

'Illegal memories!' Jessica exclaimed. 'Our kind thrives on memory! I remember my childhood—'

"You are not a HydrO."

'So you became a hero and qualified for the competition,' Jessica said. 'That much I can see. And you did it by cheating, according to your culture's definition, because you aren't supposed to remember. But since you still do remember, you should still be able to handle a Squam, shouldn't you?'

"No. When the truth became known about my treason, more memories came, until I remembered it all. And with full memory of my juvenile state came—"

'Yes?' she prompted eagerly.

"Awareness of mortality."

'You mean adult HydrOs really don't know they're going to die? That doesn't make sense! Swoon of Sweetswamp, just now, mentioned suiciding—'

"They know it objectively, not subjectively. It lacks personal force. We do not fear death, or consider it among our alternatives. Therefore Swoon remarked on this as a misjudgment of mine, attempting a tactic so risky as to be suicidal; she did not really contemplate death as a termination. I did—but I am not, am no longer, an adult; I am deficient."

'Heem, this is ridiculous! Every creature has to die sometime, and—'

"Awareness of death as an immediacy does not come until the senile metamorphosis, when the concerns of a lifetime are put aside. Then the events of the adult stage are forgotten, and the entity is equipped to contemplate termination."

'That's amazing! No concern about death, no awareness of youth or age!

Subjectively. Like human beings always thinking the lightning will strike someone else, not themselves. You mentioned something about that before, but I didn't think it was literal!'

"When my adult metamorphosis became flawed, my awareness of demise returned. I knew I could die. My power departed, because I became a coward."

She was silent awhile. The ship decelerated, keeping its place in the column.

Then she said, 'Heem, I can't accept that. The way you handled that concepts contest, and the first part of the spaceship race, and the Holestar navigation—you've got good nerve."

"These are all natural HydrO facilities. Fighting Squams is not."

'Still, you could rise to the challenge, as you have in other cases.'

"No. I tried to needle with the accuracy required, once, on a mock-up of a Squam. I could not do it. My needles lacked sufficient accuracy. My fear ruined my aim."

'That's not so!' she cried. 'You can't fear the Squam more than you fear the Hole. Fear didn't stop you when you were juvenile. I've been sharing your nerves, your mind. I know you are no coward!'

"I tested my needlejets again before I entered the competition. They remained inaccurate. My fear—"

'You knew you couldn't navigate the Hole, too!' she said. 'But when the time came, you threaded the needle perfectly!'

"Only because I borrowed your sight and your confidence. Your reflexes. No HydrO

could have done it without those assets."

'And no HydrO can overcome a Squam!' she exclaimed. 'But with sight you could do that too, Heem. I didn't have confidence; I merely urged you on, while my own terror nearly wiped me out, and you had to revive me after the danger was over.

You were the strong one, Heem, not me! I just told you you could do it, and you were fool enough to believe me, and then you could do it. Don't you see—it isn't cowardice that stops you, it's lack of perception! You were lucky in your prior encounters, but you were wounded too, and though your skin healed, your needlejets suffered loss of accuracy. You were burned twice, Heem! There must be scar tissue interfering with your aim, or with your perception, so that you aren't aiming where you think you are. Your skin just doesn't function as well as it did before you were hurt. Once you learned more, you knew you could not depend on luck, and your jets weren't fine-tuned, so you became afraid. Your fear was a natural response to your incapacity, not the other way around. With sight, you could do it, applying your knowledge of tactics, just as you did threading the needle of the Star-Hole. And you have sight now, Heem! For as long as I am with you. You can beat your Squam! I'm sure of that!'

"And you expect me to be fool enough to believe you, again?"

'Yes! Because this is not something new, like skirting a black hole. You've handled Squams before.'

Amazed, Heem reflected. "This is possible. I am aware of mortality, but I did navigate the Hole—with your help. Why should I not navigate a Squam—with your help? It just may be—" He paused. "How is it that your kind remembers its juvenile state? All your metamorphoses can't be flawed!"

'We have no metamorphosis,' she said, surprised. 'Didn't I make that clear before?'

"But how do you know when you're adult?"

"By your age! When we achieve the required number of years of life, we are by definition adult. There is no break of continuity, no loss of memory."

"By your age! This is incredible."

'Sometimes it seems so,' she agreed wryly. 'Actually, there are also some physiological changes that signal maturity, but age is the legal criterion.'

"But then you all remember the horrors of your juvenile state! All your siblings dying—"

There are no horrors, Heem. Our parents take care of us, or some other responsible party. No human child is left to fend for himself, and few of us die in childhood. In our case, our parents died before we were grown, and the family retainer, Flowers, took over and saw to our security. It is like this in every Solarian family.'

"That cannot be so! In a few generations you would overrun your habitat. There has to be a natural control of numbers, so that a given species neither overpopulates nor dies out. Every suitable location must be seeded, but there must be no reseeding of populated regions."

'I can see the logic of your system, Heem,' she said. 'But it is a cruel one. We produce only one or two offspring at a time, and make sure they survive. The end result is the same—and we suffer no traumas requiring the oblivion of metamorphosis. For you, remembering— Heem, it's terrible! You really do have horrors to forget! No wonder you have traumas. I would, too, if I'd been alone with two hundred sisters, with no parents, in a valley filled with deadly menaces, and watched my sisters die, all but me, knowing that only luck accounted for my survival—'

"Your rationale and mode of life have their appeal," Heem jetted. "I believe I would prefer to propagate your way, rather than the HydrO way."

'Now don't start jetting treason,' she said, touched. Then she shifted the topic. 'One thing still bothers me. If you were the only survivor of your valley, and in any event metamorphosis wiped out the memory—how did anyone know you had refused to reseed the valley of Morningmist?'

"That bothered me also," Heem admitted. "It fostered my illegal exploration of my own buried memories. The valley of Morningmist was empty, but that was no necessary indication of the crime, for all HydrOs could have been killed before a male came across to assist the re-seeding. It had to be someone who had been there, and knew me personally, who knew that male and female had occupied the valley together, and left it empty."

'Meen of Morningmist!' Jessica exclaimed. 'She was not killed. She crossed to Highfalls, didn't she? She knew, and she could have—'

"She would have had to incriminate herself, for she too left Morningmist without reseeding. Even though she wanted to, her failure would have made her suspect."

'Yes, I have encountered that aspect of HydrO logic before.'

"I do not believe she would have exposed me, even had she not lost her memory through metamorphosis. I am in fact sure she did not, for when they quested for the truth of this matter, they located her, and she did not remember."

'But there was no other person!'

"There was one."

She was amazed. 'You don't mean—?'

"Slitherfear."

'The Squam! But—'

"When I became known for my success against a Squam, Slitherfear became aware of my identity. He knew the geography of that region; after all, he had surveyed it. The name Highfalls sufficed. He thought he had killed me in the valley, when I dropped off the machine-floater. Now he knew I had survived. He suffered internal illness because of the needling I had done to his stomach; though his kind used their other machines to restore him somewhat, he suffered both physical pain and the humiliation of being driven from his post by a HydrO. He was as angry with me as I was with him. He communicated with my people, betraying me. They had to verify or refute the charge—and it was true."

'So Slitherfear is twice your nemesis! He slew your love, then turned you from hero to criminal. You really have a score to settle with him!'

"And he with me. I understand he still manifests the faint odor of punctured membrane, which causes him to be held in ill repute among his kind and prevents him from mating."

'Good for you!' she exclaimed, clapping mental hands. Heem realized that her digits were not really Squamlike; they were soft-shelled rather than hard, and possessed five extremities rather than three.

"Slitherfear has motive to thrust for fame," Heem continued. "His work was undone by my victory in the arena, so he too is a failure. I believe he has entered this competition. He is an adventurer, with a liking for infiltrating distant regions and a dissatisfaction for remaining with his own kind. This accounted for his original mission to Morningmist."

'Where he blithely ate the young HydrOs!'

"It is the Squam nature. So I suspect he will be among the hosts on Eccentric, vindicating himself and preying on the helpless. I hope he is; in this fashion we may meet again."

'But if you were afraid to battle a Squam—'

"I am afraid. But it is necessary to make the attempt, to finish the business I started in Morningmist. Slitherfear must be killed, and I wish to be the one to kill him. Somehow."

'And you call yourself a coward!' she breathed in wonder.

Her attitude was rolling better with him. Heem realized that it was merely the result of her alien culture, but still it had its merits. Perhaps he should have been conceived an alien.

Heem decelerated jerkily, managing to lose another place in the column. There were Squam ships near him; he was sure they had satisfaction in perceiving his difficult descent. When he oriented for the planetary set-down, he fouled it up some more. When the ship finally settled to the landing site, it was twenty-third.

'That's playing it comfortably close,' Jessica said. 'Let's go get our tractor, and hope we don't lose the race by two places.'

He was about to oblige, as the acceleration bath drained—for, of course, he had had to use it for the final push—when one more communication came from the space net. "Do not hurry, Heem of Highfalls," the cynical taste translation sprayed.

"I thought you might enter this competition, but doubted you would make it this far. I think you will not get far beyond this point, weak as you are. Do not die yet; allow me the opportunity to complete unfinished business."

'Slitherfear!' Jessica exclaimed. 'You were right!'

Heem, abruptly faced with the conflict he had half sought, was unable to respond to his nemesis.

"Do you dissolve in your ship, stupid HydrO?" the Squam demanded with sardonic flavor. "Do not fade out completely until I land; I mean to destroy you with my own pincers."

Jessica, finding Heem unable to answer, took over his communication system and responded for him. "Thank you for the good news, slayer of juveniles," she sprayed. "It will be my pleasure to destroy more than your stomach, this time, monster."

'What are you rolling?' Heem protested inside. 'I can't—'

"I'm psyching him out," she replied. "Making him uncertain, so he'll be nervous, make mistakes. It's good policy."

"Wait for me at the landing site, and we shall discover what shall be destroyed," Slitherfear replied.

"Oops," Jessica said privately to Heem. "I don't think it worked. He's either not scared, or he's a good bluffer." Then, into the net, she sprayed, "Why should I delay my mission for the likes of you, Squam? Catch me if you can."

"I shall, coward."

Heem suffered a surge of foul-tasting shame. Here, before all the contestants remaining in local space, he had been challenged and branded a coward. 'We must wait for his ship!' he needled.

"Don't be ridiculous," Jessica said. "Obviously the Squam has some reason for his certainty for wanting the showdown here. Otherwise he wouldn't have tipped his hand by broadcasting on the net. Maybe he has an acid-gun in his ship, or maybe he wants it where there will be several more Squams to help him out. We have to avoid him, or meet him in neutral territory, where we have an even chance. Let's get out of here, Heem."

She was rolling along most logically! Of course the Squam would not fight fairly, if he had any means to cheat.

Benumbed by the rapid roll of events, Heem moved out.

Chapter 6: Planet Eccentric

The surface of the planet was bright, with white washes of vapor against a blue welkin, a line of dark green at the horizon.

Heem rolled to a halt. "How can I see all that? I have no light-receptors! In the ship we were translating machine-input that derived from a visual source, but now I can only taste and feel. There can be no direct input from the sky."

'I confess, I cannot tell a lie, this time,' Jessica said. 'I filled in the imagery from my own awareness. I know what day on a planet looks like; I have made holograph paintings of it many times. I just don't feel comfortable, blind.'

"But if your picture differs from reality, and I am deceived—"

'That could be quite a problem when you encounter Slitherfear,' she agreed. 'I hadn't thought of that. When you fight the Squam, you have to have an exact notion of every detail. I think we can translate from your taste-input, but we'll need more work on it. So we'd better stay away from Slitherfear until we have it down pat.'

Heem was relieved to agree. He had to fight the Squam, but he wanted to do it in the most favorable situation for him.

'Still, I do have some direct input,' Jessica continued. 'I feel the sunlight on your flesh and the heat of the air; it has to be midday. So I know that whatever is visible, is visible.' And she strengthened the image.

Heem contemplated the scenery. It was lovely. He liked seeing, now that he had discovered how. His taste was unimpaired; he was aware of the pavement, the fumes of the ship's emissions, the nearby alien vegetation, and the line of tractors at the edge of the landing area. There was no harm in the vision.

Suddenly the tractors appeared, as Jessica caught his thought. Gross black machines with huge ballooning tires and metallic grills and complicated appurtenances.

"Oh, stop it!" he needled at her. "There is no taste of composition wheels or controls. The diffusion of taste indicates smaller sources than you show."

"Oops." The balloon wheels were replaced by metal ones, and the tractors shrank in size.

Heem rolled rapidly across to the nearest one. As he touched it, and picked up the flavors of its immediate vicinity, the oil spots and fuel drops, the taste and visual pictures merged. It was a treadlaying vehicle, with a single front wheel, just large enough for a sapient body. The controls were multiple, so that HydrO, Squam, or Erb could operate it. Heem rolled up the sloping side ramp and settled into the control chamber, familiarizing himself with the details. It was a standard model, with the jet-buttons organized in the normal HydrO mode. He could not decipher the Squam or Erb controls, but did not need to.

The next ship was coming down; Heem felt its vibration. Jessica, indulging her artistic propensity again, filled in the image: a sliver of bright metal balanced on a thin column of orange fire against a deep blue backdrop—

The fire cut off.

Heem jetted at the tractor controls. His engine wooshed into life. Fluid drove into wheel-chambers, and the vehicle lurched forward.

'What are you doing, Heem?' Jessica cried. 'Jackrabbit starts waste fuel!'

Heem did not answer. He aimed the tractor directly into the jungle at full acceleration. The vegetation loomed up, clarifying as Jessica interpreted the taste emanations of it: green stems rising from the ground, flaring into side-stems, which in turn flared into more side-stems. 'Watch out for those ferns!' Jessica cried. 'Heem, there's no need to careen off like this—'

Then the concussion came. The fern-trees swayed with the blast, and the tractor jumped momentarily from the ground.

'What was that?'

"The descending ship. Didn't you see it run out of fuel? It had to crash."

'Oh. Someone played it too close.' She was chastened. 'No wonder you got out of the way in a hurry! We could have been—'

"Destroyed," Heem finished. "As that contestant was."

'This competition—isn't supposed to be fatal, is it? I mean, the losers shouldn't—'

"Those who play it foolishly close can die. That pilot should have opted out, merely orbiting the planet until picked up. But he elected to risk it, hoping he would not crash too hard—and had he had moments more fuel he might have survived. It was a far lesser gamble than the one we took passing the Hole."

'Yes,' she agreed weakly. 'Do you suppose it could have been Slitherfear who crashed?'

"Hardly. Slitherfear is too canny for such a basic error. He was several ships back, while this one was the next following us. Slitherfear will only die when I kill him." If Heem killed him, instead of getting killed himself.

'Are you allowed to—to attack another contestant?'

"No. It will have to seem like an accident, or it could disqualify us if we win the competition. If we do not win the site, it will not matter; there can be no real enforcement of regulations here."

'But after what I said in your name on the space net, everyone will know that—'

"They will assume that was bluff. There are many such bluffs in such competitions, considered part of the byplay. Had I not been daunted by the sudden presence of my enemy, I should have acted as you did."

'Well, I'm still not sure it's proper,' she said. 'Promise me you won't attack Slitherfear.'

"But you were baiting him yourself!"

'Well, I changed my mind. It's a female prerogative.'

Heem could not admit that he was afraid to attack the Squam anyway. Maybe his new perception of sight would enable him to prevail, but he was hardly confident. It was one thing to contemplate revenge from the safety of distance, but another thing to roll it into practice. "I will, for your sake, try to avoid Slitherfear." He felt mixed relief and frustration. If only he had the power to destroy the Squam! Secure power, not just a hope. It wouldn't matter if he lost the competition for the Ancient site, if he settled with the Squam. He could die satisfied.

'Let's reverse those priorities. We will concentrate on winning the race. If we lose it, and all is lost, and we know I will die and you will be imprisoned, then we can go after your enemy. That would be the right time.'

That made excellent sense. At times the Solarian found channels of logic that were quite valuable.

Heem concentrated on his driving, using the jet controls to guide the powerful little machine through the jungle. These fern-trees differed from the plants of his home-planet; they only had partial respiration, depending on a network of roots to draw sustenance from the ground. He had studied this process and understood its alien nature. The fact that Jessica's visualization enabled him to perceive the plants with an alien sense only complemented the effect. Already he was getting used to vision, and even beginning to think visually.

There was a track in the jungle, circling the landing area. Heem guided the machine to follow it, picking up speed. This was not so very different from space piloting, in spirit.

'But how do we know where we're going?' Jessica asked.

Heem needled the tractor's information bank, and it sprayed a display of variegated flavors. "This is the pattern of the landscape," he advised her. "The keyed tastes mark fuel deposits, hazards, safe passages—"

'Oh, a map!' she exclaimed. 'I'm good at maps. Let me visualize it—there.' A colored picture-chart formed.

They contemplated it. The map indicated that they were on a large island girded with volcanic mountains, long rivers, broad plains, and deep jungles. At the center of the island was the destination, the object of the competition. The Ancient site. Heem felt a thrill of excitement run through him as he saw/tasted it, and was not certain whether it was his reaction or hers.

'Both,' Jessica said. 'The fascination of the Ancients appeals to all the sapient species of the Cluster. Even if it wasn't a race, I'd have to hurry to that site.'

"You know of the Ancients in your section of the Galaxy?" Heem inquired, teasing her.

'Of course we know of the Ancients! What do you think we are, savages? It was the Solarian Flint of Outworld who saved the Milky Way in the First War of Energy by penetrating an Ancient site. And I am descended from that great man, and my home is the castle where he liaisoned with Good Queen Bess and started my family line.'

"Roll cool, alien female! So a Solarian has tasted a site. Who knows, some century the Solarians may even achieve sapience."

She fired a mental needle-kick at him. 'You bastard! Just like a male!'

"You invite it. Just like a female."

She needled him again, but this time it was a more friendly jab, with a faint and intriguing flavor of sex appeal. Alien she might be, but she was reminding him more strongly of Moon of Morningmist. He remembered those first happy hours in the new valley, of association and copulation.

'Just as though there is nothing in the universe except sex,' Jessica said severely.

"Is there?"

'Oh, pay attention to your map! You're running into a mountain.'

So he was, in a manner of tasting. Heem guided the tractor to the side, skirting the ridge ahead. "According to the map, this is one trail of five threading through the terrain to the site. The problem is, with fifty tractors and narrow trails, it may become crowded."

'Crowded? It must be a thousand kilometers to the site! That's one tractor per fifty miles, average.'

Heem struggled with the alien measurements, unable to reconcile them with each other or with his own frame. He had knowledge of Solarian time-scales, but not distance-scales. "It is about two days' travel by machine, if there are not too many interruptions. But the tractors will not be evenly spaced; they are beginning clustered and will proceed at similar rates, since all are set at the same level of propulsion. There will be blockages at the difficult passes. If we get trapped behind such a block, the tractors on all the other trails will proceed beyond us. Then we will lose, regardless of what else happens on our own trail."

'Oh, I see. So we'd better pick a trail that isn't much used—or go cross-country.'

"No cross-country. Taste these intense lines on the map? Those are lava runnels.

This planet is actively volcanic. We can cross only at the bridges."

'So there is still a good deal of luck involved,' she said. 'Those who happen to be in the wrong line, lose out.'

"We must arrange not to be in the wrong line. That way we mitigate chance."

'Gotcha. Let's study that map more closely.'

Heem pulled the tractor off the trail and parked it behind the large clump of ferns. "We dare not proceed too far on this trail until we are sure," he jetted.

"I dislike delaying, but since the trails do not intersect again until after the fuel depots—"

'Fuel depots?'

"We shall have to refuel once. Machines are not civilized; they must consume physical chemicals constantly, like Squams."

'Go ahead and needle it, chauvinist! Like Solarians too! Machines eat.'

Yet her words were pleasant, in contrast to her thought. He liked that counterpoint. In fact, despite what he knew of her nature, he liked her. She seemed so much less like a Squam than she had, now that he was well past the superficial points. After all, there were quite a number of species in the Cluster that consumed physical substance. Not all creatures who ate and had limbs were inherently evil.

'I should hope not,' Jessica said.

He kept forgetting that she could taste his superficial thoughts. Not that it mattered, anymore.

"The most direct route seems to be this one," Heem jetted, mentally indicating a line on the map. "Almost level, no swamps, only two lava bridges. Therefore a disproportionate number will follow it."

'Which makes it a bad route,' she said. 'Now here is the longest, windingest, hilliest route, with six lava crossings. No one will take that one!'

"Because anyone who does, will lose the race. Unless all four alternate routes get clogged."

'Which they might, if all the traffic goes on them. But what's to stop spaceship arrival number one from taking the shortest tractor route, and zooming along it without opposition, since no other tractor can catch up?'

"That is an excellent question. It simply cannot be that simple. These races are not designed for that sort of victory. There has to be something that prevents a rollaway victory for the first lander."

'I certainly don't see what—oh, do you mean monsters or something, lurking for the first arrivals?'

"No, this is supposed to be a low-hazard competition, which means the worst hazards are the ones we bring with us, like other competitors. There are very few animals on Eccentric, because of its climate. There may be undiscovered monsters in the wilds, but not on the marked trails."

'Then it seems to me it's backward. Each tractor that passes will chew up the ground some more, until it is virtually impassable. So the first tractor will just keep gaining.'

"That depends on the nature of the soil and of the treads. With laydown tracks like these, that approximate the sensible locomotion of HydrOs, the path may get better and safer each time—"

'That's it!' she exclaimed. 'The caterpillar treads beat down the brush, press down the rocks, make a bumpy trail become a highway! So the later tractors will gain on the first ones, and save fuel.'

"And guarantee pileups," Heem agreed. "Yet if we can only gain by being behind, we can't win—"

'Yes we can! The key is the same as with the spaceships! It's not where you are, it's how much fuel you conserve. If you run economically, you'll pass the others in the end. Look at those fuel depots on the map— they're nearer the landing field than they are the Ancient site. How much you want to bet that every tractor will run out of fuel before the end, on that last stretch? So any who haven't caught on by then, and who continue to waste fuel by forging new trails or jamming into each other or simply speeding—'

"This verges on genius, alien creature! That is the key! A trap for the stupid or unthinking. What use to lead the pack, if your tractor stalls out before the others and you have to roll on your own power while the others pass you by in their machines? The strategy is to use the most-used trail, proceeding slowly and efficiently, then go ahead at the end."

'Unless we get hung up behind a two-day-long traffic jam,' she amended. 'Better to stay up near the front while the fuel depots are ahead, and—' She paused.

'Oops—I just thought, Heem. Is there enough fuel for all the tractors, no matter when they come?'

Heem checked the coding on the map. "These deposits, in the aggregate, have enough fuel to refill only half the tractors."

'So there is the other shoe.'

"The other what?"

'The other part of the trap. Go too fast, you run out of fuel early. Go too slow, you can't refuel. So you're out either way.'

"This is the kind of maneuvering I understand! We must proceed rapidly to the depot, then economize on the remainder."

'I wonder—could that also be a trap? Everyone racing to the nearest depot—'

"It could be. Yet if we do not race—"

'I'm still suspicious. There's something too pat about this. How is that fuel distributed? I mean, is there the same amount at each depot—maybe enough for five tractors? This vitally affects our strategy.'

"It does indeed," Heem agreed. This alien was smart! "The map seems to indicate that all depots are even. The same amount of fuel at each station."

'So the depots on the most popular route will run out first, and the latecomers won't be able to cross to some other depot, will they! Because they're too far apart. So we'll lose about half our tractors at the first round, including some of the leaders—and the smart contestants who arrive late will do best to go on the least popular trails, in the hope that a fuel refill remains that will put them back into the race. The last could very well be first.'

"Possible. Except that a smart leader should still be able to stay ahead of a smart follower. Something more is required."

'This bad route,' she said. 'It's so very bad, no one in his right mind would take it unless he were already so far behind he knew it was the only one with fuel. But look—there's a crossover strip here; you could start on the bad route, then cross to a better one after the fuel depot.'

"Yes. We must do that. This delay for reflection may have gained us much more than we had hoped." Heem started up the tractor and directed it toward the bad route.

'Still, I wonder,' she mused. 'Why should they design a route that bad, then put an escape trail? I'm getting paranoid again. Heem, is there any way to take extra fuel at the depot and store it for the end stretch?'

"No. Doubtful. The depots deliver a set amount by closed connection. Otherwise the first tractors would steal it all."

'So you can't store it up. You have only one tankful at the end, no matter which route you're on?'

"True. Perhaps some fuel from the initial tank can be conserved, to stretch the second; that is all."

'Heem, look at this bad route. It crosses several lava runnels, then climbs right over a mountain!'

"Yes. Virtually all our fuel would be expended in that ascent."

'But from then on, it is all downhill. We could coast almost to the site!'

Heem studied the route, surprised. "That is a better route than it seems. It provides elevation at the expense of fuel, but it conserves that elevation until the end, when the ride down is free. Provided the tractor achieves the final height."

'So let's stay on it, Heem! It's a gamble, but there's a lot to gain. No traffic, no fuel shortage, and we can take our tractor closer to the Ancient site than any other way. Because the tractors on the other trails, going on the level, will have to continue under power, while we can turn off the motor entirely between climbs.'

"I agree. We will be among the first ten tractors, then, even if we must travel far and slow at the outset."

'All because we paused to consider, instead of rushing blindly ahead.' She was pleased.

Other tractors were moving, as the spaced-out ships landed. Here the trail was wide; Heem navigated past two vehicles going in the opposite direction. One was a sinister Squam, the other an Erb. If they were surprised to note the tractor going the wrong way, they did not show it. Probably they felt that every fool who lost his way was a net gain for the others.

Heem located the bad trail. Sure enough, it was virtually unused; only one or two tractors had gone before. The path was rough, but far better than straight uncharted wilderness. He moved along it at the maximum speed he judged safe.

Jessica filled in the imagery with growing detail, until Heem almost found himself thinking visually despite his knowledge that it wasn't real. The clumps of ferns had thickened into a dense jungle, their leaves interlocking so that no tractor could pass between the plants; there was no choice except to remain on the carved trail.

'Yet no big trees,' Jessica remarked. 'These all look as though they just sprang up this season.'

"They did. The eclipse-winter wipes out everything. The air freezes and settles to the planetary surface, and all organic structures shatter and are reduced to powder. In the spring there is only nutrient dust, with the seeds of the new life embedded."

'All new, every year!' she said. 'But how can animals grow from seed?'

"Your kind does not grow from seed?"

'Not that way. We give live birth.'

"I do not comprehend."

'The offspring are born from the body of the mother. Some other Solarian species lay eggs, while—how do HydrOs do it?'

"We seed."

'You mean like vegetable seeds? In that case why couldn't your seeds survive the winter here, buried in frozen mulch the way the native seeds do. You could colonize the planet.'

"Not like vegetable seeds. HydrOs are always animate, conscious, though we soon forget our earliest moments, even before metamorphosis. My illegal memories go back only until the time I was half grown, when the majority of my siblings had already perished. Freezing would kill us. We must have hydrogen to consume, and be warm enough to process it."

'How do you draw energy from gas? I've never been clear on that.'

"It is a natural process requiring no intellect. I suppose it is no more complex than the way you Solarians process physical food. Some heat is released, which we regulate to facilitate the process, and on occasion when we require hot weapon needlejets—"

Another tractor was coming up on them from behind, gaining on them as they had conjectured would be the case.

'We should let it pass,' Jessica said. 'Then we can follow, saving fuel. If the refueling is a set amount, there must be about twice that capacity in the tractor, so that units will neither run out early nor overflow. Anything we save now will contribute that much to our progress at the end.'

"True. But if we simply draw aside and let the vehicle pass, that entity will be suspicious, and may decline to take the lead. We must yield the lead only with seeming reluctance."

'Say, yes! You really are smart, Heem!' Flattered, Heem did not respond. She was quite intelligent herself, once he allowed for the facts of her alienness and femaleness.

The pursuing tractor came close. Now Heem tasted the environment of its occupant. "That's an Erb," he jetted. "Nothing to worry about."

'An Erb could win this race, you know,' Jessica warned him. 'An Erb in a tractor could run you off the road just as easily as a Squam could.'

"Never," Heem sprayed, unworried. "Erbs cannot compete with HydrOs. They're only plants."

'Plants?' she demanded incredulously. 'That's not the way I remember it from our last discussion on the subject. You told me they were sapient, with movable leaf-umbrellas they used to fetch in light energy, and that they could defeat Squams in combat. That's quite a bit for a plant!'

Now the other tractor was right behind them. Heem maneuvered to block its forward progress, as though afraid it would pass them. "They draw nutrients from the ground, like other plants. These tractors have mulch-beds bottoming the occupation compartments, so as to be serviceable for the Erb's roots. That is also why the compartments are open; the Erbs need access to light."

'I'm still grasping, Heem. I understand all this intellectually, but I want to form an image for us to look at right now.'

Heem concentrated, trying to convert his taste-impression to a visual one. When Jessica was doing the imagery it came easily, if inaccurately. For him it was much harder.

'Here, I'll help you. Like this?' She made a picture of a giant green fernlike thing, its fronds waving gently in the breeze.

"No, not at all like that," Heem sprayed. "Erbs are not green. They don't wave.

They—" He focused on the taste. Actually, since he had never seen an Erb—no HydrO had!—he could not be sure of the color, but knew it did not match that of most vegetation.

The picture fuzzed and changed as they adjusted it. Suddenly the real Erb drew alongside; Heem had not paid proper attention to his maneuvering. He tried to crowd, too late.

'Let it by,' Jessica murmured. 'That's what we want, remember?'

Heem had almost forgotten. He allowed his tractor to lose ground slowly, and the Erb wrestled the lead from him. As Heem fell behind, he picked up a clear medley of tastes carried back on the wind, and suddenly Jessica's picture firmed.

It was of a golden column swelling into a splay of tendrils below and a cone opening out above, formed of overlapping metallic petals.

'I see,' Jessica said. 'It gathers light by spreading its leaves into a full circle. But what about days when there is no direct sunlight? It can't store enough energy from the sun to maintain an active life-style, can it?'

Heem struggled with the picture, adjusting it. The Erb's cone opened into a disk, the disk tilted to face the wind, and the petals angled separately to form vanes. The wind caught them, driving them in a circle about the axis; the force of the wind was being transmuted into torque that spun down into the body of the plant. 'A windmill!' Jessica exclaimed. 'Now at last I see it! You tried to explain it before, but—'

The Erb's tractor was now ahead, and proceeding slightly more slowly on the less-beaten track. Heem edged off, allowing his own tractor to fall slowly further behind, so that the Erb would not realize the truth. In the process, Heem increased his fuel economy significantly.

'But how does the Erb defend itself from a horror like the Squam?' Jessica asked. 'You said Erbs could beat Squams, didn't you? Something about drilling?'

"The leaves mass into a drill-cone," Heem sprayed, modifying the picture again.

He was getting better at this. The secret was to formulate an extremely detailed conception, then project that detail. Any aspect that was vague in his mind, was vague in the image. This was good discipline! "Visualize a Squam attacking the Erb." Jessica obligingly conjured the image of a Squam. It looked somewhat alien, as she was to a certain extent drawing on her own experience of fanged reptiles, but it sufficed. The Squam slithered toward the Erb, its triple arms extended, each triple pincers open.

The image-Erb rotated to aim its wedged leaves at the Squam. The mass spun on its axle-stalk as the windmill had, but now it was driven from inside. As the Squam came close, the cone angled to point at the Squam's torso and drove forward.

The screw-thread configuration bit into the body, catching under the scales and jamming them apart. In a moment the body of the Squam was split open, its hard scales unable to resist the overpowering leverage of the spiraling wedge. The Squam was badly injured and would soon die.

'Now at last I understand that too,' Jessica agreed, blanking out the vision.

'Torque wins the day! And I see how the drill would not work against the protean body of a HydrO. It really is scissors-paper-rock.'

"It really is what?" Heem asked, confused by her flurry of concepts.

She explained, carefully illustrating with pictures. 'Scissors are closing sharp edges that sheer through paper, defeating it. But paper wraps rock, smothering it. And rock smashes scissors. So each beats the other, in a vicious circle.

That's what it is with Squams, HydrOs, and Erbs. Squams have scissors-pincers that cut through the soft paper-flesh of HydrOs, but the rock-hard drill of an Erb smashes the scissors. And the HydrOs—how do the HydrOs overcome Erbs? I know you told me before, but—'

"We wrap them," Heem admitted. "We surround them and jet them with hot water.

They can block the pincers of the Squams, but not our liquid."

The tractor forged on, readily handling the curves and rises of the trail. 'You know, the more I learn of your way of life, the more I appreciate it,' Jessica observed. Then she corrected herself. 'No, I don't really like it; I much prefer my human mode. But yet your scheme of things has its appeal—let me isolate this—something attracts me—'

"Your Solarian existence remains alien to me in most respects," Heem jetted.

"But in your mode of raising offspring, and you yourself—I find myself wishing that you were a HydrO."

'Well, I am a HydrO, for the nonce. I'm occupying your body, aren't I?'

"A separate HydrO. One I could copulate with."

'One you could—what a thing to say!' she exclaimed, a sort of pleased anger washing through her aspect of his mind. 'Every time I think we are making progress, you come up with—'

"I regret," Heem jetted quickly. "I forgot that your king regards copulation as indecent. I withdraw the thought."

'Heem, you can't withdraw a thought! And my kind doesn't regard—well, I don't, anyway! I—you just caught me by surprise. We Solarians don't—I mean such things are not baldly stated, but I guess they are felt. In fact, my clone-brother, who's really me in male guise, a Y chromosome in place of an X—I—I guess what you're really saying is a natural urge—'

"I regret offending you. I feel toward you somewhat as I felt toward Moon of Morningmist, and I now am more familiar with you than I was with her when she—"

'You only knew her a few days before she died,' Jessica agreed. 'I have been with you a similar period, and we have solved a concepts-riddle and raced in space and bypassed a black hole already. How could anything you say cause me offense? I'm—I'm clarifying my own feelings to myself now, more than to you. I'm surprised, but—deeply pleased, Heem. I—I do want your respect. Because I have come to respect you. You really are quite a man in your fashion.'

"I am a HydrO, not a man."

'Yes, yes of course, Heem. I spoke figuratively. What I meant was, I—I—oh, God, my culture makes this hard for me, and I thought I was liberated! But I want to be honest I—I wish I were that lady HydrO. So I could—I know sex isn't serious with you, but often it isn't with us, either. Not reproduction-serious.

Sometimes it's just a mutual recognition of feeling, and—'

"But we are of differing species," Heem protested, intrigued. He had been appalled by the presence of a female mind in his; now he preferred it.

'Are we really, Heem? Is that so important? Our physical bodies differ, but our minds agree on the fundamental things, like not leaving babies alone to die. If I could occupy the body of a separate HydrO, a female, would it be wrong—what we might do?'

"No!" he sprayed explosively. "It would not be wrong!"

'After all, creatures in transfer do all sorts of things. That's the nature of transfer. It leads to understanding, reduces alienophobia, spreads information.

When in Rome—'

"When in what condition?"

'Condition?'

"I did not recognize the condition of Rome."

'Oh. That's a city on ancient Earth, the Solarian home-world. My planet circling Capella is just a colony, as your Planet Impasse is. What I meant was that when one is in transfer, one does what the host does. Expresses oneself in the manner of the host, though it differs from— I mean, when I'm in HydrO host, it should be right to—'

"But you are in a male body."

'I wish I weren't. I want a female body. Truth is, I might as well have been in a male body back in System Capella, since I had to act male anyway. This isn't so much of a change after all! But I hate it. I wish I were female, so I could—could at least greet you in the HydrO manner. As Moon of Morningmist did.

Before I went home.'

Before she went home. Heem abruptly realized that his aversion to her intrusion into his private mental space had not merely dissipated; it had been replaced by positive feeling. He liked her very well, and no longer wanted her to go. Yes, she was alien, and female—but she alone did not condemn his shame of the valley of Morningmist. She had provided him with the useful new perception of sight, that would be lost when she went. Only a mind geared to vision could make it work. She wanted to go, but he wanted her to stay.

'Why thank you, Heem.'

Heem sprayed an explosive epithet. That damned un-privacy of thought... was also becoming more appealing. He was not alone.

'Look, Heem, I feel the same. I was aware of your reactions when I kissed you, and I didn't want to tease you, so I shut up. But I do—wish I could stay. I can't stay; we both know that. We have to win this competition and get me transferred back. Otherwise you'll be in jail, and I will perish as my aura fades. So there is absolutely no sense in—in our getting involved with each other, because even if it were possible it would still be impossible.'

She made a certain female sense. If they failed to win the competition, both would die. Slowly, horribly, suffering stifling confinement of one kind or another. If they won, they would separate, and live half the Galaxy apart. Even if Jessica could mattermit in her own physical body to his world, or he to hers, they would be of two completely alien species. Meanwhile, they were together—and could do nothing, because they had between them only a single body. So she was exactly correct; even if it were possible, it would be impossible. Therefore it was pointless and foolish even to speculate on alternatives; it was a dead issue.

Yet somehow it did not feel dead. Suppose they failed in the competition, but remained free on Planet Eccentric? At least they would be together, and could wait for the killing winter in company. He wanted her with him, even on that basis. It was an emotion he had not felt before, this willingness, even desire, to sacrifice everything else for the mere sake of the company of another creature.

'Maybe your species doesn't have that emotion,' Jessica said. 'Your couples don't seem to stay together after reproducing. Among our kind it is called love.'

"I have never tasted that concept before," Heem admitted. "It must be another crossover from your being, like the ability to see. I do not know how to deal with it."

'You shouldn't have to, Heem. It is unfair to make your kind react to an emotion it doesn't possess naturally. I'll try to blot it out—'

"No! I do not comprehend it, but it relates to you and I must keep it. It is a torment that I like."

'Oh, damn, Heem!' Yet she was pleased.

Then he had another realization. "The competition—we do not have to win. I will yield myself to the authorities, and they will transfer you back—"

'And imprison you. I will not have my freedom that way.'

"But if I am doomed anyway—"

'You are not doomed. You can have the rest of the summer season of Eccentric free, then perish as you prefer, by the action of the Hole. Reaching to claim you in the form of the eclipse. It is right for you, Heem, and I would not deny you that.'

"I do not want freedom if you die!"

'Heem, if you go to prison, my heart goes to prison with you, no matter where my body is, or my aura. You try to turn yourself in, and I will paralyze you with my screams. We are not going to separate that way. Only if we win, so that I know you have a future—then I can go home.'

And she was not bluffing. She was as foolishly principled as he. "Then we must win."

'We won't win if we don't pay more attention to where we're going. Why don't you stop trying to argue with females and get to work?' But she sent him a kiss.

According to the map, they were nearing the first bridge. The tractor emerged from the jungle, and there was an awful flavor of molten rock.

'Flowing lava!' Jessica exclaimed with a thrill of horror. 'So it really is true! The volcanoes really are active here!' Working from his taste, she made a visual picture: a cleft in the ground, brimming with glowing red liquid rock that sizzled its way downhill.

A tractor ground up from behind. Two tractors, three. The later arrivals were taking to this "poor" route in greater numbers, evidently reasoning that it was, after all, the best prospect, just as Heem and Jessica had. Heem concentrated, and picked up the tastes: the new contestants were a HydrO, a Squam, and an Erb.

They quickly spread out on the wider path beside the lava channel and raced toward the bridge ahead.

'We'd better move, if we want to keep our place,' Jessica said.

"We know one Erb is ahead of us," Heem responded. "I judge from the nature of the flavor of the trail that there were no more than two tractors ahead of that one. If we assume there is fuel at the depot for five tractors, we can let one of the following machines pass us, no more—and our path will be easier if we do let that one ahead."

That's cutting it close, Heem.'

"We must cut close to win. We must conserve fuel, building up reserve. In the final stage, those who have planned most carefully will prevail—and we must be among the first five."

'First five? Why that number? There is no cutoff here, is there?'

"I believe all tractors will exhaust their fuel before the finish, as we surmised. The leaders will be strung out, perhaps widely. We shall have to proceed without machines. There should be a chance to pass a few—but if we are not near enough the lead, we shall have no chance. I deem five to be the only ones having fair chance."

'I see. You're right, of course. You thought it through better than I did. Very well, we'll play it close now, so we'll have the edge when it counts.'

The three tractors were not conserving fuel at all. Each was racing to be first.

It was now evident that there was no absolute limit on tractor velocity, contrary to Heem's assumption. But the faster a given vehicle moved, the more wastefully it expended its fuel. Either these drivers had not calculated as precisely as Heem had, or they did not know precisely where the limit was. Each wanted to be sure of obtaining refueling.

No—they were not merely racing, they were fighting. The Erb was in the center, with the best track, but as it drew ahead the others closed in from the sides to bang against it, disrupting its progress. Jessica patched together her picture from Heem's taste and vibration perceptions, showing the three tractors skewing along.

"I think we had better stay clear of that," Heem jetted, accelerating their own tractor. "There is no fuel economy to be gained in that melee."

But there was another clang of contact. All three pursuers skewed, and the Erb bounced ahead. Heem had to veer out of the path to prevent it from bumping him.

That put him in front of the other HydrO, and he had to steer on out to the jungle to avoid it. The foliage entangled his treads, and he had to slow.

All three tractors shot past him. In one miscalculation, he had lost his place.

Instead of crossing the bridge ahead of the three, he would cross behind.

"Food!" he swore.

Jessica, as tense as he, broke into hysterical mental laughter. 'To you, the foulest concept is food,' she gasped. 'To us, it is excrement, or—'

Heem angrily maneuvered the machine back onto the center path. "Or what?"

'Or copulation.'

Now it was his turn to signify mirth. "You Solarians are truly, wondrously alien! Copulation is your foulest concept?" The tractor resumed speed, moving well, gaining on the others—but Heem knew he would have to pass two of them, somewhere between the bridge and the fuel depot That would be difficult, and cost him fuel. He should have crossed the bridge first, then allowed one tractor to pass him when all were conveniently spaced out.

'It is sort of silly,' Jessica admitted. 'We have good terms and bad terms for the same things. Things that are quite natural and necessary. Your way makes more sense. Your expletive relates to a function alien to your metabolism.'

Now the bridge came into clear perception. It was, by the taste of its ambience that Jessica translated into another picture, a narrow span of hardened lava arching over the channel, wide enough for one tractor at a time. It seemed to be a natural span; easier for the Competition Authority to direct a path to it than to build a bridge over flowing stone.

The Erb charged up and onto it, lifting above the liquid lava. The passage had to be quick, because the air was quite hot in that vicinity. Both HydrO and Squam skewed to a halt. "The weight of two tractors might collapse it," Heem explained, slowing his own vehicle. "No use to crowd past if it only means destruction; we have to let the Erb clear first."

'At least we know it's safe for one, because the first Erb crossed it.'

Then, as this Erb reached the apex, the bridge collapsed. Lava-rock and tractor plunged into the boiling river. The channel was narrow; blocked by this mass, the lava foamed up and overflowed its bed. Hastily, the three remaining tractors spun about and accelerated into the jungle, getting clear of the widely spreading liquid. The vegetation it touched burst into flame.

Soon the blockage melted, and the lava overflow receded, returning slowly to its channel. Much of it remained, cooling and hardening, unable to flow. A small new lava plain had been formed. But the bridge was gone. A small section of hardened lava had formed at the height of the overflow, and now represented the beginning of a new bridge. This demonstrated how these things occurred, but it was hardly safe to use now; it would have to cool for many days.

'What do we do now?" Jessica asked dispiritedly.

"We follow the Erb into the flow," Heem responded, his own hopes destroyed.

Her spirit revived abruptly. 'Oh no we don't! There's got to be a way to continue!'

The Squam tractor moved slowly toward them. Heem wondered whether it could be Slitherfear, and prepared himself for a battle in tractors, but soon the taste-pattern showed it was a stranger. A peculiar rapping came from its occupant: the sign-signal of truce.

'Um, let me handle this,' Jessica said. 'I'm closer to the Squam type than you are. We're all in the same boat, now.' Heem acquiesced, not wishing to converse with the monster, and she used his body to needle a tractor control. The tractor made a similar knocking sound, agreeing to the truce.

The other HydrO echoed the sound, and came close.

"HydrO," the Squam sprayed, using its tractor's short-range communicator. The broadcast message emerged from Heem's unit in HydrO translation, since he had been using HydrO controls. The Squam, of course, had not really sprayed. "We are competitors, but face a common problem. Unless we can proceed, all have lost."

Extremely true. "Agreed," Jessica jetted into their own tractor's unit, knowing that the receiving Squam unit would translate it into the series of noises that was its language.

"Know you who passed last this bridge?"

"An Erb was ahead of us," Jessica jetted.

"Could that Erb have sabotaged the bridge?"

'Trust a Squam to think of that!' Heem sprayed internally. 'Of course that happened! It must have knocked out part of the rock from the far side, weakening the structure. So that no one could overtake it.'

"We believe it did," Jessica jetted to the Squam. Now that it was close, her picture was clear. It reposed coiled in the compartment, both extremities below, its three limbs extended upward from the elevated center section. Three pincer-fingers on each limb were spread. The creature's hue was dark, its scales glinting metallically, and its nether portion was very like a serpent. There was no Solarian analogy for the rest, so the picture became fuzzy.

"Our map suggests another potential natural crossing, downstream where the lava spreads and cools," the Squam continued. "But the terrain is rugged, probably too arduous for a single vehicle. Will you assist, so that one or two of us may reenter the race?"

'No!' Heem sprayed.

"Yes," Jessica agreed even as he objected.

'Cooperate with a Squam?' Heem demanded. This is impossible!'

"Yes," came the other HydrO's spray.

"It is possible and necessary," Jessica told Heem internally. "The Squam is being positive; we must be the same."

'No Squam can be trusted!'

"We are not sure of that. Surely Squams differ, just as Erbs do. As HydrOs do.

We had not expected such vicious tactics from an Erb, had we? And the other HydrO does not seem to fear Squams the way you do. You have Squam-phobia, Heem; it may be unjustified."

'Unjustified! A Squam killed Moon of—'

"A Squam, yes; this Squam, no."

"We shall have to use lines to anchor our vehicles to each other, to navigate rough terrain," the Squam communicated, "Shall we agree to resume the race in the same order we reached the bridge, at such time as we achieve crossing?"

That left Heem's tractor last. Still, it seemed fair. 'No, it isn't fair!' Heem protested. 'All three of us will be well behind the pace.'

"That's not the Squam's fault," she reminded him. Then, to the Squam: "Agreed."

There was a brief dialogue between the Squam and the other HydrO, determining who was first. Then the quest for the natural crossing commenced. They all knew that speed was of the essence.

Off the path, progress was a challenge. The ferns crowded in as close to the lava channel as the heat permitted, leaving little room for the tractors. They proceeded single file, slowly.

Then the channel became shallow. The lava overflowed in disciplined fashion, thinning and slowing and hardening. Flood plains had formed and turned to solid stone and been overrun by new floods, so that there were many step-layers.

Several new channels had been cut through this landscape, but even the cool rock was extremely irregular. The Squam's tractor halted. "We must survey," the Squam communicated.

All three occupants dismounted from their tractors. The two HydrOs met the Squam. Now no linguistic communication with the Squam was possible, but it wasn't necessary. They knew what they had to do.

They spread out, surveying the lava-beds. The rock was warm in places, hot in others; they had to discover a route that was cool enough and stout enough to be firm under the weight of a tractor.

In one place the lava formed a veritable mountain, as though it had made a vast bubble when hot, which firmed and was overlaid with subsequent lava. The far side of this dome was across the original channel; Heem could taste the vegetation beyond. The burningly hot lava flow plunged out of perception somewhere beneath this dome. This was a giant bridge!

They returned to their vehicles, consulted, and agreed: they would try to cross this dome. It seemed firm enough to support the weight. But its sides were steep.

"A winch," Jessica said. "One tractor here, pulling, the cable guided over the curvature. The other tractor there, pushing the third. Once the third is over the hump, it can winch the others up the incline." She returned to their tractor's communicator so she could make this clear to the Squam.

The Squam agreed. Since Jessica had suggested it, she and Heem had the privilege of making the first attempt. Each tractor had a winch—they were multi-purpose vehicles—but the reach was not long enough. They had to hook two cables together end to end. Then the Squam parked as close to the hot-lava flow as possible, and used his pincers to string the linked cables over the dome, catching them in a crevice so they would not slip off side-wise. The other HydrO, a female, nosed her vehicle forward to push.

'If this does not work,' Heem sprayed morbidly, 'we shall be first into the flow, after all.'

"Or stuck on top of this dome," Jessica said cheerfully.

Push and pull. Heem put his treads in motion. They skidded, for the incline here was almost vertical. Then the cable carried the front end up. The tractor tilted alarmingly and tried to skew to the side; then the treads caught and helped it lift up the slope. The angle would have been impossible without the winch.

Heem stopped at the top, where the bubble was level. The Squam, the only creature facile at this sort of thing, slithered up to disconnect the winch.

Then Heem turned his vehicle around, on top of the dome, while the Squam drove around to the spot Heem's tractor had started from. They reconnected the winches, and Heem backed his tractor down the far slope until the rear treads struck the ground. He was across!

Now the other HydrO nudged up to push the Squam, while Heem started winching in.

The Squam's tractor-nose came up. The stiffest haul was while the vehicle's treads were skidding, for the cable now went entirely over the dome, with a fair amount of friction. Almost, it seemed Heem's own tractor was about to be hauled up instead, though he had his treads locked. Yet the powerful winches kept drawing in. Heem worried about the fuel expenditure.

Then, abruptly, the cable went slack—and taut again, yanking Heem's tractor momentarily off its back threads. Then the cable snapped, and the tractor dropped. Jessica screamed.

"Don't do that!" Heem sprayed, trying to damp down the searing emotion. He shut off the motor and rolled out of the tractor. He found a channel and moved up the slope of the dome with almost the dispatch of a flatfloater. The Squam's tractor had broken through a portion of the dome and fallen below. Now it lay in what Jessica's picture showed as a pool of light from the hole, overturned.

"One Squam departed," Heem remarked, not unduly disturbed.

'We don't know that!' Jessica said. 'Get down there and check. It's a living creature who helped us; we must help it.'

"But it's hopeless. Even if the monster lives, the tractor is defunct."

The other HydrO joined them. "That crust was weaker than we thought," she sprayed. "The changed angle of draw—"

'Get down there, Heem,' Jessica repeated warningly. Heem yielded. The notion of helping a Squam was still new to him, but he found it hard to protest what Jessica really wanted. She was so beautifully righteous in her emotion. "We must verify the condition of the Squam," he sprayed to the HydrO.

"Why?" she asked reasonably.

Heem hesitated. 'If you don't answer, I will!' Jessica told him.

"The Squam is a sapient creature," Heem sprayed reluctantly. "He was helping us.

We were operating under truce. To neglect him now would be to assume complicity in his destruction, violating that truce."

"Perhaps so," the HydrO agreed distastefully. The rubble of the collapse descended at a navigable angle down from the HydrO's tractor. They rolled carefully down.

"Squam," Heem sprayed. "Do you survive?" In a moment the other HydrO's tractor sprayed the reply. It seemed the Squam spoke into his own unit, which was still broadcasting. Thus the taste, a bit blurred by distance, wafted down from behind them: "I am crushed, yet I survive. I shall not live long without assistance."

Heem hesitated again, but Jessica needled him. "What assistance may we proffer, Squam?" As his jet reached the other HydrO's tractor, Heem felt the harsh vibrations of the Squam's tractor-unit translating.

Then the indirect response came back. "Only to notify the Competition Authority.

I require serious medication."

"I doubt our radios will reach," Heem sprayed. "They are intended only for short-range communication, as now, and we are far off the charted route. I believe there is a call-in unit at the fueling depot. But only my tractor is across; I would have to leave you both here and go to it alone."

"This is the luck of the situation," the other HydrO sprayed. "I am out of the race."

So she was. There was no way now to get her vehicle across. Heem addressed the Squam again. "May we help remove you from your vehicle?"

"This would be appreciated," the Squam agreed. "I am in some pain, and greater freedom would enable me to alleviate it somewhat."

They used the other HydrO's winch to haul large fragments of lava-rock away, then jetted the sand and dust clear. Jessica watched with interest; she admitted to wondering how handless creatures moved things, and now saw the technique of jetting out small debris from beneath so that the large pieces could roll.

In due course they had excavated a tunnel under the inverted tractor. The Squam dropped down and hauled himself along by means of two limbs. The third was broken, and a section of his body was indeed crushed, with ichor leaking slowly from it.

They helped the Squam get set up beside his tractor.

"This is an unanticipated kindness, from your species," the Squam remarked.

"We operate under truce," Heem reminded him. "You were assisting us; now we assist you."

"It is good that you are not like so many of your kind, who hate my kind without reason."

Heem felt like needlejetting the monster's remaining limbs, but Jessica restrained him. 'He is not Slitherfear! He has played straight with us! Don't you forget that!'

"There is honor apart from species," Heem sprayed. "I am not partial to your kind, but there is also your transferee to consider." And my own! he thought savagely at Jessica.

"Then I will assist you," the Squam replied. "My transferee is Trant of Trammel, who has made a study of the habitats of sapients. He informs me that this cave has the aspect of a suitable breeding locale for HydrOs."

The female HydrO reacted. "I am Geel of Gemflower. In what way is this cave proof against the ravage of winter?"

"It is heated by the subterranean lava-flow," Trant of Trammel responded via the Squam. "Protected from exterior storms, it maintains a survivable ambience even in the depths of the eclipse. Note that fungoid growth exists here that is several seasons' culmination. Your kind, independent of light and food, can survive here—at least for the brief period of extreme cold on the surface."

"It is true!" Geel sprayed. "By happenstance we have come upon the means to colonize this plant! We must seed it!"

'Brother!' Jessica remarked. 'Talk about single-minded females!'

Heem felt suddenly tight. Thus abruptly, the issue of reproduction was upon him again. "It is not a vacant region," he protested. "The Squam is here."

"We are aware of your concern," the Squam communicated. "Squams have been known to prey on the young of your kind, though this is forbidden by the articles of compromise of Planet Impasse. I point out, however, that even were I an outlaw individual, I am largely immobile, probably incapable of catching a rolling HydrO of any size. In any event, if you notify the Competition Authority of my presence here, I will be removed, and the cave will then be secure."

How neatly the creature had refuted his objection! Heem was forced to confront again the issue that had destroyed him before. Should he allow himself to reproduce his kind, or remain firm in his negation? If he refused again, even victory in the competition would not absolve him; but if he acceded—

'Oh, go ahead, Heem, do it!' Jessica said.

That was a shock. "I thought you agreed with my position!"

'I do agree. But this is a different situation. There are no natural predators here. You can seal off this cave, and after the competition you can return to rejoin the female and raise your offspring yourself. Heem, you have a chance to do it right, this time—and in the process to make a good life for yourself if you don't win the contest. You won't have to die in the Eccentric winter!'

This was a new flavor! She was correct. He could alleviate his major objection to the HydrO mode of reproduction, and exonerate his treason—without sacrificing his chance in the competition. Still, he hesitated. "You cannot survive, if—"

'This makes no difference to my survival, Heem! If you win the competition, I live; if you lose, I die. The only thing you can safeguard is your own survival and status.'

"If anything happened, and I could not return—"

'Geel of Gemflower will still be here, won't she? Her tractor is stuck on the wrong side of the bubble; she can't cross, and probably doesn't have enough fuel to make it back to the spacefield. She has to stay—and what mother wouldn't?'

"My mother wouldn't!" Heem needled. "Neither parent remained in Highfalls—or in Morningmist. Adult HydrOs do not remain where they seed; they leave it empty, letting the offspring suffer without protection, without information. Geel will depart with the Competition Authority when it comes to pick up Trant of Trammel and his Squam host."

'Well, maybe so, for her. But this time it will still be different—because you'll be in charge, Heem.'

Something was still bothering him. "You—how can you, a female in my mind, that I supposed was interested in—how can you favor—?" His thought became inchoate.

'What do you think I am—a jealous bitch? Don't answer that! You want the truth, you deserve the truth. I am jealous—but I am also mighty curious about exactly how the HydrOs reproduce. I can't learn it from your mind, because you honestly don't know all of it. I want to know, because—' Here she paused, and a flavor of defiant shame washed through them. 'Because I might want to do it myself, someday, if there were ever opportunity. I know that will never be, so it is academic, a pipe dream, but if I admit that, I'm really admitting that I'm not going to survive... hell, Heem, maybe I just want a surrogate experience. It might be better than nothing, which is what I face otherwise. Or maybe I want to see what it's like from the male view, watching you. I've had to fake the male view for so long, I—I don't claim my motives are all pure and innocent and uncomplicated. Maybe I am a voyeur at heart. Anyway, I really think you should do it—then get on with the competition. Because I'm not forgetting for a moment that I'll never get home unless you win!'

Yet Heem could not come to a decision. Something still bothered him about this.

"We must inspect the cave," he sprayed externally. "It may prove to be less suitable than anticipated." The cave—or the situation?

He and Geel rolled around the cave. It was large, with many bypasses and alternate chambers, but there seemed to be no exits not blocked by hot lava rivulets except the one the tractor had made. The cold would undoubtedly enter that hole, in winter, but there seemed to be a number of alcoves beside hot lava that would remain warm regardless. There would need to be a constant source of hydrogen, and the hole would provide that; frozen gases would enter and evaporate and suffuse the passages. Fungus grew profusely in many places, and there were no predatory creatures. Then, in the spring, the great outdoors would come to life, an entire world open to the emerging juvenile HydrOs. It was, by HydrO definition, ideal.

'So what's bothering you?' Jessica demanded. 'Still shy about letting me snoop on your act of procreation?'

"Perhaps," he admitted.

'Well, do it anyway. You can't let foolish foibles restrain you.'

Then he had it. "They will all be of one sex. Where will any of them find mates?"

'The first visiting HydrO of the right sex from Impasse will take care of that—if there is a suitable place,' she pointed out. 'If not, then it hardly matters; HydrOs don't reproduce unless the locale exists.'

Heem tasted no alternative. Urged from without and within by these two females, and pushed by his own nature, which did indeed feel the imperative to seed so suitable a place, he had to do it. Yet he did not like being trapped by circumstance. "If ever there is occasion for me to needle one of your fundamental shames—" Heem thought viciously at Jessica.

'When that time comes, I'll take my medicine like a good girl. But it won't.

You'd have to catch me in human guise and rip my clothes off in public while everyone laughed, just as in my nightmare, and there's really no way, let's face it. Now you stop stalling and do what has to be done.'

She was baiting him, and they both knew it. Still, there was a bitter taste of wrongness in Heem. He feared some catastrophe, yet could not define it.

Gradually, as he explored the caves, Jessica's logic prevailed. His objections to his species' mode of reproduction had been alleviated. If he failed to win the competition, he could still return here, secure from his own kind, and attend to the growing offspring. He could warn them about the coming whiter, if they did not know, so that none would be caught outside. He could alert them to the threat of Squams, and instruct them how best to defend themselves.

'And if you lose the competition, I will remain with you until my aura fades,'

Jessica reminded him. 'I will help you raise your juveniles.'

And how could he tell her no? If he sent her back to her own body, he would be prisoner, and not be able to return to his litter. The trap was inevitably closing.

They returned to the tractor, where the Squam waited. "You were correct, Squam,"

Geel sprayed. "This region must be seeded; it will preserve our litter through the winter, and in spring they can spread again across the planet."

"Only be sure that you have me removed," the Squam replied. "Then you need have no concern about the natural menaces."

Smart Squam! He no longer had to take the assistance of the HydrOs on faith; he knew they would see to his rescue. Was that the real reason he had identified this ideal habitat?

Heem found himself at the point of decision—and found that it had already passed. He was ready to seed this cave. This readiness was a phenomenal relief to him. It had not been easy or comfortable to oppose the tradition and urge of his culture and kind.

Geel of Gemflower rolled close to him, spraying out her copulative flavor. It was not as enticing as that of Moon of Morningmist, but it was quite adequate to the occasion. 'So that's what females do to males,' Jessica remarked. 'I always thought of the sexual come-on as a game, but the game is much more serious from the male view.'

Heem ignored her. He responded to the overture by jetting a more intense taste at Geel. She caught that taste and sprayed it back to him, modified to signal receptivity. No conscious decisions were required; nature was well familiar with the mechanism.

'Why, it's beautiful!' Jessica said. 'The dialogue of complete commitment.'

Abruptly, involuntarily, Heem needled Geel with his signature: the precise taste of his being, from which his individuality could be reproduced. In casual copulation this signature was always withheld by the male, or rejected by the female. Geel accepted it, merging it with her own essence throughout her body.

'This is just like human reproduction. The male essence joining the female essence in the body of the female, sperm meeting egg, fertilizing it—'

Geel exploded. Fragments of her splattered the tractor, the floor, the cave roof, and flew far down the main passage. Several struck the Squam and Heem himself. Nothing of her original body remained.

The Squam was astonished. "She is destroyed!"

'What happened?' Jessica demanded, horrified.

For an instant Heem thought some other Squam had come upon them with a weapon.

But there was no such intrusion. Numbly, he understood. "The parts of the female—become the seeding. That is why no female HydrO remains to care for her offspring. And the male—must become part of civilization. That is why there are more adult male HydrOs than females. Neither can remain—lest they betray the truth to the new generation, and add yet one more horror to the process."

"I regret I did not know," the Squam communicated, still going through the unit on Geel's tractor. "I lacked intent to destroy the female. Perhaps my transferee knew—yet we operate under truce."

"None of us knew," Heem sprayed. "Certainly Geel did not." Yet had he, Heem, suspected? That bitter taste that had restrained him before—had that been it?

'Heem, I'm sorry,' Jessica said, and her emotion was strong and real. 'It's my fault. I meddled when I shouldn't have, pushing you into it.'

"You did not know, because I did not know," he jetted, trying to reassure her.

But it was a weak effort, in the roll of this disastrous revelation. Geel's transferee had perished too, unknowingly. All the horror he had felt before had been restored to him. This time the Solarian and the Squam shared the guilt.

'Now we know that your sibling Hiim was dead,' Jessica said in a feminine irrelevance. 'Because Meen of Morningmist would have mated, had she found him—and she survived to become an adult. You saved her life, at least, Heem.'

Yet this locale had been seeded, in the fashion of his kind. Heem now understood another reason for metamorphosis: to erase the knowledge of what was entailed in seeding from the memory of the male, so that the species would innocently continue to propagate itself. Since it was always done in the absence of other HydrOs, and only the male survived, the secret was thus fairly safe.

He no longer felt the urge to return here to educate his offspring, who were now picking themselves from their falls and making their first uncertain rolls. He would help as many as possible to get down from the ceiling safely and from any crevices in which they had lodged, and set them rolling in the safest section of the cave, but after that it was up to them. What could he teach them, that they would want to know? Let them grow in innocence.

'In innocence,' Jessica repeated. She was crying.

Chapter 7: Nether Trio

They managed to transfer surplus fuel from the two other tractors to Heem's machine, and proceeded at wasteful velocity to the depot. Heem reported the location and plight of the Squam, and received assurance that the creature would be salvaged. Then they moved across more lava-bridges and on up the mountain, following the trail.

They came to the place where the cutoff could be made to the better trail. But the map had been deceptive: it was a steep bank. It would be possible for the tractor to slide down it, but the risk of disaster was great, and no travel in the opposite direction was possible. No one could cross to this path.

'I'm suspicious,' Jessica said. 'Why should they make it possible to get off this bad trail, but not to get on it?'

"Because others might realize, late, the significance of the elevation. No one who has not selected this trail at the outset can achieve its benefit."

Which meant there would be little competition here. There might be three tractors ahead of them, no more, and none coming from behind. But this could be deceptive, for the real competition could be on the four other paths.

They climbed. By the time they reached the top, their fuel was low. Heem had sacrificed time in favor of fuel, adding to the reserve he had built up before, but not much of that remained. He hoped he had more fuel now than the tractor ahead of him. He wanted very badly to pass the bridge-sabotaging Erb.

The downward slope of the hill enabled him to turn off the motor and coast for fair stretches, conserving more fuel. Now this choice of routes was paying off.

They had to be gaining on the tractors on the other trails, and he hoped also on the three ahead of him on this trail. Any traffic blockages occurring elsewhere were to his advantage. But he had lost time in the cavern-dome; was his present progress enough?

They glided up to a stalled tractor. 'Out of fuel!' Jessica exclaimed. 'Stopped by that little ridge ahead. It's working, Heem; we're outlasting the others!'

So it seemed. Heem caught the taste of Erb: the other driver. The one who had bypassed him, and set the trap of the bridge.

'Leave him alone!' Jessica warned. 'He's out of the race, harmless to you now; just let him stew. Don't risk your own tractor by trying to ram him.' She had caught Heem's thought, and somewhat guiltily he agreed to pass on by. That should be satisfaction enough. After all, this Erb had showed him that these creatures could be dangerous too; he had taken Erbs too lightly before.

But as they approached, the other tractor came to life and lurched into their path. Heem swerved, but so did the other. Jessica screamed as the two collided, sideswiping each other.

Suddenly angry, Heem accelerated his tractor, drawing on his skill in piloting.

He shoved the other vehicle back. 'Now don't get male impetuous!' Jessica cried uselessly.

But the Erb was skilled too, and was not thrown out of control. Now they were racing down the slope under power, side by side, the path barely wide enough.

'But why is the Erb doing this?' Jessica demanded plaintively.

"He thinks to prevail by destroying all who follow him."

'But that's crazy! He needs to gain on those ahead of him.'

"Erbs are a crazy species. Vegetable synapses are not the best." Heem was too occupied by his driving to argue the point with more precision. "We must disengage before we both are destroyed; this is wasting precious fuel. But the pattern of tastes ahead is unclear."

"I'll help! This is a slope—feed that pattern to me, for visual adaptation—that's right! I can see it now. The path curves ahead; there's a sidewise slope to it that reverses—'

"I see," Heem agreed. He accelerated again as they approached the first tilt, shoving the other tractor, then braked suddenly as the Erb shoved back. The shove and reversing tilt caused the other tractor to cut in front of Heem momentarily. Then Heem banged its rear, forcing it into the vegetation at high speed.

The Erb plowed into the ferns, lost momentum, and stalled. "He will not get out of that soon," Heem sprayed with satisfaction. "He will waste much fuel. I'm sorry I did not overturn him."

'Me too,' Jessica agreed. 'We tried to pass him by without trouble, but he wouldn't have it that way. He's responsible for killing one of his own kind, injuring a Squam, and—' She did not rethink the seeding matter, quite; it was just a flavor-color of numbness. 'You know, Heem, I don't dislike the Squams the way you do. I mean I am more like a Squam than you, but that one at the cave seemed basically decent. I think Squams differ just as other sapients do, and there are some good ones and some bad ones. To judge the whole species by a single individual, or by the mere fact it can defeat your kind in—'

"That's it!" Heem sprayed. "The Erbs hate HydrOs, as HydrOs hate Squams. Because HydrOs can kill Erbs, and Squams can kill HydrOs. That Squam had no animosity toward us; it did not fear us, even when critically injured. But that Erb knew we followed it, so it set traps for us—"

'I believe you're right, Heem! A three-way psychosis of hate! Squams must hate Erbs, too!'

They had come to a new understanding, but had wasted more fuel. How were they to gain on the tractors ahead, on this path and on the others?

'We'll make do, because we have to,' Jessica said.

Heem kept the tractor rolling downhill, motor off. It had a new vibration he did not like: some result of the collisions with the Erb's tractor. This would decrease its efficiency of rolling, and waste yet more fuel on the ascents.

"Do we have to make do?" he inquired. "After the episode of the cave, I wonder whether it would be worthwhile to rejoin my society at all."

'Of course it is, Heem! Your species' mode of propagation may be brutal, but you do have a high level of adult civilization, unfettered by the traumas of youth.

You don't want to throw that away. That would be destroying the good along with the bad.'

"But the bad is inherent in our kind! Every living HydrO, in fact every HydrO

who ever lived, has done so because of the destruction of a parent. I exist because of that. I survive at the expense of my parent and every sibling of Highfalls, and now I have propagated at the expense of my mate. HydrO

civilization is predicated on this anathema—"

'No, Heem! I don't believe in Original Sin! You must join your society so that you can more effectively protest this mode!'

Again he was gratified by her support. But that support was unwarranted. "There is no way to change the reproductive nature of our species. Better to let it die out entirely."

'That's no answer, Heem! It's not really so much different from others. In my own species, the Solarians, the male produces so many seeds they could impregnate virtually all the nubile females of a planet in one day, yet all but one of these is wasted. And the female produces eggs, one a month, enough for maybe three hundred babies in her life, were they raised ex-utero. At most ten of these will be used, and usually only a couple, and often none. Sometimes she herself dies in childbirth. So the ratios really are similar, with only a very few offspring surviving. At least your way gives these offspring some small chance to determine their own fate, while ours determines it almost randomly at conception. A different route to a similar end. And we do need different routes, because there are so many different worlds with different environments—'

"I think you are spraying nonsense," Heem jetted. "Yet you make me feel like continuing the struggle."

'Oh, good, Heem! I admit I am selfish, because I want to survive myself, but I do think you have a lot to offer your culture, and—'

"You alien thing, I think I—what is that concept you have?'

She was startled. 'What concept?'

"As a male for a female, beyond the term of convenience."

'Beyond the—oh, you must mean love.'

"Love, yes, as we discussed before. It is a concept limited in my kind, because it cannot be fully associated with propagation, since—" He flooded out that concept, but part of Geel's explosion seeped through to awareness anyway. "But just as I am coming to comprehend the alien perception of vision, now I am coming more properly to feel—"

'No, Heem, no!' she protested. 'You can't love me! I'm alien—'

"Does the concept now repulse you?"

'But when we discussed it before, we didn't know how—what happened to HydrO

females when—we really are so different, Heem, and not merely physically!'

"And your discussion just now of the wasted sperms and eggs of your kind—that was not true?"

She capitulated. 'No, Heem, it was true. I think maybe I love you too, impossible as it is. I mean, even if we could physically meet—there's just no way—and here we are stuck in just one body—oh, this is ridiculous!'

"So we remain at impasse."

'As always.'

"Yet the emotion is to an extent independent of the body. Your Solarian body would be a horror to me. But you, yourself—"

'I know, Heem. I feel the same.'

That was as far as they could take it. Once more, there was nothing to do except drop the subject.

They moved on. The fuel dropped lower in the machine's tank, until there was enough only for very limited maneuvers. "We are not going to travel a great deal farther in this vehicle," Heem sprayed, disappointed. "We may have gained on the others, but not enough."

'We're not out of it yet,' Jessica said reassuringly. 'According to the map, we're nine tenths there. Only one bad ridge to cross—'

"We shall have to roll it alone—and that will be very slow." Heem ground the tractor up over another elevation. As he crested it, the motor choked to a stop.

The fuel was gone.

They coasted down until the path leveled. 'That's it,' Jessica said. 'One thing in our favor: that ridge is not far ahead, and it crosses three of the routes. I doubt any tractor will have enough fuel to get over it. The other two routes are blocked by a large river. Do Squams or Erbs swim?'

"No. They will have difficulty crossing."

'So we're still in the game. Let's roll!'

They rolled. Heem jet-rolled up the next incline, then free-rolled down the next decline. As he passed the lowest point, he jetted to speed up, so as to continue his roll on over the next crest with minimal effort. Since the route was generally declining, they made good progress.

'This is really a pretty efficient mode of travel,' Jessica admitted. 'You conserve momentum, and really move quite swiftly. As fast as the tractor did, I believe.'

"In terrain like this, HydrOs are among the fastest travelers in Segment Thousandstar," Heem jetted with a certain pride-of-species. "But the tractor helped in gaining me the elevation necessary to roll efficiently on my own. It would be very slow if I had a prolonged uphill slant to traverse."

They passed a stalled tractor. It had the flavor of Squam, but was empty. The Squam had slithered forward under its own power, and could not be too far ahead.

'I believe we are about to pass another contestant,' Jessica observed. 'Don't pause to quarrel, now. We don't have your sight well enough coordinated, yet, to handle a Squam.'

"You assume I am a quarrelsome male!"

'Of course. The terms are virtually identical, aren't they?'

He needled her with a mental jet that lacked more than tickling force, and she screamed a small scream that shook no nerves. Things were back to normal.

They continued along the trail. Soon they did overhaul the Squam, who was slithering with fair dispatch up the incline but could not match Heem's accumulated velocity. True to Jessica's stricture, Heem did not pause. He did not even squirt an insulting needle at the creature as he rolled by. This was not Slitherfear, after all, and there was a certain limited merit in the Solarian's opinion about differences between individuals.

'Limited merit?'

But a short distance thereafter he had to stop. Another tractor was stalled in the path—and the path itself terminated ahead of it. Heem tasted and Jessica looked, and they could not perceive any trail beyond. It ended in a blank wall of stone.

"That is more of a ridge than the map suggests," Heem sprayed.

An Erb stood beside the machine, surveying the situation. It had a map, and Heem could tell from the disturbance in the taste-pattern that it was playing its gaze over this map. The Erb's light receptors were on little stalks at the center of its flower; when it folded its petal-leaves to drill something, its eye-patches were protected, though its sight was then limited. In this case its petals were spread, and rotating slowly.

Heem had not brought his map along, of course, but retained a good memory of it.

HydrOs seldom had to carry things with them, since they had no need of the food or shelter other species required, and retained in memory most of what they had use for. Only in special situations, such as the transfer of fuel between tractors, did HydrOs ever need to transport objects—and in that recent case, the tractor's winch had done the work. Heem's memory-map indicated that the trail proceeded straight ahead. Obviously the Erb was similarly baffled.

'It occurs to me that someone in the Competition Authority made quite certain the tractors would not make it all the way to the Ancient site,' Jessica said.

They wanted this to be an all-around challenge, so they put little surprises in the map.'

"I could climb that mountain," Heem sprayed. "But it would take so long I would surely lose the race. It would have been better to choose a route that terminated in a river."

'Had we but known,' Jessica agreed. 'HydrOs can roll under water, right? Drawing hydrogen from bubbles in the water? But that's the luck of the draw.'

Heem considered. "We cooperated with a Squam before, to cross the lava-flow. I wonder whether it is possible to cooperate with an Erb—or what we might gain from it?"

'Heem, you are becoming astonishingly liberal! But yes: they have true sight, don't they? And they can drill things. I think we could benefit from those talents.'

"But Erbs hate HydrOs."

'Easily solved. Let the transferees do the dealing. This is not supposed to be a contest against Erbs and HydrOs, but of all the Thousand Stars against each other, using particular hosts.'

Dubiously, Heem agreed. "You do the communicating."

'Fine. We alien things must stick together.' She paused. 'Oops, I forgot one detail. I don't know the language. Will the tractor transmitter translate?'

"Not unless it receives a signal. The impulses are coded, and translated into the operator's language."

This is crazy. It will translate a broadcast, but not a direct dialogue? Before, we did okay.'

"At the lava-crossing we had two tractors, translating each other's broadcasts.

Here we have only one."

'Maybe we could use it to broadcast, then play back its own message in translation. Trick it into becoming a translator.'

"Doubtful. We had better try Thousandstar common code."

Jessica probed his thought. 'Oh—like that truce-knocking the Squam did before. A small vocabulary of set signals for any species. So how do we proffer truce to the Erb? It can't taste us and we can't see it, not directly.' She was, however, forming a picture of the creature.

"We roll in the truce-pattern," Heem sprayed. He initiated the roll.

The Erb drew back, scuttling along on its little roots, its stout stem swaying.

'That needs no translation,' Jessica said. 'It's afraid of you.'

"I am not surprised. Erbs are skittery creatures."

'What about that one who tried to run us down?'

"In a tractor, it is a different matter. Your point about variation between individuals—"

'Well, try again. Move slowly, so as not to alarm it. We need to make contact.'

Heem started the truce-roll again, performing it slowly. This time the creature held its ground.

But before the Erb could respond, the Squam arrived. "Is there difficulty in communication?" a device sprayed.

"You have a translation unit!" Heem sprayed back. "Three languages?"

"I try to be prepared," the Squam replied. "I anticipated problems in this competition. Are you amenable to a truce for the purpose of advancing mutual progress toward the site?"

"Yes," Heem agreed. "At the site itself it must end. But if we do not make progress now, none of us will be in contention for victory. I have been trying to signal the Erb to this effect."

The translation unit rendered his spray into flashes of light for the Erb. Now the creature acceded. "However, I prefer not to associate too closely with the HydrO," it amended. "That breed is not to be trusted."

"Not to be trusted!" Heem exploded. "You hypocrite of a plant! Back there in the trail—"

"Truce, truce!" the Squam interposed. "We have been in competition, but must abate that temporarily."

"And I prefer not to associate with a Squam," Heem sprayed. "But we must associate with each other if we are to travel. Let us agree on this: if one of us attacks another, the third will be obliged to attack the aggressor. That way we are all protected; only peace will help us all."

'Say, that's a neat device!' Jessica exclaimed. 'Whoever starts trouble will regret it. I'm glad to see you are now able to view Squams rationally.'

"Equitable," the Squam agreed.

"Shall we review options and assets? I am Sickh of Sleekline, an unmated female who—"

"Female!" Heem interjected.

The Squam swiveled to orient her pincers on him. "You object?" her translator needled.

'Do you?' Jessica needled from within.

Heem rolled back. "Merely surprise. I had thought few females would enter this highly competitive mission."

"A number of the species of Thousandstar have highly competitive females, and their representatives reflect this, and require female hosts," the Squam responded. "You, a male, have inadequate means to appreciate the devious qualities of the mystique."

'Ha!' Jessica exclaimed.

Heem was silent/tasteless externally. Internally, he sprayed, "This Squam sounds just like you."

Jessica was chagrined. 'Not really?'

He had mercy. "Not really. She believes she has a mental as well as physical advantage over me. It will be best not to disabuse her."

'You're learning, Heem! I'll watch her closely. We may make a better team than we knew.'

The Squam resumed her introduction. "I am a specialist in geological manifestations, and my transferee is an archaeologist. I believe we can fathom an excellent route to the site, recovering time, but it is apt to be hazardous for a single entity."

That was a potent combination for a mission like this. Geologist and archaeologist would be extraordinarily quick to perceive signs of the Ancients that others might miss. Theoretically this was a race to a marked site, but one could never be certain, with the Ancients. Also, the prior Squam had made quite an accurate guess at the prospective hazards of leaving the prepared path; this one's warning of hazard could be well conceived.

'Yes,' Jessica agreed. 'Awful smart girl, there.'

The Erb flashed at the translator, and it emitted a spray for Heem and sounds for Sickh Squam: a versatile instrument. "I am Windflower, also female at this stage of my growth. I am a student of the material and theory of the Ancients, and my transferee specializes in transfer technology."

An even more potent set! The Ancients were the past masters of transfer—one reason their sites were so eagerly sought. But how much did these specialized fields help in the actual competition to reach the site? It seemed the experts had not been quite practical enough. This was, Heem understood, a common failing of experts throughout the Cluster.

Heem's turn. "I am Heem of Highfalls, male, a specialist in space piloting and combat. My transferee is an analyzer of patterns."

"Excellent," the Squam said. "Now let us consider how we may forward mutual progress. The routing delineated by the map is suitable for tractors; it would be possible to shape a ramp against the face of the cliff and employ the winch to assist the steep ascent, but this would expend both fuel and time.

Windflower's machine cannot have much fuel remaining."

"True," the Erb agreed. "Insufficient for such purposes. We drove well and carefully, but the map deceived us."

Well and carefully indeed, Heem thought. This tractor must have come farther and faster than any other. These two creatures had to be among the most skilled and clever in the competition: a fact not to be forgotten.

"Therefore, we must proceed independently, either following the marked route or devising one of our own. The marked route curves somewhat; a direct approach could cut the travel distance to a third."

"The direct route is over the most extreme elevation of the ridge," the Erb flashed.

"Therefore not feasible. But my preliminary analysis suggests that this ridge is porous. There should be caves penetrating it, some of which could emerge quite close to our objective."

'This is one smart creature!' Jessica repeated.

"My kind depends on the ambience of light, except in quite close quarters," the Erb protested. "We have no liking for nether regions, and are not competent therein."

"This is one reason you can benefit by cooperating with us," the Squam pointed out. "My kind is quite facile in subterranean situations, so long as they are dry and reasonably firm in structure. We utilize sound to explore the reaches.

We are shaped conveniently to traverse small passages. However, there may be constrictions too narrow for me to pass—"

"My kind is adept at fracturing rock," the Erb flashed.

"My kind can squeeze through almost any aperture, given time," Heem sprayed.

"There may be sections flooded with water," the Squam continued. "I do not care for water."

"No problem," Heem sprayed. "My kind can travel beneath water, so long as hydrogen is associated with it, and this is usually the case."

"There may be steep elevations and descents, or channels of hot lava, that can only be traversed by hauling over by means of a line, or other manual exercise.

My own kind is apt at this sort of thing." The Squam paused, clicking a pincer in a signal of decision. "I believe, acting together, we can surmount most obstacles—if we trust one another."

"I do not trust the HydrO!" the Erb flashed.

"And I am not entirely at ease with you," the Squam replied. "And the HydrO is wary of me. Yet if we do not trust each other, none of us have a chance to win through to the Ancient site in time. We are not here to quarrel; we are here to bear our transferees to that site expeditiously. We would be reneging were we not to promote that interest first. I suggest that we need more than a guarded truce; we need confidence in each other. Else we dare not proceed together."

"It may be academic," Heem sprayed. "You have speculated caves in this ridge, but I taste none."