Luiz appeared in the doorway of Flower's lab offices, leaned there, his seamed face set in worry. "Shuttle's down," he said. "Two of them. They're coming in pairs.”

"The dispatch is nearly ready." Boaz made a few quick notes, sorted, clipped, gathered her materials into the pouch and sealed the coded lock; Security procedures, foreign to her. She found the whole arrangement distasteful. In her fifty-odd years she had had time to learn deep resentment for the military. Most of her life had been wartime, the forty-three-year mri wars. Her researches as a scientist had been appropriated to the war in distant offices; on Flower they had been directly seized. She had to her credit the decipherment of mri records which had led them here, which had led to the destruction of mri cities, and the death of children; and she grieved over that. A pacifist, she had done the mri more harm with pick and brush and camera than all of Saber's firepower and all the ships humans had ever launched; she believed so; and she had had no choice had none now that she was reduced to writing reports for security, reckonings of yet another species for military use.

She had had illusions once, of the importance of her freedom to investigate, the tradeoff of knowledge for knowledge, for a position in which she, having knowledge, could sway the maker of policy; there had been a time she had believed she could say no.

She put the pouch into Luiz's hand, looked beyond hitn to the other man who had come into the lab; Averson, Sim Averson, a balding fellow who walked as though he might break. He came, and she offered her hand to him. Three years Averson had worked aboard Flower before the Kesrithi mission, which made him one of the seniors of the present staff, a sour, fretsome fellow who took his work in Cultures and his library more seriously than breathing, and lived for the increase of data and systems to his personal credit in libraries back home. Averson had taken naturally to specialization in regul, as slow and methodical as they, pleased with the mountains of statistics which regul tended to accumulate. He had taken over Aldin's office with a sour intimation of satisfaction, as if Aldin's death had been fate's personal favor to him… appropriated Aldin's notes and materials and immersed himself in more cataloging. It likely did not occur to Averson now that the military might have interests wider than specific questions, that what he did might have moral implications ... or if it did, it did so at a distance outside Averson's more vivid concerns. He looked now only annoyed, roused out of his habits and his habitation and his work.

"Be careful," Boaz urged him. "Sim, something's wrong up there.”

Dark eyes blinked up at her, somewhat distantly. Averson had grown into the habit of looking down. He shrugged his bowed shoulders. "What can we do? When they ask, we come, however inconvenient it happens to be. My tapes, my programs, everything disarranged. I told them. Of course it's wrong. HI be a week putting things in order. Can I explain this to them? No. No. Security has no comprehension.”

"Sim, I mean that there's something wrong with the regul.”

Averson's brow fractured into different wrinkles, distant recognition of a fact both germane and foreign to his research; he was slow of habit, but not slow-witted.

"I queried about the overflights," Luiz said. He folded his arms and set his back more firmly against the doorframe ... his knees troubled him; he had gotten old, had Luiz, fragile as Averson. We have all grown old, Boaz thought desperately. None of us will live to reach humanity again, not with all our functions intact. I will be near sixty, Luiz seventy-five if he makes it through the jumps again; Koch seventy at least; and some of us are dead, like Aldin. "Koch went silent on me in a hurry. Now he wants you up there. And files on the regul. Boz is right Something's astir up there with our allies.”

Averson blinked slowly. "Metamorphosis. We reckoned ... a longer time required.”

"Stress conditions," Luiz surmised.

"Possibly." Averson chewed at his fingernail and frowned, staring at nothing in particular the while he followed some train of thought

"Sim," Boaz said, "Sim, watch out for security.”

Averson blinked at her, drawn back from his musing.

"Don't trust them," Boaz said. "Don't trust what they do with what we give them. Think. Think before you tell them something… how ignorant men could interpret it, what they could do with it They aren't objective. We daren't trust that. People want statistics to justify what they want to do. That's the only reason we're ever asked.”

"Boz," Luiz protested, with a meaningful glance at the intercom. Flowers operations staff was all military.

"So what do I care? What can I lose? Promotion? Assignments in the future? None of us are going to be fit for another after this one; and it's dead certain they're limited on replacements for us.”

Influence, Boz.”

"What have we been able to influence? Between Saber and the regul, invaluable sites have been blasted to rubble, the greatest cities of a world in ruins, an intelligent species maybe reduced beyond viability… and we observe, we take notes… and our notes provide information so that regul and mri can toll each other. And maybe we can join in. Duncan took his own way out I look at this and suddenly I begin to understand him. He at least-”

A shadow fell in the corridor doorway. Boaz stopped. It was Galey, from Saber, with another man. Vague surprise struck her, that Galey should have come down; an old acquaintance, this man ... a freckled young man when he had set out from Kesrith, full of promise; a man in his thirties now, with a perpetually worried look. Youth to man to senior by the time he could get back to human space again, Boaz thought; mortality was on them alL The thought began to obsess her.

"Dr. Averson?" Galey inquired, came with the black man into the main lab. He proffered Luiz a cassette, had it signed for, passed the tab to his dark companion. "Lt Harris," Galey identified the other. "Running shuttle up for Dr. Averson. Orders explain matters. Myself and my crew, we're staying on down here; cassette explains that too, I think, by your leave, sir, doctor.”

There was a moment's cold silence.

"What's going on up there?" Boaz asked.

"Don't know," Galey said, and avoided her eyes. "Sir?" he said to Averson. "We have a limited access here. Better move as quickly as possible.”

Luiz handed over the dispatch, received a signature in turn, from Harris.

"Suppose," Boaz said, "you see him settled, Mr. Galey.”

Galey gave her that perplexed stare he could use; she did not relent. "Doctor," he murmured, and took his leave with Harris, shepherding Averson along with them in some haste.

"My tapes," Averson was saying. "My records “

The door closed.

"Blast!" Boaz spat, and sat down.

"There's no help for it," Luiz said.

"His whole life," Boaz murmured, shaking her head; and when Luiz looked puzzlement at her; "Theirs, mine, yours. Spent on this thing. More than just the years. We can go home. But to what? What's the chance Stavros is still governor on Kesrith? No, new policies, a new governor the whole situation years without our input. And what do we bring back? What do we tell them about what we've seen out here, a track of dead worlds saying what? No one's asking the right questions, Emil. Not we, not the regul... no one's asking the right questions.”

Luiz wrapped his thin arms about him and stared at the floor. "We can't get out there to ask the questions.”

"And now we've got the military.”

"We're vulnerable here; that's what's on my mind. Boz, what-ever's afoot, I'm going to request all but essential personnel shuttled up. Fifty-eight people is too many to risk down here."

"Nol" She thrust herself to her feet "Flower has to stay here, right here; we have to make it clear to them we're staying.”

"We have to wait for Duncan as long as there's hope of waiting. That's our purpose; our only purpose. The Xen department has to understand that There's no chance of doing more than that, and there's sure none of making gestures of principle with fifty-eight lives. Forget it, Boz.”

"And when that fails?" She stalked to the door, looked back at him. "We'll lose the mri, you know that. How do we win, in a waiting game with regul?”

"We apply pressure… quietly. It's all we can do.”

"And can't they figure that out? It's their game. Our generations are a fraction of theirs. Our whole lifespans are nothing to their three centuries. If you're right, if there is an adult developing among them, they can even out-populate us in the long run. And if there isn't one now, there will be, sooner or later, this year or the next. Sooner or later, Saber will give up and pull us out We're mortal, Emil. We think in terms of weeks and months. The regul will get the mri in the end. Do you see Saber tying itself up here for longer than a few months? And do you think regul wouldn't wait fifty out of their three hundred years to have their own way with the mri? And we can't. Fifty years… and we're all dead.”

Luiz gazed at her, his dark eyes shrouded in wrinkled lids, his mouth pressed to a fine line. "Don't you go on me, Boz. We've lost too many to that kind of thinking. I won't hear you start it.”

"Four suicides and six on trank? It's Gale’s sort who go that route… the young, who had illusions of a Hie after this mission is over. You and I, we're too old for that We at least have a past to look back on. They don't. Only the jumps. And more of them to face on the way home. The drugs may not last; we were handing out doubled doses at the end. And what after that? You tell me what that voyage will be like with no drugs.”

"Well find something.”

"We can try." She made a shrug that was half a shiver. "This world, Emil, the age, the age of it one vast tomb; the seas dried up, the cities frozen and waiting for the sun to go out and all space about empty of life. Dear God, what is it to be young among such sights as these? It's bad enough to be old.”

Luiz came and took her by the arms, gathered her to him, and she held to him until the shivers stopped.

"Emil” she said, "promise me something. Talk to the staff. Let me talk to them. We can hold Flower here, right where we sit, with all her staff. No lessening the stakes, no making it easier for them, regul or human.”