"Cavanagh," Pheylan repeated, sticking out his own tongue and trying to point to himself. Not surprisingly, it didn't work very well. "Earth," he added, hoping he was guessing right about what had been said.

"Cavv-ana," the alien repeated. "Urr't."

"Close enough," Pheylan said. "Now let me try. Siv-seleck: Too-err—"

"Svv-selic: Too'rr," the alien corrected him sharply.

"Right," Pheylan said. "Siv-selick—"

"Svv-selic: Too'rr," the alien insisted.

"Yes, I get it," Pheylan said. He could hear the differences; he just couldn't get his mouth to make the proper sounds. "Sorry, but 'Siv-selick' is as close as I can get. You're not exactly on target with 'Cavv-ana' either, you know."

For a moment Svv-selic gazed at him, as if trying to guess what his prisoner might have said. Pheylan found himself looking at the alien's wide eyes, noticing for the first time that each had what looked like three separate pupils. The two on either end were vertical, catlike slits, while the center pupil of each eye was noticeably wider. It struck him as an odd and rather redundant arrangement.

Though so did the aliens' hands, for that matter, composed of three fingers plus two oppositely placed thumbs. Was the second one a spare? Or did their particular grasping movement require an extra thumb to get a proper grip? Or was the appendage something else entirely?

Long ago, in his second year at the Peacekeeper academy, there'd been a unit on nonhuman physiognomy. He was beginning to wish he'd paid more attention in that class.

The alien stirred, cutting off his musings. "Brracha," he said.

From the chorus line of aliens two approached, each with a small round greenish-yellow ball clutched in one hand. One of them stopped beside the alien on Svv-selic's left—Thrr-gilag, if Pheylan was right about these jawbreaker consonant sounds being names—and handed him the ball. Thrr-gilag took a step forward and, in turn, handed the ball to Svv-selic. At the same time, the other alien handed his ball to Nzz-oonaz, who stepped forward and handed it to Pheylan.

"Thank you," Pheylan said, frowning at it. It was hard but not too heavy, with a bumpy texture and a strange but not unpleasant aroma. A piece of fruit? He looked back up at Svv-selic, wondering if they intended for him to eat it. Svv-selic, watching him, held up his own piece of fruit—

And suddenly his tongue snapped stiffly out, its edge slashing like a knife blade as it ripped through one side of the fruit.

Pheylan jumped, startled. The tongue retracted and slashed out again, cutting a second deep groove in the other side of the fruit. A thick, clear liquid pooled slowly across the top of Svv-selic's fingers and dripped over them onto the ground. "Brra'avv rrv nee," he said.

Pheylan swallowed hard. As an object lesson, it could hardly have been improved on. It probably also explained why they weren't bothering with hand weapons. "Very impressive," he managed. "Now what?"

"Brracha," Svv-selic said. His tongue slid out, supple and nonknifelike again, and pointed at the fruit in Pheylan's hand.

Pheylan shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I can't," he said, sticking out his tongue again for their inspection. "My tongue doesn't work that way."

For a long, uncomfortable moment Svv-selic just looked at him. Then he turned and handed the lacerated fruit back to Thrr-gilag. As he did so, Nzz-oonaz stepped forward again and took the fruit from Pheylan's hand. "Brra sev kel't mrrt," Svv-selic said.

He turned, the others standing with him following suit, and started toward the building complex. One of the shipboard escort stepped up to Pheylan's side and gestured toward the complex with his tongue. "Right," Pheylan said, and started walking.

They led him to a heavy-looking door in one of the smaller hexagons at the near edge of the complex. Svv-selic swung it open and gestured with his tongue. "Right," Pheylan said again, and stepped inside.

It was a large room, taking up most if not all of the hexagon. Three of the six walls were lined with waist-high consoles, some of them with displays that showed shifting ghosts of hazy luminescence or more sharp-edged patterns of white and gray. A dozen pieces of alien furniture were scattered loosely around two of the other three walls. The sixth wall held the door they'd entered by, itself flanked by another pair of consoles.

And in the center, arranged inside a floor-to-ceiling glass cylinder, was a bed, a chair and fold-down table, a toilet, an open-top shower, and a washbasin.

His cell.

"Nice and cozy," he commented sourly. Actually, it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. Small but adequately appointed, a little short on privacy... and, somehow, oddly familiar. He took a step toward it, studying the layout—

And stopped abruptly as a tongue darted out in front of him, pointing to his left.

He looked. Five of the aliens had grouped themselves beside one of the consoles against the wall. A console whose front panel was even now extending a flat, tablelike slab into the room.

Pheylan took a deep breath. Alien or not, he knew a medical-examination table when he saw it. "Okay," he said, bracing himself and starting toward it. "Let's get it over with."

It took three hours in all—a long and distinctly unpleasant three hours. Still, he had to admit as the glass door of his glass cell swung shut behind him, it could have been a lot worse.

Maybe that part would come later. After they'd learned some English and could ask him all the questions prisoners of war were usually asked. He wondered if their culture included the concept of torture.

He took a deep breath, looking around the room and trying to ignore the uncomfortable tingling still running through his muscles from the instruments they'd used in their examination. With three hours to think about it, he'd figured out why the cell arrangement had looked familiar. Except for the missing wall displays and mounted artwork, it was a perfect copy of Commodore Dyami's stateroom aboard the Jutland.

He stepped over to the bed and sat down, running a hand over the material. It was noticeably softer than a standard shipboard bunk, and the blanket felt more like plastic than cloth. But they'd gotten the basic style right.

The aliens were still in the outer part of the room, some of them watching him. Swiveling around, he stretched out on the bed and gazed up at the flat, almost featureless ceiling. Wondering if they realized the priceless bit of information this room had given away.

They'd had four ships at the battle: big ships, far too big to use the double-speed skitter stardrive. They'd picked him up at that same battle and flown him here. Presumably directly, and he would have known from the engine sound if they'd stopped along the way. True, they could have had a skitter stashed aboard one of the other ships, which could have arrived here fourteen hours ago. But most of that lead time would have been eaten up by however long it took the aliens to sift through the rubble of the Peacekeeper force. And yet, he'd arrived to find a copy of Commodore Dyami's stateroom already in place for him.

The conclusion was inescapable. The aliens had a method of true instantaneous communication.

It was the breakthrough in tachyonic physics that the Commonwealth had been looking for for probably the last hundred years. This wasn't just the raw, single-bit information that a ship was passing by a few light-years away or that a tachyon static bomb had just been triggered. This was someone at the battle talking directly to someone here, giving highly detailed instructions as to what kind of environment to set up for the prisoner who was on his way. It was contrary to everything the scientific establishment thought they knew about tachyon physics. And yet here it was.