He was struck by a decadence in the pattern, an ostentation that he found arrogant and bizarre beyond mere alienness.

One of Tom's main assignments aboard Streaker had been evaluation of alien devices — particularly the military variety. This wasn't the best the Galactics had, yet it made him feel like an ancient New Guinea headhunter, proud of his new muzzle-loading musket, but painfully aware of the fact of machine guns.

He looked up. His team was gathering. He chinned his hydrophone switch.

"Everybody about done? All right, then. Subteam two, head off and see if that canyon goes all the way through the ridge. It'd cut twenty klicks of the route from here to Streaker."

He heard a whistle of assent from Karacha Jeff, leader of subteam two. Good. That fin was reliable.

"Be careful," he added as they swam off. Then he motioned for the others to follow him into the wreck through the seared, curled rent in its hull.

They entered darkened corridors of eerily familiar design. Everywhere were signs of the commonality of Galactic culture, superimposed with the idiosyncrasies of a peculiar alien race. The lighting panels were identical to those on ships of a hundred species but the spaces in between were garishly decorated with Thennanin hieroglyphs.

Orley eidetically examined it all. But always he looked out for one thing, a symbol that could be found everywhere in the Five Linked Galaxies — a rayed spiral.

They'll tell me when they find it, he reminded himself. The fins know I'm interested.

I do hope, though, they don't suspect just how badly I want to see that glyph.

"Aw, why should I? Huh? You aren't being very cooperative with me! All I want is to talk to Brookida for just a minute. It's not as if I was asking a lot!"

Gillian Baskin felt tired and irritable. The holo image of the chimpanzee planetologist Charles Dart glared out at her. It would be easy to become scathing and force Charlie to retreat. But then he would probably complain to Ignacio Metz, and Metz would lecture her about "bullying people just because they are clients."

Crap. Gillian wouldn't take from a human being what she had put up with from this self-important little neo-chimp!

She brushed aside a strand of dark blonde hair that had fallen over her eyes. "Charlie, for the last time, Brookida is sleeping. He has received your message, and will call you when Makanee says he's had enough rest. In the meantime, all I want from you is a listing of isotope abundances for the trans-ferric elements here on Kithrup. We've just finished more than four hours surgery on Satima, and we need that data to design a chelating sequence for her. I want to get every microgram of heavy metal out of her body as soon as possible.

"Now, if that's too much to ask, if you're too overworked studying little geological puzzles, I'll just call the captain or Takkata-Jim, and ask them to assign somebody to go down and help you!"

The chimp scientist grimaced. His lips curled back to display an array of large, yellowed, buck teeth. At the moment, in spite of the enlarged globe of his cranium, his outthrust jaw, and his opposable thumbs, he looked more like an angry ape than a sapient scientist.

"Oh, all right!" His hands fluttered and emotion made him stammer. "B-But this is important! Understand? I think Kithrup was inhabited by technological sophonts as recently as thirty thousand years ago! Yet the Galactic Migration Institutes had this planet posted as fallow and untouchable for the last hundred million!"

Gillian suppressed an urge to say, "So what?" There had been more defunct and forgotten species in the history of the Five Galaxies than even the Library could count.

Charlie must have read her expression. "It's illegal!" he shouted. His coarse voice cracked. "If it's true, the Institute of M-migration should be told! They might even be grateful enough to help get those crazy religious n-n-nuts overhead to let us alone!"

Gillian lifted an eyebrow in surprise. What was this? Charles Dart pondering implications beyond his own work? Even he, then, must think from time to time about survival. His argument about the laws of migration were naive, considering how often the codes were twisted and perverted by the more powerful clans. But he deserved some credit.

"OK. That's a good point Charlie," she nodded. "I'm having dinner with the captain later. I'll mention it to him then. I'll also ask Makanee if she'll let Brookida out a little early. Good enough?"

Charlie looked at her with suspicion. Then, unable to maintain so subtle and intermediate an expression for long, he let a broad grin spread.

"Good enough!" he rumbled. "And you'll have that fax in your hands within four minutes! I leave you in good health."

"Health," Gillian replied softly, as the holo faded.

She spent a long moment staring at the blank comm screen. With her elbows on the desk, her face settled down upon the palms of her hands.

Ifni! I should have been able to handle an angry chimp better than that. What's the matter with me?

Gillian gently rubbed her eyes. Well, I've been up for twenty-six hours, for one thing.

A long and unproductive argument about semantics with Tom's damned, sarcastic Niss machine hadn't helped at all, when all she had wanted from the thing was its assistance on a few obscure Library references. It knew she needed help to crack the mystery of Herbie, the ancient cadaver that lay under glass in her private lab. But it kept changing the subject, asking her opinion on various irrelevant issues such as human sexual mores. By the time the session was through, Gillian was ready to disassemble the nasty thing with her bare hands.

But Tom would probably disapprove, so she deferred.

She had been about to go to bed when the emergency call came from the outlock. Soon she was busy helping Makanee and the autodocs treat the survivors of the survey party. Worry about Hikahi and Satima drove all thought of sleep from her mind until that was done.

Now that they seemed to be out of danger, Gillian could no longer use adrenalin reaction to hold of that empty feeling that seeped in around the edges of a very rough day.

It's not a time to enjoy being alone, she thought. She lifted her head and looked at her own reflection in the blank comm screen. Her eyes were reddened. From overwork, certainly, but also from worry.

Gillian knew well enough how to cope, but coping was a sterile solution. Instinct demanded warmth, someone to hold close and satisfy that physical longing.

She wondered if Tom felt the same way at this moment. Oh, of course he did; with the crude telempathic link they sometimes shared, Gillian felt she knew him pretty well. They were of a type, the two of them.

Only sometimes it seemed to Gillian that the planners had been more successful with him than they had been with her. Everyone seemed to think of her as superbly competent, but they were all just a little bit in awe of Thomas Orley.

And at times like the present, when eidetic recall seemed more a curse than a blessing, Gillian wondered if she really was as neurosis-free as the manufacturer's warranty promised.

The fax printer on her desk extruded a hardcopy message. It was the isotope distribution profile promised by Charlie — a minute ahead of schedule, she noted. Gillian scanned the columns. Good. There was little variation from the millennia- old Library report on Kithrup. Not that she had expected any, but one always checked.

A brief appendix at the bottom warned that these profiles were only valid in the surface crust and upper asthenosphere regions, and were invalid any more than two kilometers below the surface.

Gillian smiled. Someday Charlie's compulsiveness might save them all.