For another, problems between people meant nothing to Hogram. Because Hogram had talked with the Omalo domain master on the radio, he had to acknowledge there were more humans than the ones he had met. But he simply did not believe in a whole planet full of them, all at each other’s throats because one man had gone berserk. Given what Hogram knew, Tolmasov wouldn’t have believed it, either. Unfortunately, it was true.

And so the crew of Tsiolkovsky went through the motions of doing more research: Bryusov comparing country and town dialects, Rustaveli working on his rocks, Katerina and Voroshilov joining together on a biochemical study. None of it seemed to mean much now.

“Yuri isn’t sorry Lopatin’s gone and got himself in this mess,” Rustaveli observed.

“Then why did he cut you off when you called the Americans?” Tolmasov answered his own question. “Because his head might roll, too, I suppose, if anyone back home”-as polite a euphemism as he had ever come up with for the KGB-“thought he’d overhead you and done nothing. But I daresay you’re right, because of Katya if for no other reason.”

“There are others,” Rustaveli said slowly. The pilot glanced over at him, he rarely sounded so serious. Seeing he had Tolmasov’s attention, the geologist went on, “Yuri complained that Lopatin snooped through the poems he wrote for her and stored them in his secret computer file. Evidence, I imagine, but only a chekist could say of what.”

“I’d hate a man for that, too,” Tolmasov said.

“And I,” Bryusov agreed, though Tolmasov had trouble imagining Bryusov worked up enough about anything to hate the man who did it. Maybe if an academician from Arkhmolinsk stole something from one of his papers and published it first: anyone would be furious over that kind of pilfering.

Then the full meaning of Rustaveli’s words got through to the pilot. “Wait a minute,” he said. “How does Yuri know they’re in Lopatin’s secure file?”

“How else?” Rustaveli put a flippant shrug in his voice. “He read them.”

“That’s impossible.” Tolmasov had tried to access Lopatin’s secure file, tried and failed. If the pilot of a mission was not trusted with the passwords he needed to get into a KGB man’s files, what were the odds a chemist would be? There was no way…, no, there was one.

Rustaveli was waiting when Tolmasov looked up. The Geol’gian nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “But you will notice I have not told you any such thing.”

“Like that, eh? No, of course, you haven’t, Shota Mikheilovich. But Yuri! Who ever would have thought that about Yuri?”

“Shota hasn’t what?” Bryusov asked. “Who would have thought what about Yuri?” The linguist sounded as confused as if his companions had started speaking Navajo.

“Never mind, Valery Aleksandrovich. Nothing important,” Tolmasov said kindly. Some people, he thought, were really too innocent to be running around loose.

His feeling of smug superiority lasted not quite two minutes. Then he remembered he had thought the same thing about Yuri Voroshilov. He shook his head. Sometimes you just couldn’t tell.

“Are you all right, Reatur?” Lamra asked when the domain master finally got around to paying attention to her. Them, though, she had little to complain about: he hurried through his hellos to the rest of the mates so he could spend uninterrupted time with her.

If he had looked tired before, now he looked tired and battered. One of his arms jerked when he sighed, a wince that showed he had been hurt. “I’ve been better, little one,” he answered. “The domain has been better, come to that. The Skarmer beat us, beat us badly.”

She saw herself start to turn blue and tried to stop but couldn’t.

“What will we do?” she said.

“’We’?” Reatur asked gently. “Lamra, right now there isn’t much you can do. I wish there were. As for me, I am going to fight them again. Maybe here, closer to the castle, closer to where most of my males live, they will make a better showing.”

“What if they don’t?”

The domain master pulled in arms and eyestalks, released them: a shrug. “Then we won’t have to fight a third time, that’s certain. Do you understand what I mean?”

Lamra thought about it. “We’ll have lost?” She didn’t want to say that; she didn’t even want to think it.

But Reatur seemed to approve. “That’s right,” he said. “Your thoughts should always be thin, clear ice, Lamra, so you can use them to see through to what’s there, no matter what it is. If you don’t think clearly, it’s like trying to look through muddy ice.”

“Oh,” Lamra said. She wanted to show Reatur she could use what he was telling her. “Then are you going to show me why you haven’t opened one of your hands since you came into the mates’ chambers? Do you have something in there? Is it for me?”

His eyestalks wiggled-slowly, but they wiggled. “Thin, clear ice indeed, little one. Yes, I have something for you in that hand.” He turned so it was in front of her.

She held out a hand of her own. He gave her the present. She peered down at it with three eyestalks at once. “It’s a runnerpest!” she exclaimed. “A little runnerpest, carved all out of wood. It’s wonderful, Reatur. Thank you.” She felt proud for remembering to say that. “Where did you get it? Did you carve it yourself?”

“Yes,” he said. He hesitated, as if unsure whether to go on, but after a moment he did. “I wanted you to have something to remember me by, even if-the worst happens.”

“I’ll keep it always,” Lamra promised. Then, wanting him to know she was still thinking clearly, she amended, “For as long as I have, anyhow.”

“For you, that’s always,” Reatur said firmly.

“I suppose so.” Lamra kept looking at the little runnerpest.

‘I’m going to poke this around a corner and scare Peri silly with it. Not that she isn’t silly already, that is.” No matter how hard she worked at it, staying serious was never easy.

This time, Reatur’s laugh was unrestrained. “I’m glad I came to see you, little one. One way or another, you always make me feel better.” He turned an eyestalk down toward her bulges. “Do you want to hear something foolish, Lamra?”

“I don’t think you can be foolish, clanfather,” she declared. “That only shows how young and foolish you are still,” Reatur said. “I was just thinking it’s a shame you’re carrying budlings. I’d like to plant them on you now.”

‘That is foolish,” Lamra agreed. Once Reatur had succeeded in planting budlings on her, her interest in mating, once so intense, disappeared. She did her best to think like a male. Altogether unsure how well she was succeeding, she said, “There are lots of other mates here.”

“I know,” Reatur said. “It wouldn’t be the same, somehow. Planting buds on you now would be like, like”-the domain master sounded like someone groping after an idea-“like mating with a friend.” He stopped in surprise. “That must be what the humans do,. with their mates who live as long as males. It would be comforting, I think, especially in bad times.”

“I suppose so,” Lamra said indifferently. But the notion Reatur had presented was so strange, she couldn’t help thinking about it. “If the humans keep me alive after my budlings drop, will I want to mate with you again?”

That seemed to surprise Reatur all over again. “I truly don’t know, Lamra. If we’re all very, very lucky, maybe we’ll find out.”

“Sometimes you just can’t tell, Pat.” Irv felt like an idiot the moment the words were out of his mouth, but he was lucky-

Pat wasn’t listening to him. She was off in that disconnected place where she had spent so much time since Frank hadn’t answered his last radio call.

His wife glanced toward him and Pat, toward Athena, toward Reatur’s castle. “I don’t think that eloc mate is ever going to drop its budlings,” Sarah said. They had checked the mate five times in the last two days. It looked ready, but it wasn’t doing anything. “I’m going over to the castle to examine Lamra again,” Sarah went on. “I just keep hoping she can hang on until we know we have some real chance of doing her some good.”