He pulled the trigger, the explosion loud in the small room. Connie screamed and lowered her head, covering it with her hands as if knowing. He'd saved Robert once before by killing their father. Now he'd saved him again. Small tight sobs, like little chuckles, burned his throat, and his free hand wiped away tears. A much more powerful explosion roared from the other side of the steel door, knocking things from shelves. Morgan held the muzzle close to Connie's head and pulled the trigger again.

Tears blinded him. Then he heard alien voices; the safety door had been dislodged. A blaster pulse struck the family room door, sending a spray of Tuffboard fragments across the room. Morgan put the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger a final time.

Interrogation

Qonits' ranking bodyguard rapped sharply on the door, but not with the butt of his blaster, as he had at first.

Even that had been an improvement. In an early session, a half-hour charade with the chief scholar, David and Yukiko had managed to communicate that they didn't want guards, or even Qonits himself, walking in on them without permission. That it showed lack of respect, and they would not cooperate without respect.

Not that privacy was the point. Video cameras monitored them endlessly. The point they hoped to make was that they had rights. Of course if their captors disagreed, pain was always available to inspire cooperation. Neither David nor Yukiko imagined they could withstand serious torture. But the Wyzhnyny didn't know that, and might prefer not to risk their deaths, or possibly inspire unbreakable resistance.

When Qonits had left that time, they hadn't known whether he'd understood. But beginning the next day, the guard who'd brought their meals had knocked. And so had Qonits' bodyguard, all without apparent resentment.

"Who is it?" David called.

"It is Qonits."

As far as it went, Qonits' Terran was quite understandable. On the other hand, the Wyzhnynyc the humans had learned was negligible. For a while the exchanges had been fairly even, but apparently the Wyzhnyny had changed their minds and decided not to teach them. At any rate the humans had no artificial intelligence to run endless cross-references, refining and expanding on meanings and nuances.

As shipsmind acquired a working vocabulary, sessions had more and more been built around lists-requests for the meanings of words recorded during earlier interrogations and the prisoners' personal conversations. Words presumably chosen by shipsmind. Qonits' efforts to speak became less halting and uncertain. His main difficulty was understanding what was said to him.

"Come in!" Yukiko called back. She and David made a point of neither being the prime spokesperson. Let the Wyzhnyny consider them equal to each other in rank.

As always, Qonits' entrance showed what the two Terrans read as dignity without arrogance. They still didn't know whether that dignity and apparent lack of arrogance were idiosyncracies of Qonits, or shared by other ranking Wyzhnyny. But they'd come to like the chief scholar.

"Good morning," Qonits said carefully. "I wish you feel well now."

"We feel very well, thank you," David said, "and we wish the same to you."

The Terrans sat on a couch. Yukiko had sketched one for Qonits, and he'd had it made. His own people had such things, and Qonits could understand that humans might have greater need for them. It must, he'd told himself, be tiresome standing on just two legs. He'd wondered at first why they didn't fall over.

"You are welcome," Qonits replied, then paused. "I have-more questions."

David raised an eyebrow at Yukiko; the knowledge master's delivery suggested this might be a different sort of session.

"We are interested," Yukiko answered.

They almost always say that, Qonits thought, and I never know why. What might they be learning from us? He wondered how long it would be before he began to actually understand these aliens. Until he did, knowing their words and sentences would be inadequate to understanding their meanings or intentions. What went on in the privacy of those round alien skulls?

"We wonder what is the kind of your empire," he said.

"Ah," said David, and spread his hands. "It is-an empire."

Qonits looked at him warily. "Please tell me more about it."

Yukiko spoke next. "It is many worlds united to permit, and provide for, the separate and mutual satisfaction of each and all worlds."

The focus of Qonits' eyes slanted off into left field, a response the Terrans had learned to recognize: he'd gotten no real notion of what her statement meant. His fingers tapped something into the small key pad hanging from his neck. Presumably he was listening to what shipsmind made of it.

After a few moments, his gaze returned to the two Terrans. "Thank you," he said. This session, he told himself, promises to require much work by shipsmind before I understand their answers. I wish I understood now. My subsequent questions could be more to the point.

"And what is this empire's government?" he asked.

It was David and Yukiko who felt uncertain now. They suspected the monitoring they were subjected to was more than visual, and they preferred to keep the Wyzhnyny guessing, uncertain. It was David who answered. "It is a commercial union, to facilitate the members buying from and selling to each other."

As he'd spoken, he began to see where this could take him, and felt a touch of excitement. Meanwhile something was obviously going on with Qonits. Disbelief? Concept overwhelm? David tried another tack. "We call it a commonwealth." He tapped his head as he went on. "Think of it as many self-governing worlds united for their separate individual good. And also for their mutual good-their joint good, their together good."

Qonits' eyes had lost their unfocused look. He was intent now. "Then there will be no effective defense," he said. Even in the Wyzhnyny's non-human voice, David could hear the mental wheels turning. And sense the distrust.

"That is not correct," David said. "There will be defense." God, there'd better be! "Defense is one of the primary functions of commonwealth government. Defense, the enforcement of valid contracts, and overall record-keeping."

Qonits' nictitating membranes slid over his eyes in a reflex the Terrans had yet to understand. "What is the kind of defense?" the Wyzhnyny asked. "What kind of things is done by that defense?"

David wasn't thinking his way through the situation now. He was running on creative intuition, winging it. "My wife and I are not informed on defense. We are research scientists. We learn about the seas on new worlds." The nictitating membranes were back again. This will give his shipsmind something to chew on, David thought. He'll be back with a monster word list tomorrow. "We know the basic principle though," he continued. "Design the defense, or select the defense, which most damages and frustrates the enemy. Keeps them off balance."

Qonits' long tongue licked air. David and Yukiko hadn't figured that one out yet, either. It took a long moment before the chief scholar responded, speaking very slowly, very deliberately. "Then why have we not met such defense? We have now eleven of your planets. Still no defense. Why?"

There was no sense of challenge in the question. He simply wants to know, Yukiko thought. "We are a very numerous people," she answered. "In recent centuries-hundreds of years-we have colonized many new worlds. We are a very diverse species, with many different peoples having different wants. They go out beyond the older colonies, find new worlds and colonize them."

The answer stopped Qonits dead in the water. It seemed to her he was about to go catatonic, whether because he couldn't grasp what she'd said, or because he could. She wished she knew what he was hearing on the earphone he wore. "And," she went on, "apparently the newer, farther colonies are being sacrificed." She turned to David. "Wouldn't you say so, dear?"