Mihelich was not just an M.D., but a geneticist, a research cytologist, and a pioneer in cloning techniques with several patents on work done under the auspices of various corporations, so that few people knew of his contributions.

Titus dug out some of the man’s more esoteric papers and waded through the alien language of biomed. Clearly, Mihelich was one of ten researchers who understood human cloning well enough to produce a viable luren or orl fetus. And he had gathered all the help and equipment he’d need.

When Titus uncovered the profiles of Dr. Mirelle de Lisle and her co-workers, the scope-the sheer audacity-of the clandestine half of the Project came home to him.

It would be useless to clone an alien without knowing what he was. The Cognitive Sciences, which included anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, linguistics, and psychology, yearned to dub themselves Xenology. But there had been no strangers to study until Kylyd arrived. Now, the leaders of that movement were on the moon to create an environment suitable for raising alien children.

But the biggest discovery, Titus made by accident. One of Mirelle’s reports-which read like a textbook in applied kinesics, a branch of anthropology dealing with communication encoded in subconsciously controlled movement-contained an illegible document that seemed like gibberish until he recognized the phonetic alphabet and looked up the symbols.

An hour later, he stared at a screen full of squiggles he could read as plainly as English. But it wasn’t English. It was luren. distorted pronunciations, strange words, and odd syntax aside, it was the language Abbot had taught him, and the document seemed to be a transcription of a kind of verbal log recording off Kylyd.

They’ve tapped the ship’s electronics! And not a hint of that had ever appeared in any official report from Project Station. He backed out of the file stealthily, his mind leaping from the sketchiest hints to rock-hard conclusions.

The first time he’d seen Abbot in Kylyd, squeezing through the twisted portal, he’d been carrying something that could have been a recorder. Abbot was an electronics wizard. Abbot had Marked Mirelle, who was on the clandestine side of the Project. Abbot knew what she knew.

Knowing that it had been done by the humans, never mind that official reports said they couldn’t even ignite the lighting system, Abbot could have jiggered a recorder to mesh with Kylyd’s own system. And if so, he could have been pulling data out of the control console he bent over with such absorption while Titus hid in the sleeper’s chamber.

Abbot had this transcription as well as others the humans knew nothing about, and Abbot was learning to read Kylyd’s records. The humans, of course, had no idea what Mirelle’s gibberish meant; there was no Rosetta stone.

Why would Abbot spend so much time on language? Just to send the SOS in the right dialect? Hardly. He intended to wake the sleeper. But what did Abbot plan to do with a wakened luren-a pure-blood?-a pure-blood who would become his son-wholly in his power?

Titus shied away from that idea, telling himself it was just wild conjecture, but he was unable to get the thought of the orl out of his mind. What if they had been aboard as crew, not food? What if the galactic luren of today would not regard Earth’s humans merely as a food supply? And what if Abbot was right? What if this really was the last chance for Earth’s luren to survive intact as luren? What should I do?

The question haunted him through the rest of the day, despite distractions, and when the evening crew left, he stayed, coveting time alone during the one shift when the lab was empty-He had to think through, in the most absolutely rigorous fashion, what he must do. He had to build a mental model of the situation and run some trial solutions to his problems to see what the major effects would be.

Knowing life wouldn’t be as simple as physics, he was nevertheless methodical as he listed his goals and options in his calculator’s private note file. Pondering the result, he suddenly added, “I could waken the luren and father him.”

Staring at that absurdity, he heard the lab’s hall door open. Inea peeked around the cowling of the airlock.

The lab’s lights were on full, but Titus had dimmed the light in his office; the levelors were shut, the door ajar. She found the lab empty, and crossed to the observatory. She grabbed her lab coat off the rack and donned it, covering her lilac and pink gym suit as if she did this every night.

Curious, Titus shut his note file and watched from his door. She bent over a reader, calling up files, reading. He tiptoed to his desk and slaved his unit to hers. She was checking the daily worksheet on the computer repair.

The screen went blank again, and he saw her move to the observatory instruments. Most were receivers tied to the major solar orbit observatories, but some were tuned to the few dozen extra-system probes that were still alive. His observatory recorded everything that came in, but the data were useless until the main computer came back on line.

There were three installations on Earth and one in Earth orbit that could synthesize portions of the data, but the Project had the only system able to interpret all the data according to any one of the prevailing theories of the universe, and run a continuous comparison of the results against all new data. They had not only capacity, but unique programming on unique hardware.

Inea, a skilled interpreter, could tell by inspection if the raw data was unusual. She pored over the readouts intently.

All his adult life, Titus had postulated the position of the dim, distant star that had to be the origin of the flight that had deposited his ancestors on Earth. It was hidden behind the brighter bodies in the Taurus region, but legend gave him an approximate line and distance. Data captured by the extra-solar observatories that saw Kylyd’s approach would pinpoint the home-as soon as Wild Goose answered.

Inea raised her head, frowning in frustration at the dissected computers out in the main room, and then back at the screen she was reading. Has she found something?

He crossed the lab to the glass partitions of the observatory. At the door, he hesitated. His foot hit a screwdriver abandoned on the floor. Inea whirled, stifling a squeak. “Darr-Titus! Do you have to sneak up like that?”

“I’m sorry. I’m curious about what you’re doing here.”

“Well, this is my job, you know. And I’m not putting in for the overtime. I won’t screw up your bookkeeping.”

“Do you come in every day?” Has Abbot seen her?

“Y-yes,” she confessed. “Is that so terrible?”

“I just didn’t expect it.”

“I’m an astronomer, not an electrician. On my own time I’ll do astronomy.” She tilted her head to one side. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t be here?”

“No, of course not. Knowing you, I should have realized you’d come.” He entered the observatory, and scanned the recorders. “Did you see what came in this afternoon?”

“Yes. I wish I’d been here.”

“It could be our big break.” The tracings indicated an object where no one had seen one before.

“Yes, if it’s a star and its spectrum checks against the data from the alien ship, we won’t need your star catalogue.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but this afternoon, I asked for the data to be processed on Earth and the results relayed to us. Only by then our computer may be up-our shipment from Luna Station is due in two days. Will you be ready?”

“I’ve been ready for a week. When should I report?”

They discussed the state of the repairs, Titus insisting she report the day after Abbot was due to finish his job on the computers. He didn’t explain the timing.

As he dodged her questions, she became more insistent and curious. Then, without warning, she desisted.