One of the first jobs of those opening Project Station had been to collect specimens, then sterilize the craft. Mihelich had unraveled the genetics of all those specimens.

“Dr. Colby,” said Mihelich, “Dr. Nandoha is correct. If that leak has altered the temperature, then it’s imperative that we warm the corpse and complete the autopsy before deterioration sets in.”

“No, you don’t understand,” interrupted Mintraub. “It’s been room temperature in there for hours, and there’s no deterioration at all! They said the wound had-”

Abbot seized her by the shoulders. “How long?” he demanded. “Exactly how long?”

“Uh, at least six hours.”

“And it’s night outside!” Abbot dropped her and ran out the door. It was the first public slip Titus had ever seen Abbot make. He didn’t know of the leak! I’ve rattled him.

Pandemonium erupted. In a small voice, Mintraub finished, “-begun to heal.” She was white and shaking, but Titus didn’t stop to comfort her. He jostled his way through the press of bodies and took off after Abbot. Six hours at night, and the alien could be recovered already.

His palm print got him through the barricades and he caught up with Abbot as he sidled between the two Brink’s guards inside the cryo-lab door. In the sterilizing shower, Titus whispered, “You don’t think the sleeper will-”

“Oh, yes I do,” said Abbot. “This isn’t how I planned it.” The door opened and Titus crowded through behind Abbot, watching the scene beyond the plastic wall of the dressing room through a small window.

The cryogenic bubble had been opened, the body lying on the top of the pedestal as if it were an operating table. Dr. Kaschmore spat emphatic orders at the half dozen nurses and physicians who clustered about the body. Mirelle, on the far side of the pedestal, was leaning over the body, and the woman Titus thought of as Diving Belle was flexing the sleeper’s fingers and dictating notes.

As Titus donned his mask, the shower behind him started up again. In front of him, Abbot charged out the door into the lab.

This is like a scene out of a bad science fiction movie!“ he roared. They fell silent, turning toward him. ”If that thing wakes up it could kill you before it knows you’re not enemies!“

His Influence carried a vibrant shame. Everyone backed away from the body as Abbot and Titus approached. A sterile sheet had been draped over the legs, but the chest wound was exposed. It had nearly healed.

“There are too many people in here,” declared Kaschmore. She singled out the Diving Belle, Abbot, and Titus, “You have no reason to be here. Out. Now. How can we-”

Abbot cut her off. “I may be of assistance to Mintraub with the equipment.” He went to the wall panel controlling the ambient environment. “If the explosion-”

At that point, Colby and Mintraub emerged from the shower room, Colby saying, “I gave explicit orders that the cryo-bubble was not to be opened for any reason. I-”

“He’s breathing!” exclaimed the Diving Belle who was behind Mirelle, on the other side of the pedestal.

Abbot doused the lights, and the room filled with dismayed human voices. Dimly, Titus heard the outer door open and shut. Eyes still straining to adjust, Titus felt rather than saw Abbot streak by him, headed for the luren, moving by dead reckoning. Then he saw the dim blot of warmth that was Mirelle, Abbot’s Mark glowing on her forehead, collide with someone and stumble toward the luren. Colby got in Abbot’s way. Abbot tripped and Colby yelped.

Titus saw the luren hand go for Mirelle’s throat. The luren body was room temperature, and the limb appeared only as a shadow against Mirelle’s warmth. Without thinking, Titus dove through the air, flung his body across the luren’s and shoved Mirelle away.

The luren emitted a formless grunt as Titus’s weight came down on him, then steel fingers closed over Titus’s ears,, and cold wet lips searched his throat. A strange paralyzing hum penetrated Titus’s bones, turning his will to mist. He hardly felt the teeth cutting into his vein, but he knew it when the luren began to feed.

He felt it in the soles of his feet, in his groin, in his belly, and in his heart, a rhythmic pulling, that grew stronger, more intense, more insistent, until he was pushing with it, helping it devour him, wanting to pour himself into the other, needing to become one with it.

Around him, the paralyzing hum rose to fill the room, but he knew only the great demanding rhythm of his pumping heart, and the hot tendrils of thought piercing his brain, demanding more of him than he had to give, pulling him inside out. It was not unpleasant. It was like a good, long hard stretch, or a delicious yawn.

He melted into relaxation, nothing left in him that wanted to guard himself. Gradually, he became aware of the hunger he was feeding with his substance, and he could feel it abating with each pulse that rippled through his body. His pleasure was the luren’s pleasure, the desire to live, the need to live, the demand to live.

And it was life that they shared, life and the glory of living. The pulsing rhythm of life and the love of life wove between them, and Titus wanted that life, to cherish it and let it kindle him forever. At some point, the luren’s demand succumbed to Titus’s overflowing insistence. The pleasure was now Titus’s, and the luren shared it with him.

Their heartbeats slowed, the distant pulsing hum weakened, and the urgency abated, leaving them floating in darkness. Distantly, Titus felt the luren’s tongue stroking the skin of his throat. His whole body burned with the aftermath of pleasure too intense to recall.

A breath whispered in his ear, “Enough, my father. I would not take your life.”

Warm hands pushed up on his chest. The words had been in the luren language, and the spell was broken. I’ve fathered the sleeper!

Stunned, he pushed his weight up, and then the emergency lights came on, Mintraub crying out triumphantly, “I got it!”

The alien gasped.

Abbot, with Kaschmore’s help, was trying to untangle himself from Colby. Mirelle lay supine, the Diving Belle kneeling beside her. Mintraub was at the power control panel, Lifting off the coverplate. Mihelich stood in the door from the dressing room, mouth agape. The blackout couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but Titus would have sworn it was at least a year.

The alien screamed, an ululating shriek of pain and terror carried on a blast of paralyzing Influence such as Titus had never felt before.

Every human in the room froze, eyes blank.

Titus’s hands went to the luren’s face, needing to soothe the shuddering fear away. Their eyes locked.

“Wh-what are you?” choked the alien.

“Luren, of a sort,” answered Titus.

“What sort?” His slitted eyes traversed the room. “Where am I?”

“On an airless satellite, in a building constructed around Kylyd. It crashed. You went dormant.”

The alien focused on Mirelle and a cluster of medics. “What manner of people are they? They are people? Not orl?”

“Human,” answered Titus in English. “Not orl.”

The man’s gaze locked again with Titus’s eyes. “Your accent. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Titus himself was guessing at the luren’s words. “I first spoke their language.”

The alien’s eyes went back to the cluster of humans around Mirelle. Then suddenly, Titus found his own eyes drawn to the alien man’s and that profound Influence focused inside him. For a moment, the rapport of their sharing flashed into being, and the hot tendrils of a probing mind crawled through his brain. He flinched, and hard, bony fingers bit into his shoulders. He threw every bit of his training and skill into deflecting that raking, tearing probe, sure his sanity hung in the balance.

Without warning, everything went white, and the next thing he knew he was on the floor beside the pedestal, some bare feet dangling over his face and Abbot bending over him sealing his disposable suit’s collar over a sore spot.