When he didn’t move, she grabbed him by the biceps and pushed him into the bathroom, shutting the door. Titus leaned over the sink, sick and ashamed, yet aching with a desperate hunger he’d never felt before. He rinsed the dead stuff out of his mouth, then glimpsed his face in the mirror-eyes sunken and bruised, anguish graven in deep lines down his cheeks. He swayed, struggled for balance and fell against the door. It wouldn’t open.

Panic struck, and he flung himself against the barrier, dimly aware of the life surging on the other side but wholly unable to think. The battering thud of his body hitting the hard barrier set up a rhythm in his mind, a pulse of hunger as strong as H’lim’s had been.

The next thing he knew, the door slid aside and he fetched up hard against the opposite wall.

Inea held the pitcher filled with warm blood, surrounded by a haze of ectoplasm. He went for it, slobbering and gulping like an animal, the thick stuff spattering them both. He knew no shame until he’d finished the pitcher, flung it aside, and borne her to the floor, ripping at her clothing.

Then her arms went around him, and she put his face to her neck. His teeth caught the fold of skin, the great vein like rubber between them. And there he stopped.

Scalding remorse paralyzed him while her hands moved urgently on his bare back, and her lips plucked at his bearded cheek. And there was no reserve in her, no barrier between them. Her love and her substance penetrated his flesh, and her desire inflamed him.

He forced his jaws apart, muscles hardening as his will refused what his body demanded. The searing shame was worse than the relentless hunger.

“What’s the matter? Am I doing it wrong?”

A raw sound tore from his throat, perhaps a sob. He rolled off her, pulling her on top of him and cradling her in his arms. “No. I’m doing it wrong. Can you ever forgive me? I never wanted you to see anything like that.”

“It’s okay, if you’re all right now?”

“No. I need more.” He struggled to his feet, pulling her with him and retrieving the pitcher. His hands were shaking even worse now.

“Here, let me.” She rinsed the mess off and set another pitcher of water to warm. Then she ran cold water into the sink. “Get out of those clothes. They’ve got to soak right away.” She stripped her clothes off into the sink, turned and found him standing still. “Come on,” she said, unfastening his shirt. “Oh, my God!”

Her fingers danced over the wound in his neck. He captured her hand. “That’ll be gone in a few hours.”

“Titus, you’ve broken quarantine! You could be infect-”

“He’s got nothing that hasn’t been loose on Earth for centuries! If there was anything to bring, my ancestors brought it.”

“You don’t know that. There could be mutations-”

“Mihelich says there’s nothing humans can’t handle, and there’s no reason to doubt that.”

“I hope you’re right.” The bleep interrupted them, and Inea poured another packet of crystals into the pitcher, holding it close to her bare chest.

He smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. “I don’t know why, Inea, but the biochemistry out there is the same as that evolved on Earth.”

She held the pitcher to his lips, but he wrapped her hands around it and stepped back to skin out of his stained pants, take his Bell and the bugs’ control box out of the pockets, and drop the Pants in the water. Then he got a glass and poured himself a drink. “To life-micro and otherwise!” When the elixir crossed his tongue, he knew he couldn’t afford the bravado. He chugalugged it and refilled the glass, still unable to sip it.

By the third glass, his hands stopped shaking and he considered what all this must be like from her point of view. She had been unable to give her body to an alien, and now she’d been attacked by a slobbering animal who was about to ask her to go to bed with him. He dropped into the chair, burying his face in his hands. “I’m sorry!”

She slid into his lap and put her arms around him. “I know. But it’s okay. You’re the best man I know, and when you run up against something you can’t handle, I know what kind of a thing it has to be. But the secret of love is that the two oil us together can handle anything.”

“Even the idea of sleeping with something that’s not human?”

“Are you so very sure you’re not human?”

“I used to think I was human, but now I’m not so sure.” He told her how H’lim had extracted English from his mind. “He was in a panic and paralyzed everyone-even me-and then snatched the language from my mind. But no luren I ever heard of could do that. I fought him, and then I was ashamed I’d fought! Is that a human reaction to mind rape?”

“Was Abbot surprised?”

“I don’t know. I was a bit out of it then.”

“Out of it? I’ll say. I had to haul you through the corridors like a zombie.”

He kissed her. “The zombie’s coming alive. Can you handle that yet?”

Try me.

He emptied the pitcher into his glass and wrapped her hands around it. “First I have to confess something that may change your mind.”

“Good. That’s progress. You always used to hit me with those things afterwards.”

“I did a really stupid thing.” He recited Abbot’s warning that he might kill.

“And you think you should have taken his stringers and maybe killed one of them?”

“I vaguely recall thinking that in the bathroom. Inea, I lost control, I didn’t really believe it could happen-”

“Now, you listen to me. You so much as lay a finger on one of them, and you’ll never get me in bed again. Is that understood?”

“Inea!” he protested, the false strength of partial recovery deserting him. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. I may have to develop a string-”

“Well, we’ll see about that, but you don’t accept anything from Abbot, and you don’t go to anyone else without telling me, first! First-do you understand? Not later!”

He nodded, but before he could say anything, her eyes went wide. “The alien! You said the hunger is harder after a dormancy.”

“He’s fed for now, and Abbot’ll bring him a stringer. I think H’lim will accept. He doesn’t have much choice.”

“We’ve got to get there first!” But a vague helplessness suffused her as the heavy drain of ectoplasm weakened her. Absently, she lifted the glass of blood to her lips, but when the smell reached her, her lip curled.

Titus lowered his head to sip from the glass. “We don’t have much time. But first things first-if you’re still willing?”

“We may still have to fight Abbot for H’lim, but we’re in a better situation with you as his father than if Abbot had got him. So we’ve got to find out what kind of folk H’lim’s people are, because maybe Earth shouldn’t send that probe out at all.” She shook her head. “Oh, I can’t think.”

He set the glass aside, and enfolded her in his arms. “It will all be clearer after this.” He kissed her and discovered he was in an embarrassing hurry all of a sudden.

He didn’t get it right for her the first time, but the second and third times made up for that. He woke to find her hanging up their laundry, and the fourth time was pure sharing. He let her sleep while he showered and worried.

Nothing was becoming clearer, and almost six hours had passed while events hurtled on without him. Dressed, he made up some blood, noting how low his supply was and hoping Connie’s trick packing chips arrived soon. He infused the blood with his own ectoplasm, so replete he hardly felt the loss, then left a note for Inea flashing on the vidcom screen:

I don’t know how you could face me when I behaved so shamefully. But you did. Now I’ve got to use the strength you gave me to tend to my obligations. You’re right; together we can do anything.

I love you beyond all measure, T(DR)S Tucking the Thermos under his arm, and cloaking it so it wouldn’t be noticed, he headed for Biomed, a bounce in his step and a whistle on his lips. Those around him, however, trudged bleakly along, wearing grim frowns and muttering darkly about Nagel and W.S. having declared Project Station under strict quarantine. Colby had already invoked rationing anticipating curtailment of supply deliveries.