He was unfailingly polite and graciously cooperative, obscuring his reticence under an effusive generosity. “I know genetics and commerce, but not politics or cartography. Believe me, I’d like your message to reach my employers even more than you would. However, I don’t know where I am, and I’ve even less idea of how to locate home from here.”

Questioned on astrogation, he could only cite his ineptitude with that branch of mathematics. Of Kylyd’s stellar drive he said, “I don’t think anyone understands why it works, but its revolutionized galactic commerce.”

That was their first clue that there was a civilization out there. Closer questioning only revealed that there were many species allied into political units, which never seemed stable enough to traders. H’lim’s people, however, dealt little with other species and even his ignorance was long out of date. How long? There was no telling, he claimed, since he did not understand astrogation, and never could anticipate the elapsed time of a trip. He sounded much like a time zone-hopping businessman who depended on his calculator to compute local time, so no one considered he might be lying.

Knowing he was starving while waiting for Mihelich’s cloning of orl blood to yield results, they offered him human blood from the infirmary’s stores, cloned and guaranteed sterile blood. That’s precisely what it was, cloned, dead and sterile. But he accepted it with good grace and did his best to choke it down. It took more fortitude than had the acceptance of Titus’s supply, which he now welcomed whenever Titus could get some in to him. That, at least, was infused.

Meanwhile, H’lim redoubled his efforts to help Mihelich. He was under no constraints about working around the clock in plain sight-they knew he was alien. So late one night Titus found him poring over the vidcom. As Titus came in, he looked up. “You don’t have much of a vocabulary, do you?”

“What?” That had never been one of Titus’s problems.

“Chorion,” challenged H’lim.

“Never heard the word.”

“Choroid,” he said.

Titus leaned over his shoulder to see what he was reading. “H’lim, that’s a biology dictionary.”

“I know. I’m a biologist-I think. The study of animals, yes?”

“Definitely not my field.”

“True. Have you made any progress in your field?”

“We’re getting some sense from Wild Goose now, and we’ve refined our guesses with all the new data. If you came along a direct line from your home planet, we’ll find it.”

“I couldn’t begin to guess about that, but it doesn’t really matter. The signal will be picked up by someone.”

“Someone who’d care enough to respond?”

“Who knows? But I’m going to compose a message to go with Earth’s, so that whoever hears it will route it to someone who would care.”

“You want to go home.”

“Yes.” H’lim turned from the vidcom, waved cheerily at the surveillance cameras, then turned them off. “Do you really think that makes privacy?”

“I’m staking my life on it,” said Titus, producing his Thermos from his briefcase. While H’lim drank, Tims mused, “I’d have found anything the humans left running, but Abbot might have a bug or two in here. I don’t think so, though. He prefers to use Influence.”

“What little you have of it, it seems to suffice.”

“We wouldn’t fare very well if we went back with you, would we?”

“Hard to say. From the two of you, I’d say your strain has become devious, perhaps sly. But then you admit you were sent as master spies to manipulate these humans and vie with each other covertly. I doubt such skills exist at home, however I’ve led a sheltered life-as you say Andre has.”

Mihelich and Mirelle were the only two H’lim saw more of than he did of Titus and Abbot. “Andre’s a specialist,” Titus said.

“Yes.” Even in private, H’lim refrained from criticizing Earth’s lifestyle, though he often registered surprise at first encountering a peculiarity. Titus believed the man had traveled on diverse worlds and learned the trick of accepting the strange on its own terms.

Titus dug into the briefcase again. “Brought you some items from Kylyd that my analysts are through with. Can you tell me where these were manufactured?” He set some odd bits of metal on the desk.

H’lim scooped them up eagerly. “Where are the rest?” he demanded with an intensity that startled Titus.

“Rest? I think that’s all there were. Were they manufactured from materials found on Lur?”

“I don’t know.” He began sorting them and counting-

“It might give me a clue to the spectrum to look for.

H’lim looked around. “Mirelle would demand to know what they’re for, but you’re not the least bit interested.”

Titus really hadn’t thought about it, but now he looked at the oddments. “Game pieces?”

“You’ve lost Thizan?”

“Abbot might know more than I.” Titus pulled up a chair, suddenly intensely curious. “Tell me about it.”

Several hours later, Titus left with sketches for the missing pieces of the board game which was not unlike chess but had more kinds of pieces and a more complex board. Technically, the time had been wasted, but he felt almost as relaxed and refreshed as if he’d slept a full night, and he wanted to forget all about everything else but building the set and mastering the game.

He was jarred back to reality when he found Inea in his office with a report on Abbot’s doings gleaned from her little bugs. “He’s discovered his power source is missing!”

He told her that H’lim would be adding a message to the probe’s signal. “Abbot may not think his message is so important anymore.”

“He’s been running around like crazy, gathering components to rebuild the thing.”

“Are you sure that’s what he’s up to?” They spent the hours until Titus’s first conference of the day analyzing Abbot’s moves.

“Don’t worry,” said Inea as he left. “I’ll stay late tonight and get those figures from Wild Goose cleaned up.”

Titus went on about his business, sternly putting aside his infatuation with the board game. The news from Earth had worsened, the probe construction was going swiftly but not smoothly, and despite everything he’d learned from H’lim, he felt less confidence in his targeting efforts than ever before. Maybe H’lim doesn’t know much, but he’s not telling everything he does know. Those starships don’t travel in straight lines-I know it!

But Wild Goose’s preliminary figures had confirmed the straight-line trajectory constructed from all other detection devices operating during the approach. The very earliest figures though, had eluded them. Wild Goose had been the first to spot the approaching object, but that data had a lot of noise in it due to the onboard malfunction which still hadn’t totally cleared up. The engineers hypothesized that some kind of wave from the ship’s drive had disrupted onboard electronics, but there was no proof of that.

Late during the graveyard shift, the sun was coming up outside, making Titus suddenly tired as well as hungry. Inea wasn’t in her apartment, so he returned to the observatory, worried that she’d fallen asleep over her desk.

The lab was deserted, the lights dim, and there were two figures behind the glass walls beyond the computers. A singularly strong Influence pervaded the atmosphere, throbbing with hunger.

H’lim!

Titus charged across the room.