“That’s the problem!” retorted Titus, hunger eroding his patience. “Any such volunteer would sicken and die! Humans aren’t orl. Sex with another human isn’t enough.”

“How do you know!”

Titus sighed and quit keyboarding his report. “I’ve seen those of my blood cause a lot of death in a lot of different ways. If you doubt me, ask Abbot.”

Inea recoiled, stung. Titus finished his report. She said, “Well, then maybe you could convince him to take the volunteer to bed? After all, I finally accepted you.”

“He’d never do it. He thinks of orl as animals!”

“But humans are not orl!” she insisted.

“It doesn’t matter. He’d never be potent with a human.”

“Did you ask him?”

“I don’t know him well enough yet.”

“If you’re supposed to be his father, you’re supposed to tell him about the birds and bees.”

Titus laughed. The release felt good, and when Inea joined in, he reveled in it. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw text from Connie scroll onto his screen.

Inea read over his shoulder. “Bamaby Peter? That’s the ship you arrived in. It doesn’t usually carry much cargo.”

“It’s bringing the W.S. investigators. And this”-he indicated one of Connie’s code groups-“means it’s also bringing enough blood for me, H’lim, and Abbot, too. So we won’t have to recruit another human volunteer-yet.”

“The blood isn’t all you need.”

“We can survive on what we gather from human proximity.”

“But-”

“Inea! It’s become too dangerous to use Influence, and stringers are much too dangerous without Influence. If we can’t manage, we’ll have to either go dormant or die.”

“You really mean that?”

He nodded, acknowledged Connie’s message, and shut down. “Will you come home with me now, or are you too mad at me?”

She put her hands on his shoulders. “I’m more scared than mad. I don’t want you to die.”

He relaxed into the warmth of her touch. “I wasn’t-not as long as you’re willing to be mine.” He lifted her hands off his shoulders. “Let’s not start that here, though.”

The next day, after cautioning H’lim not to invoke the slightest whiff of Influence, Titus escorted him into the conference room flanked by a new set of four Brink’s guards, two men and two women, who were punctilious but white-lipped.

Those at the long polished table were pinched and drawn. Conversation arrested, their eyes followed the alien around the table to his place at Colby’s right. Titus admired H’lim’s composure and wondered if the ordinary clothing he’d been issued helped him feel less like a prisoner.

The seat reserved for H’lim had extra space around it and was between Titus and Abbot. There was no water glass or electronic doodling pad in front of H’lim’s place, and the computer terminal there was locked. Titus shoved his pad in front of H’lim, demonstrating its controls, then used his master key to unlock the terminal while he remarked to one of the Brink’s guards, “We’re short one pad here.”

The woman looked to Colby who sketched a nod. Before long, the pad was produced. Enabling the large screen en the wall behind her to display their graphs, Colby called them to order, inviting each to report on the effect H’lim’s escape had had on their work.

Titus marveled at the furor sparked by the escape. The station was being scoured for biological contamination; everyone was to be put through a psychological and medical sieve; Brinks was investigating for laxity; a copy of the computer records had been impounded; Food Services was shut down for sterilization and institution of stricter procedures; Environmental was double-screening every technician’s move from a remote location; locks were being changed; the gym showers and swimming pool had been shut down; and progress on the probe had halted because all of these measures required staggering numbers of staff hours.

As each department head reported, Titus saw the others darting covert glances at H’lim who listened impassively, jotting notes in luren script. The proceeding took on the aspect of a trial, with H’lim the defendant. When at last Accounting gave an estimate of the cost of it all, it was as if H’lim had been indicted for grand larceny. The point was not lost on the luren merchant.

“It does not stop there,” announced Colby. “Each of us will undergo psychological testing at short intervals. The tests will be administered and evaluated from Luna Station. Furthermore, every official decision, every act of every technician, will be evaluated at Luna Station. Personnel are en route aboard Barnaby Peter to Luna to set up a department there, and new landlines will be laid to carry the data without solar interference. Aberrant behavior or hypnotic influence will be detected immediately.

“Also aboard Barnaby Peter are the World Sovereignties investigators, a group now composed of volunteers who’ll share our quarantine for the duration. Half of them will remain in Luna Station to review the decisions of those who come here.

“Are there any additions, suggestions, or questions?”

Absolute stillness wrapped those at the table. When Colby glanced down to consult her notes, H’lim said softly, “Dr. Colby, may I speak?”

Her head snapped up, then she scanned the tense faces about the table. Every eye was on H’lim. Titus suddenly wondered if anyone would note a resemblance between H’lim and the two Earth-luren flanking him. He had to restrain the surge of Influence that came unbidden. The meeting was being recorded and Influence wouldn’t fool the recorders.

“As a matter of fact, the issues connected to your future situation are next on the agenda.” Scanning the grim faces, she announced, “Dr. Sa’ar has the floor.”

H’lim had heard the phrase more than a dozen times now, and copied the human mannerisms with haunting exactitude. “I understand I have put you to trouble and expense. The manner in which I did this is more disturbing to you than I had expected. I have made a grave error. I wish to explain and to offer to make amends. Would this be out of order?”

“Not at all,” replied Colby.

H’lim painted a graphic picture of his awakening and confinement, emphasizing the control the humans had exerted on his information access. He cited the promised spacesuit that never arrived, and the “magnetic noise,” the lack of privacy, and a pattern of deprivation that seemed to him to have been engineered by an expert in his people’s physiology.

“When you asked me to construct a message to draw a ship here, I entertained two hypotheses. Either you were exactly what you said you were, or you were enemies bent on using me against my own kind. I had to ascertain the truth. I discovered, to my chagrin, that my suspicions were groundless.”

Colby asked, “What precisely had you suspected us of? Who did you think we might be?”

H’lim gazed at the terminal set into the table. “You are like enough to one of the known species that you might have been recruited from them.”

“But you admitted to me,” said Colby, “that you had contact with Titus’s mind. Surely, had this been an elaborate deception, you would have learned of it?”

“Not necessarily, though that would have been the most difficult and expensive part of the deception, and so the stakes would have had to have been very high. I’m a stock breeder, a merchant, an ordinary working man, not a spy. These matters are wholly beyond me. But I’m now convinced that you are what you say you are, and that therefore I owe you a great debt.

“If you will launch your probe, then I will supply the message you requested. But I must know if you intend the probe to lure the respondent away from this solar system. If you were to signal from here, with the more powerful ground-based equipment, there would be a greater chance of attracting attention quickly, so later winning trust.”

“Of those very people,” said Colby, “whom you thought had kidnapped you? Whom you thought had tried to brainwash you with well designed torture? Who are those people who look so much like us?”