“Abbot’s project didn’t save the probe, and the Array isn’t really the right tool for signaling Earth. If we lose it, science loses a lot but our strategic position won’t be that much worse. The other antenna mast is almost finished and might be powerful enough to reach Earth without a relay.” Colby couldn’t ask Earth for a decision, so she paced around her desk like a caged animal several times before she finally told Titus, “We’ve got ta risk the Array. With the diversions planned, it’s possible they’ll never notice.”

As the sun rose over the station, Titus’s vitality sank, and he forced himself to check and recheck everything for fatigue errors. But a few days later, he had the tabulations ready for transmission with every eventuality covered. He also had a test message ready for Connie, with a full report set to dump if she returned the code signal. It was a risk. If ground control at the ballistic launch site caught the interference their computers were filtering out of Titus’s signal and realized that it, itself, was a signal, it could blow the entire operation because they’d think it was the secessionists breaching security. The resulting tightening of security could ruin all of Connie’s plans.

Just before the transmission time, Colby cordoned off Titus’s lab, filling it with Brink’s auditors, claiming that they had to keep up with their paperwork. This attracted no attention because the auditors had been working constantly, all over the station, and since the blockade, Colby had been using them to keep people too busy to brood.

With that security in place, Titus wanted to make sure his black box was functioning properly, so he pulled the console apart to go over all the connections. It was only then that he found one board he couldn’t account for. At first he thought fatigue was dulling his mind, but when he couldn’t find that board on any circuit diagram, he realized he’d found Abbot’s alternative transmitter-or, at the very least, his means of communicating with the Tourists.

“Something wrong, Dr. Shiddehara?” asked a guard.

“Uh, no, just have to replace this. Intermittent short.” He wasn’t challenged as he deposited the board in his office and brought forth another, wholly meaningless, one which he inserted without connecting it to anything.

On Colby’s command, Titus sent his calculations, tying in local weather predictions at the launch site and known orbital movements of the blockade ships. The media had surmised that the blockaders were preparing to take Luna Station, the last bastion of World Sovereignties on the moon’s surface.

As planned, Titus got no acknowledgment that his data had been received, only the computer’s tedious, digit by digit handshake with groundside. The data went somewhere, but he had no way of knowing who got it.

As they waited for the launch hour, and the moment when Titus would have the chance to correct errors in the orbit, Titus went into his office to pocket Abbot’s device. He didn’t expect to be searched on the way out, but if so, he’d just say he was taking lr to the shop to get the short fixed. Checking the console, he round that Connie had solicited his report with her proper code, and in return his black box had captured a brief note from her.

“Next caravan from Luna Station has supply for you. Stay on ton of A. We’re doing our best.”

Heart pounding, he began to enter a warning to divert her efforts to the “tainers, and then realized that the `tainers were already buttoned up, and no doubt the decoy caravan was now loading at Luna Station. It’s too late. Whatever miracles had been pulled off, whatever sacrifices had bought those miracles the blood would be destroyed when the convoy blew up in the blockaders’ faces.

It was with heavy but shaking hands that he brought up the Eighth Array, grabbed the orbital data, recomputed the orbit, and nudged the “tainers back on target, a circle a hundred fifty yards wide not half a mile from the station. It would be a ”hard“ landing, and there would be some loss, especially since the target area could not be cleared of all rocks. But it had been leveled and smoothed at one time, for use as a staging area when the station had been built. Most of the supplies would survive impact.

When Titus emerged, he found Abbot talking to a guard. He cut his conversation off and followed Titus. “You had the Array up, didn’t you? Colby wouldn’t let me in. Titus-”

He didn’t break stride, the stolen board stiff and heavy in his lab coat pocket. “If you want to know what the auditors found, talk to Colby.”

“Titus, you don’t know what you’re doing-”

“-and right now, I’m too tired to learn.” Titus hit the lift call button and was shocked when a door opened before “his nose. He slipped in and hit the door-close before Abbot could follow. He left his father sputtering. I can’t believe I’ve got his transmitter and he never knew! But Titus didn’t even feel a sense of triumph. Abbot had seemed so haggard.

By the time the doors opened again, Titus felt the letdown ot tension. Nothing would happen now for days with the “tainers in freefall orbit.

He returned to his room, weary from the weight of the daylight outside and the cold knowledge that there would be no blood for him after all. Even Inea’s squeal of delight as he showed her his plunder didn’t raise his spirits.

Together, with a kind of solemn ceremony, they broke the board in a dozen pieces and stuffed some of them down the disposal. Titus felt like a traitor not telling her that he had the other transmitter intact, hidden in H’lim’s room.

That night, despite everything Inea could do, not one drop of orl blood would stay down. Covered with cold sweat, Titus curled around his aching middle and huddled in one corner of the bed, struggling to breathe gently enough not to set off the perpetual dry heaves.

I could live. If I develop a string. He’d accepted this job with the knowledge it might become necessary, but the idea had never been real to him before. I’m taking ectoplasm from Inea, and in this condition, I can’t help her replace it. I can’t go on like this.

He hugged himself tighter and tried not to think. In a few moments, he’d get up and rig his wires around the bed so he could sleep. Presently, trickles of a seductive aroma invaded his sinuses. His throat melted open and surrounded the sweetness as if to swallow the nourishment.

No. Inea! Before he could move, she thrust a hard rim against his mouth and tilted it so the blood ran down his throat and he was forced to swallow. Fresh human blood. Her blood, still warm from her body, replete with her life, aching with her love. Shaking with the need for it, he tried to thrust it away, knowing there was no end to what he would do for more.

She pushed the glass back at his mouth, and he saw the tourniquet still around her arm, the clumsy mark where the needle had gone into the vein. “Drink, Titus, or it will go to waste.”

He did. He couldn’t help it. After a bit, he found himself sitting crosslegged, cradling the glass he’d licked clean and inhaling the aroma. It hadn’t been enough. Would any amount be enough? “Abbot put you up to this.”

“No. It was my own idea. H’lim told me it probably wouldn’t be as addictive if I gave it to you in a glass.”

“H’lim said that?” His eyes fixed on the tourniquet and he battled to release it.

“You can have more,” she said, proffering the arm. She registered surprise, and maybe disappointment, when he only removed the tourniquet. “H’lim said maybe human blood would settle your digestion so you could accept some orl blood.”

He coiled the tourniquet expertly around his hand and tied it. “Inea, you shouldn’t have done it. One human can’t support one of us, and I don’t dare start with anyone else.”

“Very soon, H’lim will have his booster ready.”

“If that’s no more successful than the orl blood, it will be worse than useless.”