“Impressive advances,” repeated H’lim, circling a workbench and nervously repositioning glassware. “Here in this lab, I know what I’m doing. I won’t accidentally provide you with some bit of technology you can’t yet control. But the ship-Dr. Colby, that’s not my field. Some offhand remark could do your civilization a great deal of damage.”

“You won’t come?” asked someone in the back.

“I will go,” answered H’lim gravely. “For my own reasons, I must. I’d prefer to explore Kylyd in solitude, but I understand that is not to be. Therefore, I’ll go.” He tapped a used Petri dish on the bench, frowning at it. Someone had cleaned pizza crumbs off the bench into it.

Titus could almost see the thoughts churning in H’lim’s mind. For the first time, he no longer cherished hope of escape and riches. Titus had won. Abbot’s message had not gone and, with the probe destroyed, neither had the humans“. ”I’ll answer your questions, but only to satisfy your curiosity, without providing any `impressive advances.“ At least I hope I shall not destroy my generous hosts.”

He snapped the dish down onto the hard surface and strode out the door. As they all crowded out of the lab, Colby edged over to Titus who was wrestling with his own whirling emotions. “Have you any idea where Abbot’s gone? He was supposed to meet us here. I’ve left messages for him everywhere, but nobody’s seen him in hours.”

Oh, no, now what? “You tried my lab?”

“Several times.”

“Maybe he’s in Kylyd and plans to meet us there?”

“Maybe, but it’s not like him to just disappear.”

Titus grunted noncommittally. He didn’t even have time to drop Inea a message warning her that Abbot was up to something new. As H’lim’s trusted escort, he had to hurry to catch up. Maybe it’s a false alarm. Maybe Abbot’s sleeping.

On the way to the locker room, Colby walked beside H’lim assuring him of the various protective features Biomed had designed for his suit. When they’d all dressed, she led the way back to Biomed, saying, “Protection or no, we won’t make you face the direct sunlight.”

As soon as they emerged from the airlock into the connection tube to Kylyd, H’lim’s knees sagged, and he eyed the flimsy material around them with distrust. Titus, too, felt the drag of the sun like the impact of the noise of an unshielded jet engine. When they reached Kylyd’s hull, the luren leaned against the bulkhead and closed his eyes, taking attention away from Titus as they both recovered.

Seeing the alien wilt, everyone spoke at once. “Are you all right?” “My God, if we’ve hurt him.” “It can’t be ultraviolet this time.” “He’s sensitive to magnetics, remember?” “Hardly any flux out there.” “Less in here, by Dearman’s measurements.” “What about particles? This hull stops everything-maybe even neutrinos. Has anybody measured. ?” “Quiet!”

That last was Colby’s voice. Titus stiffened his knees and moved up beside H’lim. “Better now?” he asked the luren, only then noticing the single Cognitive representative, who had a camera trained steadily on H’lim.

“I wish I could stay in here.” H’lim’s voice gained strength and he finally stood away from the wall and looked around as if to get his bearings.

This corridor was distorted and crumpled in spots, but had been cleared, leaving gaping holes in the walls. H’lim scanned a wall, muttered something about human lights in the luren tongue, then led off with purposeful strides. Titus, squinting at the spot where the luren had stared, imagined he saw some dim variations in the paint that might have been symbols. There might be spectral studies of the interior on file by now, but Titus hadn’t had time to look them up.

And suddenly, he was more excited than he’d been since he was a boy. H’lim was finally in a mood to reveal the very things Titus had always wanted to know. But more, he might well give away the secrets Titus had been digging for-how both Earth’s peoples would be regarded in the galaxy.

As escort, Titus had the privilege of clinging to H’lim’s elbow, catching every gesture, every prolonged look, and he intended to make the most of it.

Trooping after H’lim, the humans jockeyed for position, vying for attention. Finally one physicist won out, a gruff-voiced barrel of a man with a slight limp even under lunar gravity. “You handle that suit as if you know what you’re doing,” the physicist observed, “but this ship didn’t carry a full complement of vacuum suits. Nor does it have escape pods. Is that the height of arrogance, the depths of depravity, or simply bad design?”

Amused, H’lim answered, “Try flawless workmanship.”

“Ah, but you crashed. Not so flawless.”

“It’s an old ship,” answered H’lim.

“Ah, broken down, then.”

“Oh, no. It was flawlessly designed for conditions other than encountered.”

“And what conditions were encountered?”

“You’ve got me there.” H’lim’s command of idioms Titus seldom used had grown rapidly. He seemed to have mastered English, but that, Titus reminded himself, was an illusion.

H’lim led them to what had been identified as a crew dormitory-until they’d discovered that orl were animals. “You’ve cleaned up in here.”

“I’ve told you,” said Colby, “that we’ve saved every shred of orl tissue we found. Most of it was in here and the adjacent room. You’ve seen what explosive decompression did to the tissues.”

The room had been twisted off-true only a little. H’lim toured the place, touching wall fixtures and the fittings where bed frames had been stapled to the floor, lingering wistfully at the broken lighting panels.

Someone noticed, and prompted, “Perhaps with a little data, we could duplicate those lighting panels.”

H’lim shook his head. “If I knew how to make them, I’d made some by now.” Then he led the way on a whirlwind tour through the rest of the ship, identifying for them the captain’s office, the crew’s quarters, the orl feed lockers, the water recycling plant, the air scrubbers, and the room where he’d been found, which had retained some pressure.

“I was preparing to-dine,” he explained delicately. Titus hung on H’lim’s every word, but his eyes roved down each cross corridor seeking Abbot, worrying about what his father was up/to now. Had he discovered his transmitter missing? If so, how long ago? Was there any way to get word to Inea? He saw the opening where Brink’s had their security checkpost. It had a line into the station. He toyed with the idea of cutting away just for a moment to leave Inea a message that it wasn’t all over yet.

Remembering the look on her face when H’lim had put the purple fluid, the precious booster, away, he took a few steps, but Colby called him back. “This way, Titus!”

Nearby was H’lim’s living quarters. Inside, he opened wall panels nobody had suspected existed, found a dead computer terminal, shook out some liquid containers long since boiled empty, collected a set of grooming tools, a couple of suits of clothes, and the rest of the pieces to his Thizan set, stuffed it all into a small bag and presented it to Colby. “Do I have to beg or fight to keep these?”

“Neither, but I suspect someone will ask to examine them.” She gestured to the open compartments. “Is the whole ship equipped with these?”

“I suppose, though I doubt they’ll open the way the ship’s frame is twisted. And don’t ask me where they are, what they have in them, or how they ought to open. I was just a passenger. I actually didn’t expect these to open.”

She hefted the bag. “You do travel light.”

“One learns.”

“Mass limits?” asked someone eagerly.

“No. Regardless of what has been dragged along, it’s never what’s needed. Much simpler to acquire items appropriate to the local conditions.”

A woman at the rear laughed ruefully.

When asked about the still minimally operational work stations along the central corridor, H’lim said, “They have to do with running the ship, but I don’t know how to operate them.” Having seen how quickly H’lim picked up the station’s programs, Titus thought the luren might figure these out, if he wanted to. Abbot had broken into some of the ship’s systems that Cognitive and Technical didn’t know about.