“She’s doing what I should have been doing, if I had any sense. Tally looks like a human, but he isn’t one. Graves says he’s an embodied computer. Back on the planetoid he had his brain popped right out of his head, and it didn’t worry him a bit. Come on. Maybe there’s some way to get him functioning again.”

At first sight it seemed a forlorn hope. The body was limp and lifeless, and the top of the skull had been ripped away to reveal the stark white of broken bone.

“First thing,” Nenda said. “Gotta stop the bleeding.”

“No.” Hans Rebka was reaching into the brain cavity. “That looks bad, but it’s not the worst problem. We’ve got to get his brain back in charge of his body, quickly, or he’s done for. Tell Atvar H’sial to hold him. Tightly.” The arms and legs were beginning to jerk as Rebka felt under the brain. “See, here’s the problem. That blow jarred the neural connection loose. I’m trying to reseat it. Anything happening?”

“Ye-e-s. Yes, indeed.” It was E. C. Tally who answered, in a slurred and gurgling voice. “Thank — you. It was apparent to me… at once, that the blow had severed the brain-body interface, but without… sensory inputs I had no idea what happened next. Nor could I… communicate the problem.” The bright blue eyes opened and blinked away blood. Tally glanced around him. “I am now functional. Relatively speaking. I am operating with backup-mode interfaces, but for the time being they appear to be adequate. Where are the Zardalu?”

“Gone. For the moment.” Darya had taken the loose top of the skull from Atvar H’sial and was gazing at it hopelessly. It was a mass of bloody, matted hair and sharp-edged bone. “They took Kallik with them.”

“They will surely be back. Allow me.” Tally reached out and removed the cap of skin, hair, and bone from Darya’s hands. He studied it, his blue eyes intent. “The front hinges are gone, completely sheared away. But the rear pins appear intact. They may hold it in position, provided that I do not make sudden movements or allow my head to move far from the vertical.”

He became silent again.

“Are you all right?” Rebka asked.

Tally waved a hand at him. “I have been running diagnostic programs. I had hoped that the only major problem would be the inevitable necrosis of the skull, deprived of its blood supply. But now I know that there are other more serious difficulties. This body is close to end-point failure. It cannot function for more than another few hours; twenty at the outside, in continuous operation. Perhaps twice that long if it is given adequate rest. After that I will become unable to move; then I will lose all sensory inputs. It is important that I transfer potentially useful information to you at once, before any of this happens.”

As Tally spoke he was trying to maneuver the loose skull into position. It would not seat cleanly. After a few seconds he gave up the effort. “There is also more structural damage than I thought. We may as well bandage it as best we can and forget it. This is as good a result as I am able to achieve.” He sat on the floor with his hands to his head, while Hans Rebka carefully wound the bandage again around the bloodied hair and skin.

“Now,” Tally went on. “May I speak? Prepare yourselves to receive information from me. It would be a tragedy if facts that I have already collected could not be passed to you because of my own motor systems malfunctions.”

“You can start anytime. I’m listening.” The episode with the Zardalu had left Louis Nenda pale, but not from fear. He was scowling, and his nostrils were dilated. “Any information you can give about those blue bastards, I want.”

“There is one factor that Julius Graves says is of overwhelming importance. He instructed me to tell it to you, if any possible opportunity arose. Did you see the ring of pouches on each of the Zardalu?”

“Like a bead necklace, all the way around their bodies? Sure. Hard to miss ’em.”

“But you probably do not know what they are. They are reproductive pouches. Young are developing within each of the swollen beads. The Zardalu appear to be hermaphroditic, and any one of them will produce multiple live offspring. We saw young ones, actually appearing. And they eat ravenously, as soon as they are born.”

“There’s plenty of food available around here.”

“Adequate for us, and for the adult Zardalu forms. But the immature Zardalu are mainly meat-eaters. According to what Kallik heard, the Zardalu consider that inferior young will develop if feeding is restricted to what is available from the food suppliers here.”

“What do you mean, inferior?” Nenda asked. “We’re all eating it. Inferior how?

“I do not know. But Julius Graves is convinced that unless the Zardalu are allowed to leave soon and go where they wish, you and the hostages will be seen as a necessary food supply for their young. Compliance with their demands is most urgent.”

Darya was nauseated. But Rebka just shrugged, and Nenda said, “So we’re all gonna be kiddie munchies. Great. I don’t see knowin’ that does much for us. What else do you have?”

“I can take you at once to the chamber where the Zardalu are located, if that is your wish.”

Rebka glanced at the others. “Not quite the top item on our agenda, is it? We don’t know what we’d do with it if we had it. Maybe we’d like that later. What else?”

“Something whose value cannot be determined, though Steven Graves argues that it is significant. Kallik is the only one who can communicate with them. The Hymenopts were the slaves of the Zardalu in the distant past, and the Hymenopt language has not changed. Kallik said—”

“Hold on a minute, Tally,” Hans Rebka interrupted. “You keep on telling us Kallik said this, Kallik said that. I don’t think we can trust a single thing that Kallik tells us. The Zardalu have taken her over completely.”

“Uh-uh.” Nenda shook his head. “It looked that way, but it ain’t so. Kallik and me, we’ve got codes we use when we can’t speak. You couldn’t read that flickering pattern of her eyes, when she was down groveling in front of the middle Zardalu. But I could. She was saying to me, over and over, ‘Wait. Not yet.’ She knew I was ready to bust out, an’ she was telling me it wasn’t the time.”

“Did she say anything else to you?” Rebka asked. “Any details of their weapons, or maybe their weak spots?”

“Hey, be reasonable. Those eye codes aren’t a real language. But I’ll tell you one thing Kallik told me, indirectly. The Zardalu are strong. Nothing should be able to hold an adult Hymenopt. We couldn’t do it, if we all tried at once. That Zardalu did it easy. We’ll need something special if we’re gonna fight ’em.”

“But Kallik was weakened,” Darya said. “Even before they tore her leg off, she was injured. She might be dead by now.”

“Naw.” Nenda was turning back to Tally. “You lot just don’t know your Hymenopts. Takes a lot more than that to worry Kallik — she’s regrowing that leg right now, won’t think twice about it. But it makes the point even stronger, and it’s not such a nice one. See, if a Zardalu could hold her, and do that to her, it’d turn any of us into mincemeat. And talking of mincemeat, let’s hear the rest from Tally before the baby Zardalu start squeakin’ for dinner. What else did Kallik say?”

The embodied computer had sunk down to a sitting position and was holding the sides of his head. “She was listening to them when we were first captured, before they realized that she could understand Zardalu speech. By the way, Kallik does not hold a high opinion of their intelligence. They did not worry themselves with what they had already said in front of her, even after they learned that she could understand them. She heard much of their conversation. Apparently they were captured by The-One-Who-Waits, or something like him, during the very last days of the Great Rising. They were transported here already in stasis. At that time, planet after planet ruled by the Zardalu Communion had joined the revolution. Zardalu were being systematically exterminated, and their last few outposts overrun and wiped out. These fourteen individuals had fled to space to escape. They were the last ones left. Kallik says they think that they are the only surviving members of their species.”