'Project Earthman?' said Hal. 'What's that?'

Fobo's V-in-V lips parted m a smile to reveal the sharp serrated ridges of bone.

'I can't tell you now because your colleagues on the Gabriel might, just possibly, learn about it from you before it takes effect. However, I think I can safely tell you that we know about your plan for spreading the deadly globin-locking molecule through our atmosphere.'

'There was a time when I would have been horrified to learn that,' Hal said. 'But now it doesn't matter.'

'You don't want to know how we found out about it?'

'I suppose so,' Hal said dully.

'When you asked us for samples of blood, you aroused our suspicion.'

He tapped the end of his absurdly long nose.

'We can't read your thoughts, of course. But concealed in this flesh are two antennae. They are very sensitive; evolution has not dulled our sense of smell as it has among you Terrans. They allow us to detect, through odor, very slight changes in the metabolism of others. When we were asked by one of your emissaries to donate blood for their scientific research, we smelled a – shall I call it furtive? – emanation. We finally did give you the blood. But it was that of a barnyard creature which uses copper in its blood cells. We wogs use magnesium as the oxygen-carrying element in our blood cells.'

'Our virus is useless!'

'Yes. Of course, in time, when you'd learned to read our writing and got hold of our textbooks, you'd have discovered the truth. But before that happened it would be too late, I trust, hope, and pray, for the truth to be of any importance or consequence.

'Meanwhile, we've determined just what you were up to. I'm sorry to say that we had to use force to do it, but since our survival was at stake and you Earthmen were the aggressor, the means justified the ends. A week ago we finally found an opportunity to catch a biochemist and his gapt while they were visiting a laboratory in the college. We injected a drug and hypnotized them. It was difficult getting the truth out of them but only because of the language barrier. However, I've learned a certain amount of American.

'We were horrified. But not really surprised. In fact, because we suspected something was afoot that we wouldn't like, and from the very first contact, we were ready to take action. So, from the first day your ship landed, we've been busy. The vessel, as you know, is directly–'

'Why didn't you hypnotize me?' Hal said. 'You could have done it easily and a long time ago.'

'Because we doubted that you'd be privy to anything that had to do with our blood. Anyway, we needed someone who had necessary technical knowledge. However, we've been watching you, though not so successfully, since you managed to sneak in the lalitha past us.'

'How did you find out about Jeannette?' Hal said. 'And may I see her?'

'I am sorry; I must say no to your second question,' said Fobo. 'As for the first, it was not until two days ago that we managed to develop a listening device sensitive enough to justify installing it in your rooms. As you know, we are far behind you in some departments.'

'I searched the puka every day for a long time,' said Hal. 'Then, when I learned of the stage of development of your electronics, I quit.'

'Meanwhile, our scientists have been busy,' said Fobo. 'The visit of you Earthmen has stimulated us to research in several fields.'

A nurse entered and said, 'Phone, Doctor.'

Fobo left.

Yarrow paced back and forth and smoked another cigarette. Within a minute, Fobo returned.

He said, 'We're going to have company. One of my colleagues, who is watching the ship, tells me Macneff and two Uzzites left in a gig. They should be arriving at the hospital any second now.'

Yarrow stopped in midstride. His jaw dropped. 'Here? How'd they find out?'

'I imagine they have means about which they failed to inform you. Don't be afraid.'

Hal stood motionless. The cigarette, unnoticed, burned until it seared his fingers. He dropped it and crushed it beneath his sole.

Boot heels clicked in the corridor.

Three men entered. One was a tall and gaunt ghost – Macneff, the Archurielite. The others were short and broad-shouldered and clad in black. Their meaty hands, though empty, were hooked, ready to dart into their pockets. Their heavy-lidded eyes stabbed at Fobo and then at Hal.

Macneff strode up to the joat. His pale blue eyes glared; his lipless mouth was drawn back in a skull's smile.

'You unspeakable degenerate!' he shouted.

His arm flashed, and the whip, jerked out of his belt, cracked. Thin red marks appeared on Yarrow's white face and began oozing blood.

'You will be taken back to Earth in chains and there exhibited as an example of the worst pervert, traitor, and – and–!'

He drooled, unable to find words.

'You – who have passed the Elohimeter, who are supposed to be so pure – you have lusted after and lain with an insect!'

'What!'

'Yes. With a thing that is even lower than a beast of the field! What even Moses did not think of when he forbade union between man and beast, what even the Forerunner could not have guessed when he affirmed the law and set the utmost penalty for it – you have done! You, Hal Yarrow, the pure, the Lamedh-wearer!'

Fobo rose and said in a deep voice, 'Might I suggest and stress that you are not quite right in your zoological classification? It is not the class of Insecta but the class of the Chordata pseudarthropoda, or words to that effect.'

Hal said, 'What?' He could not think.

The wog growleld, 'Shut up. Let me talk.'

He swung to face Macneff. 'You know about her?'

'You are shib that I know her! Yarrow thought he was getting away with something. But, no matter how clever these unrealists are, they're always tripped up. In this case, it was his asking Turnboy about those Frenchmen that fled Earth. Turnboy, who is very zealous in his attitude toward the Sturch, reported the conversation. It lay among my papers for quite a while. When I came across it, I turned it over to the psychologists. They told me that the joat's question was a deviation from the pattern expected of him; a thing totally irrelevent unless it was connected to something we didn't know about him.

'Moreover, his refusal to grow a beard was enough to make us suspicious. A man was put on his trail. He saw Yarrow buying twice the groceries he should have. Also, when you wogs learned the tobacco habit from us and began making cigarettes too, he bought them from you. The conclusion was obvious. He had a female in his apartment.

'We didn't think it'd be a wog female, for she wouldn't have to stay hidden. Therefore, she must be human. But we couldn't imagine how she got here on Ozagen. It was impossible for him to have stowed her away on the Gabriel. She must either have come here in a different ship or be descended from people who had.

'It was Yarrow's talk with Turnboy that furnished the clue. Obviously, the French had landed here and she was a descendant. We didn't know how the joat had found her. It wasn't important. We'll find out, anyhow.'

'You're due to find out some other things, too,' Fobo said calmly. 'How did you discover she wasn't human?'

Yarrow muttered, 'I've got to sit down.'

He swayed to the wall and sank into a chair. One of the Uzzites started to move toward him. Macneff waved the man back and said, 'Turnboy got a wog to read to him a book on the history of man on Ozagen. He came across so many references to the lalitha that the suspicion was bound to rise that the girl might be the one.

'Last week one of the wog physicians, while talking to Turnboy, mentioned that he had once examined a lalitha. Later, he said, she had run away. It wasn't hard for us to guess where she was hiding!'

'My boy,' said Fobo, turning to Hal, 'didn't you read We'enai's book?'

Hal shook his head. 'We started it, but Jeannette mislaid it.'

'And doubtless saw to it that you had other things to think of... they are good at diverting a man's mind. Why not? That is their purpose in life.

'Hal, I'll explain. The lalitha are the highest example of mimetic parasitism known. Also, they are unique among sentient beings. Unique in that all are female.

'If you'd read on in We'enai, you'd have found that fossil evidence shows that about the time that Ozagenian man was still an insectivorous marmoset-like creature, he had in his family group not only his own females but the females of another phylum. These animals looked and probably stank enough like the females of prehomo marmoset to be able to live and mate with them. They seemed mammalian, but dissection would have indicated their pseudoarthropodal ancestry.

'It's reasonable to suppose that these precursors of the lalitha were man's parasites long before the marmosetoid stage. They may have met him when he first crawled out of the sea. Originally bisexual, they became female. And they adapted their shape, through an unknown evolutionary process, to that of the reptile's and primitive mammal's. And so on.

'What we do know is that the lalitha was Nature's most amazing experiment in parasitism and parallel evolution. As man metamorphosed into higher forms, so the lalitha kept pace with him. All female, mind you, depending upon the male of another phylum for the continuance of the species.

'It is astonishing the way they become integrated into the prehuman societies, the pithecanthropoid and neanderthaloid steps. Only when Homo sapiens developed did their troubles begin. Some families and tribes accepted them; others killed them. So they resorted to artifice and disguised themselves as human women. A thing not hard to do – unless they became pregnant.

'In which case, they died.'

Hal groaned and put his hands over his face.

'Painful but real, as our acquaintance Macneff would say,' said Fobo. 'Of course – such a condition required a secret sorority. In those societies where the lalitha was forced to camouflage, she would, once pregnant, have to leave. And perish in some hidden place among her kind, who would then take care of the nymphs' – here Hal shuddered – 'until they were able to go into human cultures. Or else be introduced as foundlings or changelings.

'You'll find quite a tribal lore about them – fables and myths make them central or peripheral characters quite frequently. They were regarded as witches, demons, or worse.

'With the introduction of alcohol in primitive times, a change for the better came to the lalitha. Alcohol made them sterile. At the same time, barring accident, disease, or murder, it made them immortal.'