he looked rather bedraggled. He sat at Erin's feet, politely accepting a taste of people food now and then, but not being demanding about it. Denton had selected soft music to form a warm, bland background. Neither he nor Erin felt especially talkative. Both seemed content to smile as eye contact was made, to touch hands now and then across the little table. Erin selected a nice tidbit and, not taking her eyes off Dent's, held it down for Mop. When her offering was not seized immediately, she turned her head. Mop was seated at the closed door to the gym, his hair standing up oddly, a low growl issuing from his throat. «Hey,» Erin said. «Want a nibble?» Mop ignored her. She had never heard him growl in just that manner. She felt a shiver of dread, for there was definite warning in Mops' stance, in his steady, low growling. She walked to the gym door and opened it. Dent saw her freeze. He sprang to his feet and went to look over her shoulder. The metal deck was littered with rock particles. The encasing shell of matrix material had shattered away from the skeleton, leaving each fossil bone free of encumbrance. The accretion inside the skull cavity had been expelled. The eye sockets were empty, black. And, most unnerving of all, the wing bones that had been folded under the body were spread out on either side in a graceful sweep. «I am not liking this,» Erin said. «What the hell?"Dent asked, moving forward to kneel beside the skeleton. Mop, refusing to enter the gym, sat outside the door, growling steadily. «Let's get out of here,» Erin said, tugging on Demon's arm. «You talked me into it,» he said. She locked the door, went to the console, and activated the communicator. Dent looked over her shoulder as she sent a blinkstat to the beacon beside which the ship rested. It was directed to Captain Julie Roberts of the U.P.S. Rimfire. Over Erin's name, the number of the originating blink beacon, and the route that Mother would be following to Haven it said: «Imperative you come immediately.» To that message Erin added one word, a word that would have meaning only for Julie Roberts and the female officers aboard Rimfire. During the long and boring circumnavigation of the galaxy there'd been lots of time for girl talk, and not even the captain was above such diversions. One dreamy-eyed little ensign had voiced a reverie about finding a race of perfect men on some undiscovered planet on the opposite side of the galaxy, men who would know how to treat a woman, men who were tender and romantic, polite and considerate, and very skilled in the erotic arts. The ensign's dream became a sort of «in» joke among the female officers. They knew, of course, that Rimfire's mission was to lay a blink route around the periphery of the galaxy, but they all agreed that it would be fine with them if Rimfire also found what one wag called F.R.A.N.K., the Faultlessly Romantic Alien Nooky Knocker. Before the end of the trip the acronym F.R. A.N.K. had come to mean any alien, not just a romantic male. And so Erin's message read: «Imperative you come immediately. F.R.A.N.K.» A blinkstat was next to nothing traveling through nothingness instantaneously. The small generators in the blink beacons relayed the message along the way without pause and before Mother's generator was charged the stat had gone to X&A Headquarters on Xanthos to be relayed outward along Rimfire's known route into an unexplored area of the galaxy. «Will she come?» Denton asked, eyebrows raised in amazement. «She'll come,» Erin said. «Secret code?» She laughed. She didn't feel like laughing, for she could remember with more detail than she liked the way the skeleton had shed the matrix rock, the way the wings had been repositioned. She told him the meaning of F.R.A.N.K. «I guess she'll come, then,» he said. «You told her you'd found an alien. The question is, when?» «I doubt seriously if she'll be able to meet us before we get to Haven.» «What would you say,» he asked, «if I suggested that we drop back to DW I and deposit our friend in there on the surface in a safe place?» «Ah,» she said, «she makes you a little uneasy, too.» «A little? Hah.» He grinned. «Of course, we can say that it was an effect of blinking, or the charge in the air that caused all the rock to peel off of her.» «We can say that, I guess.» «I know that she's been dead for only God know how long,» Denton said. «My reason tells me that she's not even organic material anymore, that she's nothing but stone, but I seem to have a low threshold for terror.» «I think Mop would agree with you,» she said. Mop was sitting in front of the gym door, making that eerie, warning sound deep in his throat. «Maybe we'd better go see what she's doing in there now,» Denton said. «You go,» Erin said, only half-joking. Denton went to the door. «What's old Miss Bones doing in there, Mop?» he asked, as he opened the door. Mop yelped and went scrambling backward to hide under the console. Erin felt a thrill of pure fear. Before her eyes, Denton Gale ceased to exist. A red spray lashed at her face stingingly as Dent exploded. She opened her mouth to scream. A red mist clouded the viewport, beaded the glass of instruments, colored every surface on the bridge. Erin's scream did not make it past the original thought impulse before she, too, was annihilated, erupting into molecule-sized particles that dispersed themselves on the metal walls, deck, and ceiling of the bridge and further coated instruments and surfaces. Under the console, protected from the damp spray, a little dog cowered in abject fright. CHAPTER TEN Captain Julie Roberts never wore Rimfire's favorite duty uniform, shorts, overblouse, and hose. She was a private person. No one aboard her ship knew that under her service slacks she had a pair of legs that would stand comparison with those of any young woman in the crew. Her tailored tunic did not, however, completely conceal the fact that she was a well endowed woman. She wore her dark hair at optimum Service length so that it clung to her head in natural, kinky curls. She did not always wear a hat, but no member of the crew had ever seen her when her face was not perfectly done with skillfully applied, understated makeup. The captain did not always keep regular hours, did not pull a definitely timed watch. She just came and went, and the very unpredictability of her schedule kept the crew always on the alert. As it happened, Captain Roberts was asleep and Lieutenant Ursulina Wade was on bridge watch when Erin Kenner's blinkstat caught up with Rimfire. The big ship was motionless in space, waiting for her generator to charge. She had covered the assigned area of search, laid new blink beacons to an area of the galaxy where there were no life zone planets, but where she had charted a few gas giants, a hot planet with an atmosphere of toxic chemicals, and one barren near-sun globe of rock that might offer mining possibilities after the proper exploration. Ursulina, known to her fellow officers as Ursy, had matured since she had dreamed openly of finding the perfect man on an alien planet in the first months of Rimfire's circumnavigation. She had not given up her dream, even if two periods of experimentation with a handsome married officer named Jack Burnish and a young man fresh out of the Academy had proven to be a bit disappointing, but she had learned to keep her fantasies to herself. When she took Erin Kenner's blinkstat off the machine and read it, she flushed, thinking that someone was bringing up an old joke that had lost its humor. But the stat had come through a host of beacons on its way to Rimfire. Ursy remembered Erin Kenner well. She had tried to pattern herself after Erin, for Erin had been an excellent officer. Apparently, since she'd enjoyed two promotions since Erin quit the service, she had succeeded. Now Ursy faced a decision. The «Captain's Status» board indicated that Julie Roberts was sleeping. The captain did not like to be awakened without very good cause. Ursy read the message again. «Imperative» was a pretty strong word, but the «F.R.A.N.K.» was even stronger. She pulled herself up, punched the captain's communicator, and waited. «Speak,» the captain's voice said. «Captain, there is a blinkstat that, in my opinion, requires your immediate attention.» «Send it to my cabin.» Ursy called the navigator from his cubbyhole and told him to take the watch. It wasn't that she couldn't entrust the message to someone else, it was just that she wanted to see the captain's face when the captain read it. She knocked on the captain's door. To her surprise Julie Roberts was not fully dressed, but was bundled into a furry, white robe. The captain nodded in answer to Ursy's greeting and held out her hand. «Did you back-check the blink routes?» the captain asked after a quick glance at the stat. «No, ma'am.» «This message could have originated on board. Some wag having a little joke?» «I'll go check immediately, ma'am.» «It would have saved time had you checked first.» «Yes, ma'am.» «Never mind. Go back to the bridge. I'll check it myself.» In a quarter hour the captain was on the bridge. She sat down at the computer and punched in a long series of numbers. Ursy looked over her shoulder as the viewer showed the route of Erin Kenner's stat. A long line extended back from Rimfire's position to a point opposite the U.P. main worlds, then inward to Xanthos. From Xanthos the line led toward the core and terminated at a blink beacon near the Dead World sac. «Lieutenant,» the captain asked, «what does this message mean to you?» «I think, ma'am, that Erin has found something, ah, well, something alien.» «And why does she contact me instead of X&A Central?» «Erin admired you very much, Captain. I think if she were in some kind of trouble she'd call on you first.» «Trouble?» «The same question came to me, ma'am,» Ursy said. «A ship could blink in to Erin's position from one of the U.P. planets much quicker than Rimfire can get there. But I think Erin would call on you in any emergency, Captain.» Julie thought for a few moments. She and Erin Kenner had enjoyed a good relationship, as much of a friendship as could exist between a junior officer and the ship's captain. Once or twice she'd heard Erin complain about Service red tape and the ground-bound commandos at X&A Central on Xanthos. It was understandable for a field officer, a woman who had spent six years aboard Rimfire without seeing a human face other than those in the ship's crew, to have a mild case of distrust for headquarters types. One thing was sure. Erin Kenner was not the hysterical type, not the type to send out false alarms. There was, of course, doubt in Julie Roberts' mind that Erin had found something alien. But the stat had originated quite near a spot in the galaxy that, if one dwelt upon it, could give one nightmares. «Ursy, this stat is to be kept between me and thee,» Julie said. «Yes, ma'am. We're going, then?» «Well, hell, Ursy, you've been looking for the Faultlessly Romantic Alien Nooky Knocker for years. Would you want to miss this opportunity?» «Ma'am,» Ursy said seriously, «I'm not sure that Erin is qualified to judge whether or not she's found F.R.A.N.K. I'm not so sure that I agree with her taste in men.» Julie Roberts did not answer, although she was aware that both Erin and Ursy had fallen for the smooth line of Jack Burnish. «Shall I program a blink, Captain? We're ninety percent charged.» «Blink away, Lieutenant,» Julie said. «Have navigation figure us the shortest route to Haven. Erin should be there well ahead of us.» Minutes later, Rimfire shimmered and disappeared to emerge into normal space light-years down the route toward home. CHAPTER ELEVEN She lashed out blindly toward movement and, although her reaction was a defensive one, stemming from the knowledge that she was weakened, her blow was catastrophically harmful to fragile flesh and blood entities. She realized that she'd made a mistake even as she struck and was taking readings and measurements to rectify her hasty action even as the two bio-masses were being disassembled into fragments no larger than molecules. She feared that she had been too slow, for she had been confused by the fossilized evidence of her long agony. As she preserved physical patterns down to and below the cellular level, she was surprised by the complexity of the entities. That degree of intricacy in intelligence was unexpected. As she began to loose the psychological bonds of the nightmares of frozen eternity, she came to respect what the two entities had been. It was pleasing to her to find that there was still another biosystem at hand, an entity of passive receptiveness that was available for use as a data bank. She made certain decisions, took action. That done, she allowed herself a respite. The fossil bones were, of course, useless to her. They were a curiosity, nothing more. Once she had shed them, once she had broken free of the constraining layers of stone, she was finished with that remnant of her former self. As she rested, she explored these new surroundings. Although the race that had constructed the thing of metals and artificial materials was familiar in form—she had seen two of them and there were images of many others contained in the electronic mind of the machines—their thought patterns and lifestyles were totally alien to her. They were quite primitive, having to depend on an artificial hard shell of protection against the vacuum of space and having to use electronics and machines to draw the power of movement from the stars, but the way in which they had compensated for their shortcomings was ingenious. The computer interested her. She explored it, had some difficulty understanding how it retrieved specific data from an electronically charged chamber filled with a dense cloud of aerated acid. Even though the computer had a greater capacity for logic than the minds of the beings who called themselves man, or humans, it was quite limited and had no ability to originate thought. She examined the small biosystem that had been hiding under a chair. Interesting. Relatively large brain capacity for its size, but of very low intelligence, operating, in fact, largely on the instinctive level. She was very weak. She wished for a companion with whom to share a joke: «I'm afraid that I'm feeling very insubstantial at the moment.» It amused her to assemble the scattered organic matter to form a composite of the originals. She did so because she was, or had been, accustomed to carrying more mass than was represented by either the male or the female man. She considered placing the genitalia of the two entities in opposition, but she had other things to do. She could experiment with the pathetic little emotions of man later. To her pleasure, she gained vitality as she formed a body and extended herself into it to feel two hearts beating, to experience the flow of blood and to wonder at the little secretions and acquisitions of some rather clever organs and glands. She became distracted for a period of time as she experimented with the release of certain chemicals into the large brain which she had assembled from the cells of both the male and the female, but she soon tired of such childish gratification. As she built and formed the large body, gathering the scattered material carefully, painstakingly, the little one—she discovered by reviewing the images stored in the machines that they called it a dog—made an irritating noise and bared tiny, white teeth. «You are brave enough,» she said, using the words of man. The harshness of her voice sent the little dog cringing away to hide under a chair. She did some modifications on the voice box and practiced speech until the dog peered fearfully out from the shadows to see who it was who was calling him so softly and so caringly. Mop quickly saw that it wasn't one of his humans who was calling. It was a large thing that smelled familiar but was quite frightening in its bulk. It took a while to customize the body to her liking. She noted that the dog had his own food and water dispensers and that now and then he went into another room to sleep on a rumpled bed. Once she had her body adjusted for comfort and utility, she spent a few days gathering as much knowledge as there was available about the curious culture and lifestyle of man. She was ready to leave the limited confines of the ship and venture into the wider universe. She willed transfer to a rather pretty world that the men called Delos. Nothing happened. The ability to move instantly to any spot in the galaxy was gone from her. She accepted that lack along with the loss of her own physical form. She reentered the available body and cranked up its systems