old 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 again. It seemed that she was to be confined, at least for the moment, to the ship. Since her body was only flesh and blood, it would not survive in the vacuum of space. Something had gone wrong in the indeterminable period of time since she had been locked away in the cooling core material of a destroyed world. She examined herself minutely and found that she had lost many abilities. She would simply have to make the best of what was left. Perhaps these men had developed materials and techniques that would help her regain the magnitude that had once been hers. She spent more time with the materials in the ship's library and resigned herself to the fact that she would have to travel about in a man-made spaceship and imitate the mechanical and electronic structures of man in order to accomplish her desires. She soon discovered that there was not quite enough written or recorded material aboard ship to tell her everything she wanted to know about the blink drive. Moreover, the men had been secure in their knowledge of ship's operations and had not included a basic manual in the library. The knowledge which she needed to operate the ship safely was not included in the material in the library. With her powers so diminished, she didn't want to chance being stranded in space, perhaps to drift for more eternities. She divided the organic matter in her large body into the two original units and lifted the female entity from her repository in the dog's skull and inserted her into her own frame. CHAPTER TWELVE Murdoch Plough, owner of the Haven Refining Company, leapt to his feet in shock when his secretary announced that Miss Erin Kenner was asking to see him. His face first drained itself of blood, so that he was quite pale, but by the time he had recovered himself enough to tell the secretary to send Miss Kenner in he was feeling flushed and feverish. Erin Kenner's presence on Haven presented possibilities that Plough was not quite ready to face. He tried to tell himself that there could be alternate explanations for his not having heard from his brother and the crew of four whom he had sent to replace Erin Kenner and the man she'd picked up on New Earth as possessors of the source of the richest gold ore he'd ever seen. Plough was still musing about the unpleasant possibilities when the Kenner woman and a man about her own age entered the room. He had received no messages from his brother since Kenner's Mother Lode left the main United Planets blink beacon range and headed toward the core. Seeing the woman brought an uneasy smile to his large, square face. She was a looker, all right. As he glanced toward her helper or lover or whatever the hell Denton Gale was, he felt a little easier about his brother, because there was no way that these two pussies could have survived had Brother Gordon and his crew isolated them on a mining planet somewhere off the established blink routes. «Well, Miss Kenner,» he said. «Have your brought a representative of X&A with you this trip?» It still rankled Plough that the woman had pulled influence on him, forcing him to pay premium prices for her ore. «Mr. Gale is my associate,» the Kenner woman said flatly. «What can I do for you?» Plough asked, walking around his desk to shake Denton Gale's hand. «We have a load of ore,» Kenner said. «Ah, excellent, excellent,» Plough said, wiping his hand on his trouser leg. Denton Gale's hand was cold and damp. «However, Miss Kenner, I'm afraid that the market has fallen slightly since you were last here.» «We have a load of ore,» Kenner said. Plough looked at her a bit more closely. She was looking straight at him, but there was an oddness in her eyes, as if they were focused beyond his face. He named a price lower than the price he'd offered her originally for her first load. «We will take the proceeds in U.P. credits,» Gale said. «Sure, sure,» Plough said. «I'll deposit the amount in your account, Miss Kenner.» «We will take the proceeds in U.P. credits,» Gale repeated. «You mean in cash?» There was a moment of hesitation until Kenner said, in that flat, wooden voice, «We will take the proceeds in cash.» «That's a lot of paper,» Plough said. «Is your load as heavy as the last one?» Neither Gale nor Kenner spoke. «Well,» Plough said, «I'll have my men move your ship over to the loading ramp.» «I will move the ship,» Kenner said, turning to lead Gale out of the office. Plough followed them into the reception area, watched them walk stiffly out of the office. «That broad act a little odd to you?» he asked the secretary. «I didn't notice, honey.» the secretary said. Since her prime duty to her employer was of a private nature, she tended to be a bit casual when she and Plough were alone. Plough watched the Mother Lode lift and move laterally to the ramp. Soon some very rich ore was rattling down the conveyor belts toward the smelters. Kenner and Gale stayed aboard the ship. Plough went to the communication room and placed a call to Haven X&A, expressed concern about an overdue Haven Refining Company mining ship, was told that there'd been no communication from the Murdoch Miner. «If you will give us the projected route of the ship, sir,» the X&A operator said, «we will begin a trace.» «No, no, thank you,» Plough said. «I'm probably being needlessly concerned. I'll get back to you.» The Mother Lode sat beside the loading ramp through the smelting operation. Neither Kenner nor Gale left her until Plough called to tell them that he had the money in United Planets credits. Gale came to the office and accepted the large bag of credits without a word. Plough kept waiting for an irate call from X&A complaining that he was cheating an ex-X&A officer, but nothing happened. When Gale left the office, Plough was just behind him. As the Mother Lode lifted ship, she was followed by Murdoch Plough's own private yacht, a converted fleet light destroyer armed with some weapons that were legal for a deep space miner that often entered unexplored areas and with some armament that would have landed Plough in deep trouble if his yacht were ever inspected by X&A. To Plough's surprise the Mother Lode did not leave Haven immediately. She orbited halfway around the world and landed at the spaceport on the other continent. Plough didn't like the idea of taking his heavily and illegally armed ship into a landing other than at his own home port where there were no interplanetary customs offices and no X&A station. But he wanted to know what Kenner was up to, so he went down from orbit in a launch. The Mother Lode was taking on cargo. It was fairly simple for Plough to find out that Kenner was buying a rather odd assortment of materials, calling in her orders from the ship, paying on delivery in cash. All he had to do was intercept the delivery vehicles and hand out a couple of credits and he knew that a wide array of chemicals and electronic equipment were being loaded into the Mother Lode's cargo bins. The most puzzling thing was that while the equipment and materials were being loaded, the mining equipment was being gutted from the Mother Lode. It looked as if Kenner and Gale intended leaving the almost new and very expensive equipment sitting out in the weather on the pad beside the ship, but when Kenner called Control for permission to lift ship she was asked—Plough was tuned into the control frequency—her intentions in regard to the discarded equipment. When she hesitated, Control told her that the machines would have to be removed from the pad before the Mother Lode could be given clearance. Plough shook his head as the Kenner woman babbled on to Control, asking really stupid questions until she was finally told that Control didn't care what she did with the equipment just as long as it was removed from port property. Plough felt faint when a couple of hundred thousand credits worth of perfectly good mining machinery was given to the port's waste removal service, but he didn't have time to make an effort to salvage it, because Control was giving the Mother Lode lift clearance. He took the launch back to his yacht and was ready to follow when Kenner's ship reached orbit and blinked away. He had come to the conclusion that something had happened to his little brother. He wasn't worried. Knowing Gordon, the Murdoch Miner was probably cruising around a couple of hundred ligh