"Maybe. What have you got in mind?"
"Some reading to catch up on." She leveled a forefinger at him. "Don't touch that board!"
At the door she met the puppeteer coming out. She waved casually as they passed, and Nessus leapt six feet to the side. "I beg your pardon," he fluted. "You startled me."
Teela lifted an eyebrow and went inside.
The puppeteer stopped next to Louis and folded his legs under him. One head fixed on Louis; the other moved nervously, circling, covering all angles of vision. "Could the woman spy on us?"
Louis showed his surprise. "Sure. You know there's no defense against a spy beam, not in the open. So?"
"Anyone or anything could be watching us. Louis, let us go to your office."
"There ain't no justice." Louis was perfectly comfortable where he was. "Will you stop bobbing your head around, please? You act scared to death."
"I am frightened, though I know my death would matter little. How many meterorites fall to Earth in a year?"
"I wouldn't know."
"We are perilously close to the asteroid belt here. Yet it does not matter, for we have been unable to contact a fourth crew member."
"Too bad," said Louis. The puppeteer's behavior puzzled him. If Nessus had been human — But he wasn't. "You haven't given up, I trust."
"No, but our failures have been galling. For these past four days we have been seeking a Norman Haywood KJMMCWTAD, a perfect choice for our crew."
"And?"
"His health is perfect and vigorous. His age, twenty four-and-a-third terrestrial years. Six generations of his ancestors were all born through winning lottery tickets. Best of all, he enjoys travel; he exhibits the restlessness we need.
"Naturally we tried to contact him in person. For three days my agent tracked him through a series of transfer booths, always a jump behind him, while Norman Haywood went skiing in Suisse, and surfing in Ceylon, to shops in New York, and to house parties in the Rockies and the Himalayas. Last night my agent caught up to him as he entered a passenger spacecraft bound for Jinx. The ship departed before my agent could conquer his natural fear of your jury-rigged ships."
"I've had days like that myself. Couldn't you send him a hyperwave message?"
"Louis, this voyage is supposed to be secret."
"Yah," said Louis. And he watched a python head circling, circling, searching out unseen enemies.
"We will succeed," said Nessus. "Thousands of potential crew members cannot hide forever. Can they, Louis? They do not even know we are seeking them!"
"You'll find someone. You're bound to."
"I pray that we do not! Louis, how can I do it? How can I ride with three aliens in an experimental ship designed for one pilot? It would be madness!"
"Nessus, what's really bugging you? This whole trip was your idea!"
"It was not. My orders came from those-who-lead, from two hundred light years away."
"Something's terrified you. I want to know what it is. What have you found out? Do you know what this trip is really all about? What's changed since you were ready to insult four kzinti in a public restaurant? Hey, easy, easy!"
Tle puppeteer had tucked his heads and necks between his forelegs and rolled into a ball.
"Come on," said Louis. "Come on out." He ran his hands gently along the backs of the puppeteer's necks — the parts that showed. The puppeteer shuddered. His skin was soft, like chamois skin, and pleasant to the touch.
"Come on out of there. Nothing's going to hurt you here. I protect my guests."
The puppeteer's wail came muffled from under his belly. "I was mad. Mad! Did I really insult four kzinti?"
"Come on out. You're safe here. That's better." A flat head peeped out of the warm shadow. "Now, you see? Nothing to be afraid of."
"Four kzinti? Not three?"
"My mistake. I miscounted. It was three."
"Forgive me, Louis." The puppeteer exposed his other head as far as the eye. "My manic phase has ended. I am in the depressive leg of my cycle."
"Can you do anything about it?" Louis thought of the consequences, if Nessus should hit the wrong leg of his cycle at a crucial time.
"I can wait for it to end. I can protect myself, to the extent possible. I can try not to let it affect my judgment."
"Poor Nessus. You're sure you haven't learned anything new?"
"Do I not know enough already to terrify any sane mind?" The puppeteer stood up somewhat shakily. "Why did I meet Teela Brown? I had thought she would have departed."
"I asked her to stay with me until we find your fourth crewmate."
"Why?"
Louis had wondered about that himself. It had little to do with Paula Cherenkov. Louis had changed too much since her time; and he was not a man to force one woman into the mold of another.
Sleeping plates were designed for two occupants, not one. But there had been other girls at the party … not as pretty as Teela. Could wise old Louis Wu still be snared by beauty alone?
But something more than beauty looked out of those flat silver eyes. Something highly complex.
"For purposes of fornication," said Louis Wu. He had remembered that he was talking to an alien, who would not understand such complexities. He realized that the puppeteer was still shivering, and added, "Let's go to my office. It's under the hill. No meteors."
After the puppeteer left, Louis went looking for Teela. He found her in the library, in front of a reading screen, clicking frames past at a speed high even for a speedreader.
"Hi," she said. She froze a frame and turned. "How's our two-headed friend?"
"Scared witless. And I'm exhausted. I've been playing psychiatrist to a Pierson's puppeteer."
Teela brightened. "Tell me about a puppeteer's sex life."
"All I know is, he isn't allowed to breed. He broods on it. One may assume that he could breed if there weren't a law against it. Aside from that, he stayed off the subject completely. Sorry."
"Well, what did you talk about?"
Louis waved a hand. "Three hundred years of traumas. That's how long Nessus has been in human space. He hardly remembers the puppeteer planet. I get the feeling he's been scared for three hundred years." Louis dropped into a masseur chair. The strain of empathizing with an alien had exhausted his mind, used up his imagination.
"How about you? What are you reading?"
"The Core explosion." Teela waved at the reading screen.
There were stars in clusters and bunches and masses. You couldn't see black, there were so many stars. It might have been a dense star cluster, but it wasn't; it couldn't be. Telescopes wouldn't reach that far, nor would any normal spacecraft.
It was the galactic core, five thousand light years across, a tight sphere of stars at the axis of the galactic whirlpool. One man had reached that far, two hundred years ago, in an experimental puppeteer-built ship. The frame showed red and blue and green stars, all superimposed, the red stars biggest and brightest. In the center of the picture was a patch of blazing white the shape of a bloated comma. Within it were lines and blobs of shadow; but the shadow within the white patch was brighter than any star outside it.
"That's why you need the puppeteer ship," said Teela. "Isn't it?"
"Right."
"How did it happen?"
"The stars are too close together," said Louis. "An average of half a light year apart, all through the core of any galaxy. Near the center, they're packed even tighter. In a galactic core, stars are so close to each other that they can heat each other up. Being hotter, they burn faster. They age faster.