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Have you been listening to our conversation? he asked. I left the intercom on.
You are thanked for your courtesy, Ydwyr replied, but I could not follow the Anglic.
Oh! Djana s hand went to her mouth. I forgot
And I, Flandry admitted. We Terrans tend to assume every educated being will know our official
language by definition and of course it isn t so. Well, I can tell you.
I believe I have deduced it, Ydwyr said. You are swinging free, dangerously but concealingly near the
pulsar. From the relativistic region you will launch your courier torpedoes, strapped together and
hyperdrives operating simultaneously. What with distortion effects, you hope my folk will mistake the
impulses for this boat s and give chase. If your decoy lures them as far as a light-year off, you will be
outside their hyperwave detection range and can embark on a roundabout homeward voyage. The sheer
size of space will make it unlikely that they, backtracking, will pick up your vibrations.
Right, Flandry said admiringly. You re a sharp rascal. I look forward to some amusing chit-chat.
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If your scheme succeeds, Ydwyr made a salute of respect. If not, and if we are taken alive, you are
under my protection.
Gladness burst in Djana. My men can be friends!
You are kind, said Flandry with a bow. He turned to the girl. How about making us a pot of tea? he
said in Anglic.
Tea? she asked, astonished.
He likes it. Let s be hospitable. Put the galley intercom on low and you can hear us talk.
Flandry spoke lightly, but she felt an underlining of his last sentence and all at once her joy froze. Though
why, why? Would thedatholch accept tea? she asked in Eriau.
You are thanked. Ydwyr spoke casually, more interested in the man.
Djana went forward like an automaton. The voices trailed her:
I am less kind, Dominic Flandry, than I am concerned to keep an audacious and resourceful entity
functional.
For a servant?
Khraich, we cannot well send you home, can we? I
Djana made a production of closing the galley door. It cut off the words. Fingers unsteady, she turned
the intercom switch.
sorry.You mean well by your standards, I suppose, Ydwyr. But I have this archaic prejudice for
freedom over even the nicest slavery. Like the sort you fastened on that poor girl.
A reconditioning.It improved her both physically and mentally.
No! He might be speaking of an animal!
She does seem more, hmm, balanced. It s just a seeming, however, as long as you keep that
father-image hood over her eyes.
Hr-r-r, you have heard of Aycharaych s techniques, then?
Aycharaych?Who? N-n-no I llcheck with Captain Abrams Damn! I should have played along with
you, shouldn t I? All right, I fumbled that one, after you dropped it right into my paws. Getting back to
Djana, the father fixation is unmistakable to any careful outside observer.
What else would you have me do? She came, an unwitting agent who had acquired knowledge which
must not get back to Terra. She showed potentialities. Instead of killing her out of hand, we could try to
develop them. Death is always available. Besides, depth-psychological work on a human intrigued me.
Later, when that peculiar gift for sometimes imposing her desires on other minds appeared, we saw what
a prize we had. My duty became to make sure of her.
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So to win her trust, you warned her to warn me?
Yes.About in honesty between us, Dominic Flandry a fictitious danger. No orders had come for
your removal; I was welcome to keep you. But the chance to clinch it with her was worth more.
Anglic: No? I ll be especially damned.
You are not angry, I hope.
N-n-no.That d be unsporting, wouldn t it? Anglic: The more so when it caused me to break from my
cell with a hell of a yell far sooner than I d expected to.
Believe me, I did not wish to sacrifice you. I did not want to be involved in that wretched business at
all. Honor compelled me. But I begrudged every minute away from my Talwinian research.
Djana knelt on the deck and wept.
Blink blink blink furnace glare spearing from the screens. The hull groaned and shuddered with stresses.
Fighting them, the interior field set air ashake in a wild thin singing. Often, looking down a passage, you
thought you saw it ripple; and perhaps it did, sliding through some acute bend in space. From time to time
hideous nauseas twisted you, and your mind grew blurred. Sunward was only the alternation of night and
red. Starward wereno constellations nor points of light, nothing but rainbow blotches and smears.
Djana helped Flandry put the courier torpedoes, which he had programmed under normal conditions, on
the launch rack. When they were outside, he must don a spacesuit and go couple them. He was gone a
long while and came back white and shaken. Done, was everything he would tell her.
They sought the conn. He sat down, she on his lap, and they held each other through the nightmare
hours. You re real, she kept babbling. You re real.
And the strangeness faded. Quietness, solidity, stars returned one by one. A haggard Flandry pored
over instruments whose readings again made sense, about which he could again think clearly.
Receding hyperwakes, he breathed. Our stunt worked. Soon s we stop registering them First,
though, we turn our systems off.
Why? she asked from her seat to which she had returned, and from her weariness.
I can t tell how many the ships are. Space is still somewhat kinky and well, they may have left one
posted for insurance. The moment we pass a threshold value of the metric, there ll be no mistaking our
radiation, infrared from the hull, neutrinos from the power-plant, that kind of junk.Unless we douse the
sources.
Whatever you want, darling.
Weightlessness was like stepping off a cliff and dropping without end. Cabin dark, the pulsar flash on
one side and stars on the other crowded near in dreadful glory. Nothing remained save the faintest
accumulator-powered susurrus of forced ventilation; and the cold crept inward.
Hold me, Djana beseeched into the blindness. Warm me.
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A pencil-thin flashbeam from Flandry s hand slipped along the console. Back-scattered light limned him,
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