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cheating strangers if given the chance.
Lisa was carrying the record tile containing the scientists multi-thousand-word tome in her kit bag. The
report had only been finished half an hour before she was to depart. She had thought that she would be
the only passenger, and was thus surprised when she found Mikhail Vasloff waiting at the airlock for her.
His kit bag was with him and he had the air of someone about to embark on an adventure.
What are you doing here, Mr. Vasloff?
I am going along. It took some convincing, but Captain Landon gave his permission an hour ago. I am to
go up with you.
I would have thought you would stay here at Hideout, Lisa replied cautiously, suddenly aware that she
might have blundered into sensitive territory.
Why would you think that?
You haven t exactly been this expedition s biggest booster, now have you?
Instead of growing angry, the Russian put his head back and laughed. When he stopped, he said, I have
never heard a statement made more diplomatically, Miss Arden. Perhaps I should recruit you for my little
cabal of fanatics.
I ve never called them fanatics, Mr. Vasloff.
You are about the only one in the Stellar Survey who has not. But then, you aren t really Stellar Survey,
are you?
No, sir. I was recruited specifically for this job.
Then, you can probably understand my position better than anyone. I am going along to make sure that
the more & shall we say, enthusiastic? ... that the more enthusiastic members of our party don t take
leave of their senses.
How so?
By revealing the location of Earth to these aliens, of course.
No one would do that.
Not intentionally. Still, we cannot know precisely what information we are divulging just by revealing the
fact of our existence. Surely any reasonably knowledgeable Orphean biologist will be able to divine what
sort of star we evolved under.
Lisa nodded. The human body was a veritable signpost to the fact that Sol was a G2 yellow-white star. It
telegraphed that fact merely from the wavelength of light at which human eyes focus most sharply. There
was no telling what other secrets their bodies might reveal to an alien who knew what to look -- or sniff
-- for. The human body odor must reveal facts about the chemical composition of their home world.
How that would also give the aliens clues to thelocation of Earth, Lisa could not imagine. The problem
was that an alien might prove to have a better imagination.
So how do we know what we are revealing to them?
Vasloff shrugged. We don t. Alien capabilities are, by definition & alien. That is why I am coming
along. I will be more on guard than the rest of you. I will see to it that no unnecessary chances are taken.
In that respect, we all want the same thing, Mr. Vasloff.
Of course. We all want the same things; we just go about it differently. I have no desire to offend, Miss
Arden, but perhaps I can explain my point better with an example.
Go ahead.
Do you like Sar-Say?
The question took a moment to consider. In fact, she did like Sar-Say. He had ceased being a research
subject more than a year earlier. He was a quick study and had empathy for human ways of looking at
things. Besides, he could be very funny when he put his mind to it. She remembered how devastated she
had been during that day and night she had watched over him in the infirmary. It had seemed as though
she was losing a child.
Yes, I suppose I do.
Then you would be more likely to believe something he tells you than not?
Lisa thought about her answer for a moment and then said, We ve never caught him in a lie, but that
doesn t mean he tells us the truth, I suppose.
Isn t that what this entire expedition is about? Determining whether Sar-Say has been telling us the
truth?
We would be fools to take his word for something as big and bad as he says the Sovereignty is.
But if he were going to lie about it, wouldn t he put a happier face on it?
That seems logical.
Yes, it does. To a human. However, is it logical to a Taff? That is why I am coming along. Like the rest
of you, I plan to learn all I can about the Orpheans and the Broa, but I will learn through the eyes of a
skeptic, not an advocate.
Well, Mr. Vasloff, whatever your motives, it is good to have you along.
At that moment, a speaker mounted on the rock wall announced that the orbital shuttle to theRuptured
Whale was ready for boarding. They gathered up their meager belongings, and Vasloff ushered her
through the portal leading to the docking tube.
A few minutes later, they were spaceborne.
CHAPTER 34
The yellow star in the viewscreen might have been a twin of Sol were it not for the great cloud of gas and
dust that lay beyond. The Sky Flower Nebula was not the same universe-spanning wall as in the Hideout
System, but it was still the most prominent feature in the sky. In one respect, the Broan conquest of
humanity had already begun. Already, bits of trade talk were infiltrating the crew s daily conversation. It
seemed fitting to call the nebula by its Broan name while here in Broan Space.
Dan Landon sat at his station and considered what lay ahead as he sipped tea from a microgravity bulb.
The Crab/Sky Flower Nebula was the unofficial boundary between human space and Broan, at least until
they knew better how far the Sovereignty extended along the Orion Arm of the Milky Way.
Nor was the name they called the supernova remnant the only evidence that they were in Broan space.
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