Those Of My Blood Part 6

"For knowing? No." Not legally, anyway. But just let Abbot Mark her, and . He couldn't finish the thought.

"But they'd kill you?"

"Might. It's a pretty terrible crime-endangering all of us. They wouldn't understand-about you and me." He helped her to her feet and resisted the natural embrace, holding her shoulders at arm's length. He wanted to take her to bed as he'd never wanted anything else in his life. But he wasn't going to spoil this with haste.

Rationally, he knew the most they could have together would be a few short decades. She'd die of old age while he still seemed young and had to change ident.i.ties every few years. But right now, those decades were worth his life, and more. It was something he had to have, no matter the price. And if that meant going to bed alone tonight, then so be it.

She broke away and turned to the door. "You'd better go. I'll get through the night alone. I've done it before."

He gathered himself. "But this time, I'll be there in the morning. And tomorrow night, too, if you like."

"We'll see. I have to think." She opened the door for him. "I'll see you in the morning, Dr. s.h.i.+ddehara."

"t.i.tus," he corrected.

"t.i.tus."

He was left alone in the busy, well-lighted corridor. But where before his mind had been a deep, black silence of fatigue and despair, it was now filled with plans. Where the station had seemed cold, distant, alien, and unreal, it was now home. There was nothing he couldn't do. It wasn't elation that buoyed him all the way to the elevators. It was strength.

He felt as refreshed as if he'd slept the day through. The renewal showed in his body. The last of the solar irritation was gone from his skin. A vague headache that had plagued him had disappeared. He felt wonderful.

He sent the elevator up to the surface, and set out to visit the alien craft. No doubt Abbot had been there ahead of him, but he would catch up now, and he would win.

Chapter five.

t.i.tus knew that besting Abbot was a fantasy, but he nursed it like a potent drink as he made his way toward the locks leading out to the alien s.h.i.+p. Abbot had been playing this game for too long. But on the other hand, there was something to be said for youth, flexibility, and desperation. Not Inea. He's not going to get Inea.

He had to think. In the day he'd been at the station, t.i.tus had spent no more than four hours in his room. In six hours, he had to be back at the lab, and then they'd be after him for his physical and to log time in the gym. For all he knew, that might be as necessary for his kind as for humans, in order to return to Earth with any bone left.

If he went to the alien craft now, someone might notice that he never rested. They wouldn't make anything of it immediately. Everyone here was an eager volunteer. But dedication was one thing, superhuman performance something else. So he didn't dare approach the alien craft openly.

He loitered at an intersection until the corridor was clear, then cloaked himself with Influence. He'd found that surveillance cameras were located only where emergency crowd control was needed. He evaded them and found the locker room, where there was a locker with his name on it containing a customized s.p.a.cesuit. He waited until the room was empty, then suited up in haste, using Influence to repel anyone from the door. Abbot could suit up in plain sight of half a dozen people and keep them from noticing! thought t.i.tus, ruing his own lack of practice.

Thought of Abbot's mastery of Influence reminded him that he'd have to find some way of keeping the Tourist out of the lab and away from Inea. Just throwing him out of the lab in a fury as he'd done earlier wouldn't be enough. He'd have to work on Colby somehow, get it made an order.

Dressed, t.i.tus tagged along with a group going on s.h.i.+ft. There were three engineers, two electricians, a physicist, a chemist, and a metallurgist. Their chatter was strewn with references to the alien craft's design. But one thing was clear: not a tenth of what they had been doing and thinking had yet been reported on Earth, even at top security levels.

Furthermore, n.o.body yet understood the craft's engines or power source. Speculation was running wild, however. t.i.tus followed the group into the docking bay where the surface truck would pick them up, listening attentively.

"I tell you, that thing has to be FTL. It works on some principle we've never imagined. There's no power source!"

"Look, maybe it lost its sails. Maybe it's not supposed to come this close to a star. Maybe they left their engines out beyond Neptune. That could be why we can't a.n.a.lyze the propulsion-because this module doesn't have any!"

"Maybe this is only a lifeboat detached from a larger s.h.i.+p that suffered a disaster." The third engineer was the youngest. She was also the smallest of the group, dark-haired and comely, with a musical voice. "We can't rule anything out, even though we wouldn't build a lifeboat with such a huge cargo bay."

"If it's a lifeboat," argued the first engineer, "it would have Propulsion and power for life-support and communications. Maybe it's just a cargo "crane'?"

One of the others spoke up. "You know, I think you've got there-a power module left way out in solar orbit. Makes sense. The s.h.i.+p didn't explode on impact. It could be they came in on battery power. We ought to get one of the observatories searching far orbits tangent to the s.h.i.+p's line of approach. Might find their sails."

"It can't be a new idea," said someone else. "I'll bet they're doing a search already."

"And what if they aren't? I'm going to write it into my daily report, and we'll see what happens. That's what they want us to do, you know-think independently so if we all come to the same conclusions, they'll figure we got it."

t.i.tus didn't know if a module of this s.h.i.+p was missing, but according to Abbot, the s.h.i.+p their ancestors had come to Earth in had been faster than light, and it hadn't exploded on impact, either. t.i.tus had always accepted that some mishap had forced that s.h.i.+p down on Earth, but he'd often wondered where they had been going and why. Had they been explorers, colonists, traders, or even tourists? Was this new s.h.i.+p of the same sort, or different?

"There's our ride," called one of the men.

The docking bay's pressure doors stood open, and now a truck churned silently up onto the glazed flooring of the bay. It was an open framework built over two tracks, and it maneuvered quite nimbly though soundlessly in the vacuum.

t.i.tus felt the vibration as the truck sc.r.a.ped the dock. He followed the others, climbing onto the struts and grabbing a cargo strap. The driver was seated on a bench before an array of levers which she manipulated with finesse. "All set?" Without turning to look, she added, "Here we go!"

The truck lurched away from the dock and lumbered out the door into the starry night, kicking up a cloud of dust. The sun was not visible at the moment, for which t.i.tus was thankful. Even though his suit would protect him as nothing he could wear on Earth, he still didn't wholly trust it. It had been designed by humans with human tolerances in mind.

But his anxieties melted away as they rounded the corner of the bay doors and came into full view of the wreck.

Pieces of it that had scattered during the crash had been dragged up beside the main fragment before the station was built around it. The main section was mangled, torn, and half-buried.

Floodlights cast sharply defined cones of illumination, stripping away any glamour or drama. The s.h.i.+p looked like heaps of trash in a wrecking yard. But he could see something now that he hadn't seen in the photos taken with instruments tuned to human vision.

Suddenly mindful of the cameras perpetually aimed at the wreck, he moved to s.h.i.+eld his suit identification as he squinted against the floodlights. He could just make out markings on the s.h.i.+p's hull; dark rust against darker rust color. Had the humans missed the markings because their eyes didn't register the distinction? It was faint to him, but his eyes were not luren eyes. They were human eyes affected by luren genes.

Perhaps to luren eyes, the markings stood out brightly. He made a mental note to Influence someone to do a spectral a.n.a.lysis of the whole hull. It might hold a clue to the luren eye, and thus to the luren sun.

Part of the inscription was torn away and part was buried in the moon dust. But t.i.tus could read the script. Imagining the missing parts of letters, he transliterated it to English, trying to sound the word, for he didn't know what it meant. Kylyd. "Kailaid?"

Possibly this was a word in a different language from that preserved among Earth's luren. Or it might simply be a name, a word that had lost meaning eons ago.

As they approached the rent in the side of the main section being used for an entryway, t.i.tus felt a p.r.i.c.kly surge of excitement. Suddenly, the wreck wasn't just a heap of twisted metal anymore. It was a stars.h.i.+p. It had an ident.i.ty, a history, a proud name, and a loyal crew.

t.i.tus skinned through the security check in the shadow of of the engineers, and found himself free inside the wreck. Nothing had prepared him for this.

Twisted and distorted though it was, the shape of the s.p.a.ce the aliens had carved struck a deep nerve in t.i.tus, a human nerve. This place was subtly wrong. It was alien.

t.i.tus had traveled all over the world, and had felt the vague unease in foreign buildings, a negligible component of culture-stress syndrome. But this was different. This fairly shouted wrong!

He shuddered and ducked aside through an airlock that had been wrenched and buckled at impact. Here floodlights had been strung up since they hadn't yet conquered the s.h.i.+p's systems. The s.h.i.+p's lighting, when they found it, ought to provide t.i.tus with a vital clue to the home star.

Crossbreeds such as t.i.tus usually had an infrared sensitivity peak as well as a much greater ultraviolet peak along with the usual three human peaks of sensitivity. But what of purebred luren?

Not far beyond the twisted hatch, he came upon two work stations set in wide places at either side of the corridor. There were dark stains on the light buff furnis.h.i.+ngs. Blood.

He examined a chair set low and pitched so the occupant would be half reclining, looking at an overhead panel. Now the panel was just a dark red oval patch on the ceiling, but the darkness had depth, as if he were looking into a tank. He tried to imagine what the display would be like, but he had no idea what was done at this station.

The controls were on the arms of the chair, which were broad and dotted with bits of the same deep dark substance that formed the screen above. Perhaps, with the power on, the display on the chair arms would identify each control's function. That would be necessary if the functions of the controls could be changed.

He was thinking like a human, and he knew it. He wasn't sure anyone on the Project had the imagination to understand luren controls. He regarded the work station with some awe. It was unexpectedly humbling, for he'd always subconsciously a.s.sumed he would understand luren artifacts on sight.

Casting about with all his senses, he determined that he was alone. Sitting down, he put his hands on the controls and gazed up into the monitor-if that's what it was. Opening himself, he tried to feel what this place was.

But it only baffled him. There's a lesson. Raised human, schooled by humans, I am human. He wished everyone who subscribed to the Tourist philosophy could sit here and feel this. It would end their callous treatment of humans.

Suddenly, the last of the unacknowledged doubts that had depressed him since his skirmish with Abbot in the men's room on G.o.ddard Station vanished. It might be futile to delay the moment the luren found Earth, but it had to be done. With time to study this, humans just might be able to hold their own.

Something whispered at the edge of perception.

Influence! Abbot!

He sprang out of the chair and crouched, m.u.f.fling his own Influence as much as he dared. Back the way he'd come, through the twisted hatch, t.i.tus saw Abbot stop, hunker down, and open an access panel. He worked within, concentrating, Influence keeping him invisible to the humans who pa.s.sed.

t.i.tus backed along the hall away from Abbot, searching for a place to hide. Nearby, he found an undamaged door. Eyes focused on Abbot, he put one hand behind him, groping with gloved fingers for the control. His grip fell naturally onto a panel, and before he knew it he was inside the room.

It was a chamber about seven feet by eight feet. As he sensed Abbot move toward him, he worked frantically to shut the door. It slid closed just as Abbot eased through the twisted hatch. Before utter blackness enclosed him, t.i.tus glimpsed Abbot's hand gripping a recording device.

Dispelling his own Influence, t.i.tus leaned against the door, eyes closed, concentrating on Abbot's moves. He couldn't discern the faint vibration that Abbot's feet must be making-the whole s.h.i.+p pulsed with human movement. But that keener sense that accompanied Influence tracked Abbot to the work stations t.i.tus had examined.

Abbot stopped there and t.i.tus sensed the older vampire's intense concentration cloaked under precisely disciplined Influence. t.i.tus didn't dare move. He hardly breathed. He just waited, observing Abbot working.

At last, Abbot moved on past the room where t.i.tus hid, and was gone. When the last whiff of his Influence had faded, t.i.tus heaved a tremendous sigh. Then it hit him. He had spied on Abbot, and had not been noticed. t.i.tus grinned ferociously. He wasn't helpless before an all-powerful master. It was a real contest now.

t.i.tus heaved himself away from the wall, and saw absolute, total darkness.

Activating his suit light, he peered about in the shaft of illumination and found a Westinghouse cable feeding overhead lights. He found the switch and turned them on.

In the center of the bare room, a lucite cylinder about six-feet long lay atop a dark rectangular block.

And inside-inside lay a man.

No! A luren!

The supine figure was unclothed. The skin had the white pigmentation that had turned t.i.tus from the dusky skin color of Southern India to that of a deeply tanned Caucasian in the grave. The abdomen was concave, indicating the shrunken abdominal organs and spa.r.s.e body fat of the typical Earth-bred luren. His face was long and gaunt.

The only differences were those of degree. This individual was whiter than anyone t.i.tus knew. He was more emaciated. His hair was not gray or white but metallic silver. t.i.tus supposed his eyes would be pale, too.

He seemed "alien" because there was no Oriental, Hispanic, Caucasian, Indian, or Black cast to his features. It was nothing specific. His nose wasn't too prominent, his eyes weren't too odd, his lips not especially different, and his cheekbones seemed normal. His ears were reasonably shaped and placed. Even his haircut wasn't so exotic. It was in the summation of these things that the difference lay.

The body showed no sign of explosive decompression. One side of the chest was depressed. A blow had broken ribs and ruptured organs-minor damage but enough to induce dormancy in a luren or to kill a human. The skull seemed intact.

The protective cylinder had gauges for air pressure, temperature, and radiation. The gauges were attached to a remote-monitored telemetry device.

Inferences leaped through t.i.tus's mind. There had been no hint on Earth that they'd found anything but cell-damaged corpses. This intact specimen was being preserved-probably in pure sterile nitrogen-for cloning! It had to be for cloning!

It hadn't been done yet for lack of budget, but they'd do it eventually. All they needed was one perfect germ cell.

What the humans didn't know was that this "corpse" was not dead. His spine and brain were intact. Given a benign environment, he'd revive. But the humans didn't suspect that. Despite, or perhaps because of, all the horror movies ever made, they'd never suspect that.

Suddenly, he realized what he'd done. Turning on the lights had signaled security. They had to be on their way.

He flicked the lights off and fumbled at the door. It resisted. Calm down. It has to be unlocked or how'd I get in? It gave, spilling him into the hall, and he took off in the direction Abbot had gone. Behind him, a security officer squeezed through the twisted hatch and headed for the room where the sleeper lay.

t.i.tus rounded a bend, chose a branching corridor, and stopped, lost. He knew he was facing what they had labeled the stern. It was connected to the medical research dome by a pressurized, high-security tunnel. Very likely Abbot had gone that way, for the only other way back into the station was via the surface, past the security checkpoint.

Heart pounding, t.i.tus set off astern, cloaked heavily in Influence. Visualizing the consequences of being caught and connected to the security breach, he sidled through groups of workers. The Project openly sponsored some fifteen hundred investigations underway, both on the alien vessel and in the station's labs. But t.i.tus's mind was on the sleeper. Could he allow the humans to vivisect a helpless luren? If they knew, would they do it anyway? They could have their cloning specimen without destroying the man. But knowing what he did of biologists, t.i.tus was sure they'd do a total autopsy, which would include removing the brain-fatal even for a luren. If they knew he was alive, would they let him wake?

Was it even up to t.i.tus to decide what they should allow the humans to do to the sleeper? Maybe Abbot didn't know about the sleeper yet. t.i.tus had to get word to Connie.

That meant rebuilding his computer, hoping the parts s.h.i.+pment from Earth would include a new black box. Had Abbot destroyed the black box on purpose? Did he even know about it? More to the point, could t.i.tus slip a replacement communicator box into the rebuilt computer without Abbot knowing? Was Abbot in direct touch with his Tourists?

Had Connie received and understood t.i.tus's cryptic message buried in the requisition that Carol Colby had sent to Earth? And could Connie's agents smuggle him a communicator? Unlike Abbot, t.i.tus didn't have the skill to build one.

t.i.tus came to an unguarded airlock fitted into a docking port of the luren craft by profligate use of flexible gasket material. The portal was plastered with a frightening array of Day-Glo quarantine signs, but the green light above it was on. He leaned against the bulkhead beside it, trying to concentrate on what was on the other side.

At length, he held his breath and eased into the airlock. Casting a pall of Influence to divert the attention of the guards, he hoped no one would notice what appeared to be an empty lock cycling. After a nerve-racking interval, he emerged in the Biomed research section where the alien bodies were being studied. It was one area t.i.tus's clearance didn't authorize him to enter.

He would need their results, but he had been banned from their lab. Why? Because they planned a cloning? It seemed so reasonable, and then he remembered Mihelich. If he was connected with cloning.

The airlock opened into a corridor where everyone was dressed in bio-isolation suits, the labs opening off it doubly sealed. Through the next airlock, precautions eased and there was one open lab where gla.s.s vessels climbed poles up to the ceiling next to one lined with incubator ovens filled with specimen dishes. Two other rooms down the hall held the main biocomputer.

Further on, he found a power and life-support substation capable of maintaining this dome independently of the central systems of the station. Of course Abbot would oversee the operation of that unit, and thus be cleared for this area.

t.i.tus was sorely tempted to linger, to listen and try to find out if cloning capability was being installed here. But it was too dangerous. He had already inadvertently tripped one of security's traps. No more today.

He headed back to his room.

t.i.tus spent the next couple of days organizing the repairs. s.h.i.+mon proved to be a genius, and Inea became invaluable. Though she was no computer hardware expert, she was a wizard at troubleshooting and better with her hands than others.

At his first department heads meeting, t.i.tus Influenced one of the engineers to do a refractory study of the s.h.i.+p's hull. He led the man to believe it would be useful if the military had to detect hostile s.h.i.+ps.

When not attending obligatory meetings, sitting on committees, or reading reports of meetings he wasn't supposed to attend, t.i.tus prowled the storerooms. He found eight vital components that had disappeared from inventory-Abbot's work, no doubt. Each time he returned with one of these treasures, Inea would study him thoughtfully.

During working hours, she treated him in a professional manner. There were only a few moments when she would pause to weigh something he said or did, and he would feel he was being judged-no, that all luren were being judged.

He hadn't visited her again, not because he spent most of his off hours trying to crack security seals to get at background on the biomed staff, but because, each evening when they parted, she would say goodnight in a final tone.

At first he thought it was an act designed to tell everyone there was nothing between them, protecting his cover. But when he caught up with her in the elevator, she brushed him off. He was alarmed at how much it hurt to watch her retreating form. B he didn't dare push her.

On the fourth day, Carol Colby called. t.i.tus took it in his office. "t.i.tus, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"I'll take the bad first."

"We've got an appropriations fight on our hands. We may not get all the parts you ordered. And we may not get them by special s.h.i.+pment. They're telling me the budget won't cover it. When I told them they had to s.h.i.+p the parts, or at least squirt us a copy of your star catologue, they laughed at me. It would cost too much to squirt it, they tell me."

"It would," agreed t.i.tus. "It would take hours, and there'd be errors. Sunspot activity is making hash of all data from the far orbital instruments. We're on repeaters."