the Hunter to check the main arteries, therefore easier to be found if they rode them. Besides, the snow no longer hid the pavement, and Hulann was able to adjust their blade speed and elevation far in advance of any change in the surface.
They had been making light conversation on and off through the dark hours of their flight. At first, the talk had helped to soothe them, had distracted them so that they could not dwell on the memory of the Hunter's Lightning that had torn off the rear fender. It was not 'lightning' of course. The Hunters had several surgically implanted weapons systems within their overlarge bodies. In their arms and hands was the gas pellet gun. From a storage sack in their arm, the system drew a highly compressed droplet of liquid oxygen, propelled it through the tubes by the controlled explosion of other gas, and fired the pellet from beneath the fingernails. It sunk into its target, expanding, and exploding the target from within. It was a short-range device. But effective. Knowing how it worked did not make it seem any the less mystical.
Hunters made an effort to cloak themselves in the attributes of gods-even in a race without a religious mythos. It was no surprise that they succeeded. Indeed, when Hulann had first comprehended the 'gods' concept held in several of the other galactic races, he had immediately wondered whether-in a hundred or a thousand centuries-the naoli would look back upon the first Hunters as ancient gods of a sort. Perhaps these genetically engineered creatures were destined to be the first of a line of saints that would one day be held in more esteem than they truly deserved. Worshiped? Maybe
Eventually, their conversation turned to more personal channels, away from the artificial, frantic chatter which had first been subconsciously meant to blot out unpleasant thoughts. They talked of their pasts, of their families. Hulann was surprised at the compassion the boy showed, at the way he cried when he told of the death of his father and sister (his mother had died shortly after his birth). It was not like a human to show such emotions. At least, it was rare-and always with less intensity than this. Humans were cold, with little laughter and even fewer tears. This unemotional, stoic reserve was the thing that made them so basically alien to the naoli. And alien to all of the other races as well-all of which were gregarious.
Then the understanding came.
It sliced through his brain, stabbed upward into his overmind, jolting the entire foundation of his reason.
It hurt.
The first inklings of comprehension stirred and began to blossom when Leo pointed to a distant light of a rising naoli starship, easily a hundred miles away to the east. He watched the flame and the blue-green haze it created with the gaze of a washed and restructured naoli longing for his past He sucked in his breath as the majestic plume grew longer on the velvet backdrop of the still dark sky. (just the horizon rim was touched with orange daylight). Hulann's mind leaped into the chasm of discovery when Leo said:
'I wanted to be a spacer. Always wanted it. But I wasn't chosen.'
'Chosen?' Hulann asked, not realizing yet where the conversation was leading.
'Yes. My family stock was not what they called 'prime.''
'But you are too young to have applied for space work.'
Leo looked confused.
'You said you were only eleven.'
'You're chosen before you're born,' the boy said. 'Isn't it that way with naoli?'
'That makes no sense!' Hulann said. 'You can't be trained for space work until you're older, able to grasp basic physics.'
'It would take too long that way,' Leo said. 'To be a spacer, you have to know so many things. Hundreds of thousands of things. To learn them as an adult-even with the help of hypnoteachers-would require too long.'
'Forty years. Fifty at the most,' Hulann said. 'Then there are centuries ahead in which-'
'Exactly,' Leo said when Hulann failed to finish the sentence. 'Humans only live to an average age of a hundred and fifty years. Only the first two thirds are 'strong' years in which we can withstand the rigors of intergalactic travel.'
'That's horrible!' the naoli said. 'Then your spacers spend their entire lives doing the same thing?'
'What else?'
Hulann tried to explain that the naoli held many occupations in one lifetime. It was unthinkable, he said, that a man should spend his short years doing the same thing. Limiting. Boring. Deadly to the mind. But it was not easy to press across this basic naoli principle of life to someone of so short-lived a species.
The understanding was hovering closer. Hulann felt the weight of it, though he could not understand exactly what was weighing on him
'Once,' Leo said, 'in the early days of our space programs, spacers were not trained from before birth. They grew up, led normal lives, went to the moon, came back. Maybe they remained in the space program, maybe not. Some of them went into business. Others entered politics. One of them became President of the major country of that time. But when the faster-than-light drives were perfected and we began to accumulate more and more relevent data a spacer had to learn, the old way of choosing astronauts had to be replaced.'
There was now full understanding. Hulann realized why there had been a war, why Leo was different from the humans the naoli had met in space.
'The fertilized egg is withdrawn from the mother soon after conception,' the boy went on. 'The Spacer Institute then takes it and develops it into all the things a spacer should be. A spacer has toes twice as long as non-spacers, because he needs them for grasping in free-fall The big toe is also an opposable thumb after the genetic engineers are finished. His range of vision runs into the infra-red. His hearing is more, acute. When the foetus is four months developed, it is subjected to a constant learning environment where data is fed directly into its developing brain. The human brain never learns faster than during that five month period.'
Hulann found he could barely speak. His voice was thinner, hoarser than normal. His lips kept drawing in over his teeth in shame, and he had to withdraw them to speak clearly. 'How? did the non-spacers feel? about the spacers?'
'Hated them. They were different from the rest of us, of course. They could survive much better in space, in any alien environment. There was talk of beginning to send out non-spacers as passengers, but the spacers fought that for a good many years. They guarded their own power.'
'And they were cold,' Hulann said sickly. 'Showed very few emotions, never laughed?'
'Was bred out of them. The less emotional they were, the better job they could be counted on to perform.'
'The war-' Hulann said.
When he did not finish, Leo said: 'Yeah?'
'We thought the spacers? We never considered that they might not be typical of your race. We met hundreds. Thousands of them. They were all alike. We could not know.'
'What are you saying?' Leo asked curiously.
'The war was a mistake. We were fighting Hunters. Your spacers are the equivalent of our Hunters. And we destroyed all of you because we thought your Hunters- your spacers were typical of all of you?'
Master Hunter Peneton sat in the control chair of the Shaper, three hundred and sixty-one electrodes attached to his body, snaking away from every part of him, disappearing into the vast machinery of the micro- surgical machine. His fingers danced across three hundred and sixty-one controls on the board before him.
He shaped.
He changed.
In the steamy, sealed plastiglass module beyond the foot-thick quartz wall, a tiny foetus was buoyed on a cushion of forces that would be forever beyond his understanding, even when he was grown into a full creature. For this foetus was destined only to be a Hunter. Not a Master Hunter.
That was something else again. There was a special program of genetic juggling, a program of the highest complexities, to be used in the creation of Master Hunters. It was used only once every Century. There were never more than five Master Hunters at any one moment.
Peneton was a Master Hunter.
He shaped.
He changed
In a storage tank in Atlanta: rats
In the morning light, the Great Lakes conversion crater's light looked more yellow than green. Along the
