dome, and let the younger bodies of my team members take over the digging. Seems to me that's close enough to count.'
Alex chuckled. 'I like him already. I was afraid this trip was going to be a bore.'
'Not likely, with him around. Well, this is our second-in-command, double-doc Siegfried Haakon-Fritz. And if this lad had been in charge, I think it might have been a truly dismal trip.' She brought up the image of Fritz, who was a square-jawed, steely-eyed, stern-faced monument. He could have been used as the model for any ortho- Communist memorial statue to The Glorious Worker In Service To The State. Or maybe the Self-Righteous In Search Of A Convert. There was nothing like humor anywhere in the man's expression. It looked to her as if his head might crack in half if he ever smiled. 'This is all I have, five minutes of silent watching. He didn't say a word. But maybe he doesn't believe in talking when it's being recorded.'
'Why not?' Alex asked curiously. 'Is he paranoid about being recorded or something?'
'He's a Practical Darwinist,' she told him.
'Oh, brother,' Alex replied with disgust The Practical Darwinists had their own sort of notoriety, and Tia was frankly surprised to find one in the Institute at all. They were generally concentrated in the soft sciences, when they were in the sciences at all. Personally, Tia did not consider political science to be particularly scientific.
'His political background is kind of dubious,' she continued, 'but since there's nothing anyone can hang on him, it simply says in the file that his politics have not always been those of the Institute. That's bureaucratic double-talk for someone they would rather not trust, but have no reason to keep them out of positions of authority.'
'Got you.' Alec nodded. 'So, we'll just not mention politics around him, and we'll make sure it's one of the forbidden subjects in the main cabin. Who's next?'
'These are our post-docs; they have their hard science doctorates, and now they're working on their archeology doctorates.' She split her center screen and installed them both on it at once. 'On the right, Les Dimand-Taylor, human; on the right, Treel rish-Yr nahLeert, Rayanthan. Treel is female. Les has a Bio Doc, and Treel Xenology.'
'Hmm, for Treel wouldn't Xenology be the study of humans?' Alex pointed out. Les was a very intense fellow, thin, heavily tanned, very fit-looking, but with haunted eyes. Treel's base-type seemed to be cold-weather mammalian, as she had a pelt of very fine, dense brown fur that extended down onto her cheekbones. Her round, black eyes stared directly into the lens, seeing everything, and giving the viewer the impression that she was cataloging it all.
'No audio on the post-docs, just static file pictures,' she continued. 'They're attached to Aspen.'
'Not to Old Stone Face?' Alex asked. 'Never mind. Any grad student or post-doc he'd have would be a clonal copy of himself. I can't imagine any other type staying with him for long.'
'And here are our grad students.' Again she split the screen. 'Still working on the first doctorate. Both male. Aldon Reese-Tambuto, human; and Fred, from Dushayne.'
'Fred?' Alex spluttered. Understandably. The Dushaynese could not possibly have looked less human; he had a square, flat head, literally. Flat on top, flat face, flattened sides. He was bright green and had no mouth, just a tiny hole below his nostril slits. Dushaynese were vegetarian to an extreme; on their homeworld they lived on tree sap and fruit juice. Out in the larger galaxy they did very well on sucrose-water and other liquids. They had, as a whole, very good senses of humor.
'Fred?' Alex repeated.
'Fred,' she said firmly. 'Very few humans would be able to reproduce his real name. His vocal organ is a vibrating membrane in the top of his head. He does human speech just fine, but we can't manage his.' She blanked her screens. 'I'll spare you their speeches; they are very eager, very typical young grad students and this will be their first dig.'
'Save me.' Alex moaned.
'Be nice,' she said firmly. 'Don't disillusion them. Let the next two years take care of that.'
He waved his hands vigorously. 'Far be it from me to let them know what gruesome fate awaits them. What was the chance of death on a dig? Twenty percent? And there's six of them?'
The chance of catching something non-fatal is a lot higher,' she pointed out 'Actually, the honor of being the fatality usually goes to the post-docs or the second-in-command; they're the ones doing the major explorations when a dig hits something like a tomb. The grad students usually are put to sifting sand and cataloging pottery shards.'
Alex didn't get a chance to respond to that, for the first members of the team arrived at the lock at that moment, and he went down the lift to welcome them aboard, while Tia directed the servos in storing most of their baggage in the one remaining empty hold. As they came up the lift, both the young 'men' were chattering away at high speed, with Alex in the middle, nodding sagely from time to time and clearly not catching more than half of what they said. Tia decided to rescue him.
