or more. They came pouring in, full of indignation at being kept outside, even more full of astonishment when they saw what was waiting for them. The ones in front stopped short, goggling, until the ones behind pushed them forward. There was a curious sort of collective sigh. Then some rushed toward the sub and a dozen or so zeroed in on Marcus Pell, full of complaints and accusations. A tall woman in a sari got to him first. 'I must protest this unnecessary delay, Deputy Director Pell!' she snapped sternly. 'Under the terms of the UN covenant we are entitled to immediate access to every item of Scarecrow technology, without delay!' And a man, in the uniform of some army I didn't recognize but wearing a blue United Nations beret, backed her up: 'I have already filed a protest because your people did not allow UN observers to be present when this submarine was landed!'
Pell wasn't fazed. He'd had plenty of practice in dealing with indignant foreigners who were pissed off at something the Bureau had done. He spread his hands benignly. 'I understand your concerns, Major Korman, Doctor Tal, but these are exceptional circumstances. The Scarecrows don't know we have captured this sub, and they mustn't find out. So we have had to take unusual security precautions-'
He didn't stop there, but I stopped listening. I had a nearer problem. Several dozen of the new people had circled my little group, staring in fascination at their first sight of a real, live Horch. A couple of them were cameramen, shooting from every angle, and when Beert saw the lenses pointing at him he couldn't help flinching away. Pirraghiz and the wounded Doc, Wrahrrgherfoozh, saw what was happening and moved to surround Beert protectively, but the audience was all raucously shouting questions: Did they speak English? What happened to the big one's arm? How come the other Doc was wearing clothes? Were they dangerous?
I tried to reassure Beert and Pirraghiz and at the same time keep the more adventurous of the spectators from reaching out to touch Beert, but it was Hilda, the expert in crowd control, who rescued us. She produced four Bureau police to surround us and then-she must have turned up the gain on her internal microphone-she thundered at the people:
'Don't come too close! There's a risk of communicable diseases.' With the help of the police, that made them fall back a little. She added, more civilly, 'When they've been examined you will have your proper access to them, and before that we'll arrange for Agent Dannerman to meet with you in the auditorium to tell his story.'
She didn't give me a chance to react to that. While the police were moving the spectators away she came up close to me and, said softly, 'I'd go easy on telling Marcus to go screw himself if I were you, Danno. You're not making any friends for yourself that way.'
She was telling me what I knew already. I shrugged. 'I already have all the friends I need.'
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, 'Maybe you do. It's a good thing for you that I'm one of them.' And then, with a change of tone, 'Anyway, here comes our transportation.'
The transportation was one of those electric-motored people carriers you see in airports. It was big enough to hold all of us-including the Docs, though just barely. With a couple of Bureau uniformed police ahead of us to clear the way we moved pretty fast out of the loading area, through the halls of Camp Smolley. Hilda wasn't on the vehicle and didn't need to be; her box's wheels kept up easily as she rolled along behind us. Behind her still half a dozen more guards were following, half-trotting to keep up; most of them wore the blue UN berets. All the way the two Docs were mewing to each other, taking a lively interest in the rooms they passed, the fire extinguishers on the walls, the water fountains, the ceiling-mounted TV screens at every intersection that were all displaying the scene in the loading dock, though no human beings were present in the halls to watch them because everybody who could get there was there already. Beert was darting his head in every direction, too, and full of questions. I couldn't tell him much. I'd never been in Camp Smolley before either.
I knew right away when we got to the rooms they had reserved for my friends, though, because two people were standing in front of one of the doors. One was a blue-beret guard, looking uneasy, and the huge figure next to him was unmistakably a Doc. I was astonished to see him there, but Pirraghiz saw him at the same moment I did and her reaction was a lot more violent. She screamed something and leaped off the carrier-I thought she was going to overturn the thing-and flung herself into the other one's arms, the two of them mewing at high volume at each other. I got off, too, turning to Hilda. 'Oh, right,' I said, memory returning at last. 'There were a couple of Docs with the bunch that escaped from the prison planet, the escape party, weren't there?'
'Two of them. The other one's dead,' she said shortly. 'This one we call Meow; he's been helping out figuring how the Scarecrow stuff works-can't talk so anybody can understand him, but he's good at drawing pictures. Tell your Horch friend this is where he's going to live for a while.'
For a while. When I looked inside I hoped that 'for a while' would be really brief, because the room they wanted him in was not attractive. It was a damn jail cell, is what it was. It had bars on its one window, and a lidless open toilet, and a washstand, and a narrow cot. That was all.
Hilda was watching my face. 'Tell him it's only temporary,' she suggested.
I looked at her. 'Yeah, sure,' I said. I did tell Been: that. What I didn't tell him was how long 'only temporary' was likely to be in government practice. I glossed it over as fast as I could, and tried to explain to him how the toilet worked, and offered to get more blankets for his cot if he wanted them, and promised I would see him as often as I could-I didn't then realize how intensive the questioning was that lay ahead of us, and therefore how often that would be.
Beert listened in silence, head hung low, ropy arms wrapped around his belly for protection. All he said, his voice low-pitched and somber, was, 'What about food, Dan?'
That took me aback. 'Oh, hell,' I said. 'Right. Food.' I hadn't given that little problem any thought at all.
So I asked Hilda for help. She wasn't, much. 'There's plenty for the Docs and the Dopeys,' she told me. 'The Scarecrows sent some food down for them-that's how they sneaked their subs along. I don't know about the Horch. What does he eat?'
I turned to Pirraghiz for help. That took a little doing, because all three of the Docs were still excitedly mewing to each other. Wrahrrgherfoozh and the one they called Meow were hugging each other at that moment-by no means with the same passion as Pirraghiz had shown, but you can do a lot of hugging with six arms apiece, even if one of them is only a stump. When I got Pirraghiz's attention and explained the problem, she looked remorseful. 'I did not think, Dannerman,' she said sadly. 'Let me ask the others.' They chattered back and forth for a moment, then she shook her massive head at me. 'I am not sure,' she said. 'Perhaps I can do for Djabeertapritch what I did for you in the nest of the Two Eights-get samples of all the foods your species eats, and see what among them resembles the foods of the Horch.'
'I understand Meow has food of his own,' I said, pointing at the other Doc. 'Maybe some of that can be used, or the food for the Dopeys.'
She looked puzzled. 'Perhaps,' she said, 'but why do you call him that? It is Mrrranthoghrow.'
I stared at her, slack-jawed. 'Mrrranthoghrow?'
'Exactly he,' she said happily. You would not think that a six-armed creature with a face like a bearded full moon could look coquettish, but she managed it. 'He is a copy of the one we knew in the Two Eights, of course, but it is Mrrranthoghrow whom the Others copied for this mission and he remembers me well from earlier times. But you surprise me, Dannerman. Did you think I would be so affectionate with a total stranger?'
Next stop for me was my press conference-well, there was certainly no press there, but that was what it felt like to the person in the hot seat. I climbed up onto the platform, before the hundreds of staring eyes, and gave them a sketchy outline of my adventures with the Horch. Then I opened the floor for questions. That was a mistake. There were about a million of them, and all the time I was searching the hundred or more faces in the room for Patrice.
When I found her, squeezed into almost the last row, I managed an inconspicuous wave. She waved back, all right, but there was something about her that seemed wrong.
I took me a moment to figure that out. It was the clothes and the hairdo. Patrice had been wearing a pretty pants suit; this one was in Bureau coveralls. All right, she could have changed her clothes-not very likely, but possible-but she hadn't had time to let her hair grow into a long ponytail.
There was only one possible explanation. The woman I was looking at wasn't Patrice. She had to be Pat! The real Pat. And sitting beside her was a man who looked a lot like me, except that he wore a mustache, and I realized I was looking at the other me, Danny M., the man who was married to Pat.
That did not help my concentration.
When the deputy director, sitting behind me on the platform, saw that I was stumbling through the next couple
