about Beetchermarlf. Takoorch is the one I remember.” Barlennan, having had more direct contact with human beings and more selfish reasons to develop such skills, had been able to read more accurately between the lines of Benj’s talk and obtain a more nearly correct picture of the boy’s feelings than Dondragmer had. It would, he was sure, be useful; but he put it from his mind as he turned away from the communicator. “That could be both better and worse,” he remarked to the two scientists. “It’s certainly just as well we didn’t set up that blinker system for night communication; they’d have seen us certainly.”
“Not certainly,” objected Deeslenver. “The human said they could spot such lights but there was no suggestion that they made a habit of looking for them. If it takes instruments, I’d bet the instruments are busy on more important thing.”
“So would I, if the stakes weren’t so high,” returned Barlennan. “Anyway, we wouldn’t dare use it now because we know they’ll be looking this way with the best machines they have. We just asked them to.”
“But they won’t be looking here. They’ll be searching the neighborhood of the Kwembly, millions of cables from here.”
“Think of yourself back home looking up at Toorey. If you were supposed to examine one part of it closely with a telescope, how much of a slip would it take to make you glance at another?? Deeslenver conceded the point with a gesture. “Then we either wait for sunrise, or fly a special if we want to use the Esket as you suggested. I admit I haven’t thought of anything else. I haven’t even thought of what we might do there which would make a good test.”
“It shouldn’t matter too much. The real question would be how soon, and how accurately and completely, the human beings do report whatever we set up for them to see. I’ll think of something in the next couple of hours. Aren’t you researchers setting up for a flight to leave soon, anyway?”
“Not that soon,” said Bendivence. “Also, I don’t agree with you that details don’t matter. You don’t want them to get the idea that uv could possibly have anything to do with what they see happen at the Erket. They certainly aren’t stupid.”
“Of course. I didn’t mean that they should. It will be something natural, making full allowance for the fact that the human beings know even less than we do about what’s natural on this world. You get back to the labs and tell everyone who has equipment to get onto the Dada that departure time has been moved ahead. I’ll have a written message for Destigmet in two hours.”
“All right.” The scientists vanished through the door, and Barlennan followed them more slowly. He was just beginning to realize how valid Bendivence’s point was. What could be made to happen, in range of one of the Esket’s vision transmitters, which would not suggest that there were Mesklinites in the neighborhood but which would attract human interest and tempt the big creatures to edit their reports? Could he think of such a thing without knowing why the reports were being held up? Or, for that matter, without being quite sure that they were? It was still possible that the delay on the Kwembly matter had been a genuine oversight; as the young human had suggested, each person might have thought that someone else had attended to the matter. To Barlennan’s sailor’s viewpoint this smacked of gross incompetence and inexcusable disorganization, but it would not be the first time he had suspected these qualities in human beings; not as a species, of course, but on an individual basis. The test certainly had to be made, and the Esker’ transmitters might surely be tools for the purpose. As far as Barleunan knew, the transmitters were still active. Naturally, care had been taken that no one enter their field of view since the “loss” of the cruiser, and it had been long since any human being had made mention of them. They would have been shuttered rather than avoided, since this would obviously have left the Mesklinites at the place much greater freedom of action; but the idea of the shutters had not occurred until after Destigmet had departed with his instructions to set up a second Settlement unknown to the human beings. As Barlennan remembered, one of the transmitters had been at the usual spot on the bridge, one in the laboratory, one in the hangar where the helicopters were kept. The helicopters had been carefully arranged to be out on routine flights when the “catastrophe” occurred; and the fourth transmitter was in the life-support section, though not covering the entrance. It had been necessary to take much of the equipment from this chamber, of course. With all the planning, the situation was still inconvenient; having the lab and life rooms out of bounds or at best accessible only with the greatest care, had caused Destigmet and his first officer, Kabremm, much annoyance. They had more than once requested permission to shutter the sets, since the technique had been invented. Barlennan had refused, not wanting to call human attention back to the Esket; now, well, maybe the same net could take two fish. The sudden blanking of one or perhaps of all four of those screens would certainly be noticed from above. Whether the humans would feel any inclination to hide the event from the Settlement there was no way of telling; one could only try. The more he thought it over the better the plan sounded. Barlennan felt the glow familiar to every intelligent being, regardless of species, who has solved a major problem unassisted. He enjoyed it for fully half a minute. At the end of that time, another of Guzmeen’s runners caught up with him. “Commander!” The messenger fell into step beside him in the nearly dark corridor. “Guzmeen says that you should come back to Communications at once. One of the human beings, the one called Mersereau, is on the screen. Guz says he ought to be excited, but isn’t, because he’s reporting something going on at the Esket- something is moving in the laboratory!”
Keeping in phase with Barlennan as he switched directions took some doing but the messenger managed it. The commander took his continued presence for granted. “Any further details? When, or what was moving?”
“None, sir. The man simply appeared on the screen without any warning. He said, ‘Something is happening at the Esket. Tell the commander.’ Guzmeen ordered me to bring you back on hurricane priority, so I didn’t hear any more.”
“Those were his exact words? He used our language?”
“No, it was the human speech. His words were<” the runner repeated the phrase, this time in the original tongue. Barlennan could read no more into the words than had been implicit in the translation. “Then we don’t know whether someone slipped up and was seen, or dropped something into the field of the lens, or-”
“I doubt the first, sir. The human could hardly have failed to recognize a person.”
“I suppose not. Well, some sort of detail should be in by the time we get back there.” There wasn’t, however. Boyd Mersereau was not even on the screen by the time Barlennan reached Communications. More surprising, neither was anyone else. The commander looked at Guzmeen suspiciously; the communication of ficer gave the equivalent of a shrug. “He just went, sir, after that one sentence about the lab.” Barlennan, mystified, squeezed the “attention” control. But Boyd Mersereau had other concerns on his mind. Most, but not quite all, involved events on Dhrawn, not the Esket. There were a few matters much closer to home than the giant star-planet. The chief of these was the cooling down of Aucoin. Aucoin was annoyed at not having been brought into the exchanges between Dondragmer and Katini, and the captain and Tebbetts. He was inclined to blame young Hoffman for going ahead with policy-disturbing matters without official approval. However, he did not want to say anything which would annoy Easy. He regarded her, with some justification, as the most nearly indispensable member of the communications group. In consequence, Mersereau and others suffered fallout from the administrator?s deflected ire. This was not too serious, as far as Boyd was concerned. He had years ago classified the pacifying of administrators along with shaving as something which took time but did not demand full attention; it was worth doing at all only because it was usually less trouble in the long run. The real attention- getter, the thing which kept even news from the Esket in the background, was the state of affairs at the Kwembly. Left alone Boyd might have been moderately concerned, but only moderately. The missing Mesklinites weren’t close personal friends of his. He was civilized enough to be bothered by their loss as much as if they had been human, though they were not his brothers or sons. The Kwembly herself was a problem, but a fairly routine one. Land-cruisers had been in trouble before; so far they had always been extricated sooner or later. All in all, Mersereau would have been merely absorbed, not bothered, if left to himself. He was not left to himself. Benj Hoffman felt strongly about the whole matter and had a way of making his feelings clear, not entirely by talking, though he was perfectly willing to talk. Even when silent he radiated sympathy. Boyd would find himself discussing with Dondragmer the progress of the melting-out plan or the chances of another flood in terms of their effect on the missing helmsmen, rather than with
