Those of My Blood. Jacqueline Lichtenberg

question you evaded? The aliens?”

      “I’m going to continue to evade.”

      “Why?”

      “Basically, to protect you.”

      “From?”

      “I’ve already told you. I’ve broken a law for you. You’re walking around with a head full of knowledge you shouldn’t have, and no gag-whammy to keep you silent. One slip and we’re both in an awful lot of trouble.”

      “How much trouble?”

      “Life or death for me. Being gagged for you.”

      “They wouldn’t kill me? For knowing?”

      “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 identities 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. Shiddehara.”

      “Titus,” he corrected.

      “Titus.”

      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 lifts. 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 lift 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

      Titus 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 ship. 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, Titus 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 spacesuit. 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 Titus, 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, Titus tagged along with a group going on shift. 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, nobody yet understood the craft’s engines or power source. Speculation was running wild, however. Titus 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 analyze the propulsion—because this module doesn’t have any!”

      “Maybe this is only a lifeboat detached from a larger ship 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 something there. A power module left way out in solar orbit. Makes sense. The ship 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 ship’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.”

      Titus didn’t know if a module of this ship was missing, but according to Abbot, the ship their ancestors had come to Earth in had been faster than light, and it hadn’t exploded on impact, either. Titus had always accepted that some mishap had forced that ship 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 ship 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.

      Titus felt the vibration as the truck scraped 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 Titus 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