Those of My Blood. Jacqueline Lichtenberg

corner of the bay doors and came into full view of the wreck.

      Pieces of it that had scattered during the crash had been dragged up beside the main fragment before the station was built around it. The main section was mangled, torn, and half-buried. Floodlights cast sharply defined cones of illumination, stripping away any glamour or drama. The ship looked like heaps of trash in a wrecking yard. But he could see something now that he hadn’t seen in the photos taken with instruments tuned to human vision.

      Suddenly mindful of the cameras perpetually aimed at the wreck, he moved to shield his suit identification as he squinted against the floodlights. He could just make out markings on the ship’s hull; dark rust against darker rust color. Had the humans missed the markings because their eyes didn’t register the distinction? It was faint to him, but his eyes were not luren eyes. They were human eyes affected by luren genes.

      Perhaps to luren eyes, the markings stood out brightly. He made a mental note to Influence someone to do a spectral analysis of the whole hull. It might hold a clue to the luren eye, and thus to the luren sun.

      Part of the inscription was torn away and part was buried in the moon dust. But Titus could read the script. Imagining the missing parts of letters, he transliterated it to English, trying to sound the word, for he didn’t know what it meant. Kylyd. “Kailaid?”

      Possibly this was a word in a different language from that preserved among Earth’s luren. Or it might simply be a name, a word that had lost meaning eons ago.

      As they approached the rent in the side of the main section being used for an entryway, Titus felt a prickly surge of excitement. Suddenly, the wreck wasn’t just a heap of twisted metal any more. It was a starship. It had an identity, a history, a proud name, and a loyal crew.

      Titus skinned through the security check in the shadow of one of the engineers, and found himself free inside the wreck. Nothing had prepared him for this.

      Twisted and distorted though it was, the shape of the space the aliens had carved struck a deep nerve in Titus, a human nerve. This place was subtly wrong. It was alien.

      Titus had traveled all over the world, and had felt the vague unease in foreign buildings, a negligible component of culture-stress syndrome. But this was different. This fairly shouted wrong!

      He shuddered and ducked aside through an airlock that had been wrenched and buckled at impact. Here floodlights had been strung up since they hadn’t yet conquered the ship’s systems. The ship’s lighting, when they found it, ought to provide Titus with a vital clue to the home star.

      Crossbreeds such as Titus usually had an infrared sensitivity peak as well as a much greater ultraviolet peak along with the usual three human peaks of sensitivity. But what of purebred luren?

      Not far beyond the twisted hatch, he came upon two workstations set in wide places at either side of the corridor. There were dark stains on the light buff furnishings. Blood.

      He examined a chair set low and pitched so the occupant would be half reclining, looking at an overhead panel. Now the panel was just a dark red oval patch on the ceiling, but the darkness had depth, as if he were looking into a tank. He tried to imagine what the display would be like, but he had no idea what was done at this station.

      The controls were on the arms of the chair, which were broad and dotted with bits of the same deep dark substance that formed the screen above. Perhaps, with the power on, the display on the chair arms would identify each control’s function. That would be necessary if the functions of the controls could be changed.

      He was thinking like a human, and he knew it. He wasn’t sure anyone on the Project had the imagination to understand luren controls. He regarded the workstation with some awe. It was unexpectedly humbling, for he’d always subconsciously assumed he would understand luren artifacts on sight.

      Casting about with all his senses, he determined that he was alone. Sitting down, he put his hands on the controls and gazed up into the monitor...if that’s what it was. Opening himself, he tried to feel what this place was.

      But it only baffled him. There’s a lesson. Raised human, schooled by humans, I am human. He wished everyone who subscribed to the Tourist philosophy could sit here and feel this. It would end their callous treatment of humans.

      Suddenly, the last of the unacknowledged doubts that had depressed him since his skirmish with Abbot in the men’s room on Goddard Station vanished. It might be futile to delay the moment the luren found Earth, but it had to be done. With time to study this, humans just might be able to hold their own.

      Something whispered at the edge of perception.

      Influence! Abbot!

      He sprang out of the chair and crouched, muffling his own Influence as much as he dared. Back the way he’d come, through the twisted hatch, Titus saw Abbot stop, hunker down, and open an access panel. He worked within, concentrating, Influence keeping him invisible to the humans who passed.

      Titus backed along the hall away from Abbot, searching for a place to hide. Nearby, he found an undamaged door. Eyes focused on Abbot, he put one hand behind him, groping with gloved fingers for the control. His grip fell naturally onto a panel, and before he knew it he was inside the room.

      It was a chamber about seven feet by eight feet. As he sensed Abbot move toward him, he worked frantically to shut the door. It slid closed just as Abbot eased through the twisted hatch. Before utter blackness enclosed him, Titus glimpsed Abbot’s hand gripping a recording device.

      Dispelling his own Influence, Titus leaned against the door, eyes closed, concentrating on Abbot’s moves. He couldn’t discern the faint vibration that Abbot’s feet must be making. The whole ship pulsed with human movement. But that keener sense that accompanied Influence tracked Abbot to the work stations Titus had examined.

      Abbot stopped there and Titus sensed the older vampire’s intense concentration cloaked under precisely disciplined Influence. Titus didn’t dare move. He hardly breathed. He just waited, observing Abbot working.

      At last, Abbot moved on past the room where Titus hid, and was gone. When the last whiff of his Influence had faded, Titus heaved a tremendous sigh. Then it hit him. He had spied on Abbot, and had not been noticed. Titus grinned ferociously. He wasn’t helpless before an all-powerful master. It was a real contest now.

      Titus heaved himself away from the wall, and saw absolute, total darkness.

      Activating his suit light, he peered about in the shaft of illumination and found a Westinghouse cable feeding overhead lights. He found the switch and turned them on.

      In the center of the bare room, a lucite cylinder about six-feet long lay atop a dark rectangular block.

      And inside...inside lay a man.

      No! A luren!

      The supine figure was unclothed. The skin had the white pigmentation that had turned Titus from the dusky skin color of Southern India to that of a deeply tanned Caucasian in the grave. The abdomen was concave, indicating the shrunken abdominal organs and sparse body fat of the typical Earth-bred luren. His face was long and gaunt.

      The only differences were those of degree. This individual was whiter than anyone Titus knew. He was more emaciated. His hair was not gray or white but metallic silver. Titus supposed his eyes would be pale, too.

      He seemed “alien” because there was no Oriental, Hispanic, Caucasian, Indian, or Black cast to his features. It was nothing specific. His nose wasn’t too prominent, his eyes weren’t too odd, his lips were not especially different, and his cheekbones seemed normal. His ears were reasonably shaped and placed. Even his haircut wasn’t so exotic. It was in the summation of these things that the difference lay.

      The body showed no sign of explosive decompression. One side of the chest was depressed. A blow had broken ribs and ruptured organs: minor damage but enough to induce dormancy in a luren or to kill a human. The skull seemed intact.

      The protective cylinder had gauges for air pressure, temperature, and radiation. The gauges were attached to