Those of My Blood. Jacqueline Lichtenberg

had been no hint on Earth that they’d found anything but cell-damaged corpses. This intact specimen was being preserved—probably in pure sterile nitrogen—for cloning! It had to be for cloning!

      It hadn’t been done yet for lack of budget, but they’d do it eventually. All they needed was one perfect germ cell.

      What the humans didn’t know was that this “corpse” was not dead. His spine and brain were intact. Given a benign environment, he’d revive. But the humans didn’t suspect that. Despite, or perhaps because of, all the horror movies ever made, they’d never suspect that.

      Suddenly, he realized what he’d done. Turning on the lights had signaled security. They had to be on their way.

      He flicked the lights off and fumbled at the door. It resisted. Calm down. It has to be unlocked or how’d I get in? It gave, spilling him into the hall, and he took off in the direction Abbot had gone. Behind him, a security officer squeezed through the twisted hatch and headed for the room where the sleeper lay.

      Titus rounded a bend, chose a branching corridor, and stopped, lost. He knew he was facing what they had labeled the stern. It was connected to the medical research dome by a pressurized, high-security tunnel. Very likely Abbot had gone that way, for the only other way back into the station was via the surface, past the security checkpoint.

      Heart pounding, Titus set off astern, cloaked heavily in Influence. Visualizing the consequences of being caught and connected to the security breach, he sidled through groups of workers. The Project openly sponsored some fifteen hundred investigations underway, both on the alien vessel and in the station’s labs. But Titus’s mind was on the sleeper. Could he allow the humans to vivisect a helpless luren? If they knew, would they do it anyway? They could have their cloning specimen without destroying the man. But knowing what he did of biologists, Titus was sure they’d do a total autopsy, which would include removing the brain, fatal even for a luren. If they knew he was alive, would they let him wake?

      Was it even up to Titus to decide what they should allow the humans to do to the sleeper? Maybe Abbot didn’t know about the sleeper yet. Titus had to get word to Connie.

      That meant rebuilding his computer, hoping the parts shipment from Earth would include a new black box. Had Abbot destroyed the black box on purpose? Did he even know about it? More to the point, could Titus slip a replacement communicator box into the rebuilt computer without Abbot knowing? Was Abbot in direct touch with his Tourists?

      Had Connie received and understood Titus’s cryptic message buried in the requisition that Carol Colby had sent to Earth? And could Connie’s agents smuggle him a communicator? Unlike Abbot, Titus didn’t have the skill to build one.

      Titus came to an unguarded airlock fitted into a docking port of the luren craft by profligate use of flexible gasket material. The portal was plastered with a frightening array of DayGlo quarantine signs, but the green light above it was on. He leaned against the bulkhead beside it, trying to concentrate on what was on the other side.

      At length, he held his breath and eased into the airlock. Casting a pall of Influence to divert the attention of the guards, he hoped no one would notice what appeared to be an empty lock cycling. After a nerve-wracking interval, he emerged in the Biomed research section where the alien bodies were being studied. It was one area Titus’s clearance didn’t authorize him to enter.

      He would need their results, but he had been banned from their lab. Why? Because they planned a cloning? It seemed so reasonable, and then he remembered Mihelich. If he was connected with cloning....

      The airlock opened into a corridor where everyone was dressed in bio-isolation suits, the labs opening off it doubly sealed. Through the next airlock, precautions eased and there was one open lab where glass vessels climbed poles up to the ceiling next to one lined with incubator ovens filled with specimen dishes. Two other rooms down the hall held the main biocomputer.

      Further on, he found a power and life support substation capable of maintaining this dome independently of the central systems of the station. Of course Abbot would oversee the operation of that unit, and thus be cleared for this area.

      Titus was sorely tempted to linger, to listen and try to find out if cloning capability was being installed here. But it was too dangerous. He had already inadvertently tripped one of security’s traps. No more today.

      He headed back to his room.

      * * * * * * *

      Titus spent the next couple of days organizing the repairs. Shimon proved to be a genius, and Inea became invaluable. Though she was no computer hardware expert, she was a wizard at troubleshooting and better with her hands than others.

      At his first department heads meeting, Titus Influenced one of the engineers to do a refractory study of the ship’s hull. He led the man to believe it would be useful if the military had to detect hostile ships.

      When not attending obligatory meetings, sitting on committees, or reading reports of meetings he wasn’t supposed to attend, Titus prowled the storerooms. He found eight vital components that had disappeared from inventory...Abbot’s work, no doubt. Each time he returned with one of these treasures, Inea would study him thoughtfully.

      During working hours, she treated him in a professional manner. There were only a few moments when she would pause to weigh something he said or did, and he would feel he was being judged. Indeed, he felt that all luren were being judged.

      He hadn’t visited her again. It was not because he spent most of his off hours trying to crack security seals to get at background on the biomed staff, but because, each evening when they parted, she would say goodnight in a final tone.

      At first he thought it was an act designed to tell everyone there was nothing between them, protecting his cover. But when he caught up with her in the lift, she brushed him off. He was alarmed at how much it hurt to watch her retreating form. But he didn’t dare push her.

      On the fourth day, Carol Colby called. Titus took it in his office. “Titus, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

      “I’ll take the bad first.”

      “We’ve got an appropriations fight on our hands. We may not get all the parts you ordered. And we may not get them by special shipment. They’re telling me the budget won’t cover it. When I told them they had to ship the parts, or at least squirt us a copy of your star catalogue, they laughed at me. It would cost too much to squirt it, they tell me.”

      “It would,” agreed Titus. “It would take hours, and there’d be errors. Sunspot activity is making hash of all data from the far orbital instruments. We’re on repeaters.”

      At least part of his operation had been functioning well. He was getting some raw data from the far observatories searching the Taurus region along the vessel’s approach path. The others hadn’t found anything as useful as a jettisoned power module, but he was monitoring a particle-counting array deployed on the surface of Deimos. If the luren drive had left a particle trail, they might find it. But not until the computer was up again.

      Titus hoped Colby’s good news was that they had regained contact with the probe that had tracked the alien in, then ceased talking before dumping its data. Unmanned probes often righted themselves. There were a dozen good people working on the problem, but Titus needed the data soon, for the probe had seen the approach from a different angle.

      “Well then,” he said heartily, “your good news is that Wild Goose has finally reported in?”

      “No, my good news isn’t that good. Abbot Nandoha has agreed—after considerable persuasion on my part—to help with your repairs. He’s technically hired to run our power plant, but his dossier shows he’s also a computer architect. I hope he can redesign your system and put you back on line with the parts we have and will be getting soon.”

      Oh, God. “I’ll bet that took some persuasion.”

      “Now, Titus, I am aware of the, uh, friction you’ve generated with Nandoha. I don’t expect such behavior from my department heads.