"We will be deeply sad to leave this place," Hickory said. "Please understand we have lived our entire conscious life here. We feel it strongly within us, as do all Obin. We thank you for allowing us to share your lives with us."

"You're welcome," I said. This seemed a trivial thing for the two Obin to want to discuss with me. "You sound as if you were leaving us. I thought you were to be coming with us."

"We are," Hickory said. "Dickory and I are aware of the burden we carry both to attend to your daughter and to share our experiences with all other Obin. It can be overwhelming. We cannot keep our implants engaged for long, you know. The emotional strain is so great. The implants are not perfect, and our brains have difficulties. We get… overstimulated."

"I didn't know that," I said.

"We would not wish to burden you with it," Hickory said. "And it was not important for you to know. We managed it so that you would not need to know. But recently, both Dickory and I have found that when we turn on our implants, we are immediately overwhelmed with emotion for Zoe, and for you and Lieutenant Sagan."

"It's a stressful time for all of us," I said.

Another Obin smile, even more ghastly than the first. "My apologies," Hickory said. "I have been unclear. Our emotion is not formless anxiety over leaving this place or this planet, or excitement or nervousness about traveling to a new world. It is a very specific thing. It is concern."

"I think we all have concerns," I began, but then stopped when I saw a new expression on Hickory's face, one I had never noticed before. Hickory looked impatient. Or possibly it was frustrated with me. "I'm sorry, Hickory. Please continue."

Hickory stood there for a minute, as if debating something with itself, then abruptly turned from me to confer with Dickory. I spent the time reflecting that suddenly the names that a small child puckishly gave these two creatures several years ago no longer seemed to fit in the slightest.

"Forgive me, Major," Hickory said, finally, returning its attention to me. "I regret I may be blunt here. We may be unable to fully express our concern. You may be ignorant of certain facts and it may not be our place to provide them to you. Let me ask you: What do you think is the status of this part of space? The portion in which we the Obin and you the Colonial Union reside among other species."

"We're at war," I said. "We have our colonies and we try to keep them safe. Other species have their colonies and try to keep them safe, too. We all fight over planets that fit our species' needs. We all fight each other."

"Aah," Hickory said. "We all fight each other. No alliances? No treaties?"

"Obviously there are a few," I said. "We have one with the Obin. Other races may have treaties and allies with a few other species. But generally, yes. We all fight. Why?"

Hickory's smile passed from ghastly into rictus territory. "We will tell you what we can," Hickory said. "We can tell you about things already spoken of. We know that your Secretary of Colonization has claimed that the colony you are calling Roanoke was given to you by the Obin. The planet we call Garsinhir. We know that it is claimed we have taken a planet from you in return."

"That's right," I said.

"There is no such agreement," Hickory said. "Garsinhir remains Obin territory."

"That can't be right," I said. "I've been to Roanoke. I've walked the ground where the colony will be. I think you may be mistaken."

"We are not mistaken," Hickory said.

"You must be," I said. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but you two are companions and bodyguards to a teenage human. It's possible whoever your contacts are at your level don't have the best information."

A flicker of something crossed over Hickory's face; I suspect it was amusement. "Be assured, Major, that the Obin do not send mere companions to guard and care for Boutin's child or her family. And be assured that Garsinhir remains in Obin hands."

I thought about this. "You're saying that the Colonial Union is lying about Roanoke," I said.

"It's possible your Secretary of Colonization may be misinformed," Hickory said. "We cannot say. But whatever the cause of the error, there is an error of fact."

"Maybe the Obin are allowing us to colonize your world," I said. "I understand that your body chemistry makes Obin susceptible to native infections: Having an ally there is better than leaving the world unoccupied."

"Perhaps," Hickory said. Its voice was noncommittal in a very studied way.

"The colony ship leaves Phoenix Station in two weeks," I said. "Another week beyond that and we'll be landing in Roanoke. Even if what you say is true, there's not anything I can do about it now."

"I must apologize again," Hickory said. "I did not mean to suggest there was anything you could or should do. I would only wish for you to know. And to know at least some of the nature of our concern."

"Is there more than that?" I asked.

"We have said what we can," Hickory said. "Except for this. We are at your service, Major. Yours, Lieutenant Sagan's and especially and always Zoe's. Her father gave us the gift of ourselves. He asked a high price, which we willingly would have paid." I shuddered slightly at this, remembering what the price had been. "He died before that price, that debt could be repaid. We owe that debt now to his daughter, and the new debt accrued in her sharing her life with us. We owe it to her. And we owe it to her family."

"Thank you, Hickory," I said. "I know we are grateful that you and Dickory have served us so well."

Hickory's smile returned. "I regret to say you misunderstand me again, Major. Certainly I and Dickory are at your service and always shall be. But when I say we are at your service, I mean the Obin."

"The Obin," I said. "As in, all of you."

"Yes," said Hickory. "All of us. Until the last of us, if necessary."

"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry, Hickory. I'm not quite sure what to say to that."

"Say that you'll remember it," Hickory said. "When the time comes."

"I will," I said.

"We would ask you to keep this conversation in confidence," Hickory said. "For now."

"All right," I said.

"Thank you, Major," Hickory said. It looked back at Dickory and then back at me. "I fear we have made ourselves overly emotional. We will turn off our implants now, with your permission."

"Please," I said. The two Obin reached up to their necks to switch off their personalities. I watched as the animation slid from their faces, replaced with blank intelligence.

"We rest now," Hickory said, and it and its partner left, leaving me in an empty room.

THREE

Here's one way to colonize: You take two hundred or three hundred people, allow them to pack what supplies theysee A fit, drop them off on the planet of their choice, say "see you," and then come back a year later—after they've all died of malnutrition brought on by ignorance and lack of supplies, or have been wiped out by another species who wants the place for themselves—to pick up the bones.

This isn't a very successful way to colonize. In our all-too-short ramp-up period, both Jane and I read enough reports on the demise of wildcat colonies that were designed in just this fashion to be convinced of this salient fact.

On the other hand you don't want to drop a hundred thousand people onto a new colony world either, complete with all the comforts of civilization. The Colonial Union has the means to do something like this, if it wanted to. But it doesn't want to. No matter how close a planet's gravitational field, circumference, Land mass, atmosphere or life chemistry is to Earth's, or to any ether planets humans have as yet colonized, it isn't Earth, and there's no practical way of knowing what sort of nasty surprise a planet has in store for humans there. Earth itself has a funny way o: devising new diseases and ailments to kill off unwary humans, and there we're a native species. We're foreign bodies when we land on new worlds, and we know what any life system does to a foreign body in its midst: it tries to kill it as quickly as possible