She had a point, the captain reflected. Still, the fact that these girls were the product of some sort of genetic manipulation wasn't extraordinary, only the superficiality of the tinkering. No humans had truly natural genetic lines any more, hadn't for a couple of centuries at least.

"Ain't you cold without no hair?" the brown-haired girl asked, looking at the exec.

"Isn't it a bother to have to maintain all that hair?" the exec responded, used to the way dirtballers thought of service people.

"All you folks look kinda creepy to us," the girl came back. This would be Mary Margaret McBride. The other, the blonde and sexy Brigit Moran, said nothing.

"People and lifestyles are different all over," the captain told the girl. "You haven't been off your world before, it's clear, or you'd know that."

"You mean folks elsewhere all look like you?"

"No, just military people. But there are other differences, quite a lot of them. None of us have much choice about that part."

"Why not?" McBride asked, apparently quite sincere in the question.

The exec tried to rescue the captain. "Look, all that's beside the point. The only thing we are trying to decide here is what to do with you. You wouldn't like it here, I don't think, and you would just be in the way of what we do."

"That's easy," McBride said. "Just put us off on any world with folks who look and act more like us. We'll get by."

"You might at that," the exec admitted. "The trouble is, you are very young, you have no experience outside a very primitive culture, and your-condition, let us say, makes it hard for us to just do that. We must make sure that you will not suffer or die because of what we do."

"Why?"

It was such a strange question in that context that it threw the exec for a moment. Finally it was the captain who answered, "Because our ways include a code of what's right and wrong and that would be wrong. Still, if you had friends or relatives on another world we might be able to arrange for you to be with them. Do you have any family like that?"

"We got some family of sorts most everywhere," McBride assured him. "But not like you mean, I don't think. Honest. We'll be okay anyplace you drop us so long as the folks there ain't like, well, you, for example."

"Sounds like we should just arrange to get you back home to Tara Hibernius," Commander Sittithong said flatly. "That might solve all our problems."

Both girls seemed suddenly quite agitated. It wasn't fear in their eyes, not exactly, but it was clear that this was the one thing that bothered them. "No, you can't make us go back!"

"Never!" repeated the heretofore silent blonde in a high breathy voice.

"Perhaps a convent, then, on one of the developed colonies," the captain suggested thoughtfully. "We could live with putting you in the custody of your church."

"Convent? Our church?" McBride seemed to be suppressing a laugh. "No, sir. Not them folks. We don't fit in with them a'tall."

The captain noticed the necklaces the two girls wore around their necks, quite similar to the one worn by the first girl. He was going to ask about it, but then decided not to, at least for now.

"Well, those are the only two choices we've come up with. If you won't tell us your stories of why you were on Murphy's ship and why you are fleeing your native world, then we can hardly make any third decision."

McBride was having none of it. "You're just like them!" she responded angrily. "No, you put us back on our ship and let us go on, or you put us off on a big world with lots of folks. You better!"

The captain found this almost amusing. "We'd better? That's usually followed by some sort of threat. We'd better or what?"

"You just better, that's all! Can we go now?"

The captain looked over at the exec who gave a slight shrug.

"Why not?" he replied. "There's little to be gained from this. You and your companions will have adjoining cabins and you must stay in them, together if you want, or not if you like, or in the lounge that will be nearby. Marines will be posted to make sure you don't go start exploring and get into trouble. I'm going to have to take a look and see how long it'll be before we're within range of Tara Hibernius, and that's that."

"You won't send us back!" McBride said flatly. "You won't!"

"I will do what's in the best interest of all of us, and you'll have to accept it. Now, go. The sergeant outside will show you all to your quarters."

Mary Margaret McBride looked at Brigit Moran and the two locked eyes and resolute expressions for a moment. It looked quite childlike. Still, they both turned in almost military fashion and stomped out of the room.

The captain sighed. "In the old days, I was a guest for a time at a private resort where military and trade representatives gathered to discuss policy. Many brought along their families in the old style because it was such a nice holiday spot. Many of their young children would act like that on occasion. I recall one small boy who did not want to stop swimming and go inside with his mother. He threw a loud screaming fit, one so awful I thought they would have to call the medical personnel, and it was only after a while that I realized I was watching unbridled and unchecked emotion. Finally, he threatened to hold his breath until he turned blue. He tried to do so, too."

"Sir?"

"I half expected at least the talkative one to threaten the same thing just now. I hope our medical computers have full data on pregnancies. It may be necessary at some point to sedate them, and I should not like to be responsible for harming the child within."

The exec had less experience with the masses of humanity in their standard forms and found the whole thing more unnerving.

"I don't know, sir. Sedation might be quite advisable. In their mental state they are as much a threat to themselves as to anyone. I shall be happy to see them leave."

"I agree. Have them continuously monitored. Put an experienced security person on them, too. I don't want a computer deciding what is and isn't aberrant behavior."

"Aye, sir."

The captain looked down at his desktop screen. "It says here we'll be close enough to shuttle them back home in sixteen days. Let us pray that we can hold out that long!"

III: THE WITCHES OF ERIN

The exec was decidedly not amused.

"All right, Murphy. Straight answers now. Are you all lunatics or failed experiments or just what the fucking hell are they doing in there?"

Murphy had been given a full bath, shave, and clean generic clothing and looked just as much an unmade bed as he had before in spite of that. Still, he'd been sound asleep in his "quarters" when he'd suddenly been rudely awakened by two big, burly marines and almost hauled up seventeen levels to the command and control deck.

Now he wiped sleep blearily from his eyes, and, partly resting on the side of a desk, he strained to focus on the viewing screen in front of them. It was the girls, all right, but he didn't remember there being nine of 'em…

Now the figures began to come together as his eyes more or less focused, and he gaped at what the duty personnel had been watching for who knew how long.

The three Tara Hibernius girls were sitting on the deck in the middle of one of the two cabins assigned to them, stark naked except for the necklaces each of them wore around their necks, designs stained onto their bodies. They were holding hands and chanting, eyes shut, faces partially raised up as if in some kind of trance. Around them they'd drawn a design using chalk or something which they'd completed after sitting in the middle so that the drawing extended all around them.