What's the matter with Brookida? Does he think a captain under siege has nothing better to do?

Hikahi, recently released from sick bay, rolled over on her back, breathing the fizzing, oxygenated fluid and keeping one eye to the hologram of the chimpanzee.

She shouldn't do that, Creideiki thought. I'm having enough trouble concentrating as it is.

A lengthy, constricting meeting always did this to Creideiki. He felt a stirring of blood in and around his penile sheath. What he wanted to do was swim over to Hikahi and bite her softly in numerous places, up and down her flanks.

Kinky, yes, especially in public, but at least he was honest with himself.

"Planetologist Dart," he sighed. "I am trying very hard to understand what you claim to have discovered. The part about various crystalline and isotopic anomalies below the crust of Kithrup I think I follow. As for the subduction layer…"

"A subduction zone is a boundary of two crustal plates, where one slips below its neighbor," Charlie interrupted.

Creideiki wished he could let down his dignity to curse at the chimp. "I do know that much planetology, Dr. Dart." He spoke carefully. "And I'm glad our being near one of these plate boundaries has been useful to you. However, you mussst understand that our choice of a landing site was based on matters tactical. We want both the metals and the camouflage offered by the 'coral' mounds. We landed here in order to hide, and to repair our ship. With hostile cruisers overhead, I can't think of permitting expeditions to other parts of the globe. In fact, I must refuse your request for further drilling at this location. The risk is too great, now that the Galactics have arrived."

The chimp frowned. His hands began to flutter. Before he found the words, Creideiki cut him off:

"Besides, what does the ship's micro-branch say about Kithrup? Doesn't the Library contribute anything on these problems you face?"

"The Library!" Dart snorted. "That pack of lies! That friggin' morass of misinformation!" Charlie's voice dropped into a growl. "It has nothin' on the anomalies! It doesn't even mention the metal-mounds! The last survey was done over four hundred million years ago, when the planet was put on reserve status for the Karrank%…"

Charlie became so strangled around the extended glottal stop that he started to choke. He went bug-eyed and pounded himself on the chest, coughing.

Creideiki turned to Brookida. "Is this true? Is the Library so deficient in regard to this planet?"

"Yess-s," Brookida nodded slowly. "Four hundred epochs is a long time. When a planet is placed on reserve it's usually either to let it lie fallow while new species evolve to a level of pre-sentience ripe for uplift, or to provide a quiet place of decline for an ancient race that has entered senescence. Planets are placed off limits either to become nurseries or old age homes.

"Both seem to have occurred on Kithrup-p. We have discovered a ripe pre-sentient race which has apparently risen since the last Library update here. Also, the… Karrank-k%…" Brookida, too, had trouble with the name. "… were granted the planet as a peaceful place to die, which they apparently have done. There seem to be no Karrank%-%… anymore."

"But four hundred epochs without a re-survey?" It was difficult to imagine.

"Yes, a planet is usually re-licensed by the Institute of Migration long before that. Still, Kithrup is such a strange world… few species would choose to live here. Also, good access routes are scarce. This region of space is gravitationally very shallow. It'sss one reason we came here."

Charles Dart was still catching his breath. He drank from a tall glass of water. During the respite, Creideiki lay still, thinking. Despite Brookida's points, would Kithrup really have been left fallow for so long, in an overcrowded galaxy where every piece of real estate was desired?

The Institute of Migration was the only one of the loose Galactic bureaucracies whose power and influence rivaled even that of the Library Institute. By tradition, all patron-lines obeyed its codes of ecosphere management; to do otherwise courted galaxy-wide disaster. The potential of lesser species to one day become clients, then patrons in their own time, made for a powerful galaxy-wide ecological conservatism.

Most Galactics were willing to overlook humanity's pre-Contact record. The slaughter of the mammoth, the giant ground sloth, and the manatee were forgiven in light of Mankind's "orphan" status. The real blame was laid on Homo sapiens' supposed patron — the mysterious undiscovered race that all said must have left man's uplift half-unfinished, thousands of years ago.

Dolphins knew how close the cetaceans themselves had come to extinction at the hands of human beings, but they never mentioned it outside Earth. For well or ill, their fate was now linked to Mankind's.

Earth was humanity's until the race moved on or died out. Man's ten colony worlds were licensed for smaller periods, based on complex eco-management plans. The shortest lease was a mere six thousand years. At the end of that time, the colonists of Atlast had to depart, leaving the planet fallow once again.

"Four hundred million years," Creideiki mulled. "That seems an unusually long time with no re-survey of this world."

"I agree!" Charlie Dart shouted, now fully recovered from his fit.

"And what if I told you there's signs Kithrup was occupied by a machine civilization as recently as thirty thousand years ago? Without any entry in the Library at all?"

Hikahi rolled over closer. "You think-k these crustal anomalies of yours may be the garbage of an interloper civilization, Dr. Dart?"

"Yes!" he cried. "Exactly! Good guess!

"You all know many eco-sensitive races will only build major facilities along a planet's plate boundaries. That way, when the planet is later declared fallow, all traces of habitation will be sucked down into the mantle and disappear. Some think that's why there are no signs of previous occupancy on Earth."

Hikahi nodded. "And if some species settled here illegally… ?"

"They'd build at a plate boundary! The Library surveys planets at multi-epoch intervals. The evidence of the incursion would be sucked underground by then!" The chimp looked eagerly from the holo display.

Creideiki had trouble taking it all very seriously. Charlie made it sound like a whodunit! Only in this case the culprits were civilizations, the clues whole cities, and the rug under which the evidence was being swept was a planet's crust! It was the perfect crime! After all, the cop on the corner only swings by every few million years, and is late, at that.

Creideiki realized every metaphor he had just used was a human one. Well, that was to be expected. There were times, such as spacewarp-piloting, when cetacean analogies were more useful. But when thinking about the crazy politics of the Galactics, it helped to have watched a lot of old human movie thrillers, and read volumes of crazy human history.

Now Brookida and Dart were arguing some technical point… and all Creideiki could think of was the taste of the water near Hikahi. He badly wanted to ask her if the flavor meant what he thought it meant. Was it a perfume she had put on, or was it natural pheromone?

With some difficulty, he forced himself back to the subject at hand.

Charlie's and Brookida's discovery, under normal circumstances, would be exciting.

But this has no bearing on escape for my ship and crew, nor getting our data back to the Terragens Council. Even the mission I sent Keepiru and Toshio on, to help appraise the native pre-sentients, is more urgent than hunting arcane clues in ancient alien rocks.

"Excuse me, Captain. I'm sorry I'm late. I've been listening quietly for a while, though."

Creideiki turned to see Dr. Ignacio Metz drift up alongside. The gangling, gray-haired psychologist treaded water slowly, casually compensating for a small negative buoyancy. A slight pot belly distended the neat fit of his slick brown drysuit.