“Bitch,” he repeated bitterly as she stole crosswise down the slope.

A cloud was shrouding the Wanderer when they waked Doc for sentry change. He groaned guardedly a couple of times as he unkinked stiff joints, then grew more chipper.

“Have to renew the flash batteries,” he noted. “Got ’em here in my pocket. Should have turned one of the sedans around and used its headlights. Can’t do it now, though — it’d wake people.”

By the time Margo had taken over Rama Joan’s bed in the truck, the Wanderer was out again, showing the Jaws. Ann was awake. Ever since the afternoon’s horror, the little girl who “loved everything” had been very thoughtful. Now Margo wondered uneasily what she was thinking when those wide eyes looked at her, a screaming killer.

But, “Why does Mommy have to go away?” was all Ann asked, rather fretfully.

Margo explained about guard duty.

“I think Mommy likes being with Mr. Brecht,” Ann commented dolefully.

“Look at the Wanderer, dear,” Margo suggested. “See, the moon’s growing into a ring. She’s broken her cocoon and is spreading her wings.”

“Yes, it’s lovely, isn’t it?” Ann said, a dreamy note at last coming into her voice. “Purple forests and golden seas…Hello, Ragnarok…”

In the bus Mrs. Hixon leaned forward from the seat behind the driver’s and whispered in Mr. Hixon’s ear: “Bill, what if these people find out we’re not really married?”

He whispered back: “Babe, I don’t think it’d matter to them a bit.”

Mrs. Hixon sighed. “Still, it’s a kind of distinction being the only normal married couple in the bunch.”

Paul woke up as alone in black space as a hobo angel, it seemed to him — so high above Earth that the stars glittered more thickly above the scythe-curve of the black horizon than he’d ever seen them, even in the desert. Yet he felt so snug and refreshed, and the transition from sleep to waking had been so gradual, that he experienced no fear at alL Besides that, there was an invisible warm glassy surface he could touch. It shut off all the harshness of space from him, and his right foot was guyed to it reassuringly. He gave himself up to the great sight.

He was poised in the night at least one hundred miles above Arizona, he decided, and looking west, for he could see all of Southern California and the northwest corner of Mexico, including the neck of the peninsula of Baja California, and beyond them the Pacific. No mistaking that pattern.

He could see the lights of San Diego — at least some city-like glow, about where San Diego should be — and he realized he was voicelessly thanking God for that, very tritely, but sincerely.

There were no clouds. The Wanderer was hanging in the west in its bull’s-head face, girdled by the shattered moon. Its violet and golden light sparkled in a wide wake across the Pacific straight toward him, and also spangled the northern end of the Gulf of California, so that all coasts were sharply defined.

The land areas reflected only a diffuse yellowish glow, like multiplied moonlight but far duller than the glittering sea.

But then he saw, with a feeling of dim but growing horror, that the Gulf of California extended at least a hundred miles too far northwest in a glittering tongue that narrowed at first but then widened. No mistaking that one departure from pattern, either.

Either because of the earthquakes or the high tides or both, the salt waters of the Gulf had burst through and filled the land below sea level in and around the Imperial Valley and the drying Salton Sea, and stretched on toward Palm Springs. He remembered that one of the towns there, a pretty big one, had been called Brawley, and another, Volcano -

Space turned to a pink wall in front of his nose, and a neutral voice called: ” ’Morning, monkey.”

Blinking, Paul slowly hunched around, easing his right foot in its invisible fetter. Tigerishka was floating bent by the control panel, as if she were sitting in an invisible swing. Miaow clung to her lap and was industriously grooming the larger cat’s green knees with her tiny pink tongue.

Paul swallowed and then lifted his fingers wonderingly to his lips. The gag was gone.

Tigerishka smiled at him. “You sleep seven hours,” she volunteered. “Feel better?”

Paul cleared his throat, but then only shut his lips and looked at her. He did not smile back.

“Oho, we learn a little wisdom, eh?” Tigerishka purred. “Monkey not jabber, we get along better. O.K. talk now, though.”

Paul kept his lips shut.

“Don’t be sulky, Paul,” Tigerishka directed. “I know you civilized by your lights, but I tie you, gag you, call you monkey to teach you little lesson: how you not so important in scheme of things, how others can treat you like you treat potentially superior animal Miaow here. Also I do it to give you birth-experience any psychologist know you badly need.”

Paul looked at her a bit longer, then slowly shook his head.

“What you mean?” Tigerishka demanded sharply. “What you think my reason?”

Enunciating each syllable as sharply and carefully as if he were teaching a speech class, Paul said: “You tell me you have a mind vastly superior to my own, and in many ways I must agree with you, yet for at least twenty minutes yesterday you confused my thoughts with those of that charming but speechless and cultureless little animal on your lap. So you took out on me your irritation at having made such a very stupid mistake.”

“That’s a lie, I never did!” Tigerishka retorted instantly in unslurred English quite as good as his own. She stiffened, her claws came out, and Miaow stopped grooming her. Then she caught herself and leaned back luxuriously, relaxed and chuckling. A delicious shrug rippled her violet-barred shoulders. “You right there,” she admitted. “That a little part my reason. Few cosmic cat strains, me let hopes run away. You notice. Monkey sly.”

“Just the same, you made the error, and it was a gross one,” he told her quietly. “How could you expect an animal tiny as Miaow to have a reasoning brain?”

“Me think it miniaturized,” she answered quickly. “Could have told it wasn’t if I’d checked by clairvoyance, but I depending on telepathy.” She petted Miaow. “Any more monkey-quibbles?”

Paul waited a bit again, then said: “You claim to belong to a super-civilized galactic culture, yet you exhibit a fantastic xenophobia. I should think a true galactic citizen would have to be able to get along with intelligent beings of all strains: sea dwellers, grazers, arachnoids and coleopteroids possibly, winged beings, wolves and other carnivores like yourself, yes, and simians, too.”

Tigerishka seemed to start just a little as he said, “wolves and other carnivores,” but she recovered nicely with a sweet, “Monkey much the worst strain of those, Paul.” She added huskily: “Also cosmos not so pretty-pretty love-lovey you think.” She had begun to stroke Miaow rhythmically, kneading the small cat’s shoulderblades.

“I am inclined to agree,” Paul commented. “You pretend to near omniscience and to a great consideration for life — at least you boasted of saving two anthropoid cities from fire — yet when you crushed our moon for fuel, you ignored the presence on it of a number of human beings, including my best friend.”

“Too bad, Paul,” Tigerishka sympathized coolly. “But they on airless planet, they have ships. Get away.”

“Yes, at least we can hope that Don and the others escaped,” Paul agreed with equal coolness, “but I don’t believe that you even knew they were there! I don’t believe that when you emerged from hyperspace you had any idea that this planet was inhabited by intelligent beings. Or if you did, you didn’t care.”

Tigerishka still seemed quite relaxed, but she was stroking Miaow in a faster rhythm, as a nervous woman might puff harder on her cigarette. “You a little right there too, Paul,” she conceded. “Things bad in hyperspace: storms, et cetera. Our need fuel acute. We feel beat when we come out, truly. Also last galactic survey show no intelligent life here, only promising feline strain.” And she twitched her nose at him as she interrupted the stroking to pat Miaow twice.