The reception and dinner was a one-time event, but after it was over Phoebe began to notice individual guards, and address them by name.

That led to a bigger change in her attitude, although the next event had nothing to do with social behavior. It was a matter of simple necessity. Phoebe had a task that could not be accomplished with just one pair of hands. She left the nitrogen bubble, checked the guard roster, and headed for a remote region of the Dump.

He was there, sitting in a habitation bubble and staring at the stars (or at nothing). He knew Phoebe was present, she was sure of it, but he did not turn his head at her approach.

“Captain Ridley. Are you busy?” (An idiot question; he didn’t know what busy was any more.) “I need help. Will you come and help me?”

He had been the guard who above all others had seemed to respond at the dinner. He had even said a few words to her. But now he did not move and he did not reply.

Phoebe, angry at her own stupidity in even asking, went back into the habitation lock; and found that Ridley was following her.

It was a beginning. He scarcely said a word, but he could and did follow directions. Within a few days he had taken over the routine of temperature checking within the bubble as his own, and he shook his head vehemently when she tried to help. It was Ridley who, near the end of one of Phoebe’s long work sessions, left the bubble and then thirty minutes later was back.

“No more for today,” said Phoebe. He shook his head, took her arm, and tugged it. He had never done that before.

“What’s wrong, Ridley?”

His mismatched eyes rolled. She knew that one of them was a replacement. The original, like his lower jaw, had been the casualty of a violent space explosion and decompression. “Brargas.”

“Brachis?”

Ridley nodded. He watched impassively as Phoebe turned off all inputs to the sealed nitrogen balloon that held the brain of the Morgan Construct, closed her suit, and followed him back to the main Dump control area. She was oddly gratified when she entered and saw the image of Luther Brachis on the communication display.

“Thank you, Captain Ridley.” And to Brachis, smugly, as he stared at the other man, “My assistant, Blaine Ridley. Are you all right?” She noticed that Brachis was not wearing his uniform, and one arm was bare and bandaged.

“Sure, I’m fine. Little incident in a restaurant.”

“In a restaurant! I’ve heard of bad service, Commander, but this is ridiculous.”

Apparently it was again not a day for joking, for Brachis went on as though he had not heard her, “I’ve been downed for a few days, and I finally had time to do some thinking. I know what’s been going on with M-26A.”

“You’re ahead of me. I’ve been getting nothing sensible. Either the Construct’s brain wasn’t working right before its body was destroyed on Cobweb Station, or the blow-up there was too much for it. It’s certainly crazy now.”

“It may seem crazy, but it’s quite logical. Do you have the complete record of your interactions with M-26A?”

“Not right here in front of me. But I have them all.”

“Then I want you to check them, every one, and see if the pattern that I noticed always holds. It’s quite simple. If you ask a question, you always get the same use-less response: More information must be provided before that question can be answered. But if you give a piece of information, and then ask a question, you get a real answer — it can be what you just fed in, or something different. But it’s just one answer. If you want information — even if it’s no more than a repeat of an answer that you just received — you have to provide a piece of information. One question, one answer. No exceptions.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Neither did I. But it works for every case. You can go back and try it, feed in anything you like, then ask any question you like. I don’t know if you’ll get the answers you want, but I’ll bet you get something. Hold on now!”

Phoebe was moving away from the camera, obviously itching to get back to test the idea that Brachis had been proposing.

“What else?”

“Assume that I’m right, and we have a way of genuine communication with M-26A. I want to know if it will let us build up a credit account. If we give it a hundred pieces of information one after another, will it then answer a hundred of our questions? If so, I want to feed it general background data about all the other members of the Stellar Group. Home worlds, history, physiology, psychology.”

“That will be a huge job.”

“I know. But M-26A is our only access point to Morgan Construct thinking processes and possible actions, and all the other Stellar Group species are going to be involved in the search. If the answers to my questions are to be useful, M-26A needs an adequate data base.”

“I’ll do my best. But I’m busy as hell. If you’re looking for quick results — ”

Phoebe Willard paused. Ridley had moved forward, to stand by her side. He was clutching at her arm. He stared at Luther Brachis, and the lop-sided jaw began moving.

“Brargas. Comder Brargas. Data. Data in to M-M — . I will — I want to — ” His eye rolled, and he made a supreme effort. “I want to help.”

Chapter 20

Mondrian awoke in a fetid, red-lit gloom to the sound of a low and ominous humming. He tensed as a tall figure loomed high overhead. As he recognized it, he slowly relaxed.

He knew where he was. He had been dreaming again; ghastly, terrifying dreams, but just what he had come to expect. The figure hovering over him was Skrynol, and the nightmare visions had been carefully designed and planted under Fropper supervision. Even the noise had a simple explanation. Skrynol was singing.

The Pipe-Rilla bent over Mondrian’s sweat-soaked body, peered at him with huge compound eyes, and hummed a three-toned phrase. The lights in the chamber promptly increased.

“For your benefit,” said Skrynol. She chittered strangely in Pipe-Rilla speech. “I did it so that you can admire my rare beauty.”

Mondrian took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped sweat from his forehead and bare chest. He had stripped to the waist at the beginning of the session, not for Skrynol’s benefit but his own. She was not fully comfortable at a temperature below human blood heat, and in the last few meetings the chamber had been made hotter and hotter.

“You seem in exuberant mood,” he said. “Can I assume that we have made progress?”

“Oh, yes, indeed.” The Pipe-Rilla bobbed her head back and forward in the gesture of assent she had learned from Mondrian. “Excellent progress. Excellent-excellent progress.”

“Enough to sing about?”

“Ahhh.” Skrynol raised her forelimbs and placed them on top of her head. “You embarrass me. A word is in order on my singing. Because we were doing so well, I extended the length of our session somewhat to pinpoint one result. As a result I took more of your blood than usual.”

“How much more?”

“Some more. Rather a lot, actually. But do not worry, I gave you replacement fluids. Mm-mm …” She bent over him, an enormous and deformed praying mantis inspecting its victim. There was a flutter of olfactory cilia, and a whistling sigh. “Mm-mm. Esro Mondrian, it is well that we Pipe-Rillas can so control our emotions and our actions. I had been warned before I came to Earth that human blood was a powerful stimulant and intoxicant to our metabolism — but no one could ever describe this feeling of exhilaration!”

She reached down with one soft flipper and drew it lovingly along Mondrian’s neck and naked chest. As she did so, long flexible needles peeped involuntarily out of their sheaths on each side of her third tarsal segment. They glistened orange in the bright white light. Fully extended, they would reach their hollow length more than nine feet in any direction. The official propaganda on the Pipe-Rillas described the aliens as “peaceable sap-sucking beings despite their formidable mandibles.”