The fist went away. He blinked, located a toggle switch, saw a light turn green. First booster separation. The fist returned.

Combat mission. Enemy. Target. He had not used those words for years; they were things of childhood. Galoshes. Skatekey.As the days stand up on end,My friend.

His uncle had fought in some grimy jungle conflict, somewhere. The man had told stories about it, resolving all complicated political theory with the unanswerable gut reality of a souvenir pistol and bayonet, proudly displayed. Nigel had thought it a minor eccentricity, like owning a complete fifty-year run of National Geographic.

The fist lifted.

The fist returned.

A rivulet of spittle ran down his chin. He licked at it, unwilling to move a hand. His eyes ached. Each of his kidneys was a sullen lump just beneath the skin of his back.Iron and oil,Brought to a boil.

Abruptly, he floated. The dull rumble died. He sucked in air, feeling life return to his numbed arms and legs, and automatically scanned the regiments of lights before him.

He was flying blind, no telltale radar to guide him. After a few minutes of checking he activated the breadboarded fire control center and received acknowledgments from the computers that rode in the missiles. Then he rotated his couch to get a full view out the large observation port.

Nothing. The port was black, vacant. He logged the time and checked the running printout on his slate. The burn was right, his heading was dead on. The Snark was coming in for an orbit around the moon, as Houston had asked it to, and he would come up from behind, closing fast.

He glanced out the port again. Nothing. Now that he was on a definite mission, moving, the complete radio silence was eerie. Out the side port he could see the moon fall away, an endless dirty-gray plain of jumbled craters.

He searched the main port carefully, watching for relative motion against the scattered jewels of the fixed stars. He was studying the star field so intently that he nearly missed the bright point of light that drifted slowly into view.

“Ha!” Nigel said with satisfaction. He swung the viewing telescope down from its mount. Magnified, there was no doubt. The diamond point resolved into a small pearl. The Snark was a sphere, silvery, with no apparent markings.

Nigel could see no means of propulsion. Perhaps they were on the other side of the object, or not operating at the moment. It didn’t matter; his missiles had both heat-seeking and radar guidance. But things could not come to that…

Nigel squinted, trying to estimate the range. The Venusian satellites set a minimum possible radius of one kilometer. If that was about right—

A voice said:

“I wish you the riding of comfortable winds.”

Nigel froze. The odd, brassy voice came from his helmet speakers, free of static.

“I… what…”

“A fellow traveler. We shall share this space for a moment.”

“It is …you… speaking?”

“You believe I cannot sense your canister. Because it overlaps the cross section of your star.”

“Ah, that was the general idea.”

“Thus, I spoke. For my life.”

“How do you know?”

“There are fewer walls than you may think. There can be intersections of—there is no word of yours for the idea. Let us say I have met this before, in different light.”

“I—”

“You are alone. I do not understand how your kind can divide guilt. Here, in this cusp, I know it cannot be done. You are one man and you have no place to hide.”

“If I…”

“You would make mean comfort for yourself. You are ready?”

“I never thought I would have to…”

“Though you came. Ready.”

“To get here at all I had to agree…”

The voice took on a wry edge. “Permit me.”

From the left port came a bright orange flare and a blunt thump as death took wing. A spike of light arced into the front port and spurted ahead. It was a burning halo, then a sharp matchpoint of flame, then a shrinking dot that homed with bitter resolve.

A chemical warhead. Nigel sat stunned. A thin shrill beep rattled in the cabin as automatic tracking followed the missile. Somehow the Snark had made his craft fire. Red numerals of trajectory adjustments flickered and died, unseen, on the board before him.

The idiot beep quickened. The burning point of light swept smoothly toward the blurred disk beyond it.

Nigel sucked in his breath—

The sky splintered.

A searing ball of flame billowed out. It thinned, paled. Nigel clutched at his couch, unmoving, nostrils flared. The beep was gone. A faint burr of static returned. He hung suspended, waiting. He stared ahead.

Beyond the slowly dulling disk of flame a dab of light moved to the left. Its image wavered and then resolved, intact; a perfect sphere.

It dawned on Nigel that the chemical warhead had detonated early. The silvery ball was drifting from sight. Nigel automatically corrected his course.

The voice came deeper now, dryly modulated:

“You have changed since we walked together.”

Nigel hesitated, mind spinning soundlessly on fine threads over the abyss.

“The sword is too heavy for you,” the voice said matter-of-factly.

“I didn’t intend to carry it at all—”

“I know. You are not so hobbled and coiled.”

“I wonder.”

“Your race has a stream of tongues. You communicate with many senses—more than you know. These were difficult for me. Sometimes it was as though there were two species…I did not understand that each man is so different.”

“Why, of course.”

“I have met other beings who were not,” the voice said simply.

“How could they be? Did they follow instinctive patterns? Like our insects?”

“No. Insect… implies they were inferior or rigid. They were merely different.”

“But each member the same?” Nigel said easily, the words slipping free. He felt light, airy.

“They lived in a vast… you have no word. Interface, perhaps. Between binary stars. They were easier to fathom than your diversity. You are tensed, always moving in many directions at once. An unusual pattern. I have seldom seen such turbulence.”

“Madness.”

“And talent. I am afraid I have already risked too much to come near. My injunctions specify—”

A click, buzz, static. The voice passed from him. “Walmsley, Walmsley. Evers here. Intersection should have occurred. We just picked up a fragment of some transmission. Part of it sounded like you. What’s happened?”

“I don’t know.”

More static. Houston was probably using one of the lunar satellites to relay, skipping Hipparchus. He wondered what—

“Well, you’d damn better find out. About a minute ago we picked up a funny signal from the surface, too. We put the source near Mare Marginis. We thought maybe the Snark had altered course and landed there.”

“No. No, it’s directly in front of me.”

“Walmsley! Report! Did you get one off?”

“Yes.”

A blur of sound. “—score? Did it score?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What?”

“It detonated before it hit. No damage.”

“And the backup? We haven’t registered any jump in radiation levels.”

“I’m not firing it. Never.” With the words a new clarity came into his world.

“Listen to me, Nigel.” A hint of urgency. “I’ve put a lot of—”

Nigel listened to it and wondered at how smoothly Evers’s voice slid from the ragged edge of anger to a silky persuasiveness; which was natural to the man? Or were they both masks?

“Good-bye, coach. No time for lectures right this minute.”

“You—” Faintly: “Let’s have the override. Okay, go on the count. Go.”

The firing button for the nuclear-tipped missile sat alone in a small bracketed section of the console. Nigel’s eyes were drawn to it because the board began flickering through a sequence of operations. He snapped the switches over to their inert positions, but the sequences continued. The board was dead. Evers had reverted control to Houston. Relay through a satellite? Nigel frantically clawed at the console, trying to find a way to stop—