Warshow shuddered. “Mind dredging, eh?”

  “Call it that,” the psychman said. “But let’s dredge whatever it is that’s tipped his rocker, or it’ll wreck us all. You, me—and that girl.”

  “You think we can find it?”

  “We can try. No Earthman in his right mind would form a sexual relationship of this kind—or any sort of emotional bond with an alien creature. If we hit the thing that catapulted him into it, maybe we can break this obviously neurotic fixation and make him go willingly. Unless you’re willing to leave him behind. I absolutely forbid dragging him away as he is.”

  “Of course not,” Warshow agreed. He mopped away sweat and glanced over at Falk, who still dreamed away under the effects of the stunbeam. “It’s worth a try. If you think you can break it, go ahead. I deliver him into thy hands.”

  The psychman smiled with surprising warmth. “It’s the only way. Let’s dig up what happened to him and show it to him. That should crack the shell.”

  “I hope so,” Warshow said. “It’s in your hands. Wake him up and get him talking. You know what to do.”

  ***

  A MURKY CLOUD OF DRUG-LADEN air hung in the cabin as Cullinan concluded his preliminaries. Falk stirred and began to grope towards consciousness. Cullinan handed Warshow an ultrasonic injector filled with a clear, glittering liquid.

  Just as Falk seemed to be ready to open his eyes, Cullinan leaned over him and began to talk, quietly, soothingly. Falk’s troubled frown vanished, and he subsided.

  “Give him the drug,” Cullinan whispered. Warshow touched the injector hesitantly to Falk’s tanned forearm. The ultrasonic hummed briefly, blurred into the skin. Warshow administered three cc. and retracted.

  Falk moaned gently.

  “It’ll take a few minutes,” Cullinan said.

  The wall clock circled slowly. After a while, Falk’s sleep-heavy eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes and glanced up without apparent recognition of his surroundings.

  “Hello, Matt. We’re here to talk to you,” Cullinan said. “Or rather, we want you to talk to us.”

  “Yes,” Falk said.

  “Let’s begin with your mother, shall we? Tell us what you remember about your mother. Go back, now.”

  “My—mother?” The question seemed to puzzle Falk, and he remained silent for nearly a minute. Then he moistened his lips. “What do you want to know about her?”

  “Tell us everything,” Cullinan urged.

  There was silence. Warshow found himself holding his breath.

  Finally, Falk began to speak.

  ***

  WARM. CUDDLY. HOLD ME. MAMAMA.

  I’m all alone. It’s night, and I’m crying. There are pins in my leg where I slept on it, and the night air smells cold. I’m three years old, and I’m all alone.

  Hold me, mama?

  I hear mama coming up the stairs. We have an old house with stairs, near the spaceport where the big ships go woosh! There’s the soft smell of mama holding me now. Mama’s big and pink and soft. Daddy is pink too but he doesn’t smell warm. Uncle is the same way.

  Ah, ah, baby, she’s saying. She’s in the room now, and holding me tight. It’s good. I’m getting very drowsy. In a minute or two I’ll be asleep. I like my mama very much.

  ***

  (“IS THAT YOUR EARLIEST RECOLLECTION of your mother?” Cullinan asked.)

  (“No. I guess there’s an earlier one.”)

  ***

  DARK HERE. DARK AND VERY warm, and wet, and nice. I’m not moving. I’m all alone here, and I don’t know where I am. It’s like floating in an ocean. A big ocean. The whole world’s an ocean.

  It’s nice here, real nice. I’m not crying.

  Now there’s blue needles in the black around me. Colors . . . all kinds. Red and green and lemon-yellow, and I’m moving! There’s pain and pushing, and—God!—it’s getting cold. I’m choking! I’m hanging on, but I’m going to drown in the air out there! I’m—

  ***

  (“THAT’LL BE ENOUGH,” CULLINAN SAID hastily. To Warshow he explained, “Birth trauma. Nasty. No need to put him through it all over again.” Warshow shivered a little and blotted his forehead.)

  (“Should I go on?” Falk asked.)

  (“Yes. Go on.”)

  ***

  I’M FOUR, AND IT’S RAINING plunk-a plunk outside. It looks like the whole world’s turned grey. Mama and daddy are away, and I’m alone again. Uncle is downstairs. I don’t know uncle really, but he seems to be here all the time. Mama and daddy are away a lot. Being alone is like a cold rainstorm. It rains a lot here.

  I’m in my bed, thinking about mama. I want mama. Mama took the jet plane somewhere. When I’m big, I want to take jet planes somewhere too—someplace warm and bright where it doesn’t rain.

  Downstairs the phone rings, jingle-jingle. Inside my head I can see the screen starting to get bright and full of colors, and I try to picture mama’s face in the middle of the screen. But I can’t. I hear uncle’s voice talking, low and mumbly. I decide I don’t like uncle, and I start to cry.

  Uncle’s here, and he’s telling me I’m too big to cry. That I shouldn’t cry any more. I tell him I want mama.

  Uncle makes a nasty-mouth, and I cry louder.

  Hush, he tells me. Quiet, Matt. There, there, Matt boy.

  He straightens my blankets, but I scrunch my legs up under me and mess them up again because I know it’ll annoy him. I like to annoy him because he isn’t mama or daddy. But this time he doesn’t seem to get annoyed. He just tidies them up again, and he pats my forehead. There’s sweat on his hands, and he gets it on me.

  I want mama, I tell him.

  He looks down at me for a long time. Then he tells me, mama’s not coming back.

  Not ever, I ask?

  No, he says. Not ever.

  I don’t believe him, but I don’t start crying, because I don’t want him to know he can scare me. How about daddy, I say. Get him for me.

  Daddy’s not going to come back either, he tells me.

  I don’t believe you, I say. I don’t like you, uncle. I hate you.

  He shakes his head and coughs. You’d better learn to like me, he says. You don’t have anybody else any more.

  I don’t understand him, but I don’t like what he’s saying. I kick the blankets off the bed, and he picks them up. I kick them off again, and he hits me.

  Then he bends over quick and kisses me, but he doesn’t smell right and I start to cry. Rain comes. I want mama, I yell, but mama never comes. Never at all.

  ***

  (FALK FELL SILENT FOR A moment and closed his eyes. “Was she dead?” Cullinan prodded.)

  (“She was dead,” Falk said. “She and dad were killed in a fluke jetliner accident, coming back from a holiday in Bangkok. I was four, then. My uncle raised me. We didn’t get along, much, and when I was fourteen he put me in the Academy. I stayed there four years, took two years of graduate technique, then joined Terran Imports. Two-year hitch on Denufar, then transferred to Commander Warshow’s ship Magyar where—where—”)

  (He stopped abruptly. Cullinan glanced at Warshow and said, “He’s warmed up now, and we’re ready to strike paydirt, to mangle a metaphor.” To Falk, he said, “Tell us how you met Thetona.”)

  ***

  I’M ALONE IN KOLLIDOR AND wandering around alone. It’s a big sprawling place with funny-looking conical houses and crazy streets, but deep down underneath I can see it’s just like Earth. The people are people. They’re pretty bizarre, but they’ve got one head and two arms and two legs, which makes them more like people than some of the aliens I’ve seen.

  Warshow gave us an afternoon’s liberty. I don’t know why I’ve left the ship, but I’m here in the city alone. Alone. Dammit, alone!

  The streets are paved, but the sidewalks aren’t. Suddenly I’m very tired and I feel dizzy. I sit down at the edge of the sidewalk and put my head in my hands. The aliens just walk around me, like people in any big city would.

  Mama, I think.

  Then I think, Where did that come from?

  And suddenly a great empty loneliness comes welling up from inside of me and spills out all over me, and I start to cry. I haven’t cried—since—not in a long time. But now I cry, hoarse ratchety gasps and tears rolling down my face and dribbling into the corners of my mouth. Tears taste salty, I think. A little like raindrops.

  My side starts to hurt where I had the accident aboard ship. It begins up near my ear and races like a blue flame down my body to my thigh, and it hurts like a devil. The doctors told me I wouldn’t hurt any more. They lied.

  I feel my aloneness like a sealed spacesuit around me, cutting me off from everyone. Mama, I think again. Part of me is saying, act like a grownup, but that part of me is getting quieter and quieter. I keep crying, and I want desperately to have my mother again. I realize now I never knew my mother at all, except for a few years long ago.

  Then there’s a musky, slightly sickening smell, and I know one of the aliens is near me. They’re going to grab me by the scruff and haul me away like any weepy-eyed drunk in the public streets. Warshow will give me hell.

  You’re crying, Earthman, a warm voice says.

  The Kollidorian language is kind of warm and liquid and easy to learn, but this sounds especially warm. I turn around, and there’s this big native dame.

  Yeah, I’m crying, I say, and look away. Her big hands clamp down on me and hang on, and I shiver a little. It feels funny to be handled by an alien woman.

  She sits down next to me. You look very sad, she says.

  I am, I tell her.

  Why are you sad?

  You’d never understand, I say. I turn my head away and feel tears start creeping out of my eyes, and she grabs me impulsively. I nearly retch from the smell of her, but in a minute or two I see it’s sort of sweet and nice in a strange way.

  She’s wearing an outfit like a potato sack, and it smells pretty high. But she pulls my head against her big warm breasts and leaves it there.

  What’s your name, unhappy Earthman?

  Falk, I say. Matthew Falk.

  I’m Thetona, she says. I live alone. Are you lonely?

  I don’t know, I say. I really don’t know.

  But how can you not know if you’re lonely? she asks.

  She pulls my head up out of her bosom and our eyes come together. Real romantic. She’s got eyes like tarnished half dollars. We look at each other, and she reaches out and pushes the tears out of my eyes.

  She smiles. I think it’s a smile. She has about thirty notches arranged in a circle under her nose, and that’s a mouth. All the notches pucker. Behind them I see bright needly teeth.

  I look up from her mouth to her eyes again, and this time they don’t look tarnished so much. They’re bright like the teeth, and deep and warm.

  Warm. Her odor is warm. Everything about her is warm.

  I start to cry again—compulsively, without knowing why, without knowing what the hell is happening to me. She seems to flicker, and I think I see a Terran woman sitting there cradling me. I blink. Nothing there but an ugly alien.

  Only she’s not ugly any more. She’s warm and lovely, in a strange sort of way, and the part of me that disagrees is very tiny and tinny-sounding. I hear it yelling, No, and then it stops and winks out.

  Something strange is exploding inside me. I let it explode. It bursts like a flower—a rose, or a violet, and that’s what I smell instead of her.

  I put my arms around her.

  Do you want to come to my house, she asks.

  Yes, yes, I say. Yes!

  ***

  ABRUPTLY, FALK STOPPED ON THE ringing affirmative, and his glazed eyes closed. Cullinan fired the stunner once, and the boy’s taut body slumped.

  “Well?” Warshow asked. His voice was dry and harsh. “I feel unclean after hearing that.”

  “You should,” the psychman said. “It’s one of the slimiest things I’ve uncovered yet. And you don’t understand it, do you?”

  The commander shook his head slowly. “No. Why’d he do it? He’s in love with her—but why?”

  Cullinan chuckled. “You’ll see. But I want a couple of other people here when I yank it out. I want the girl, first of all—and I want Sigstrom.”

  “The doctor? What the hell for?”

  “Because—if I’m right—he’ll be very interested in hearing what comes out.” Cullinan grinned enigmatically. “Let’s give Falk a rest, eh? After all that talking, he needs it.”

  “So do I,” Warshow said.

  ***

  (FOUR PEOPLE WATCHED SILENTLY AS Falk slipped into the drug-induced trance a second time. Warshow studied the face of the alien girl Thetona for some sign of the warmth Falk had spoken of. And yes, Warshow saw—it was there. Behind her sat Sigstrom, the Magyar’s head medic. To his right, Cullinan. And lying on the cot in the far corner of the cabin, eyes open but unseeing, was Matt Falk.)

  (“Matt, can you hear me?” Cullinan asked. “I want you to back up a little . . . you’re aboard ship now. The time is approximately one month ago. You’re working in the converter section, you and Dave Murff, handling hot stuff. Got that?”)

  (“Yes,” Falk said. “I know what you mean.”)

  ***

  I’M IN CONVERTER SECTION AA, getting thorium out of hock to feed to the reactors; we’ve gotta keep the ship moving. Dave Murff’s with me.

  We make a good team on the waldoes.

  We’re running them now, picking up chunks of hot stuff and stowing them in the reactor bank. It’s not easy to manipulate the remote-control mechanihands, but I’m not scared. This is my job, and I know how to do it.

  I’m thinking about that bastard Warshow, though. Nothing particular against him, but he annoys me. Funny way he has of tensing up every time he has to order someone to do anything. Reminds me of my uncle. Yeah, my uncle. That’s who I was trying to compare him with.

  Don’t much like Warshow. If he came in here now, maybe I’d tap him with the waldo—not much, just enough to sizzle his hide a little. Just for the hell of it: I always wanted to belt my uncle, just for the hell of it.

  Hey, Murff yells. Get number two waldo back in alignment.

  Don’t worry, I say. This isn’t the first time I’ve handled these babies, lunkhead.

  I’m shielded pretty well. But the air smells funny, as if the thorium’s been ionizing it, and I wonder maybe something’s wrong.

  I swing number two waldo over and dump the thorium in the reactor. The green light pops on and tells me it’s a square-on hit; the hot stuff is tumbling down into the reactor now and pushing out the neutrons like crazy.

  Then Murff gives the signal and I dip into the storage and yank out some more hot stuff with number one waldo.

  Hey, he yells again, and then number two waldo, the empty one, runs away from me.

  The big arm is swinging in the air, and I see the little fingers of delicate jointed metal bones that so few seconds ago were hanging onto a chunk of red-hot Th-233. They seem to be clutching out for me.

  I yell. God, I yell. Murff yells too as I lose control altogether, and he tries to get behind the control panel and grab the waldo handle. But I’m in the way, and I’m frozen so he can’t do it. He ducks back and flattens himself on the floor as the big mechanical arm crashes through the shielding.

  I can’t move.

  I stay there. The little fingers nick me on the left side of my jaw, and I scream. I’m on fire. The metal hand rakes down the side of my body, hardly touching me, and it’s like a razor slicing through my flesh.

  It’s too painful even to feel. My nerves are canceling out. They won’t deliver the messages to my brain.

  And now the pain sweeps down on me. Help! I’m burning! Help!

  ***

  (“STOP THERE,” CULLINAN SAID SHARPLY, and Falk’s terrible screaming stopped. “Edit out the pain and keep going. What happens when you wake up?”)

  ***

  VOICES. I HEAR THEM ABOVE me as I start to come out of the shroud of pain.

  Radiation burns, a deep crackly voice is saying. It’s Doc Sigstrom. The doc says, he’s terribly burnt, Leon. I don’t think he’ll live.

  Dammit, says another voice. That’s Commander Warshow. He’s got to live, Warshow says. I’ve never lost a man yet. Twenty years without losing anybody.

  He took quite a roasting from that remote-control arm, a third voice says. It’s Psych Officer Cullinan, I think. He lost control, Cullinan goes on. Very strange.

  Yeah, I think. Very strange. I blanked out just a second, and that waldo seemed to come alive.

  I feel the pain ripping up and down me. Half my head feels like it’s missing, and my arm’s being toasted. Where’s the brimstone, I wonder.

  Then Doc Sigstrom says, We’ll try a nutrient bath.

  What’s that? Warshow asks.

  New technique, the doc says. Chemotherapeutic incubation. Immersion in hormone solutions. They’re using it on Earth in severe cases of type one radiation burns. I don’t think it’s ever been tried in space, but it ought to be. He’ll be in free fall; gravity won’t confuse things.

  If it’ll save him, Warshow says, I’m for it.

  Then things fade. Time goes on—an eternity in hell, with the blazing pain racing up and back down my side. I hear people talking every now and then; feel myself being shifted from one place to another. Tubes are stuck in me to feed me. I wonder what I look like with half my body frizzled.

  Suddenly, cool warmth. Yeah, it sounds funny. But it is warm and nourishing, and yet cool too, bathing me and taking the sting out of my body.

  I don’t try to open my eyes, but I know I’m surrounded by darkness. I’m totally immobile, in the midst of darkness, and yet I know that outside me the ship is racing on towards Kollidor, enclosing me, holding me.

  I’m within the ship, rocking gently and securely. I’m within something within the ship. Wheels within wheels; doors inside doors. Chinese puzzle-box with me inside.

  Soft fluid comes licking over me, nudging itself in where the tissue is torn and blasted and the flesh bubbled from heat. Caressing each individual cell, bathing my body organ by organ, I’m being repaired.