of the chair, which were broad and dotted with bits of the same deep dark substance that formed the screen above. Perhaps, with the power on, the display on the chair arms would identify each control’s function. That would be necessary if the functions of the controls could be changed.
He was thinking like a human, and he knew it. He wasn’t sure anyone on the Project had the imagination to understand luren controls. He regarded the workstation with some awe. It was unexpectedly humbling, for he’d always subconsciously assumed he would understand luren artifacts on sight.
Casting about with all his senses, he determined that he was alone. Sitting down, he put his hands on the controls and gazed up into the monitor...if that’s what it was. Opening himself, he tried to feel what this place was.
But it only baffled him. There’s a lesson. Raised human, schooled by humans, I am human. He wished everyone who subscribed to the Tourist philosophy could sit here and feel this. It would end their callous treatment of humans.
Suddenly, the last of the unacknowledged doubts that had depressed him since his skirmish with Abbot in the men’s room on Goddard Station vanished. It might be futile to delay the moment the luren found Earth, but it had to be done. With time to study this, humans just might be able to hold their own.
Something whispered at the edge of perception.
Influence! Abbot!
He sprang out of the chair and crouched, muffling his own Influence as much as he dared. Back the way he’d come, through the twisted hatch, Titus saw Abbot stop, hunker down, and open an access panel. He worked within, concentrating, Influence keeping him invisible to the humans who passed.
Titus backed along the hall away from Abbot, searching for a place to hide. Nearby, he found an undamaged door. Eyes focused on Abbot, he put one hand behind him, groping with gloved fingers for the control. His grip fell naturally onto a panel, and before he knew it he was inside the room.
It was a chamber about seven feet by eight feet. As he sensed Abbot move toward him, he worked frantically to shut the door. It slid closed just as Abbot eased through the twisted hatch. Before utter blackness enclosed him, Titus glimpsed Abbot’s hand gripping a recording device.
Dispelling his own Influence, Titus leaned against the door, eyes closed, concentrating on Abbot’s moves. He couldn’t discern the faint vibration that Abbot’s feet must be making. The whole ship pulsed with human movement. But that keener sense that accompanied Influence tracked Abbot to the work stations Titus had examined.
Abbot stopped there and Titus sensed the older vampire’s intense concentration cloaked under precisely disciplined Influence. Titus didn’t dare move. He hardly breathed. He just waited, observing Abbot working.
At last, Abbot moved on past the room where Titus hid, and was gone. When the last whiff of his Influence had faded, Titus heaved a tremendous sigh. Then it hit him. He had spied on Abbot, and had not been noticed. Titus grinned ferociously. He wasn’t helpless before an all-powerful master. It was a real contest now.
Titus heaved himself away from the wall, and saw absolute, total darkness.
Activating his suit light, he peered about in the shaft of illumination and found a Westinghouse cable feeding overhead lights. He found the switch and turned them on.
In the center of the bare room, a lucite cylinder about six-feet long lay atop a dark rectangular block.
And inside...inside lay a man.
No! A luren!
The supine figure was unclothed. The skin had the white pigmentation that had turned Titus from the dusky skin color of Southern India to that of a deeply tanned Caucasian in the grave. The abdomen was concave, indicating the shrunken abdominal organs and sparse body fat of the typical Earth-bred luren. His face was long and gaunt.
The only differences were those of degree. This individual was whiter than anyone Titus knew. He was more emaciated. His hair was not gray or white but metallic silver. Titus supposed his eyes would be pale, too.
He seemed “alien” because there was no Oriental, Hispanic, Caucasian, Indian, or Black cast to his features. It was nothing specific. His nose wasn’t too prominent, his eyes weren’t too odd, his lips were not especially different, and his cheekbones seemed normal. His ears were reasonably shaped and placed. Even his haircut wasn’t so exotic. It was in the summation of these things that the difference lay.
The body showed no sign of explosive decompression. One side of the chest was depressed. A blow had broken ribs and ruptured organs: minor damage but enough to induce dormancy in a luren or to kill a human. The skull seemed intact.
The protective cylinder had gauges for air pressure, temperature, and radiation. The gauges were attached to a remote-monitored telemetry device.
Inferences leaped through Titus’s mind. There had been no hint on Earth that they’d found anything but cell-damaged corpses. This intact specimen was being preserved—probably in pure sterile nitrogen—for cloning! It had to be for cloning!
It hadn’t been done yet for lack of budget, but they’d do it eventually. All they needed was one perfect germ cell.
What the humans didn’t know was that this “corpse” was not dead. His spine and brain were intact. Given a benign environment, he’d revive. But the humans didn’t suspect that. Despite, or perhaps because of, all the horror movies ever made, they’d never suspect that.
Suddenly, he realized what he’d done. Turning on the lights had signaled security. They had to be on their way.
He flicked the lights off and fumbled at the door. It resisted. Calm down. It has to be unlocked or how’d I get in? It gave, spilling him into the hall, and he took off in the direction Abbot had gone. Behind him, a security officer squeezed through the twisted hatch and headed for the room where the sleeper lay.
Titus rounded a bend, chose a branching corridor, and stopped, lost. He knew he was facing what they had labeled the stern. It was connected to the medical research dome by a pressurized, high-security tunnel. Very likely Abbot had gone that way, for the only other way back into the station was via the surface, past the security checkpoint.
Heart pounding, Titus set off astern, cloaked heavily in Influence. Visualizing the consequences of being caught and connected to the security breach, he sidled through groups of workers. The Project openly sponsored some fifteen hundred investigations underway, both on the alien vessel and in the station’s labs. But Titus’s mind was on the sleeper. Could he allow the humans to vivisect a helpless luren? If they knew, would they do it anyway? They could have their cloning specimen without destroying the man. But knowing what he did of biologists, Titus was sure they’d do a total autopsy, which would include removing the brain, fatal even for a luren. If they knew he was alive, would they let him wake?
Was it even up to Titus to decide what they should allow the humans to do to the sleeper? Maybe Abbot didn’t know about the sleeper yet. Titus had to get word to Connie.
That meant rebuilding his computer, hoping the parts shipment from Earth would include a new black box. Had Abbot destroyed the black box on purpose? Did he even know about it? More to the point, could Titus slip a replacement communicator box into the rebuilt computer without Abbot knowing? Was Abbot in direct touch with his Tourists?
Had Connie received and understood Titus’s cryptic message buried in the requisition that Carol Colby had sent to Earth?
