The Star Fox

“They’re here for xenological research, you know. Accompanying us on a business trip to an important kinfather is a unique opportunity to observe laws and customs in action. So Bragdon offered to lend us one of his flyers, provided he and the woman could ride along. He wanted several of his people, actually, but Nesters limit the number of visitors at one time. Suspicious brutes. In any event, by using the flyer, we save this yacht for shuttle work and so expedite our own project.”

“I scent. No, you say ‘I see’ in English.” Uthg-a-K’thaq’s tone was indifferent. He turned and slap-slapped on webbed feet toward his cabin.

Vadász looked thoughtfully at his back until he had disappeared. I wonder how much of our interhuman quarrels and tensions come through to him, the Hungarian reflected. Perhaps none. Surely he will think the business between Gunnar and Jocelyn is utter triviation, if he even notices.

And he may well be right. Thus far, at least, it has only amounted to Gunnar’s being often absent from our vessel. Which has done no harm at the present stage of things. The men gossip, but the tone I hear is simple good-natured envy. For myself, I am the last to begrudge a friend what scrap of happiness he can stumble upon. Therefore—why does it make me uneasy, this?

He threw off worry and pushed buttons on the radiophone extension. A middle-aged, scholarly-looking man glared from Quest’s saloon.

“Good day, Dr. Towne,” Vadász said cheerily. “Would you please remind Captain Heim that we’re leaving in half an hour?”

“Let him remind himself,” the glossanalyst snapped.

“Do you so strongly oppose our little enterprise over here that you will not even give a man an intercom call?” Vadász leered. “Then kindly remind Mme. Lawrie.”

Towne reddened and cut the circuit. He must have some very archaic mores indeed. Vadász chuckled and strolled off to complete his own preparations, whistling to himself.

“Malbrouck se va-t-en guerre—”

—And aboard the Quest, Heim looked at a bulkhead clock, stretched, and said, “We’d better start.”

Jocelyn laid a hand on his roan hair, another beneath his chin, and brought the heavy-boned homely face around until it was close to hers. “Do we have to?” she asked.

The trouble in those eyes hurt him. He tried to laugh. “What, cancel this trip and lose Vie his data? He’d never forgive us.”

“He’d be nearly as happy as I. Because it’s far more important that … that you come out of this lunacy of yours, Gunnar.”

“My dear,” he said, “the only thing that’s marred an otherwise delightful time has been your trying and trying to wheedle me into giving up the raider project. You can’t. In the old Chinese advice, why don’t you relax and enjoy it?” He brushed his lips across hers.

She didn’t respond, but left the bed and walked across the cabin. “If I were young again,” she said bitterly, “I might have succeeded.”

“Huh? No, now, look—”

“I am looking.” She had stopped before a full-length optex beside her dresser. Slowly, she ran her hands down cheeks and breasts and flanks. “Oh, for forty-three I’m quite well preserved. But the crow’s feet are there, and the beginnings of the double chin, and without clothes I sag. You’ve been—good, kind—the last few days, Gunnar. But I noticed you never committed yourself to anything.”

He swung to his own feet, crossed the intervening distance in two strides, and towered over her; then didn’t know what to do next. “How could I?” he settled for saying. “I’ve no idea what may happen on the cruise. No right to make promises or—”

“You could make them conditionally,” she told him. The moment’s despair had left her, or been buried. Her expression was enigmatic, her tone impersonal. “ ‘If I come home alive,’ you might say, ‘I’ll do such and such, if you’re agreeable.’ ”

He had no words. After some seconds she breathed out and turned from him. Her head drooped. “Well, let’s get dressed,” she said.

He put on the one-piece garment which doubled as under-padding for an airsuit, his motions automatic, his mind awash. Okay, what do I want? How much of what I felt, (do I still feel it?) was genuine and how much was just a grab at the past when lonesomeness had me off balance? 1 plain don’t know.