“I did?” Nenda’s face was blandly innocent. “You sure it was me, Captain, and not three other guys? I never even heard of no Summer Dreamboat. I don’t remember firing at anything. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d do at all. Do you think we fired at a ship, At?” He paused. The Cecropian did not move. “No way. See, she agrees with me.”
“She’s as guilty as you are!”
“You mean as innocent.”
Rebka’s face had lost its usual pallor. “Damn you, I don’t think I’ll even wait until we get back home. I can file charges on you right here, just as well as Graves can.” He took a step closer to Nenda.
The other man did not move. “So you’re feeling mad. Big deal. Go on, try to arrest me — and tell me where you’ll lock me up. Maybe you’ll shut me away with your girlfriend here. I’d like that. So would she.” He grinned admiringly at Darya. “How about it, sweetie? You’ll have more fun with me than you’ve ever had with him.”
“If you’re trying to change the subject, it won’t work.” Rebka moved until he and Nenda were eyeball to eyeball. “Do you really want to see if I can arrest you? Try a few more cracks like that.”
Nenda turned to Darya and gave her a wink. “See how mad he gets, when anybody else tries for a piece?”
He had been watching Rebka out of the corner of his eye, and he batted away the hand that grabbed for his wrist. Then the two men were standing with arms braced, glaring at each other.
Darya could not believe it. She had never seen Rebka lose his temper before — and Louis Nenda had never been anything but cool and cynical. What was doing it to them? Tension? Fatigue?
No. She could see their expressions. They were trying each other out, testing to see which rooster was top of the dunghill.
So that was how people behaved on the primitive outworlds. Everyone would think she was making this up if she told them all about it back on Sentinel Gate.
The two men were still standing with arms locked. Darya reached over and tugged at Rebka’s right hand. “Stop it!” she shouted at them. “Both of you. You’re acting like wild beasts.”
They ignored her, but Atvar H’sial reached out with two jointed forelimbs, grabbed each man around the waist in one clawed paw, and lifted them high in the air. She pulled them effortlessly away from each other. After a second or two she allowed their feet to touch the ground, but she still held them far apart.
The blind head turned toward Darya, while the proboscis unfurled and produced a soft hissing sound.
“I know,” Darya said. “They are like animals, aren’t they? Hold them for a minute or two longer.” She spread her arms wide, as though pushing the men farther apart. Atvar H’sial might not understand her words, but she surely could take her meaning.
Darya went to stand between them. “Listen to me, you two. I don’t know which of you is more stupid, but you can have your idiocy contest later. I want to say just one word to you.” She paused, waiting until they turned their attention fully to her. “Zardalu! D’you hear me? Zardalu.”
“Huh?” Louis Nenda’s hands had still been reaching out toward Rebka. They dropped to his sides. “What are you talking about?”
Darya gestured at the doorway behind her. “In there. Fourteen Zardalu.”
“Crap! There’s not been a Zardalu in the spiral arm for thousands of years. They’re extinct.”
“You’re not in the spiral arm anymore, boy. You’re thirty thousand light-years out of the plane of the galaxy. And back in that room there’s fourteen stasis tanks, with a Zardalu in each one. Alive.”
“I don’t believe it. Nobody’s ever seen a Zardalu, not even a stuffed or a mummified one.” Nenda turned to Hans Rebka. “You hear her? She trying to make a joke?”
“No joke.” Rebka straightened his suit, where Nenda had pulled it half off his shoulders. “She’s telling the truth. They’re in stasis tanks, but I don’t know how long that will last. The stasis was beginning to end when we saw them.”
“You mean you stood there and picked a fight with me, when there’s Zardalu waking up in there? And you call me dumb! You have to be crazy.”
“What do you mean, I picked a fight!”
Darya stepped between them again. “You’re both crazy, and you’re both to blame. Are you going to start over? Because if you are, I hope Atvar H’sial understands enough to crack your heads together and knock some sense into you.”
“She does. She will.” Nenda stared at the closed door. Suddenly he was his old calm self. “Zardalu. I don’t know what you’re smoking, but maybe we better get in there. I’ll tell At what’s been happening. She’s like me, though — she won’t really believe it until she takes a peek for herself.”
He turned to Atvar H’sial. “You’re not gonna like this, At.” The gray pheromone nodules on his chest pulsed in unison with his human speech. “These two jokers say there’s Zardalu in there. You heard me. Fourteen of ’em, in stasis but alive and gettin’ ready to trot. I know, I know.”
The Cecropian had squatted back onto her hindmost limbs, furled the antennas above her head, and tucked her proboscis into its pleated holder.
“She don’t like to hear that,” Nenda said. “She says a Cecropian ain’t afraid of anything in the universe, but Zardalu images are part of her race memory. A bad part. Nobody knows why.”
Hans Rebka was sliding open the first of the two doors. “Let’s hope she doesn’t find out. I’d suggest that you and Atvar H’sial hang back a bit — just in case.”
He opened the second door. Darya held her breath, then released it with a sigh of relief. The great pentagonal cylinders lay exactly as they had left them, silent and closed.
“All right.” Hans Rebka moved forward. “You wanted proof, here it is. Take a look in there.”
Rebka walked cautiously to the transparent port in the end of the stasis tank and peered in through it. After a few seconds he gave a long sigh.
“I know,” Rebka said softly. “Impressive, eh? And scary, too. We have to find a way to turn that stasis field back on, before they wake up and try to get out.”
But Louis Nenda was shaking his head. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, Captain Rebka and Professor Lang. I just know it’s a stupid one.”
He stepped away from the long casket.
“There’s thirteen more to look at, but I’ll bet money they’re all like this one.” He turned to face Darya. “It’s empty, sweetheart. Empty as a Ditron’s brainbox. What do you have to say about that?”
Entry 42: Ditron
Distribution: Never having achieved an independent spaceflight capability, Ditrons are found in large numbers only on their native world (Ditrona, officially Luris III, Cecropia Federation, Sector Five). Transported Ditron colonies can also be found on the neighboring worlds of Prinal (Luris II) and Ivergne (Luris V). In the early days of the Cecropian expansion, Ditrons were taken to the other stellar systems, but generally they did not thrive there. Diet deficiencies were blamed at the time, but more recent analyses make it clear that psychological dependencies were as much a factor. Ditrons, at the third stage of their life cycle, fail to survive if the group size dwindles below twenty.
Physical Characteristics: It is necessary to consider separately the three stages of the Ditron life cycle, conventionally designated as S-1, S-2, and S-3. The Ditrons are unique among known intelligent species in that their highest mental levels are achieved not in their most mature form, but rather in their premature and premating (S-2) stage.
The larval form (S-1) is born live, in a litter of no less than five and no more than thirteen offspring. The newborn Ditron masses less than one kilogram, but it has full mobility and is able to eat at once. It is near-blind, possesses sevenfold radial symmetry, is asexual, herbivorous, and lacks measurable intelligence.