Ian was unable to respond.
"The others couldn't stand it. I watched them go, one by one. They'd crawl into the airlock, some of them crying, others praying. One was laughing. They'd pop the door and take the leap. The Big Leap, that's what we called it. I'd watch them struggle out there, and later I'd go out after 'em. After all, they were fresh…"
Ian was stunned.
"There was nothing else you could have done," Rich ard said, his voice soft and soothing. "There was nothing else for you, it was necessary in order to survive."
Elijah looked at him and smiled. "Conservation, recycling, that was the world, the world of my forefathers. So I lived, I salvaged and lived, forever alone, in a world of floating death. Anyhow, it tasted quite good. Still does, you know."
He smiled at Richard. "If you want, I'll go out and get you one. I've got a whole stockpile of legs. Only the best for my friends."
"No, that's quite all right, quite all right, my friend," Richard replied, making a supreme effort not to show his emotions. Ian floated in the corner and tried not to gag.
"Rachel and I…" Elijah continued. "My poor, dear Rachel who floated in an airless room. And the one book, treasured in the museum. A book from before the Great Sailing. I found it floating in the wreckage. Literature of the English-Speaking People. Oh, I know it by heart, I do. I know it all by heart, for I read it to Rachel every day, and I shouted it to the heavens my entire life as I floated with my dinner in that corridor-eighty-two me ters, fifty-two point one centimeters."
He looked over at the hulk again.
" 'Let us fly these troubled waters, Ahab, let us come h ard about.' "
He turned back to them with imploring eyes.
" 'For I alone have lived to tell thee this tale.' Please, for God sake, take me away from here."
Elijah looked at Ian slyly and reached into his pocket.
"In payment Ian, in payment I'll give you this and yet another legend to pursue. But it's our secret." And so saying, he gave a paranoid look at Richard. "Only one, there's only one and I can't share."
Ian hesitated for a moment, fearful of some horror, but Richard came up to lan's side and whispered.
"It's all right, it means he trusts you, if it's a piece of meat just pocket it, thank him, and leave. It's a bonding gift."
Richard smiled at Ian, nodded at Elijah, and floated out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. Ian smiled uncomfortably at Elijah and cleared his throat. If this is a piece of meat, Ian thought, I'll get sick, I know it, and he braced himself.
Elijah drew out his hand and opened it. A slender metal rod six inches long and the diameter of a straw floated up. A small blue button jutted from one end. The strange shimmer to the metal caught lan's eye and he drew closer. It could have been a swizzle stick from Richard's drinking kit.
"What the hell?… "
"It scared the hell out of me," Elijah said softly.
"What?"
"The thing that owned that rod."
"What thing?" Ian suddenly noticed his heart was rac ing.
"The thing."
Ian gulped. "Do you mean an alien?"
He snatched the rod out of the air and nervously ex amined it. It was cool to the touch and a minuscule flowing script curled around the length of the shaft. He had never seen such writing before and with that realization his hands started to shake.
"How did you get this?"
"Promise you won't tell, the others might get mad at me, 'cause I didn't save any. You're the leader so I have to tell you but not the others." There was a pleading whine to his voice.
Ian nodded in agreement, not really paying attention to the words, as if he was listening to the fearful chatter of a little child.
"All right then." Elijah drew closer.
"It knocked on my door, it did. Honest, I heard a knock on the airlock. I looked out the window and there it was, a ship docked to mine. So I popped the door and, sweet holy of holies." His voice rose to a near shriek and Ian had to reach out to calm him down.
"What was it like?" Ian begged.
Elijah looked at him and smiled.
"Lucky I had some garlic and artificial butter," he whispered.
"Oh, no. You didn't…"
"He sure did look like a giant snail to me. Tell me, Ian, have you ever had a hundred-kilo escargot?"
"By heavens, Ian, he's sick."
Ian looked across at Ellen and nodded in affirmation. "But that's not the question we're dealing with, Ellen."
"I don't give a good god damn what you think we're dealing with, I think we should put him under sedation, turn about, and head for home. And another thing, we should let the Exploration Board come back out here and figure out what the hell is going on with this Father, or whatever it is those people over there are worshiping." Ellen waved her hand off in the direction of Delta Sag.
"First off, I'm not going to sedate Elijah as long as his behavior is reasonable."
"Reasonable, my ass, that madman came up to me and asked if we had any fresh meat. He even pinched my leg. Good Lord, Ian, he gives me the creeps."
"Reasonable, my ass," Richard whispered sotto voce to Stasz. "I'd like to see him take a bite out of her buns, she might enjoy it."
"Shut up, pig! Remember I saved your butt from the IFF."
"And I remember in some detail what yours looked like. Stasz, you should have seen it, a little heavy perhaps, but still worth a-"."Shut up, all of you," Ian shouted. "We've got to make a decision, damn it!"
"Look, Ian," Ellen interjected, "this was originally conceived of as a way for the Chancellor to get rid of some nonconformist or incompetent faculty members."
"Yes indeed," Richard interrupted. "But do speak for yourself, Ellen dearest, when deciding which of the two."
"Give her a chance, will you?" Ian replied, amazed at himself for defending Ellen against Richard's barbs.
Choosing to ignore his comments, she continued.
"I was also going to say that this is an academic mis sion. We were to establish contact if possible with one or more colonies and find out what happened. Look, Ian, we can't even gather any more data. Our memory banks are crammed to capacity, to enter even one more item requires us to dump something else. There's enough data in there to keep our respective professions busy for the next century. Ian, we can go back home, we can go back as heroes, and screw the Chancellor."
Ian shot Richard a glance to suppress the obvious re tort.
"I know you want to get back home, too," Ian said, looking at Richard.
Richard merely shook his head and smiled. "I want to see how this argument turns out."
"And you, Stasz?"
"They've got beam weapons-look what they did to that out there." He pointed at the wreckage that drifted just outside their forward viewport.
"So that means you'd prefer to turn back?"
"Look, Ian, it's been run. I've racked up six months of translight time. By the time we get back, I figure I can take standard retirement plus ten percent. Do you think I want to blow my retirement checks just to go visit the followers of a crazy man dead for the last thousand years?"
"But your curiosity is there, isn't it?"
Stasz shifted uncomfortably, so that he floated out of his couch. "Don't ruin the image of indifference that I've tried to cultivate."
"And, Richard, what do you have to say?" Ian asked, turning away from Stasz.
"The arguments for turning back are obvious. Smith's people are armed and have twice proven their madness. Confrontation with them is something I think is totally beyond our capacity. We already have a valuable cargo of data, which I think should take precedence at this stage of the mission."
Ellen gave an audible sigh of relief.