The first task was preparation. They would need supplies and equipment. Agzaral had told him that a reasonable amount of equipment could be obtained from Earth. He hadn't said what would be reasonable.
Rick set the troops to making lists. Weapons, ammunition, special equipment, communications, survival gear, medical supplies, soap; luxuries and conveniences that couldn't be manufactured on Tran even with all the help Rick and his people could supply. The lists became endless, and they began to cut them back.
They had very little information about Tran. Karreeel was certain there was no petroleum industry there, but neither knew nor cared whether there was petroleum at alclass="underline" thus no internal-combustion gear. The other decision information was just as sketchy.
Rick asked the television set for an interview. Eventually Karreeel came on the screen.
"We need more data," Rick said. "How big is this planet? How much water? Are there hurricanes? How can I prepare when I don't know what to prepare for?"
"Your questions are reasonable. Unfortunately, we have not translated the data you require. That will be done later."
"Can you get the equipment I've asked for?"
"Some. Most."
"How?" Rick asked.
"It can be bought. Or stolen," Karreeel said. "I have little time for you. You will later meet someone who does. Until then, please do not annoy me further."
"Who is this-"
"A human. If you give me your list, I will see what can be obtained."
The screen went blank. Rick and Andrй looked at each other. "They must have agents on Earth," Parsons said. "They spoke of purchases-"
"Yeah." Rick thought about that for a moment, then laughed. "Aliens among us. Agents of the Galactic Confederacy move about studying us. We read about it for years, and it's all true."
Andrй Parsons laughed also, but neither of them thought it was really very funny.
PART TWO: THE SHIP
1
Gwen Tremaine was in love. Given that she was twenty years old and not at all unattractive, this shouldn't have been astonishing; but in point of fact she was more than astonished. She couldn't really believe it.
She had resigned herself to a lonely life. Not lonely in the sense of having no friends, although she had few enough; but she was convinced that she would never be in love, and even doubted whether anyone else ever had been. She had strongly suspected that all the poetic passages, all the lyric descriptions of how one felt when one was in love, had been invented by poets and writers who felt there ought to be such feelings but who had never experienced them.
Physical attraction she understood. She'd had several affairs and enjoyed them all. But what she couldn't seem to arouse, in herself or others, was whatever the poets felt when they spoke of love.
She had tried, and a few times she thought it was happening to her, but it never developed into anything more. The strong affection, the need for someone else's company that she saw in the few girls she got along with, sometimes she felt stirrings of it, but it never lasted. Generally what few stirrings she did experience happened after physical encounters, and usually hadn't lasted past the cold light of morning. For a while she had blamed her inability to fall in love on the men in her life, and indeed there was some justice in that. She'd been attracted to as thoroughgoing a collection of cynics, bounders, and just plain cads as it was possible for her to imagine. Even her friends said so. Not that it was so obvious when she met them. She didn't seek out the most popular boy in her high-school class, or lust after the jocks who could and did have every girl in the school. She was more likely to date the quiet ones with glasses who read a lot. Some had never had a date before her. Yet they invariably left her for her friends as soon as she'd built up their confidence to a level where they dared ask someone else for a date.
In truth, she scared hell out of everyone who tried to take her seriously. She was intelligent, she talked a lot, and she was interested in everything. She wrote for the school paper. She did so much extra classwork that she could get' an A in any subject even if she turned in a blank final exam. She earned real money at such unfeminine activities as buying stale bread and reselling it to chicken farmers. In short, she was real competition for any boy she met, and the ones she liked were never secure enough to survive that threat.
When she was sixteen and a senior at John Marshall High, she met Fred Linker in the school library. Fred had never had a date in his life and was terrified of girls. Gwen was a bit cynical about men by that time, but she was enough of a product of her culture to wish she had someone to take her on dates. Fred seemed perfect. He wasn't at all bad looking, just shy. He liked to read and knew of works like Silverlock that she adored as soon as he told her about them. He was a good listener, and they shared many opinions. So she worked on him until he asked her out, and three dates later, he got the nerve to kiss her goodnight. He didn't know how to do that very well, but Gwen was a good teacher. She'd found books that told how.
Fred wanted to be a writer. He wrote constantly. Someday he'd sell a story. He was certain of it. He'd even sent a few off to magazines and got rejection slips.
Gwen read the magazines Fred liked, and three weeks later got a short story accepted in one of his favorites. She thought he'd be proud of her, and she knew she could show him how he could sell, too- it was only a matter of studying the editor's prejudices — but a week after that Fred took another girl to the sock hop. Later he sold three stories himself, but he never asked Gwen out again.
College hadn't been much different. Gwen's physical urges got stronger, and sometimes she was so lonely she'd read in an all-night restaurant rather than sit in her room; so lonely that she made resolutions about not competing with the next man she liked. She even tried to carry them out. It did no good. Even when she didn't actually do whatever her current boyfriend thought he was good at, eventually it would come out that she could if she wanted to.
Or maybe, she told herself as she dressed in her compulsively neat one-room apartment, maybe that's all wrong. Maybe they just didn't like me in the first place. God knows there must be something wrong with me.
I'm not ugly. She studied herself in the mirror. Too short, yes. Five foot two and eyes of blue sounds very good in songs, but in fact that's pretty short, and besides my eyes are more greenish-brown. Nose too pointed, face too angular, but there are plenty of girls with longer and pointier noses and they aren't ugly. And I've got all the right equipment. Not a lot of it, but in good proportion. I bounce all right if I go without a bra, and my hips aren't bony. I don't wear clothes well because I'm too thin, but I don't look too bad. Men don't turn away.
And everyone tells me I talk well. I'm bright and witty. They say it just after we meet, and just as they're walking out.
But this time it's different.
She dressed carefully. This time for sure, she thought. Things will happen tonight. She felt a delicious sensation of anticipation. Maybe this will last, she thought. Please. Let it last.
She grinned at her image in the mirror. To whom was she praying? Her image of the universe had room in it for a god, but not one who paid much attention to that kind of prayer. If prayer worked, there were a lot of people worse off than Gwen Tremaine praying their arses off. They didn't get what they wanted. Why should she?
But there was a chance. Les was different.
She'd met him in an all-night coffee shop near the university library. It had been quite late, and she was ready to go home. She was carrying a half dozen books, and he'd seen the anthropology book. "That looks like a new one," he'd said. "I think I have not seen that one before. May I look?"