The face on the belly plate looked away. "Why don't you just go to sleep, Kiri? I'm sure Sork's all right."
Kiri was wide awake now. "No! Answer me, what's he doing now?"
The face on the belly plate looked sympathetic. "Honestly, Kiri, I don't think he's in any trouble . . . though I doubt he's enjoying it. He's—he's gone off with the Turtles. They're questioning him about something, Kiri. I hope he's all right."
A hundred meters away, Sork was hoping the same thing about himself. It wasn't that he was afraid for his safety. Though the two great Turtles hawked and shrieked threateningly, Sork was reasonably sure they would not descend to any physical act on his own person. That was not Turde style.
For that matter, Sork wasn't afraid of anything very often. Not even when he had good reason to be. Fear simply was not a part of his makeup. But he could be troubled, and often enough was, and what troubled him in this particular situation was that he could not interpret what the Turtles were after. Their questions kept coming back to the old quantum-physics lectures Sue-ling Quong had brought from her old school.
The worst thing was that he couldn't fit it all into a sensible pattern. He wished Kiri could help him, and knew he could not—and wished for half a moment for a drink of Scotch that would help ease that familiar confusion in his mind; but he put that thought away as soon as he discovered it in himself.
It wasn't fair! He had planned so carefully. Sork had done the precise thing that needed to be done: anticipated a situation, worked out a plan, decided how to handle it. Accordingly, "Yes," he said, almost as soon as they brought the subject up, "I am willing to give you access to the tapes as a commercial arrangement, under certain terms."
Chief Thunderbird rapped severely, "We do not speak of other 'terms.' Also, mere access is not enough. You must furnish more."
"What more?" Sork asked.
The Turtle seemed embarrassed. "You have heard many of these tapes. There are certain words and concepts in them which are unfamiliar. One requires that you help us by explaining them to us."
"Help you," Sork said meditatively, enjoying the sudden feeling of power—how long had it been since any human heard a Turtle ask for "help"? He said, "I'm willing to do that, but I ask you again, what terms do you offer?"
The Turtles turned an eye on each other, one each on Sork Quintero. "No additional terms are required. It is a pooling of assets, as agreed," screeched Chief Thunderbird.
"Oh, no," said Sork, confidently shaking his head. "We have no agreement here. What assets do you contribute? There must be something in exchange for my services; that's the Turtle way."
"Your services are only to make possible our use of the chips, and those are not your assets, Sork Quintero! They are the property of the human female, Sue-ling Quong!"
Sork was ready for that one. "Sue-ling and I have already pooled assets," he said, not entirely truthfully. "I speak for both of us."
The Chief turned both eyes on him in baffled rage, then turned off the transposes for a moment. Sork waited while the two Turtles hawked and hissed at each other. Then Litlun turned to him. He spread his webbed paw, counting off items on his talons:
"These are what we offer: Food. Air. Water. All the things you humans require for survival. The Brotherhood is furnishing these assets to you in exchange for the ones we request." And, as Sork began to scowclass="underline" "If you do not wish to accept these terms it will be necessary for us to remove you and Sue-ling Quong from this ship."
"At a suitable place, of course," added Chief Thunderbird. "One on which it is possible for you to survive, though perhaps not in as much comfort as on your own planet—and, of course, there would be no guarantee that you would be returned to your Earth at any specific future time."
Sork cursed to himself: It had all seemed so logical when he thought it out in private! Leave it to the Turtles to find some way of ruining things! He tried to imagine what it would be like to be set down on some strange planet. He couldn't. It was simply too far out of his experience. But what he was sure of was that the thing he wanted most, the thing he had planned for—to learn how to pilot a spacecraft—was within his grasp in The Golden Hind, and if he let that chance slip away. . . .
He tried desperately to take command on the discussion. "But—" he began, floundering for the right words. "But—but why do you want these tapes? You said they were heretical. I think one word you used was 'obscene.'"
"That does not now apply," screeched Litlun. "Because of the great peril the Brotherhood now stands in, we must conquer our revulsion at—certain things."
"Which are no concern of yours, Sork Quintero," Chief Thunderbird pointed out. "It is only necessary for you to confirm to us that you accept this pooling of assets for mutual benefit."
And there the argument rested—for an hour and more, Sork battling for some advantage, the Turtles grimly holding their position.
The situation became more and more puzzling to Sork the more he thought about it. It seemed that the Turtles were tacitly admitting that all this possibly "blasphemous" (but certainly weird) quantum-anthropic-whatever-you-called-it stuff was in some way "real."
But if that were so, that raised some hard questions. For instance: If the lecture stories were true, then the science involved had to have been known to the inventors of the wave-drive. But if the Turtles denied the science . . . then how had they built the waveships?
When he tried to ask that of the Turtles they were fierce in snapping at him. "Do not ask questions on matters which are not your concern!" thundered the Chief.
Sork stared at him in loathing and defeat. What made it worse was that for some time now he had been smelling food cooking somewhere. It had been a long time between meals.
Litlun squawked ferociously, "There is no need for further discussion, only for your answer! Do you accept our terms? Or do we alter course to set you down on some other world?"
Sork sighed and surrendered—almost. "All right. I will do my best to explain what the lecture chips are about."
"Good! Then this is agreed," Chief Thunderbird said. "Our first session will begin now."
"But I'm hungry," Sork wailed, but the Turtle only said: "Now."
When Sork at last was allowed to return to the control room he wasn't surprised to find Francis Krake there. The surprising thing was that Krake wasn't the one who sat at the control board. Krake was off at one side of the room, busy taking food out of a heater; it was Moon Bunderan who, under Marco Ramos's watchful stalked eyes, was sitting there at the controls. Her great Taur was squatting beside her.
As Sork came in the animal looked up quickly, but then the great purple-blue eyes went blank and the head swayed away from him again.
"Hello, Sork," Moon cried, pleased with herself—then seeing the look on his face. "What's the matter?" she asked quickly.
Sork shrugged. "What are you doing?" he asked.
She said proudly, "I'm driving the ship! Not that there's anything to do," she added honestly, "but Marco says I've picked up enough to see the warnings if anything went wrong. ..."
"You're doing fine," Marco assured her. "How's the chow coming, Francis? I bet Sork would like some too."
The space captain grunted and began dumping containers of hot food into dishes, handing them around. "Thanks," said Sork, realizing just how hungry he was. But as he began to lift his fork toward his mouth he saw that the shelled creature who was Marco Ramos was eating too—ladling food into a slit in its shell with as much evident gusto as any hungry human.
One of the eye tentacles turned toward him, and Sork could almost have thought that it had a humorous twinkle. "Oh, yes, we eat," Marco told him. "We have complete digestive systems. Would you like to know how we go to the bathroom, too? It's simple. There's this hatch—"