"Well, sure. I didn't mean any harm," Krake apologized. Then he cleared his throat. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you. Please don't take this the wrong way— but about you and Thrayl—?"
Moon stood up straight. "Are you asking me if we're doing something together that we shouldn't? That's the way my mother would have put it."
"Oh, no! Really. Nothing like that, only—"
"Only you can't help wondering, can you?" she said sharply. Then she relented. Sounding sad, she said, "A lot of people had that idea. That's why they might have burned him alive if they'd caught us. But Thrayl really is my friend, Captain Krake. He's like—" She paused, considering how to say what she meant. "He's like a child. I saw him born, you know. He was the size of a kitten—young Taurs are tiny—and I was only about eight myself. I used to play with him like a doll, bathe him, sing to him—he heard my songs long before he heard any of the ones he says he listens to now. I'd rock him in a doll cradle, and read to him. I taught him to talk and to read! Taurs aren't stupid, you know!"
"I didn't know he could read," Krake said humbly.
"He can do all sorts of things. Only—well, Taurs are different, you see. A lot of things that are important to us just don't interest Thrayl. He's like a—" She flushed, having trouble getting the word out—"He's like a kind of, well, saint."
She reached over and stroked the huge head. "I kept you in the house until you were too big, didn't I, Thrayl?" The huge eyes seemed to smile with love. "He would die for me, Captain Krake. I know that. And he knows that I would do anything for him, too."
Krake studied the two of them for a while, then glanced toward the door. His expression changed again. "That's not really what I wanted to ask you, though. Why do you think the Turtles want him here?" he demanded.
Moon shrugged. "I don't understand Turtles at all," she declared.
Krake shook his head, baffled. "I think it has something to do with those songs he listens to. What do you know about them?"
"They're beautiful," Moon said positively. "Thrayl told me so, only—well, he can't tell me what they're like, exactly, because he doesn't have the words. He says there aren't any words that he can translate for me, not in his language or ours; they're just beautiful. And he began hearing them as soon as his horns began to grow." She stroked the massive head absently. "He says that the thing he fears most is the thought of something happening to hurt his horns. It isn't being slaughtered and eaten that scares him, you see; he doesn't seem to mind that. I do! But Thrayl wasn't afraid of being slaughtered at all. What he was afraid of was losing his horns, because that would mean losing his songs."
Krake was staring up at that faint pucker in the screen, his brow furrowed. "Do you suppose it could be those songs that the Turtles want to know about?" he asked. "Can Thrayl . . . well, foretell the future, or anything like that?"
Moon gave the question serious consideration. "I would say no," she said finally. "Not exacdy. There have been times when Thrayl seems to know that something is wrong. Or dangerous. Or that there was trouble of some kind ahead. But I don't think the songs are really about us. They're sort of from outside. I don't know where 'outside' is, either," she added, forestalling Krake's question, "but I think it's right outside of everything. Maybe outside the whole universe."
Frowning, Krake nodded slowly—not to show comprehension, Moon thought, but only to show that he had heard the words. She didn't blame him for that. Thrayl's songs were, well, funny, and she knew she didn't comprehend what they were about herself.
She was glad when Daisy Fay and Marco appeared in the doorway. "My turn to relieve you, Cap'n," Marco said, the face on the belly plate grinning cheerfully up at his commander. "What're the orders?"
Krake glanced up again at the blur on the screen. "No orders," he said. "We just wait." He pulled himself erect. "Maybe I'll look in on Sork, keep him from getting too drunk —maybe I can get more sense out of him. You look as though you could use a little rest, too, Moon."
"I'm not sleepy," she objected.
But when Daisy Fay said amiably, "I've got some tea in my room, if you'd like some," Moon jumped at the chance. Anything was better than sitting in this cold, impersonal control room, waiting—and not even knowing what you were waiting for. Besides, she was curious about the machine-woman's living arrangements.
But as they were leaving, Moon paused at the doorway. "Captain Krake? They really are important, you know," she said suddenly. "Thrayl's songs, I mean."
"I'm sure of that," the captain said wearily. "I only wish I knew why."
Daisy Fay McQueen's quarters were a surprise to Moon Bunderan. Pictures on the walls—landscapes from Earth mosdy, and photos of what looked like some big city from pre-Turtle days, all skyscrapers and crowded streets and automobiles. There were flowers in fixtures on the walls—not real flowers, Moon saw, but there probably wasn't any real way for Daisy Fay to grow her own on the waveship. Then, while Daisy Fay was setting a funny little pot to boil and getting out cups, Moon said, with a shock of surprise, "You don't have a bed?"
"Moon, hon, what would I do with a bed?" There was laughter in the machine-woman's voice. "We're not in the shielded area, either, in case you didn't notice. Marco and I don't need shielding, at least not most of the time—we're almost as good as Turtles that way. Now don't worry," Daisy Fay added quickly, waving a couple of arms reassuringly as she saw Moon Bunderan's sudden expression of concern, "there's nothing near enough for its radiation to hurt you." The machine-woman set the cups on a shelf before moving over to the side of the chamber and pulling a bench down out of the wall. "But I do like to keep some reminders of when I was a fully organic human," she sighed. "I had this put in so Francis could be comfortable when he comes here. You can use it, Moon."
Moon sat down diffidendy. Beside her, Thrayl squatted cross-legged on the floor, his eyes on Daisy Pay McQueen. Moon rested her hand affectionately on the broad space between the horns on his head, scratching gently into the fine short fur. To make conversation, she said, "I guess the Turdes took pretty good care of you, back on the orbit station?"
The face on Daisy Pay's video screen looked a little embarrassed. "Well, yes," she said, and then added, "To tell you the truth, Moon, there wasn't much wrong with us, really."
"But Captain Krake said you were being, well, repaired."
"Sort of maintenance, yes," Daisy Fay admitted. "That wasn't the real reason we didn't go down to the surface with him, though. We just—didn't want people staring at us." Ab-sendy she stroked her round body with a tentacle. "I know we look pretty funny, Moon. You can't blame the Turdes, though —they used themselves for models, I guess."
Moon cleared her throat. "Daisy Fay? Do you mind if I ask you something?"
"Not a bit," said the machine-woman cheerily. "I even know what you want to know. How we got this way, right? It's all right. I'm sort of proud of it, in a way—I'm the only female half-robot human in the universe, right? And it beats being dead." She squatted down on four of her eight tentacles. Like Moon, she reached out gendy with one of her arms and rested it lightly on the Taur's massive shoulder. Thrayl blinked at her but made only a faint, friendly sound deep in his throat.
"It was during the war," Daisy Fay began. "I was a reporter for a Chicago newspaper—do you know what a newspaper was?"
"For telling people what was happening in the world? Before they had videoplates?"
"That's right. I .vasn't very experienced at it, but most of the men were away in the service and they had to give even a young female cub like me a chance. They sent me down to South America to report on how some of the other countries were planning for life after the war. And I had to fly across the Andes—that's a mountain chain in South America—"