He gabbled majestically at Litlun, and then both Turdes turned to leave. Puzzled, Sue-ling called after them: "But aren't there things we still need to talk over?"
"Talk?" rasped Litiun. "No, what is the purpose of talk when we are on the way to the Mother planet? It is our time to rejoice."
"And we rejoice only with our Brothers—even with the excessively ambitious ones," Chief Thunderbird added, one eye rotating around to glare at Litlun.
Krake looked after the Turtles as they left. "Now, what do you suppose Chief Thunderbird meant by that?" he asked the ship at large.
Sork shook his head. "Turtles," he said, as though that explained it all. "It's funny, though," he added, his tone more wondering than sneering. "After the way they've treated the Taurs, now they make this one a hero!" He hiccoughed slightly.
Sue-ling couldn't hold back her accusations any longer. "Sork, youVe been drinking!"
He didn't deny it. "Sometimes that's the best thing to do, my love. Maybe you should try it, too. I think we may all need a drink for what comes next."
Sue-ling was puzzled. "What's that?"
Looking drunkenly clever, Sork said, "What will happen when the Turdes find their Mother planet doesn't exist any more? Don't you remember what I told them? I warned them about what that man called Hawking said: You could perhaps travel through a wormhole—I guess we proved that for him now, since we did—but the gravitational forces would destroy any matter that passed through. And what would come out on the other side, he said, would be spaghetti."
"Spaghetti?"
"Exacdy. All twisted and curled and shapeless. That's what Hawking meant: Organized matter can't survive such a trip and stay organized. If the Mother planet did fall through a wormhole, it came out as unrecognizable fragments."
Sue-ling wrinkled her brow. "Sork?" she ventured. "How can that be, when we went through ourselves, safely enough— didn't we?"
"Safely?" Sork sighed thoughtfully. "I wonder what 'safely' means now."
Krake said dangerously, "Don't play games with us, Sork! Answer the woman!"
"Oh, it's no game. It's just that what Sue-ling said is irrelevant. The planet was matter, and so it was destroyed. But we weren't in the form of matter. We were in wave-drive—in the form of waves, not solid particles—when we came through the wormhole, so we survived. No," he said, shaking his head, "you can forget about trying to find that planet. It doesn't exist anymore."
He was staring into space, almost like the Taur listening to his songs, and the look on his face was strange. Puzzlement— as though pondering a chess problem; worry—as though unsure that a great plan could work; and sadness. Then he shook himself.
"Heigh-ho," he said amiably. "It's going to be a long trip, and we're going to have to wait to the end of it for a lot of the answers. So I'm off to sleep." He gave Sue-ling a hooded glance. "Care to come and join me, my dear? No? Well, I thought not."
And he was gone.
Sue-ling said urgently, "Kiri! Stay with him, will you? He's drinking again, I'm sure of it."
Kiri gave her a patient look. "And you want me to stop him?"
"More than that, if you can! Find where he's getting the liquor from—smash the bottles—"
Kirk sighed and turned to follow his twin. But at the door he paused. "No one can be with him all the time, Sue-ling," he said. "He has to follow his own life. He's no better off than any of the rest of us, you know. It's the only life he has."
Sue-ling was gazing after him, biting her lips. Krake watched her for a moment, then turned to his crew. "Marco, Daisy Fay—you're in charge. Sue-ling? Come along with me. I think I know where he's getting it."
Sue-ling allowed herself to follow; and then, in Krake's quarters, she saw the answer. He rummaged for a moment in a private cubicle, then looked up, apologetic. "Mystery's over," he said. "It was my liquor. I had half a case of Scotch there. I should have locked it up, I guess, but I never thought anybody would steal it."
Sue-ling's expression was bitter. "You can't trust a drunk with liquor," she said, turning away. "I'd better find him before he drinks it all up."
Krake stopped her with a restraining hand. "You aren't Sork's keeper. Let his brother take care of him," he commanded. She hesitated, very conscious of his touch. "Why do you worry so much about him?" he asked.
"I worry about both of them!" She bit her lip, wondering what to tell this new man who had suddenly appeared in the established pattern of her life. "They're rather special."
He scratched his brown beard, studying her. "I suppose former lovers are always special."
She gave him a frown. How dare he say 'former'? But what she said was, "It isn't that. It isn't even just that they're twins. They're almost like mirror images of each other, Kiri careful, thoughtful, a litde slow to act, and Sork—"
"Sork rushing in where wise men fear to tread. I know," Krake said, and changed the subject. "Why don't we just take it easy for a while? I'd offer you a drink, but the bar's dry just now."
"I don't need a drink," Sue-ling said, glad not to be made to pursue the subject of Sork and Kiri Quintero. "It's nice just to relax."
"So I find it," he said seriously. "Especially with you, Sue-ling."
In Sue-ling's opinion, there hadn't been much relaxation in the times she and Francis Krake had been together so far. Nor did she feel entirely relaxed just then. "Maybe we should be getting back to the others," she fretted.
"Why?" he asked reasonably. "If we've got anything at all now, it's time. Marco and Daisy Fay can take care of anything that comes up."
"I suppose so," she said absendy. She was responding to his words, but the private part of her mind was more taken up with the fact that he had put his hand on hers. She looked down at their hands, then up into his eyes again. "Francis? Is this the way men started to make sexual overtures in 1945?"
He flushed. She could see that he was nervous, but he didn't take his hand away. "One of the ways, anyway," he agreed, "at least as far as I can remember."
Sue-ling nodded thoughtfully. "Moon Bunderan is pretty interested in you."
"She's a child. I've never touched her."
"It might be better," she said, "if you didn't touch me right now either, Francis."
"Maybe not," he agreed gloomily, and released her hand. "I'm sorry, Sue-ling. I told you, I've forgotten how to get along with girls any more. I understand women about as well as I understand Turtles, and that's damn little."
She looked surprised. "But I thought you did understand Turtles! YouVe been dealing with them for—centuries."
"For a couple of years," he corrected, "and most of that time it was just Marco and Daisy Fay and me. Hell, I don't even scratch the surface of understanding Turtles. How did they come to have waveships, for instance?"
Sue-ling looked surprised. "They're very intelligent. I suppose they just invented them, somewhere along the way."
"Without ever studying quantum physics? And they never did, you know; it was blasphemy to them—until now, when they're desperate. And what about their history? They don't talk much about it, but every now and then I hear a name, or some kind of hint—there were those people they called the Sh'shrane that they fought against long ago. Real baddies, the Turtles say—but what was the war like, and who won, and where are the Sh'shrane now? I don't know! Hell," he said, shaking his head, "I don't know all that much about human history, for that matter. I didn't go to college, you know. I joined up when I was nineteen, and you didn't get much chance for education in the 188th Fighter Group. I know the names of a few great people—Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln—but what do I know about what they did, or why?"