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By Root 833 0

pretty girl and second, because she was the opposite of Geril. He had been trying to end an unsatisfactory relationship with Geril, who had been so insistent that he’d had to change his quarters from the ship-born to the visitors’ area of Earth-normal section in order to avoid her. Varian happened to be his new next-door neighbor. She was gay, bubbling with humor and intensely interested in everything about the satellite-sized exploratory vessel. She quickly infected him with her enthusiasm as she chivvied him into taking her on a guided tour of the various special quarters which accommodated the more esoteric sentient races of the FSP in their own atmosphere or gravity. Varian told him she’d been planet-bound—on how many diverse planets did not signify—so that she felt it was high time she saw how the Explorers and Evaluators lived. Especially since, she added, as a xenob vet, she often had to correct some of EV’s crazier judgments and mistakes.

Varian was a good narrator, and her tales of planetary adventures, both as a youngster trailing after xenob vet parents and as junior in the same specialty, had fascinated Kai. He’d had the usual planetary tours to combat ship-conditioned agoraphobia, and indeed had spent a whole galactic year with his mother’s parents on her birthworld. But he felt his must have been dull worlds in comparison to those responsible for Varian’s wild and amusing experiences.

Another way in which Varian surpassed Geril was in her ability to argue pleasantly and effectively without losing her temper or wit. Geril had always been oppressively serious and too eager to denigrate anything which did not meet with her unconditional approval unconditionally. In fact, long before Kai heard that Varian was to be his co-leader, he had realized that she must have had Discipline, young as she appeared to be. He’d gone as far as to tap for a printout of her public history from the EV’s data banks. Her list of assignments had been impressive even if the public record did not give any assessment of her value on those expeditions. However, he noticed she had been promoted rapidly—this, combined with the number of assignments, indicated a young woman slated for increasing responsibility and more difficult assignments. Granted her addition to the Iretan expedition had been made almost at the last minute when life-form readings had registered on the preliminary probe, but with her background Ireta ought not to post too many problems. Yet the planet was, as she’d said, rampant with anomalies.

“I suppose,” she was saying, “if one has a third-generation sun with planets, one must expect peculiarities; such as Ireta, whose poles are hotter than its equator, stinking of—I’ll remember the name of that plant yet . . .”

“Plant?”

“Yes. There’s a small plant, hardy enough to be grown practically anywhere on temperate Earth-type worlds, which is used in cooking. In judicious quantities, let me add,” she said with a wry grin. “Too much of it tastes like this planet smells. Sorry, I digress. What did the Theks say?”

Kai frowned. “Only the first reports have been picked up by our wandering Exploratory Vessel.”

Busy mopping off the worst of her wetness, Varian turned to stare at him, towel suspended. “Fardles!” She sat slowly down in the chair next to him. “That’s unnerving! Just the first?”

“That’s what the Theks said . . .”

“Did you allow time enough for them to manage a reply? Scrub that question.” Varian slumped against the backrest as she added, “Of course, you did,” giving him full credit for his ability to deal with the slowest moving and speaking species in the Federated planets. “That’s unlike EV. They’re usually so desperately greedy for initial reports, not just for the all-safe-down.”

“My explanation is that spatial interference . . .”

“Of course.” Varian’s face cleared of anxiety. “That cosmic storm the next system over . . . the one the astronomers were so hairy anxious to get to . . .”

“That’s what the Theks say.”

“In how many words?” asked Varian, her wry humor reasserting itself.

The Theks were a silicate