“No!”—raising his hand as if to strike her— “If I ever meet that woman, I will kill her. And I claim my lineage from the Family of Ten. From the woman that was worthy. Ten!”

“So vehement!” But the Captain changed the subject. “In thirty-six hours I will show you where the Taphids are delivered. Now go, quickly.”

Aton left.

Six

Four shifts later, in the cargo hold, Aton and the Captain loaded the Taphid caskets into a planetary shuttle. “No one else is going?” he inquired.

“No one else.”

Aton completed the job in silence. This strange woman would tell him what was happening soon enough. Apparently she had cleaned up the hold herself in the intervening period. The damaged caskets had been repackaged.

The little shuttle cast loose in the shadow of the mother vessel. The unwinking stars were visible through the shuttle’s port. Aton idly studied them while the Captain handled the controls, trying to guess what part of the galaxy they were in. “When I was a spaceman,” he said, referring to his recent years in the Navy, “I learned never to look at the naked stars. When you stare at them too long they are apt to burn holes in the retina.”

She snorted. “When I went to space, I learned to tell fact from fiction.”

Aton laughed. The shuttle came around the ship, into the sunlight. A hood slid over the port, protecting them from the more severe radiation and leaving only the internal screen for guidance. The Captain piloted the little ship down from orbit, into the traces of atmosphere.

“This is the Xest outpost,” she said.

“I still haven’t learned about fact and fiction. You mean there are such things as Xestians?”

“Xests. Everything exists, if you travel far enough,” she said. “They seldom communicate with human worlds, but the Xests may be the strongest nonhuman influence in our region of the galaxy. They happen to believe in live and let live, and they don’t need us. But this outpost is so much closer to human trade routes than to their own that they elected to do business with us. The Jocasta is one of several merchant ships handling private orders.”

“And they eat the Taphids!”

“They may. They may raise them as pets. We don’t know. At any rate, they ordered this shipment. They pay well and their credit is excellent.”

Aton shook his head. “Every time I think I’m used to space, it amazes me again. Yet if so many myths are true...” He left the sentence unfinished, thinking of the minionette.

She glanced at him. “There is one problem.”

“Naturally. That’s why Machinist Five was invited.”

“The Xests are nonsexual creatures. They have great difficulty comprehending the human system. Traders have succeeded in a partial explanation, but misunderstandings remain. They believe that two beings, one male and one female, make up the composite human entity.”

“Don’t they?”