Returning from the conference, he recognized the objects on his lab floor immediately. They matched Siker’s description. Tuluk complained to himself briefly about the careless manner of delivery and was soon lost in the intricacies of examination. He and the assistants he summoned made initial holoscans before separating whip and arm.

As they had expected, the Palenki gene structure offered no comparatives. The arm had not come from one of the few Palenkis on record in the ConSentient Register. Tuluk filed the DNA chart and message sequence, however. These could be used to identify the arm’s original owner, if that became necessary.

At the same time study of the whip went ahead. The artifact report came out of the computers as “Bullwhip, copy of ancient Earth type.” It was made of steerhide, a fact which gave Tuluk and his vegetarian aides a few brief moments of disgust, since they had assumed it was a synthetic.

“A sick archaism,” one of Tuluk’s Chither assistants called the whip. The others agreed with this judgment, even a Pan Spechi for whom periodic reversion to carnivorous type in his crèche cycle was necessary to survival.

A curious alignment in some of the cell molecules attracted their attention then. Study of whip and arm continued at their respective paces.

There is no such thing as pure objectivity.

—Gowachin Aphorism

McKie took the long-distance call while standing beside a dirt road about three kilometers from the rock. He had come this far on foot, increasingly annoyed by the strange surroundings. The city, he had soon discovered, was a mirage hanging over a dusty plain of tall grass and scrubby thornbushes.

It was almost as hot on the plain as it had been in the Caleban’s Beachball.

Thus far the only living things he had seen were some distant tawny animals and countless insects—leapers, crawlers, fliers, hoppers. The road contained two parallel indentations and was the rusty red color of abandoned iron. It seemed to originate in a faraway line of blue hills on his right, plunging straight across the plain to the heat-muddled horizon on his left. The road contained no occupant except himself, not even a dust cloud to mark some hidden passage.

McKie was almost glad to feel the sniggertrance grip him.

“This is Tuluk,” his caller said. “I was told to contact you as soon as I had anything to report. Hopefully, I intrude at an opportune moment.”

McKie, who had a journeyman’s respect for Tuluk’s competence, said, “Let’s have it.”

“Not much on the arm,” Tuluk said. “Palenki, of course. We can identify the original owner, if we ever get him. There’d been at least one previous regrowth of this member. Sword cut on the forearm, by the look of it.”

“What about the phylum markings?”

“We’re still checking that.”

“The whip?”

“That’s something else. It’s real steerhide.”

“Real?”

“No doubt of it. We could identify the original owner of the skin, although I doubt it’s walking around anywhere.”