didn't see it very clearly. Tell me - do you mind talking about this?'
'Not to you, Mother,' said Marlene, but there was a note of caution in her voice.
'Well then, when you were younger and found out that you could do this and other children couldn't - and even other grown-ups couldn't - why didn't you come and tell me about it?'
'I tried once, actually, but you were impatient. I mean, you didn't say anything, but I could tell you were busy and couldn't be bothered with childish nonsense.'
Insigna's eyes widened. 'Did I say it was childish nonsense?'
'You didn't say it, but the way you looked at me and the way you were holding your hands said it.'
'You should have insisted on telling me.'
'I was just a little kid. And you were unhappy most of the time - about Commissioner Pitt, and about Father.'
'Never mind about that. Is there anything else you can tell me now?'
There's only one thing,' said Marlene. 'When Commissioner Pitt said we could go, there was something about the way he said it that made me think he left out something - that there was something he didn't say.'
'And what was it, Marlene?'
'That's just it, Mother. I can't read minds, so I don't know. I can only go by outside things and that leaves things hazy, sometimes. Still-'
'Yes?'
'I have the feeling that whatever it was he didn't say was rather unpleasant - maybe even evil.'
23
Getting ready for Erythro took Insigna quite a while, of course. There were matters on Rotor that could not be left at midpoint. There had to be arrangements in the astronomy department, instructions to others, appointment of her chief associate to the position of Chief Astronomer pro-tem, and some final consultations with Pitt, who was oddly non-communicative on the matter.
Insigna finally put it to him during her last report before leaving.
'I'm going to Erythro tomorrow, you know,' she said.
'Pardon me?' He looked up from the final report she had handed him, and which he had been staring at, though she was convinced he wasn't reading it. (Was she picking up some of Marlene's tricks and not knowing how to handle it? She mustn't begin to believe that she was penetrating below the surface when, in fact, she was not.)
She said patiently, 'I'm going to Erythro tomorrow, you know.'
'Is it tomorrow? Well, you'll be coming back eventually, so this is not goodbye. Take care of yourself. Look upon it as a vacation.'
'I intend to be working on Nemesis' motion through space.'
'That? Well-' He made a gesture with both hands as though pushing something unimportant away. 'As you wish. A change of surroundings is a vacation even if you continue working.'
'I want to thank you for allowing this, Janus.'
'Your daughter asked me to. Did you know she asked me to?'
'I know. She told me the same day. I told her she had no right to bother you. You were very tolerant of her.'
Pitt grunted. 'She's a very unusual girl. I didn't mind obliging her. It's only temporary. Finish your calculations and return.'
She thought: That's twice he mentioned my return. What would Marlene make out of that if she were here? Something evil, as she says? But what?
She said evenly, 'We'll come back.'
He said, 'With the news, I hope, that Nemesis will prove harmless - five thousand years from now.'
'That's for the facts to decide,' she said grimly, then left.
24
It was strange, Eugenia Insigna thought. She was over two light-years from the spot in space where she was born and yet she had only been on a spaceship twice and then for the shortest possible journeys - from Rotor to Earth and then back to Rotor again.
She still had no great urge to travel in space. It was Marlene who was the driving force behind this trip. It was she who, independently, had seen Pitt and persuaded him to succumb to her strange form of blackmail. And it was she who was truly excited, with this odd compulsion of hers to visit Erythro. Insigna could not understand that compulsion and viewed it as another part of her daughter's unique mental and emotional complexity. Still, whenever Insigna quailed at the thought of leaving safe, small, comfortable Rotor for the vast empty world of Erythro, so strange and menacing, and fully six hundred and fifty thousand kilometers away (nearly twice as far away as Rotor had been from Earth), it was Marlene's excitement that reinvigorated her.
The ship that would take them to Erythro was neither graceful nor