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"He must be sick or he would have killed you. George is clever in a stupid sort of way." Kennon looked into the cubicle. The Lani glared back and growled. There was a beastlike note in his voice that made the short hairs on Kennon's neck prickle. "That fellow needs a lesson," he said. "You want to give it to him?" Douglas asked. "Not particularly." "Ha! man! you afraid!" the Lani taunted.
Copper said distastefully as she prodded the shapeless green coveralls with a bare toe. She eyed the helmet, gloves and boots with equal distaste. "I'd suffocate." "If you want to come with me, you'll wear it," Kennon said. "Otherwise you won't come near that pit. Try it and I'll chain you to the jeep." "You wouldn't!" "Just try me." "Oh all fight. I'll wear the thing but I won't be comfortable.
"You'll never be able to prove they're human!" Douglas said. "The ship's log will do that." "Not without a humanity test they can't pass that." "Sorry to disappoint you. Your grandfather used the wrong sort of sperm. Now if there had been a Betan in the crew " "You mean she's pregnant!" Kennon nodded. "There's been mutation on Beta," he said. "And it's apparently a similar one to hers.
Then how in Halstead's sacred name did you get here?" "I sleep next door," she said jerking a thumb in the direction of an open door in the side wall. "I've been there ever since you dismissed me last night," she explained. The explanation left Kennon cold. The old cliche about doing as the Santosians do flicked through his mind. Well, perhaps he would in time but not yet.
"Did you think that the Lani were our principal export?" Kennon nodded. "They're only a drop in the bucket. Agriculture Earth-style agriculture is our main source of income. The Lani are valuable principally to keep down the cost of overhead. Virtually all of them work right here on the island. We don't sell more than a hundred a year less than five per cent of our total.
"All right I'll try to get you down in one piece." "Have an ambulance ready," Kennon said. Kennon lowered the Egg through the overcast. Ground control picked him up smoothly and took him down as though it had been rehearsed. The Egg touched down in the radioactive area of the port. Decontamination jets hissed, sluicing the ship to remove surface contamination.
I'm getting tired of these dirty old cards." She stood up and sidled past the desk. Kennon resisted the impulse to slap as she went past, and congratulated himself on his self-control as she looked at him with a half-disappointed expression on her face. She had expected it, he thought gleefully. Score one for morality. He smiled. Whatever the other Lani might be, Copper was different.
He rolled over with a groan of protest and looked at his tormentor. A gasp of dismay left his lips, for standing beside the bed, a half smile on her pointed face, was Copper looking fresh and alert and as disturbing as ever. It wasn't right, Kennon thought bitterly, to be awakened from a sound sleep by a naked humanoid who looked too human for comfort. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Well," Kennon said, "let's get on with it." "I hope it won't interrupt our program," Jordan said. "Of course it will interrupt it," Kennon replied. "It can't help it. Get the idea in your head that you're facing something here that can cripple you maybe abort your whole operation. You have a choice interrupt now or abort later. And half measures won't work.
That was the crux of the matter, Kennon reflected bitterly. He was convinced she was human. She was not. And until her mind could be changed on that point she would help him but her heart wouldn't be in it. And the only thing that would convince her that she was human would be a child a child of his begetting. He could perhaps trick her with an artificial insemination of Lani sperm.
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