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further confrontations."
    Janet nodded. "Good idea."
    Quickly, without raising her voice, she herded the students together and, with Hing bringing up the rear, led them off down the docking tube.
    They'd barely gotten out of earshot before Serge saw Heather returning.
    Face scrubbed, hair combed, she wore a freshly cleaned, dry coverall--and a black scowl. Her pale green eyes were as hard as jade marbles, and her mouth was a grim slash amid the freckles. "Where's that damned Simiu?"
    she demanded, glancing around.
    "Khuharkk' and Hing have already boarded the shuttle," Serge replied.
    "Calm yourself, Heather .. . relax."
    "The hell I will," she snapped. "The more I think about what happened, the madder I get. That damned. .." she sputtered, "monkey was going to kill me!
    If it hadn't been for Hing--"
    "Stop it," Serge broke in, his tone still quiet, but something in it made Heather obey. His blue eyes held hers. "Heather, if Rob Gable or any of the other instructors heard you speak about a fellow student in such a racist, demeaning manner, you would quickly discover yourself on the next ship back to Esarth," he said flatly.
    "You are at StarBridge, now, and you are expected to uphold the mission of the school--which is about establishing positive relationships between different species. You do not belong here if you cannot learn that." Seeing her pale, he spoke more gently. "I know Khuharkk' frightened you, and I am sorry for that. But you have to realize that you insulted him every bit as fully as if you had called him names before all the other students.
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    Appearance is terribly important to his people--you made him feel like a fool."
    She took a deep, shaky breath, then her gaze wavered and dropped. "He had no right to growl and roar at me like that," she mumbled.
    "He was speaking in his own language. The Simiu tongue sounds like that to those of us who haven't learned to speak it," Serge pointed out. "Heather, I feel certain that Rob Gable and the Simiu counselor will discuss Khuharkk's behavior with him. But that is not your concern, understand?" He put a hand on her shoulder, gently. "I want you to promise me that you will not cause any further incidents--as much for your own welfare as for the Simiu's.
    Promise?"
    She didn't look up. "I promise that I'll stay away from Khuharkk'," she finally said in a grudging tone. "I won't speak to him or go into the same room with him. Okay?"
    Serge hesitated. "Eventually you are bound to find yourself in a situation where you must be polite to him," he pointed out. "StarBridge is a small asteroid."
    The girl sighed, then she looked up, her green eyes direct. "I promise that if I ever have to speak to him again, I'll be completely polite," she said. "Okay?"
    Serge nodded, relieved, and picked up Heather's small totebag. "That's fine.
    Now let's board that shuttle. We are a bit short of seats in the passenger compartment, so would you mind sitting up front with me while I pilot?"
    She gave him a quick, incredulous glance, then began to smile. "Really?
    You mean it?"
    "Mais oui," he said, giving her his most charming smile. "You are not subject to space sickness, are you?"
    "Hell, no!"
    Ssoriszs, the CLS Liaison for the Academy at StarBridge, lay coiled in the darkness of his room, far below the airless surface of StarBridge's asteroid, motionless and nearly silent. Only his breath came and went with the faintest of hisses. Lidless eyes fastened on the meditation disk before him, he willed the manipulatory tendrils haloing his head to stillness, then let his mind float free of all consciousness of his body.
    The lack of light helped. Before him, the meditation disk turned lazily, barely seen holographic images swirling and flickering in its depths. The artists who created meditation disks swore that they did not place actual images of persons, places, or things into
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    the depths of the disks. They maintained that the meditation disk only served to conjure what lay within the