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was growing up, they kept telling us, We’re all alone, We’re all alone, We’re all alone. I didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. Made the billions, now I’ll spend the billions, get everybody straight in the head about the universe. You found the signals. I’ll answer them. Numbers back for numbers. And then pictures. I know how to do it. One and zero, one and zero, one and zero, black and white, black and white, keep the bits going and they make a picture. You just fill in the boxes on your chart. This is what we look like. This is water molecule. This is our solar system. This is—” Krug halted, pantng, hoarse, taking note for the first time of the shock and fear on the astronomer’s face. In a more peaceful tone he said to Vargas, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t shout. Sometimes I run off at the mouth.”
    “It’s all right. You have the fire of enthusiasm. Better to get carried away sometimes than never to come alive at all.”
    Krug said, “You know what started it? This planetary nebula you threw at me. Upset me, I tell you why. I had a dream I’d go to the place the signals were coming from. Me, Krug, in my ship, under deepsleep, sailing a hundred, even two hundred light-years, ambassador from Earth, a trip nobody ever took before. Now you tell me what a hell-world the signals come from. Fluorescent sky. O-type sun. A blue- light furnace. My trip’s off, eh? Got me worked up, the surprise of it, but don’t worry. I adapt. I absorb good stiff jolts. Knocks me to a higher energy state, is all.” Impulsively he gathered Vargas to him in a fierce bear-hug. “Thank you for your signals. Thank you for your planetary nebula. Thank you a million, you hear, Vargas?” Krug stepped back. “Now we go downstairs. You need money for the laboratory? Talk to Spaulding. He knows it’s carte blanche for you, any time, any size money.”
    Vargas left, talking to Spaulding. Alone in his office, Krug found himself ablaze with surplus vitality, his mind flooded with a vision of NGC 7293. Indeed, he resonated at a higher energy state; his skin itself was a fiery jacket for him.
    “Going out,” he grunted.
    He set the transmat coordinates for his Uganda retreat and stepped through. A moment later he was seven thousand miles to the east, standing on his onyx veranda, looking down at the reedy lake beside his lodge. To the left, a few hundred meters out, a quartet of hippos floated, nothing showing but pink nostrils and huge gray backs. To the right he saw his mistress Quenelle, lolling bare in the shallows. Krug stripped. Rhino-heavy, impala-eager, he pounded down the sloping shore to join her in the water.
     
     

 
     
    6
     
     
    It took Watchman only a couple of minutes to run to the accident site, but by then the lift-beetles had moved the fallen block and the bodies of the victims were exposed. A crowd had gathered, all betas; the gammas lacked authority and motivation for interrupting their work programs, even for something like this. Seeing an alpha approach, the betas faded back, hovering on the edge of the scene in uneasy conflict. They did not know whether to return to work or to remain and offer assistance to the alpha, and, thus caught unprogrammed, they stood by wearing the dismal expressions of android bewilderment.
    Watchman quickly surveyed the situation. Three androids—two betas and a gamma—had been crushed by the glass block. The betas were beyond easy recognition; it was going to be a chore just to peel their bodies out of the permafrost. The gamma beside them had almost avoided being killed, but his luck had not quite been good enough; he was intact only below the waist. His had been the legs Watchman had seen sticking out from under the block. Two other androids had been struck by the falling scooprod. One of them, a gamma, had taken a fatal blow on the skull and was lying in a sprawl a dozen meters away. The other, a beta, had apparently received a glancing but devastating swipe in the back from a