While his mastery of the mind ship and the mission to Mendoza first hurtled Taragus into the ranks of intergalactic herodom, turning him into some sort of role model for the Emotional planets and a source of curiosity and anxiety on the Rational worlds, it was the rescue mission to Dros that confirmed his greatness and established the initial shape of his crew. "The interspecies and interpersonal chemistry is right," Regulus reported. "I recommend that the present crew be retained as a foundation for any future evolution of personnel."

Ever since the Karnadans had been eliminated from the intergalactic scene, or so it was hoped and believed, the Confederation’s chief operational objectives had been to maintain environmental and socioeconomic stability on member worlds; to provide support services to member planets in the event of emergency; to maintain shipping lanes, outposts, and supply depots throughout the universe; to manage and monitor cosmological forces within approved technological and philosophical limits; to enrich each other through cultural, economic, and technical exchanges; to explore, discover, and study the forces of nature, and the infinite varieties of life with which the Universe was teeming; to monitor intelligent species development on the unproven worlds, without interfering in, or unduly influencing that development, and to supervise the integration of new worlds and species which succeeded in proving themselves by mastering their aggression into the Confederation infrastructure.

"Do you understand?" Regulus asked the crew.

"We get the point," Taragus said. "We don’t get involved in the affairs of unproven planets. We can cheer from the sidelines if we want to, as long as no one hears our voices."

"It’s not easy to watch a planet nuke itself," Regulus warned them. "Or to pollute itself to extinction. It’s not easy to see total destruction coming from a mile away and just have to stand to the side. But until a planet has proven itself, our involvement must scrupulously follow meticulous guidelines of non-interference, or, in cases to be approved only by me, low-level manifestations of acceptable influence. Do you understand?"

"Yes, yes, and yes," yawned Lavovin. "Just don’t expect me to let a planet with beautiful women self-destruct. Then Lavovin flies down in his flying saucer to make world peace."

"Humor," Taragus explained, as Regulus was getting ready to submit the obnoxious security officer to a compliance court-martial.

"This is serious business," warned Regulus. "Not grist for the mill of an amateur comedian."

"Serious," they all agreed, anything to get rid of him.

"Serious," Litmo said quietly, sitting down beside the captain.

"Karnada," he agreed. "I hope I never have to witness a tragedy of that dimension."

**********

As a first planetary-study training experience on their crew-forging mission, they were directed to the nearby planet of ImpekAH. It was already well-known and well-studied by cultural anthropologists, so this was simply to be a redundant investigation. CS Hara, who had read a great deal about the target planet, and, in fact, participated in a three-month class project on the surface two years ago, briefed them, saying only: "This is a most extraordinary planet. Although it has not yet reached the level of qualifying for Confederation status, it can honestly be stated that the intelligent life forms which inhabit it – class 4 humanoids – are, without a doubt, the most perfectionistic creatures we have ever encountered, and we are talking about our experiences throughout the entire universe."

"God forbid," said Lavovin, taking out a mirror and comb. "Does anyone have mints?"

Boone scowled, but this was, in theory, only "crew spirit." Oh for the good old days, when you could simply crush men like this, and intimidate and stifle them into silence.

"Hopefully," said Taragus, "we won’t be devastated by the comparison, and leave with a lowered opinion of ourselves."

Hara laughed, then realized that her laughter was exaggerated given what the captain had just said, far out of proportion to his wit on this occasion, and she quickly stopped herself; the laugh was too obvious, almost indecent, like wearing a see-through blouse.

"Can they bounce a quarter off their beds?" Lavovin asked.

"Maybe we’ll all learn something," Boone grumbled. While Dr. Sego muttered, " ‘My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips’ red. My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.’ …Rasputin."

Two saucers were mobilized for the expedition, one piloted by Eyes and one by Brim, the first containing Hara, Sego, Taragus, Boone, and Ariel, the second containing Lavovin, Regulus, CS Porter, and six security troopers.

"We’ll practice close-quarters ‘seeing without being seen’," said Ariel. "Just a little taste of life in the field. Three days. I’ll manage the activity, Zan Taragus, consider this to be my show."

"Glad to have a moment without responsibility," said Taragus. "Now you’re sure we’re technically up-to-speed for this?"

"You are very observant," said Ariel, pleased that the captain had noted the lack of sophisticated masking technologies being deployed for the expedition. "I am a Cerebosian," he added.

"Well then, lead on!" jested Taragus.

"Humor," Litmo explained to Ariel, wishing them well from the hangar deck of the great ship. "Now bring back everyone in one piece, Ariel! – In one living piece," he added as they departed.

**********

They landed at night after constructing a concealment pit from the air. Still at night, with Eyes left behind to manage spacecraft concealment, they followed GPS monitors and environmental readers to the pre-planned observation site, in a burrow on the side of a hill at the edge of a forest. As dawn came to this strange new world, they took off their night-vision goggles, and peered out into the unrevealing light of the day with telescopes and binoculars.

"Birds," Taragus said at last, observing some movement in the branches beyond them, and listening to the initiation of a chorus, another world’s different song, the familiar trying on something new, carving out its own niche in Creation. Behind them, large furry gray creatures leapt through the treetops, adding a bizarre hum to the musical morning – one spread some kind of membrane out from underneath his legs and seemed to glide for fifty yards into another tree. "Flying nurris," said Dazome.

"Do they really fly?" asked Boone.

"No, they just catch the wind, and use it to enhance their jumping."

"As smart as monkeys," said Dr. Sego, already beginning to fidget inside the burrow. "My foot is numb. May I take a step out to restore my circulation?"

Ariel checked his environmental reader, then said, "You have five minutes, Dr. Sego. An intelligent life form is approaching through the forest."

With concern, CS Hara helped her mentor out into the clear, and guided him as he strolled around. She sat him down on a rock conveniently placed there by nature in seeming anticipation of the great academic’s discomfort, and assiduously massaged his foot. "There. Feeling better?"

"My phantom limb syndrome in reverse is now remedied," he said, eyes twinkling. "I am no Jesus, that you stoop to wash my feet."

"Don’t be foolish," she told him affectionately. "For me you are better than any saint – you are an anthropologist!"

"Hurry!" Ariel warned them. "Remember, we are practicing not being observed!"

With difficulty, they managed to squeeze the rigid professor back into the observation pit just in the nick of time, then trained their eyes and vision enhancers on a path coming out of the forest.

Taragus’ eyes lit up. A large, splendidly erect and powerful creature emerged from the wilderness, naked, magnificent, alert. An unproven alien in its natural habitat!

"Similar to the Gigantopithecus, the enormous ape man of terran prehistory, except that he is not ape-like at all," mused Dr. Sego, "merely imposing and exotic as though he were not from this time period. A very compelling physical form," he added. "Note the size of the genitalia." CS Hara blushed as Dr. Sego said, "A quasi-man with a phallus that could match a giraffe’s, inch for inch."

"Lavovin is sure to be turning green with envy," Boone commented.

The huge naked man paused not more than one hundred yards from where they were hidden, picking some kind of fruit from a tree. "Buru nuts," explained Dazome. "They actually have very hard shells, but with their powerful jaws and sharp incisors the ImpekAHs simply crack them open. The buru have been compared to mini-coconuts. Maybe we can try some later."

They saw a couple of birds dive down at the man, who just brushed them away with his mighty hands, then walked about twenty yards away from the tree. "The ImpekAHs frequently climb up trees to steal bird eggs," she said. "Those are tupo birds; they must have a nest up there, in one of the branches. They’ve been known to swarm intruders, and to even peck their eyes out. No need to go after the eggs with so much buru around."

Taragus enjoyed the way that Hara was enjoying the power of her expertise; she was neither tyrannical nor presumptuous with her knowledge, she was spontaneous like a child playing in the park, and delighted to share everything, even if it meant that others would now share her power. If he had paid just a little more attention to her, perhaps he would also have noted how carefully she was attempting to impress him, without coming off as a snob. Love was everywhere in everything she did around him, in every nook and cranny of her conversation; it was in the sweet milk of the buru fruit, and in the acrobatic leaping of the nurri, in the bravery of the little tupo birds, and in the power of the ImekAH’s casual walk through the primal forest. Without being seen, Dazome’s eyes wandered plaintively over the captain’s face. His binoculars were pointed elsewhere, he was excited by this alien world, not by the world inside the woman who was right beside him, a world he had yet to discover and explore. For a moment, Dazome was his captive, bound to him in a trance that someone surely would have discovered if Lavovin had not broken the spell at that moment, coming to them as a voice over their headsets. He was half a mile away, watching the alien from another viewing post.

"So – what’s with these giants?" he asked. "I came here to see perfectionists, and all I’ve seen so far is a naked behemoth who should be in porno movies."

"Tomorrow, you’ll begin to understand," replied Dazome.

"Tomorrow comes to the rescue of today," said Dr. Sego, "it does something like a golden leaf to a tree that is without virtue, or is it a crow on a bare branch? Say, Ariel, do you Cerebosians ever need to urinate? Why doesn’t this pit have a latrine?"

**********

As night fell, true to her promise, Dazome led them out of the forest area towards their next observation post. They were now injecting energy serum to maintain their sharpness at the same time as they cut down on their need to sleep. The night march turned momentarily anxiety-producing when Ariel blurted out, "Big feline – huge feline – at northwest 75, two hundred yards – it’s coming our way." Boone had his invisible death ray rifle in hand. The blaster gun which he preferred would produce a light too visible and detectable by planetary inhabitants, and therefore violate the discretion code level of the training mission. However, the invisible ray lacked the decisive kill velocity of the blaster; sometimes prolonged contact was necessary to bring a target down. "Still headed our way," warned Ariel. But at about sixty yards, the great beast stopped in its tracks. "Now everything depends on how it reacts to our smell," he said. "We are exotic and different, it might be scared of us, even though it is we who should be scared of it."

There was a moment of relief, then a moment of renewed worry. The unseen beast, which stayed put for a while as they passed by it, emerged from its hiding place shortly thereafter and followed them for another four hundred yards, still never showing itself, until it finally veered off of their trail and vanished into the night.

"That was a marsupial jumping tiger," Dazome informed them gravely. It could cover forty yards in a single bound, and was the size of a horse. Its teeth were as sharp as daggers.

"Haven’t they advanced to the civilizational stage of putting these things in cages?" Lavovin demanded over their headsets. He and his group was moving forward on a parallel track, one mile to the east. "In my book, perfectionists or not, no culture is worthy of respect that has not yet invented zoos."

*********

In the morning time, they once more found themselves in well-constructed pits of concealment, this time on the edge of a peculiar site that seemed to consist of some sort of ruins: there were half walls and stairways, with tree roots seemingly engaged in battle against shattered structures of stone whose meaning had been eroded. Like leaves fallen from trees and driven by the rain into unrecognizable states of decay in the arms of the mud, like a grand plan suffering from Alzheimer’s, something magnificent remained that had forgotten what it was. Here, there had been an effort that had lost its way; something cherished that love had left, and beaten with abandonment into mere form. The heart had ceased renewing, life had disintegrated into history.

"Wow," Taragus said. "This is the first time I’ve seen something like this. Alien world regression. What happened?"

"See if you can guess," Dazome told them.

"Train your minds to analyze the evidence," Ariel explained. "This is all about training."

Although daylight was better for observing the ruins, discretion code and the available technology level forced them to wait till night to move into the site, and to survey it with their night-vision goggles.

"Stones – steps – buildings – some kind of town or urban cluster," said Boone.

Taragus walked down a crumbling spiral of steps which, far from the original intention of the builders, transformed him into some kind of mountaineer, then through a gaping black doorway like a mouth without teeth, into a damp enormous basement that was now a cave infested with flying rodents. Thousands of them dangled from the ceiling, and clung to a huge conglomeration of rusted machinery, a maze of pipes and broken valves leading into and out of a row of gigantic, degraded containers. Not far beyond, stood rows of dilapidated machines and traces of benches.

"Some kind of factory," Taragus said.

"That’s right," agreed Boone. "This piece of junk right here used to be a steam engine. Must have been a lot of steam-powered mechanical processes going on in here. What, textile production or some other kind of manufacture?"

Helping each other, Taragus and Boone climbed out of the cavern, back into the lesser darkness of the night above ground. "Perhaps you would care to join Professor Sego?" Ariel asked.

Dutifully, Taragus and Boone struggled through a tangle of thick undergrowth, to a massive wall replete with elaborate carved faces and the crumbled vestige of a tower. "Giant cat faces on beasts with wings and monkey bodies, holding books in their hands."

Lavovin , whose party had just come up, arrived in time to say, "Woah, that’s evolutionary hell – if this city belonged to them, thank god it’s over with!"

"Maybe it’s just creations of the ImpekAHs’ imagination," Taragus suggested.

"That’s right," Dazome assured them, "it’s merely an architectural rendition of their myths. Fairy tales in stone."

"Psychoanalysis through masonry," mused Lavovin. "Sick and twisted bastards!" he added.

"We have all come from nightmares," Dazome reminded him.

"The winged bulls of Assyria!" exclaimed Dr. Sego. "The angels and the demons of the gothic church, the griffins and gargoyles of Central Park West! What of the chimera and the hydra, or the dragon who guarded the golden fleece? What of the harpies who ruined the feast? What of the lion who walks on two legs, ruler of the secret society?"

"Yeah, how could I have forgotten?" agreed Lavovin. "Say, have you been taking your meds?"

"Different building techniques," Taragus said, remaining firmly committed to the puzzle. "The factory and the flying monkey wall. Stones are cut differently and put together differently. The factory is more advanced, in terms of the technology and methods utilized to build it. We’re dealing with two different time periods here."

Puzzled, Boone, who had just switched his environmental reader on to radiocarbon dating, said, "Flying monkey wall is later."

Surprised, Taragus regarded him, then double-checked the dater. "The more advanced structure was built earlier?"

Dazome, who already knew all the answers, was having a wonderful time watching them figure it out on their own.

Taragus shook his head, then asked Boone, "Have you seen any signs of violence? War?"

"Neither structure has been plundered or pillaged, burned down or scarred by artillery. No signs of mass graves, either, or of other plague-category burial behaviors. They just seem to have been abandoned, and left to the ravages of time."

"Maybe trade patterns broke down," suggested Lavovin. "Wars or calamities in other regions may have disrupted a complex interdependent system, and places like this dried up like grapes on a dying vine."

They agreed that that could be possible.

"Let’s go one mile north," Dazome urged them.

By now burning with curiosity, they followed her. "Careful!" There was a steep hill, muddy and difficult to descend. "I’ll wait up here," Dr. Sego told them. One of Lavovin’s security troopers remained behind to watch him.

"So much for these boots!" cursed Lavovin, at the bottom. "All of the good this training mission is doing for my mind is being undone by the damage it is doing to my feet. I cannot walk with knowledge alone. I need boots!"

"For a soldier, you sure do have a mouth," Boone grumbled.

Lavovin rolled his eyes, but there was enough ambiguity in the rules to stop pushing the envelope once a captain got involved.

"We’re here," Dazome informed them, at last, as they parted some tree branches and practically walked into a giant stone statue, looming before them underneath a cape of leaves, with huge vines that seemed like giant protruding veins of green blood.

The stone itself was huge and powerful, radiating spell-binding force all by itself, even before art came to raise it higher. The parts of the face that remained showed exquisite traces of detail, and a shocking mastery of delicacy; there was one half of a smile and a cheek that without any other feature radiated tranquility and depth, the vast soul of someone who they would never meet. The face was, except for these stubborn remnants of its character, shattered into oblivion, hammered into ruins as though the person who it represented must be erased forever from the universe; as though he must be plucked from his mother’s womb before he was even born and never allowed to see the world or to be seen by it. His very existence must be pillaged from the memory of all living things.

Taragus looked at the awful white crater in the middle of the face, the trace of an ear on the side with scars of chisel marks all around it, the angry cracks where the stone remained in spite of the intention to destroy it, where the stubbornness of stone met the fury of transient beings, and he remarked, "His face looks like a city that’s been bombed."

"Ozymandias!" shrilled Dr. Sego, who had just convinced the security trooper to help him down the hill. Being left behind at such an advanced age can be very depressing. "Behold ye mighty and despair! Or was it Napoleon’s target practice? Good artillery drill or racism? Or is it merely Buddha meets the Taliban?"

Dazome led them through what seemed like a mile of dense forest, but what was actually only a few yards, to another statue, this one fallen and lying on its side, the face also smashed, and an arm broken off, lying in the undergrowth like a huge python made of stone, a python with a sword in its hand. Suddenly emerging from the bushes beyond it, but only because they looked that way to find it standing there in inertness, was another statue, poised as though to behold the death of its comrade. This statue’s beautiful and sorrowful face looked down upon the dead one, but her hand had been chopped off; they found it in some bushes, as though cast aside, like a small fish thrown back into the sea, they observed the fingers and a ring on one of the fingers that was like a flower, chiseled with an eye that seemed beyond the need for tools. If one could embroider with stone, work it with the intimacy of a needle rather than the roughness of a chisel and a hammer, this is what the result would have been. Could this same artist have chiseled form into glass without breaking it?

"It’s an artistic shame," Lavovin admitted. "Some great artist spends years making a masterpiece, and then some whacked vandals come along and annihilate it in a minute. Oh yes, I like beautiful things!" Lavovin explained. "I can imagine a statue like this standing amidst flowing fountains in my love den. Barbarians always seem to perceive artistry as an affront to virility," he concluded, throwing a meaningful glance Boone’s way.

"Well – violence at last," said Taragus. "Doesn’t this happen a lot when one civilization is conquered by another, especially when different religions are involved?"

"The Hindu temples must be burned!" exclaimed Professor Sego. "Destroy the elephant god! Smash the god-beasts of Egypt, for there is but one true God, and he is neither jackal nor hippopotamus! Raze the temples of Tenochtitlan, roll the idols down the steps, and raise the cross! Sweep aside the corruption of the past so that the future may be pure!"

Lavovin turned to Hara and said, "Can’t you do anything about him?"

"On the other hand," Taragus noted, "the statues don’t seem to necessarily be religious in nature, though I’m not an expert in religious art."

"That’s right," Dazome agreed enthusiastically, "they’re not. Some of them employ mythological themes in the more distant manner of post-mythological cultures; while some are just representations of physical beauty and even of philosophical states represented by bodily poses and facial expressions."

"Maybe it was some kind of puritanical reaction?" Lavovin inquired.

Dazome pointed, not without a bit of self-consciousness, to the still intact penis of a nearby statue.

"On the other hand…" said Lavovin.

"Maybe social revolution?" theorized Taragus. "If artwork of this type was seen to be merely the luxury of a leisure class?"

"Not a bad guess," admitted Dazome, exerting herself to pick up the discarded hand of the fallen statue, the one with the flower-like ring. "Take a look, Zan," she said.

Taragus took the piece of sculpture from her hand, and studied it. After a while, he looked back at her, and shrugged. Her heart was pounding to be so close to him, she was struggling not to lose her focus and become like Dr. Sego. "I don’t know," he said. "I’m not trained in this sort of thing."

"The proper ratio of the index finger to the thumb of the ImpekAH type is anywhere from 2 to 3, to 2.2 to 3," she explained.

Taragus regarded her.

"Here," she said, taking out a laser measure and quickly comparing the stone thumb and index finger with tiny beams of light. "The ratio is 2.9 to 3. The thumb is nearly as large as the index finger. And compare the thickness of the digits." She beamed a laser loop about the two digits, then drew it tight for the readings. "The finger is too thick compared to the thumb, it’s off by 20%."

Taragus stood by her, looking into her eyes, dumbfounded.

"In the eyes of its maker, this beautiful statue was flawed. The original, striking impression that it created was torpedoed, in his eyes, by the slight errors in the proportion of the fingers which ruined its credibility, turning it from a masterpiece into a failure, from a goddess into a freak. He was thrown into despair by what he saw as his lack of talent, by his ineptitude, by his hand’s betrayal of the vision of his mind. He could not tolerate this falling from his ideal. He had to destroy it."

"Galatea, I condemn you to hang from the neck until dead!" shouted Dr. Sego.

"But," Lavovin protested, "this sculptor. He was a Michelangelo. A Praxiteles. "

"A Phidias and Rodin as well," lamented Professor Sego.

"He was a perfectionist," said Dazome.

"He gave birth to beautiful art, then sinned against art!" Lavovin exclaimed. "He rose like an angel on the wings of a hammer and a chisel, then stabbed the chisel into her heart, like a knife!"

Dr. Sego, trembling with emotion, said, "Siva must destroy, must burn the tower of mistakes to the ground so that the world is empty and ready to be born again. Wipe the slate clean! The slate of genius that has a blemish! There must be not one pimple on the face of the houri!"

"So," gasped Taragus, holding the severed stone hand with tenderness in his own imperfect living hands, "there was no war in this place. The artists destroyed their own works, because they did not think they were good enough. Because they could never fully manifest what they imagined, never make reality equal to their dream."

Sadly, Dazome nodded.

"And this same impulse extended to their entire history, to their architecture, their culture, their literature, their technology, their social systems!" continued Dr. Sego.

"The factory and the flying monkey wall," gasped Boone.

"The gargoyles were too dark, they had to retreat from them. The ornamentation was too complex, they regretted filling in the simplicity with detail, they wanted to go back to the empty canvas of featureless stone, to the aesthetics of huge, graceful shapes, no longer cherishing the labyrinths of minds that can’t rest scribbled into walls, nor the endless streams of thoughts gathering like hordes of fleas into the flesh of architecture. Likewise, the factory had to be stopped. Steam power was too fast, they didn’t like the new pace of society, their soul was falling behind trying to keep up with it, they didn’t like the social systems that seemed to be coming from the technology, like black clouds of smoke rising up from burning coal. They were losing control, they fled back to the green hills!"

"The time differences?" asked Boone.

"They repeatedly advanced, then stalled out, beating their history back to the beginning so that they could restart it on alternative tracks, and overcome the flaws that choked the joy of progress," explained Dr. Sego. "‘This time we’ll get it right.’ They underwent numerous complete dismantlements and vollimpoozes, or ‘starts from scratch.’ They got as far as steam power, then took their world apart. Next time, they didn’t advance quite as far before they decided they must start again. They tried feudalism, capitalism and socialism, and found fault with all of them . In one historic cycle, they actually succeeded in inventing electric cars before they decided that the horse and buggy, or actually, the glik and troya, were just too charming to replace: all because of some poem about riding through the snow, and somebody’s grandfather. It wasn’t long after that that a minor war convinced them that their society intrinsically bred violence, and that it should be dismantled lock, stock and barrel so that they could replant utopia in good soil. The weeds of corrupt institutions must be pulled up by the roots. ‘No baggage on the way to heaven,’ they said."

"And now," gasped Boone, "they’re back to square one. To prehistory! Naked in the forest!"

"Once more with the opportunity to be pure! Once more with the opportunity to get it right! Once more with the opportunity to achieve perfection!"

"Excuse me," queried Lavovin, who would be the one to think of such a thing. "But if this same impulse of perfectionism applied to sex, wouldn’t they be extinct by now?"

"One invention with which they seem to have made peace through the ages of their self-inflicted rising and falling is the blindfold," explained Dr. Sego. "Wonderful device for dragging reality a little closer to the imagination! Close enough to make babies!"

For a moment all of them stood there, stunned into utter silence. Dazome regarded them with satisfaction, then felt a sudden surge of regret pour into her heart, for her joy in being important to them and showing them that she knew her stuff, had only served to lead them to this poignant, speechless moment, standing above the tragic neurosis of a world, a world lost in the abyss of its own impossible demands. "I’m sorry," she said, at last, tears in her eyes.

"No need," Taragus said. "We want to know the universe, and here is a part of it."

After a time, Boone said, "A shame we cannot help them, for they have helped us more than they know."

"That is why we explore the universe," Ariel said, with reverence, adding, "Greatness crawls. Mediocrity flaps its great angelic wings forever, going nowhere."

**********

It was now the third and final day of the training mission. The climax had already been attained, the crucial insight gained. Now it was only a matter of staying under cover until the night, and then practicing an open field rendezvous with the saucers. There was a bit of melancholy in the concealment pit, sorrow for a world so talented that was compelled to thwart itself, mixed with relief that they were not the same, that their imperfect, vibrant Confederation had made peace with the idea that it would never be everything it wished to be, but might, at least succeed in being a part of what it could be. It was a long slow day, dominated by irritating intrusions of flies, small biting insects in the ground, and a long lazy sun blowing its hot breath down on unsheltered things. The ruthless heat made them grateful for the shade of their little pit.

When at last night reclaimed the world, giving them stars to see by, they picked themselves up out of the pit, closed it off with their handheld trace-obliterators, then strung out in a column, moving slowly, single-file, through the dense brush towards an inconspicuous dip between two hills, five miles to the northeast. They were not more than one mile from the rendezvous point, after several hours of difficult traveling, especially in light of the straggling professor who Dazome was leading by the hand, while a security trooper partly supported him, when Ariel sent a warning buzzer up and down the line, signaling danger over everybody’s environmental readers (ENVRs). They tapped in to the danger source to discover that a jumping tiger was in the vicinity, walking parallel to their column at a distance of two hundred yards, while two ImpekAH humanoids appeared to be camped out, with a fire burning, directly in their path.

The column stopped, and drew closer together, as Taragus made his way with Boone up to Ariel’s position. "We’ll have to make a detour," Taragus told him.

"Absolutely," said Ariel. Regulus, who had joined the ground operation not long ago, after staying behind with Brim, now struggled up to be beside them.

Taragus’ finger pointed out the obvious detour path on the ENVR map. Even though the captain had, in theory, only come along for the ride while this was Ariel’s mission, Ariel noted without disapproval how the captain naturally took charge when risk appeared. Regulus noted it too. This was the quality of a Zan.

The party now stayed close together, unsure of the intentions of the fierce beast that was prowling in the vicinity. Was it stalking them, or the two ImpekAHns in their path? With a landscape reading, tied in to ImpekAH sensory capabilities calculations, they decided that they could reach the saucers undetected by the humanoids by skirting around the campfire just beneath a gentle forested ridge. "We won’t be seen," Taragus said, "and if we want to, we can stop for a moment to take a look at them."

"Not a good idea with a tiger on the loose," said Lavovin. "Let’s just get back to the saucers, and call it a night."

They were almost back to the saucers, when they noticed, on their ENVRs, that the tiger was making a sudden move towards the campfire. "Fire doesn’t always deter them," gasped Hara. "They are very bold creatures, once they commit to the hunt. This isn’t looking good."

"Humanoids about to be eaten," said Lavovin, intrigued in spite of himself. "Soon the idiots are going to wish they hadn’t reverse-developed and left behind the age of guns. What do they use now, sticks?"

"They are still attempting to create the perfect club," moaned Hara.

"Feeding time," cried Lavovin, scrambling eagerly to the top of the ridge, almost hating himself for his morbidity.

"Now don’t let them see you," warned Regulus, "we are practicing stealth viewing here."

Taragus, Boone and Hara also could not resist climbing to the top of the ridge, where they sprawled out on their bellies, with viewing equipment in their hands, not more than a hundred yards from the unsuspecting pillar of flame dancing upwards from the aromatic logs, where the two humanoids sat, muttering strange noises to one and other. There was something terrible and yet irresistible about what was about to happen. Was it some dark magnet lurking in their souls, some ancestor asking to be remembered? Less impetuously, Ariel and Regulus crept up to the top of the hill, to watch their Emotionals as much as the carnage that was certain to unfold.

"Remember," Regulus warned them all again. "Don’t let the ImpekAHns see you."

"Why not?" challenged Lavovin. "They’re going to be torn to shreds within a matter of minutes. They won’t live to tell anybody about aliens and flying saucers. I think we can count on the tiger’s stomach to keep the secret."

"Do not show yourself," Regulus insisted. "This is a natural event. It is a part of your training. A regrettable but predictable episode of the real world. We are non-interferists. Is that clear?"

Lavovin replied, "Clear as it gets, don’t worry. I don’t interfere with tigers, buddy."

Taragus waited silently with horror, following the approach of the tiger on his ENVR, it was creeping up slowly on the ImpekAHs like a phantom, a phantom that whispered over forest leaves and lulled the twigs to sleep, a phantom whose fur was the night, a bodyless phantom that would materialize in an instant with its jaws on their necks, and its shovel-like claws gouging out the delicate life-giving earth of their bellies. Beside Taragus, Dazome was trembling, a look of desperation and guilt on her face. Without her containment cap, she would surely have swept them all away like a tidal wave with the need to do something. But the cap was firmly on and she was nothing more than a helpless spectator like the rest of them. "No," Dazome whispered. "This is terrible. Regulus. Limited influence is allowed. We must be able to do something. Make a noise, do something, make it seem natural. There’s only two of them, this will never make it into their history books, and if it does, they’ll only end up throwing those books into a bonfire anyway, and forgetting about it in the next ‘start from scratch.’ Regulus – Ariel! I’m an anthropologist, not an ancient Roman. I don’t want to see this!"

"Close your eyes, Hara, or go back down the hill," said Regulus. "The saucer is only a short distance from here. No one is forcing you to watch."

"If it’s going to happen, I have to see it!" she protested. "There is no worse form of participation than looking away!"

Suddenly, the imperceptibly moving dot on the ENVR was flowing like a torrent of water that has broken through a dam towards the campfire, they heard a crash of branches as the forest opened like the belly of a pregnant woman and gave birth to its most terrible secret, to the monster which it loved, the roaring soul of the night; a gigantic shape charged through the green wreckage into the flickering outskirts of the campfire, the ImpekAHs leapt up, weaponless because they were seeking something better. Their strange and piercing screams seemed to be words, but velocity was now the only language that counted, one ran into the midst of the fire to avoid the beast, while the other seized a broken branch and sought to light it in the fire; simultaneously, the tiger howled, leaping over the flames, singed, while the first ImpekAH staggered out of the fire, lit up like a human torch, dancing strangely in the night, the dance of a body that no longer knows what is happening to it; the dance of a body whose mind is already flying away.

"No!" Taragus said, seizing Dazome’s beautiful small hand as it reached up towards the off switch of her containment cap, trying to unblock the overwhelming emotions of her tortured heart, and to roll over the inactive party with her telepathic cry for them to help. But if she unblocked her mind without Regulus’ permission, she would be broken: court-martialed and imprisoned! Furiously, disappointed nearly to the point of hatred, she looked up into the eyes of the man who she thought she loved. Could he be so cold-hearted, so in control of his emotions, to do nothing while this monstrosity took place unchallenged before their very eyes? But Taragus was already running forward with a blaster pistol in his hand, as Regulus shouted for him to stop; behind Taragus, and to protect him, Boone was now also rushing forward, with the death ray rifle slung over one shoulder and the more familiar blaster gun in his hand.

"Oh my God, court-martials galore!" gasped Lavovin, as Regulus continued to shout, "Discretion! Stop! The mission!"

The second ImpekAhn, the one with the stick that had now become a flaming firebrand, was knocked down by the tentative poke of a claw-studded paw that seemed to be fishing for him in a river. He was down and about to be clubbed to death by another blow of the paw, when a sudden sharp and jagged line of light shot out of the darkness into the side of his tormentor. The great beast howled, it was a living tree hit by lightning, it tore into the entrails of the night with the claws of its inhuman voice, the whole world dripped with the blood of fear. Wounded, the giant tiger staggered, whirled about, and with its burning, jewel-like eyes faced Taragus, who was standing with both feet spread apart, in the classic shooting position. Taragus could not believe the beast was still standing. Another bolt ripped into it from an angle, a blast from Boone’s weapon, the tiger was pushed to the ground, they saw smoke rising up from its fur like the aftermath of a barbarian raid, but the tiger just shook its head and stood up once more. Crouching low, it was hit by another bolt, it screamed, and backed off; then hit again, it lunged at the air, the nearest victim it could find, it savagely smashed the lingering bolt with its paw which caught on fire. It stood again, and then it fell, they shot it again with four more bolts where it lay.

Stunned, Taragus returned to the world, he heard Regulus’ voice once more yelling "Stop!" from the ridge. He looked up to see CS Hara rolling the flaming humanoid around on the ground, trying to put out his fire. Meanwhile, the other humanoid, covered with blood, was slowly climbing to his feet. Bewildered, the creature looked down at his wound, he looked at Taragus and Boone with very little comprehension, but with intense emotion. Had they helped him or hurt him? Who were they? Vague memories of a lightning storm flitted around the edges of his mind. Who had killed the tiger?

Suddenly waking up to the pathetic groans of his friend, he rushed forward, Dazome leapt out of the way, he almost hit her thinking she was attacking his comrade, Taragus’ blaster was now trained on him.

"No!" Dazome said. "No Zan! Let him be. I’m safe, I’m out of the way now."

"He’s going to die a horrible, painful death," said Boone, looking at the burned humanoid, writhing and moaning on the ground.

"I inserted a skin regenerator and an antibiotic dispenser into his bloodstream," she told them. Only now did they notice the emergency medical kit slung over her shoulder.

"Will it work with him? He’s not an earthling. His cells may not respond."

"It’s the generic regenerator," she said, "with the species adjustment diagnostician. I think it will work."

"And the other one?"

"ENVR shows superficial wounds. A lot of blood, but he’ll be fine if he binds it within a few hours and applies some exter root. They’re into that," she assured them.

Regulus was still shouting, "Stop it!" as they returned to the ridge. "Oh, are you Emotionals in trouble now!!!! You have violated protocol! You have contaminated this world! Without clearance, you have let yourselves be seen, and affected an outcome! You have introduced an influence, and influences have not been approved for this planet!"

"The interference is miniscule," Dazome protested. "It will be absorbed, it will be lost. It is developmentally irrelevant. All we did is try to save two poor intelligent creatures from being torn to shreds in front of our very eyes."

"You are all very suspect, now!" Regulus warned them. "You are sure to be demoted, if not court-martialed! - Did you try to turn off your containment cap?" he demanded, turning towards Hara who seemed the most vulnerable of the miscreants. "Did you?"

"She didn’t turn it off," Taragus said. "We acted on our own. Emotionals are not accustomed to letting humanoids die. Maybe one day these beings will be our brothers. But how can they ever be our brothers if we just watch them die? What will we say to them if one day they reach the stars to stand beside us? ‘We watched your fathers be torn to shreds by tigers’?"

"Zan Taragus, I do not think you have absorbed your lessons very well," Regulus told him. "The mistake we made with Karnada must never be made again. Have you forgotten Dros that quickly? Dros came from the hand of Karnada. We must obey the rules of discretion, we must not interfere, no matter how it breaks our hearts!"

"It’s only a minor infraction!" Dazome protested one more time. "There will be no culture damage! No historical tainting!"

Somehow, the turbulent party made it back into the saucers, and from there to the great mind ship where Litmo was waiting to greet them. "How did the expedition go?" he asked, cheerfully.

Dr. Sego, stepping up to him, said only: "Prometheus stole the fire of the Gods from Olympus. Brunhilde sings to Wotan, ‘You taught me to love.’ "

Litmo replied, "Oh oh."

"Grave crimes have been committed," muttered Regulus, heading angrily towards his chambers and the intergalactic communicator.

But Taragus soothed the fears of his dear Cerebosian friend. "Litmo," he said, "we acted like the Emotionals we are. I think I better stay up here on the spaceship from now on. I don’t think I’m cut out for cultural studies. But as far as what we did goes, we didn’t mess anything up, we just busted the rules on a training mission. We’ll get poor performance reports and we’ll move on. I’ve saved two planets. Surely, saving two humanoids can’t erase that."

"Surely not. Anything else?" Litmo asked his peculiar, charming friend, reassured that nothing more than a slap on the wrist would transpire from this disturbing episode.

"We learned that we’re imperfect," said Taragus. "And to be glad of it." And gently, he took both of Litmo’s hands, and slowly moved his face towards the Cerebosian’s until their foreheads were touching, and slow smiles came to both of their faces.

From a distance, CS Hara watched them with amazement and hope.

Still, the captain still was not in love with her, but there was time; maybe next adventure!

The Adventures Of Zan Taragus

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