Sweet Starfire

that skeleton back in the alien ship,” Cidra said later as she finished eating her vegetables. She had been tremendously relieved to find a prespac that contained something besides meat. She didn’t think she would ever grow to actually enjoy the taste of meat. Severance had no such qualms, naturally. He was into his second full prespac meal. Wolfing it down, as it were.
    “Don’t think about it. It’ll give you nightmares,” he advised.
    “I wonder if that creature was the pilot of the ship,” she persisted, ignoring his advice.
    “That sphere didn’t look big enough to house two monsters that size. Whatever it was must have been traveling alone.”
    “Except for the eggs.”
    Severance paused, chewing thoughtfully. “Yes, the eggs. That’s going to give several biologists a lot to think about. I wonder if the ship was a small colony vessel.”
    “Maybe we humans aren’t the only ones who have started settling other worlds.” Cidra had a sudden thought. “What if that ship was just one of many, Severance?”
    “If there were others, we have to assume that they didn’t fare much better than that one did. No one has recorded a sighting of anything like that blue monster. At least, I’m not aware of any such sightings.”
    “It’s a big planet.”
    “True. But an aggressive, intelligent species would have probably made its presence known by now. We’ve been here for several decades.”
    “They did appear aggressive, all right.” Cidra shuddered. “Didn’t do them much good, though. They didn’t survive.”
    “Thanks to you.”
    Cidra allowed herself to absorb the shock of his simple observation. All by herself she had destroyed the only known members of an intelligent, space-faring race. She was unnerved by the thought.
    Severance saw the look on her face and hastily changed the subject. “I wonder how old those eggs were. The skeleton in the case wasn’t exactly fresh. It could have been lying in the ship for hundreds of years. But the eggs were ready to hatch.”
    “They might have been capable of staying viable for years in the shell until the right conditions occurred for them to hatch,” Cidra pointed out. “Perhaps the pilot of the ship was wounded in the crash. He followed the mind call and left the eggs in what appeared to be a safe location. Apparently mat telepathic call works on any sort of intelligent mind. He set up his own protective device to insure that eventually something would wander into the safehold and become food for the eggs. Then he went back to die in the ship. The case in which we found the skeleton might have been some sort of medical facility.”
    “Which failed.”
    “As people keep observing, it’s hard to keep machinery working on Renaissance.” She smiled. “You seem to do a fairly good job of it, though.”
    He shrugged. “I told you, I’ve always been good with my hands.”
    “We make a good team, don’t we? My brains and your brawn.”
    He gave her a sardonic glance. “I may not be a near genius like your friend Mercer, but once in a while I manage to think my way through things. I can still take every piece of sardite you have in a game of Free Market.”
    At the mention of Mercer, Cidra flinched. She hadn’t thought about him or about Clementia for quite a while. The humor faded from her eyes as she grew pensive. “Yes, you’re still better at Free Market than I am.”
    Severance swore somewhat viciously and asked himself what in a renegade’s hell had made him mention her idol, Mercer. Cidra was right. He might be good with his hands, but he wasn’t always the fastest thinker in the universe. Severance slowly finished the last of his prespac, aware that Cidra had slipped off into her own thoughts.
    She was thinking of Clementia. He knew it, and the realization hit him in the gut: Clementia and a lofty relationship unsoiled by a Wolf’s passion and need. Severance asked himself bluntly what he had to offer compared to the wise and distant Mercer. The cabin of Severance Pay was a far cry from the formal gardens and glowing fountains of Clementia. Hardly the sort of place in which a gently bred woman would want to set up housekeeping with a man who occasionally drank too much ale and who would frequently reach for her with a hunger he couldn’t disguise as platonic love.
    “Are you going to give up your search, Cidra?”
    She blinked herself back to an awareness of him and smiled wanly. “I think I’ve had enough of alien