Ellik twisted back his head and the side of his mouth. "Look at him up there--_look!_" The spark burned brighter and danced in another direction. "He's gone! He left us!" Ellik said. "It's okay. He's still there. Just corrected the orbit a little, I guess." "No, no, no," Ellik said. "He started to make another try. But he got afraid to try to go into hyperspace alone." "He was just correcting for orbital decay." "You don't understand, Johnny. He's a coward. That makes him dangerous. He's getting desperate. That desperation will burst the dam of his own weakness and wash away our hope, _our lives_." His voice hushed. He stood staring starkly ahead, his palms outstretched at his sides. "Maybe he isn't _that_ cowardly," I said hopefully. * * * * * "Finished," Ellik announced. He meant he had finished editing the tape showing the operation on the alien and his recovery from his blue disease, from being an Indigo to better than an Azure. "The transmitter is finished too," I said. Ellik had suggested a way of switching the tape camera to a video converter for one of the audio communicators, and I had been able to do it easy. It took parts from both our communicators and translators too. Ellik fitted the coiled snake of tape into place. "This will be a great day for your people, Aedo. After our friend from heaven lands, we will be able to teach you a way to cure all of your sick, to make all the Indigos like you." "Like me? Make like me?" Aedo said in the pidgin terrestrial that Mike Ellik had taught him. "Yes. We'll show them how we cured you and how all can be cured." "You make show fellow like me? Make tell make that fellow like fellow like me?" "Everything's ready, Mike," I called. "That's right, Aedo," Mike said. "You'll show your people the way to equality." "Make all fellow like this fellow?" Aedo asked. "Shall I call in Lee?" I asked Mike. "Yes, that's right, Aedo. Just right." "No," Aedo said. The alien stomped the tape camera and the communicator to bits before I could get a hammerlock on him. Ellik just stared at the complete wreck of our only means of communication with the spaceship. "I be much man now. I much smart. Much smart than Azure hicks and Indigo slobs. I much smart all. I much man! Not to be all same now. _No._" The snarl hung on in Aedo's throat. Ellik lifted his head and sort of smiled. But not quite. "Well," he said slowly and sadly, "what could you expect in the way of gratitude from a dirty alien?" * * * * * The Azures did accept Aedo all right. They seem to think he must have come from some other tribe. They don't associate him with the Indigo that disappeared. No Indigo ever became an Azure before. Of course, Azures sometimes become Indigos, we found out.