"On Titan, we found what we thought was a dead or dying culture. No one's ever seen Helgae alive. Or maybe we have. They're a non-carbon chemistry life-form. The elemental blobs we figured for skeletal structure may actually be their version of organic matter. Our mekronal units could have been smashing the golden age of their civilization, for all we really know." The girl's face blanched. "No! It can't be!" "Why can't it?" Her opposition lashed Boone to new fierceness. "Man's never found a way to communicate with any other life-form--not even on our own home planet! We can't talk to ants or paramecium, let alone Martian torglors or Callistan crustachs. But we're egoists, so we've taken it for granted we're the only truly intelligent creatures. All over the system, we've moved in at will, taken what we wanted, because we had the power to do it. But maybe the Helgae are different. Maybe, on their plane, they can think as well as we, or better. Do you think they won't react when the Cartel rips apart their cities and hauls them off by millions for the sake of the mekronal that can be extracted from their bodies?" * * * * * Eileen drew back. Her eyes distended. "You're mad, Fred! The Helgae--they'd strike back if they were alive or had the power to think!" "Maybe they have. Maybe that's the origin of Titan fever, and the monsters that appear aboard our sphere-ships." Boone hammered on the shell that caged them. "Or would you like to deny this bubble, too? Whether it came down from above or grew up from below, it's here--and I, for one, can't break it!" Eileen's lips were quivering. Her face averted. Her shoulders shook. "Fred--oh, Fred...." Then she was crumpling. Barely in time, Boone caught her; held her. What was there in him that made him strike out so at her? Jealousy, as Krobis said? Frustration at their plight here? A projection of the rage he felt towards himself for having been fool enough to leave the security of the sphere-ship to come out here in the black night without decent reason? Or was it as some forgotten poet had said in a line of verse that he remembered--"For each man kills the thing he loves...." He cursed aloud. The night dragged on, with Boone cradling the girl in his arms. There were no more words between them. Then pale light came, filtered and dim within the grey translucence of the bubble. Eileen roused, suddenly wild-eyed and rigid. "Fred--" "Easy, girl. We're still inside the bubble." And then, to soothe her: "Don't worry. They wouldn't have taken the trouble to make us prisoners if they'd planned to kill us right away." She didn't answer. Wearily, Boone got up and started towards the shell's closest wall. But as he did so, the ground seemed to come alive beneath his feet. Crackling and crumbling it tilted so sharply that he was pitched from his feet.