light of the communications cell for a time. She watched her dark reflection in the polished surfaces of its walls and listened to the intermittent whirring of a ventilator in the next office, which was all that broke the silence of the station now. She wondered whether she would have become suspicious of Frazer soon enough to do her any good, if she hadn’t known for the past few weeks that she was carrying a child of the Nachief of Frome. For the past three days, she had been wondering also whether saving her life, at least for a while, by informing the Nachief of the fact, would be worthwhile. It was easy to imagine what a child of his might grow up to be.
Unaware, detail by detail since their meeting, Frazer had filled out her mental picture of that. So she had known enough to survive the two feral creatures in the end . . .
As soon as she returned to the easy-going anonymity of the Hub Systems, this other one of their strain would die unborn. The terrible insistence on life on their own terms which Frazer and the Nachief had shown was warning enough against repetition of the nightmare.
Lane caught herself thinking, though, that there had been something basically pitiful about that inward-staring, alien blindness to human values, which forced all other life into subservience to itself because it could see only itself. She stirred uneasily.
The ventilator in the next office shut off with a sudden click.
“Of course, it will die!” she heard herself say aloud in the silence of the station. Perhaps a little too loudly . . .
After that, the silence remained undisturbed. A new contemplation grew in Lane as she sat there wondering about Frazer’s mother.
The Star Hyacinths
[Editor's note: Although Telzey herself does not appear in this story, the hero is the same Wellan Dasinger who figures so prominently in her various adventures.]
The two wrecked spaceships rested almost side by side near the tip of a narrow, deep arm of a great lake.
The only man on the planet sat on a rocky ledge three miles uphill from the two ships, gazing broodingly down at them. He was a big fellow in neatly patched shipboard clothing. His hands were clean, his face carefully shaved. He had two of the castaway’s traditional possessions with him: a massive hunting bow rested against the rocks, and a minor