‘What about you?’

‘I’ve catnapped.’ Smith turned ostentatiously to the instruments and made some minor adjustments. He said self-consciously, ‘Do you know what happened back there on those planets?’

Chouns said slowly, ‘Do you?’

‘I think so.’

‘Oh? May I hear?’

Smith said, ‘It was the same plant on both planets. You’ll grant that?’

‘I most certainly do.’

‘It was transplanted from one planet to the other, somehow. It grows on both planets perfectly well; but occasionally – to maintain vigor, I imagine – there must be crossfertilization, the two strains mingling. That sort of thing happens on Earth often enough.’

‘Crossfertilization for vigor? Yes.’

‘But we were the agents that arranged for the mingling. We landed on one planet and were coated with pollen. Remember the blooms closing? That must have been just after they released their pollen; and that’s what was making us sneeze, too. Then we landed on the other planet and knocked the pollen off our clothes. A new hybrid strain will start up. We were just a pair of two-legged bees, Chouns, doing our duty by the flowers.’

Chouns smiled tentatively. ‘An inglorious role, in a way.’

‘Hell, that’s not it. Don’t you see the danger? Don’t you see why we have to get back home fast?’

‘Why?’

‘Because organisms don’t adapt themselves to nothing. Those plants seem to be adapted to interplanetary fertilization. We even got paid off, the way bees are; not with nectar, but with Gamow sighters.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, you can’t have interplanetary fertilization unless something or someone is there to do the job. We did it this time, but we were the first humans ever to enter the cluster. So, before this, it must be nonhumans who did it; maybe the same nonhumans who transplanted the blooms in the first place. That means that somewhere in this cluster there is an intelligent race of beings; intelligent enough for space travel. And Earth must know about that.’

Slowly Chouns shook his head.

Smith frowned. ‘You find flaws somewhere in the reasoning?’

Chouns put his head between his own palms and looked miserable. ‘Let’s say you’ve missed almost everything.’

‘What have I missed?’ demanded Smith angrily.

‘Your crossfertilization theory is good, as far as it goes, but you haven’t considered a few points. When we approached that stellar system our hyperatomic motor went out of order in a way the automatic controls could neither diagnose nor correct. After we landed we made no effort to adjust them. We forgot about them, in fact; and when you handled them later you found they were in perfect order, and were so unimpressed by that that you didn’t even mention it to me for another few hours.

‘Take something else: How conveniently we chose landing spots near a grouping of animal life on both planets. Just luck? And our incredible confidence in the good will of the creatures. We never even bothered checking atmospheres for trace poisons before exposing ourselves.

‘And what bothers me most of all is that I went completely crazy over the Gamow sighters. Why? They’re valuable, yes, but not that valuable-and I don’t generally go overboard for a quick buck.’

Smith had kept an uneasy silence during all that. Now he said, ‘I don’t see that any of that adds up to anything.’

‘Get off it, Smith; you know better than that. Isn’t it obvious to you that we were under mental control from the outside?’

Smith’s mouth twisted and caught halfway between derision and doubt. ‘Are you on the psionic kick again?’

‘Yes; facts are facts. I told you that my hunches might be a form of rudimentary telepathy.’

‘Is that a fact, too? You didn’t think so a couple of days ago.’

‘I think so now. Look, I’m a better receiver than you, and I was more strongly affected. Now that it’s over, I understand more about what happened because I received more. Understand?’

‘No,’ said Smith harshly.

‘Then listen further. You said yourself the Gamow sighters were the nectar that bribed us into pollination. Thu said that.’

‘All right.’

‘Well, then, where did they come from? They were Earth products; we even read the manufacturer’s name and model on them, letter by letter. Yet, if no human beings have ever been in the cluster, where did the sighters come from? Neither one of us worried about that, then; and you don’t seem to worry about it even now.’

‘Well—’

‘What did you do with the sighters after we got on board ship, Smith? You took them from me; I remember that.’

‘I put them in the safe,’ said Smith defensively. ‘Have you touched them since?’

‘No.’

‘Have I?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘You have my word I didn’t. Then why not open the safe now?’

Smith stepped slowly to the safe. It was keyed to his fingerprints, and it opened. Without looking he reached in. His expression altered and with a sharp cry he first stared at the contents, then scrabbled them out.

He held four rocks of assorted color, each of them roughly rectangular.

‘They used our own emotions to drive us,’ said Chouns softly, as though insinuating the words into the other’s stubborn skull one at a time. ‘They made us think the hyperatomics were wrong so we could land on one of the planets; it didn’t matter which, I suppose. They made us think we had precision instruments in our hand after we landed on one so we would race to the other.’

‘Who are ‘they’?’ groaned Smith. ‘The tails or the snakes? Or both?’

‘Neither,’ said Chouns. ‘It was the plants.’

‘The plants? The flowers?’

‘Certainly. We saw two different sets of animals tending the same species of plant. Being animals ourselves, we assumed the animals were the masters. But why should we assume that? It was the plants that were being taken care of.’

‘We cultivate plants on Earth, too, Chouns.’

‘But we eat those plants,’ said Chouns.

‘And maybe those creatures eat their plants, too.’