the very antennae of the
Bees. Longevity wasn't developed until around the year 3000--Lee here
was one of the first to profit by it, if you remember--and suspended
animation is still to come. So there's one theory you can forget."

"Arthur's right," Stryker said reluctantly. "An atomic-powered ship
_couldn't_ have made such a trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant
project couldn't have lasted through forty generations, speculative
fiction to the contrary--the later generations would have been too far
removed in ideology and intent from their ancestors. They'd have adapted
to shipboard life as the norm. They'd have atrophied physically, perhaps
even have mutated--"

"And they'd never have fought past the Bees during the Hymenop invasion
and occupation," Farrell finished triumphantly. "The Bees had better
detection equipment than we had. They'd have picked this ship up long
before it reached Alphard Six."

"But the ship wasn't here in 3000," Gibson said, "and it is now.
Therefore it must have arrived at some time during the two hundred
years of Hymenop occupation and evacuation."

Farrell, tangled in contradictions, swore bitterly. "But why should the
Bees let them through? The three domes on Five are over two hundred
years old, which means that the Bees were here before the ship came. Why
didn't they blast it or enslave its crew?"

"We haven't touched on all the possibilities," Gibson reminded him. "We
haven't even established yet that these people were never under Hymenop
control. Precedent won't hold always, and there's no predicting nor
evaluating the motives of an alien race. We never understood the
Hymenops because there's no common ground of logic between us. Why try
to interpret their intentions now?"

Farrell threw up his hands in disgust. "Next you'll say this is an
ancient Terran expedition that actually succeeded! There's only one way
to answer the questions we've raised, and that's to go down and see for
ourselves. Ready, Xav?"

* * * * *

But uncertainty nagged uneasily at him when Farrell found himself alone
in the helihopper with the forest flowing beneath like a leafy river and
Xavier's scouter disappearing bulletlike into the dusk ahead.

We never found a colony so advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose this is a
Hymenop experiment that really paid off? The Bees did some weird and
wonderful things with human guinea pigs--what if they've created the
ultimate booby tr