most of today.
These Alphardians are friendly, so desperately happy to be found again
that it's really pathetic."

"_Friendly?_ That torpedo--"

"It wasn't a torpedo at all," Stryker put in. Understanding of the error
under which Farrell had labored erased his earlier irritation, and he
chuckled commiseratingly. "They had one small boat left for emergency
missions, and sent it up to contact us in the fear that we might
overlook their settlement and move on. The boat was atomic powered, and
our shield screens set off its engines."

Farrell dropped into a chair at the chart table, limp with reaction. He
was suddenly exhausted, and his head ached dully.

"We cracked the communications problem early last night," Gibson said.
"These people use an ancient system of electromagnetic wave propagation
called frequency modulation, and once Lee and I rigged up a suitable
transceiver the rest was simple. Both Xav and I recognized the old
language; the natives reported your accident, and we came down at once."

"They really came from Terra? They lived through a thousand years of
flight?"

"The ship left Terra for Sirius in 2171," Gibson said. "But not with
these people aboard, or their ancestors. That expedition perished after
less than a light-year when its hydroponics system failed. The Hymenops
found the ship derelict when they invaded us, and brought it to Alphard
Six in what was probably their first experiment with human subjects. The
ship's log shows clearly what happened to the original complement. The
rest is deducible from the situation here."

Farrell put his hands to his temples and groaned. "The crash must have
scrambled my wits. Gib, where _did_ they come from?"

"From one of the first peripheral colonies conquered by the Bees,"
Gibson said patiently. "The Hymenops were long-range planners,
remember, and masters of hypnotic conditioning. They stocked the ship
with a captive crew of Terrans conditioned to believe themselves
descendants of the original crew, and grounded it here in disabled
condition. They left for Alphard Five then, to watch developments.

"Succeeding generations of colonists grew up accepting the fact that
their ship had missed Sirius and made planetfall here--they still don't
know where they really are--by luck. They never knew about the Hymenops,
and they've struggled along with an inadequate technology in the hope
that a later expedition would find them. They found the truth hard to
take, b