y?"

"The jet blast will fry him when we take off."

"What difference would that make?"

"I told you," Kennon said, "that I never destroy things
unnecessarily--not even things like Douglas."

"But he would have destroyed you."

"That's no excuse for murder. Now go back to the jeep and fetch a rope.
I'll go down and get him out."

"Do we have to bother with him?" Copper asked, and then shrugged. It
was an eloquent gesture expressing disgust, resignation, and unwilling
compliance in one lift of smoothly muscled shoulders.

"There's no question about it," Kennon said. "You're becoming more human
every day."

He chuckled as he slid over the edge of the pit following the path
Douglas had taken a moment before. He found him sitting on a pile of
ashes, shaking his head.

"What happened?" Douglas asked querulously. There was fear in his voice.

"Copper hit you on the head with a rock," Kennon said as he bent over
and retrieved the torch, still burning near Douglas' feet.

"The Lani?" Douglas' voice was incredulous.

"Not a Lani," Kennon corrected. "She's as human as you or I."

"That's a lie," Douglas said.

"Maybe this spacer's a lie too. Her ancestors came in it--a pair
of humans named Alfred and Melissa Weygand. They were Christian
missionaries from a planet called Heaven out in Ophiuchus Sector. Went
out to convert aliens and landed here when their fuel ran out."
Kennon paused. "That was about four millennia ago. Their descendants,
naturally, reverted to barbarism in a few generations, but there's
enough evidence in the ship to prove that the Lani were their
children.''

"But the tails--the differences--the failure of the test," Douglas said.

"Mutation," Kennon replied. "Those old spindizzy converters weren't
too choosy about how they scattered radiation. And they had come a long
way." He paused, looking down at Douglas, feeling a twinge of pity for
the man. His world was crumbling. "And there was no other human blood
available to filter out their peculiarities. It might have been done
during the first couple of generations, but constant inbreeding fixed
the genetic pattern."

"How did you discover this?" Douglas asked.

"Accident," Kennon said briefly.

"You'll never be able to prove they're human!" Douglas said.

"The ship's log will do that."

"Not without a humanity test--they can't pass that."

"Sorry to disappoint you. Your grandfather used the wrong sort of sperm.
Now if there had been a