needed it?"

* * * * *

He saw the Earthgirl then, curled limply on the cabin's sofa.

Her stillness left him alarmed, surprised and ashamed that he should so
readily have forgotten an obligation.

Her dishevelment, and the heavy brass fireplace poker on the rug beside
the couch, told him the story at once.

_You came just in time, Janeen. Poor Kitty! You didn't hurt her?_

Janeen shook her head. _Of course not, Filrinn. I caught her mind before
the shock of your change could derange it and--conditioned her. She'll
sleep until we've gone, and tomorrow Philip Alcorn will be no more than
a pale memory._

_Either my conditioning still lingers or my empathetic index is too high
... I'd like her to know the truth about us, Janeen, before we go._

He knelt beside the couch and smoothed the fair, tousled hair back from
the Earthgirl's quiet face.

"I'm sorry it had to be like this, Kitty," he said. He spoke aloud, but
his mind touched hers below the level of consciousness. He felt the
slow, bewildered surge of response. "It'll help you to forget, perhaps,
if you know that we came here from a star system you'll never hear of in
your lifetime, to study your people and to see what we could do to help
them.

"Alike in form, we are so far apart in nature that you could not have
borne our real presence, so we buried our real selves under a mask of
conditioning as deeply as we buried our ship under the ice of your
planet's pole. After ten years of study, our conditioning was to lift
slowly, so that we would realize who and what we were. But you are more
like us than we had thought, and with some of us, the conditioning was
too strong to break.

"It may help to know that your likeness to us will bring our people
together again when the time is right, that your children's children may
meet us on equal terms."

He lifted her from the couch and carried her to her 'copter. He set the
machine's controls to automatic and stepped back.

"Good-by, Kitty," he said.

Janeen was waiting for him in the cabin.

_The auxiliary shuttle is on its way to pick us up, Filrinn. We'll be
gone within the hour._

They stood together, linking their minds, sharing an ecstasy in the
meshing of identities that was greater than any physical fulfillment.

_But we have that, too_, Janeen said for his ears alone. And then, to
the calm, smiling faces that lingered in the background of their mingled
consciousness: