blend of all the undesirable traits
he'd fought to smother all his life. By an effort of will he kept
himself from pulling away from her hand on his shoulder.

"Jason, don't--slip away like that! _Think!_ Try to keep hold on
_yourself_!"

Jay propped his head in his hands, trying to make sense of that.
Certainly in the dim light she could not be too conscious of subtle
changes of expression. She evidently thought she was talking to Jason.
She didn't seem to be overly intelligent.

"Think about tomorrow, Jason. What are you going to say to him? Think
about your parents--"

Jay Allison wondered what they would think when they found a stranger
here. He felt like a stranger. Yet he must have come, tonight, into this
house and spoken--he rummaged desperately in his mind for some fragments
of the trailmen's language. He had spoken it as a child. He must recall
enough to speak to the woman who had been a kind foster-mother to her
alien son. He tried to form his lips to the unfamiliar shapes of words...

Jay covered his face with his hands again. Jason was the part of himself
that remembered the trailmen. _That_ was what he had to remember--Jason
was not a hostile stranger, not an alien intruder in his body. Jason was
a lost part of himself and at the moment a damn necessary part. If there
were only some way to get back the Jason memories, skills, without
losing _himself_ ... he said to the girl, "Let me think. Let me--" to
his surprise and horror his voice broke into an alien tongue, "Let me
alone, will you?"

Maybe, Jay thought, I could stay myself if I could remember the rest.
Dr. Forth said: Jason would remember the trailmen with kindness, not
dislike.

Jay searched his memory and found nothing but familiar frustration;
years spent in an alien land, apart from a human heritage, stranded and
abandoned. _My father left me. He crashed the plane and I never saw him
again and I hate him for leaving me ..._

But his father had not abandoned him. He had crashed the plane trying to
save them both. It was no one's fault--

_Except my father's. For trying to fly over the Hellers into a country
where no man belongs ..._

He hadn't belonged. And yet the trailmen, whom he considered little
better than roaming beasts, had taken the alien child into their city,
their homes, their hearts. They had loved him. And he ...

* * * * *

"And I loved them," I found myself saying half aloud, then real