"The ones you call the Helgae." For the first time, emotion seemed to grip Lor. He stared down at the bulky bundle in his hands; then, opening it, spread out an array of Cartel crewman's clothes. "They are an old race, older than you can know; and wise. They wanted no war with anyone, but there was no way for them to speak to a life-form so unlike theirs. So, when your ships attacked their cities on the world called Titan, they drew monsters from your minds to slow your onslaughts, then sought some way to bridge the barrier between your different brains."
Boone caught his breath. "You mean—mutation—?"
"It was the only answer." The man who claimed him father bent to slide on shoes. "By casting their powers of mind in human bodies through the contagion you call Titan fever, the source of conflict between your separate species once and for all could be removed."
"Of course!" Of a sudden Boone was pacing. "Only then, our sphere-ship hit Hyperion, broke the ice-shell—"
"—And menaced another whole Helgae world." Lor shrugged into a jacket. "It made the danger too great for them to wait on normal human reproduction and maturing.
"But you two were on that sphere-ship—and you were male and female, man and woman."
"Then—that's why they trapped us!"
"Yes. While you lay in your sphere here, in the state you call unconscious, your seed was planted in the woman. When growth began, the egg itself was taken, processed. By science beyond your human dreams, they speeded the whole cycle of gestation, then brought me on to manhood in days instead of years. The mind-rays drained all knowledge from both of you, gave it to me, that I might be able properly to play my role."
Boone stopped short in his pacing. "Your role—?"
"You'd call it that." Now fully dressed, the other straightened. "I am a messenger, a human spokesman for the Helgae, with no other goal than to help our race live at peace."