I say, "Hell's feathers, it was you!"
M'Clare makes motions as though to start getting out of his chair, looking seriously alarmed. I say, "It was your voice! When I asked—"
M'Clare, quite definitely, starts to blush. Not much, but some.
"Lizzie, I believe you're right. I have a sort of vague memory of someone asking how I was—and I gave what I took to be a truthful answer. I remember it seemed quite inconceivable that I could be alive. In fact I still don't understand it. Neither Yardo nor Miss Laydon could tell me. How did you get me out of that ship?"
Well, I do my best to explain, glossing over one or two points; at the finish he closes his eyes and says nothing for a while.
Then he says, "So except for this one man who saw you, you left no traces at all?"
Not that I know of, but—
"Do you know, five minutes later there were at least twenty men in that bay, most of them scientists? They don't seem to have found anything suspicious. Visibility was bad, of course, and you can't leave foot-prints in shingle—"
Hold on, what is all this?
M'Clare says, "We've had two couriers while you were asleep. Yes, I know it's not ordinarily possible for a ship on Mass-Time to get news. One of these days someone will have an interesting problem in Cultural Engineering, working out how to integrate some of these Space Force secrets into our economic and social structure without upsetting the whole of the known volume. Though courier boats make their crews so infernally sick I doubt whether the present type will ever come into common use. Anyway, we've had transcripts of a good many broadcasts from Incognita, the last dated four days ago; and as far as we can tell they're interpreting Gilgamesh just as we meant them to.