Saxon grinned at her knowingly, to her added confusion.
"I hate you!" she thought.
Villainowski jumped to his feet, saying, "Of course we accept. We all accept. But let me warn you, young woman, aliens or no aliens, I don't care if we spend the rest of our lives in the Centaurian system, I'm not going to explain my stellar drive to your scoundrels!"
Ileth turned to him almost gratefully. "Oh, that doesn't matter. Our engineers are examining it. They've assured me that they can take us back to Earth."
Villainowski looked crestfallen.
"Tomorrow," said Ileth in a firm voice, "we're starting to investigate the city. Mercedes is the anthropologist. I particularly wanted her and Saxon along."
"What about the rest of us?" Brand the bio-chemist, asked.
Ileth ticked them off on her fingers. "Dr. Villainowski is an astro-physicist, I believe. We have the telescope mounted. He and our men are to locate any other planets in the system. You, Dr. Brand, are to go with Loar, the Martian, on an expedition into the hills to the south. Mr. Murdock will be stationed temporarily with the emergency crew aboard the Shooting Star."
Saxon realized that she had cleverly separated them. At the same moment he recognized that leap of fear in Ileth whenever she thought about outside. It was pathologic.
"My Lord!" he thought, "was their fear of deep space driving them insane?"