"Slobs," I said. "Poor dumb slobs."

The nuclear flash washed over us, peppering us with a few excess roentgens.

We couldn't look at the spaceship going up, but we knew it was going. It was making a dawn.

The aliens were all frightened. They fell on the ground and started praying to the ship, all of them, the Azures and the Indigos.

"What's wrong with that crazy Chinaman?" Ellik yelped.

"Lee knows what he's doing," I said.

Ellik unsnapped his communicator from his belt. "Johnny says you know what you're doing, Chon. Do you?"

"I know." Chon's voice sounded right beside us, perfectly natural. Belt communicators work just as well as those consoles. People only buy consoles for prestige.

"Well?" Ellik demanded. "What are you doing, Lee?"

I thought maybe something had gone wrong with the communicator.

Chon's voice finally reached us.

"I'm leaving you and Johnny on this planet, Mike," he said.

An Indigo brought us in our morning supply of fruit.

Ellik kicked the Indigo. "It's overripe, blockhead. Amum, amum."

The Indigo backed out, bowing, eyes very round.

Ellik felt me looking at him.

"Well, I don't like kicking the oaf, but that's all he's been conditioned to understand as a sign of disapproval."

"Sure," I said.

Ellik passed through the scimitar of gray shadow into the sunlight that washed lines and years out of his face. He braced a hand against the doorframe and craned his head back. It stopped and steadied.

"He's still there," Ellik said. "Sometimes I wish his orbit would decay enough to burn him up in this damned sour air." He coughed into his fist.

"He could probably correct," I suggested.

Ellik sneered. "He hasn't got the brains."

"Pretty hard for one man to manage a takeoff. He was lucky to make it into orbit."

"I just wish he would come down. Somehow, someway, I'd get to him, no matter where he went on this planet."

"I suppose that's why he stays up."

Ellik slammed his fist into his palm. "I'm going to call him again. He can't get away without us. If he fouled up a takeoff that badly, he's not going to try to solo into hyperspace."

"I don't think anyone would solo into hyperspace. I don't think he would be able to come back."

"Oh, what do you know about it?" Ellik said shortly. "He's just building up his courage to try the big jump. He's yellow, sure, but sooner or later he'll get desperate enough, or scared enough, to actually go. Then we'll be stranded for fair. This planet may not be colonized for centuries!"

"Probably never," I said. "Not after Lee's reports."

"You think he would falsify reports?" Ellik asked, blinking at me.

"I suppose he'll have to."

Ellik held his head with his hands. "Of course, of course. There's no limit to the depths to which he would plummet." He ran over to the corner and snatched a communicator off the pile of our gear. "I'm going to call him and tell him what I think of him and his wild obsession."

I didn't remind Ellik that he had been telling Chon just that at least once a day for a month. I knew his nerves got tighter and tighter and cussing out Chon helped release them and make him feel better.

"Come down, Lee!" Ellik called. "The three of us can make the jump together. You're martyring yourself for a crazy reason!"

"We've talked this over before," Chon answered. "This is the last time I'm going to respond to your call. I've made it clear to you that I think knowledge of this world will cause great suffering, a lot of death, among the majority of Earth's people."

"You're talking prejudice, Lee! Your prejudice. People aren't like that any more."

"We haven't gone that far, Mike. The bigots, the hatemongers, the pettiness and xenophobia lurking in everybody haven't been asleep that long. Just look at it from my side, Mike. What will the white people of Earth think about the Orientals, Negroes and Indians of Earth when they find out the dark-skinned humanoids of another planet are—measurably, unquestionably, vastly—inferior to the light-skinned race of the same world? I ask you, Mike!"

Mike Ellik said, "It's an inept analogy, Lee, and you know it."

"But most people reason by analogy," said Lee Chon. "No, Mike. I have to leave you and Johnny to prevent a recurrence of racial hatred, intolerance and all the ugly consequences on both sides. This is the last time I'll answer you, Mike. I'm getting lonesome. In a few years, I'll get hungry for human companionship. I don't want to be tempted down. Good-by, Johnny. So long, Mike."

Ellik screamed. "Wait! Answer one more call, Lee. It's the least you can do for me. I don't know when I'll make it. It may be in a few weeks or a few years. It won't be just argument, Lee. I'll have something you'll want to tell Earth about this place and these people."

"I'm still here. Tell it to me now," Chon's voice said.

"No. I want to get proof. Let me rig up some kind of video circuit for you. I can use parts out of our tape camera and the translators. I want to get it all across to you."

I could hear Chon breathing. "Very well. I'll answer your next call."

"Lee," I called out, "Mike and me will be expecting you to answer."

Chon laughed. "I'm not going anywhere, Johnny. Only around this world every couple of hours."

"You couldn't make the jump through hyperspace without us, Lee," Ellik said.

"That's right, Mike. I'm—I'm sorry to quarantine you two down there."

"Quarantine!" Ellik stormed. "We're not sick, Lee. You are the sick one!"

There wasn't any sound, not even of breathing.

"You have an idea to change Lee's mind, Mike?" I asked.

He cupped his hand on the back of my neck. "Affirmative, Jonathan. A pretty damned good one, too."

Ellik stood staring out the door, gnawing on one of his knuckles, letting the sun turn the front of him into gold, so he looked like half a statue, and half a man.

"I suppose it had to come out in him sooner or later," he said.

"What, Mike?"

"What could we expect? It's the basic quality of treachery in the Oriental mind."

When the shadows were at their longest and the alien sun was down the closest to the horizon without actually going under, Ellik marched up the path shoving a new Indigo. The Azures supplied Mike with all the flunkies he wanted to gather food and the like for him, as his natural right. But I thought we had enough of them hanging around our quarters. I couldn't imagine what he would want with another one.

The alien hovered at the door. Ellik kicked him in the calf to make him understand he was to go inside.

"Look at him, Johnny," Ellik said, pushing the fellow forward. "Not a mongoloid, would you say?"

"No."

The alien looked stupid—blue and stupid. His face was hanging there, but it wasn't pushed out of shape any more than the faces of the Azures. The Indigo blinked back at me. What he also looked was not friendly.

Ellik took the Indigo's cheeks in his hand and angled the face toward the light. "He's a half-breed, Johnny, or otherwise the gene was recessive. He wasn't damaged before birth, only after—when he started to breathe."

"What do you mean, Mike?"

"You ever hear of cyanosis, Johnny?"

"No."

"Well, these creatures have something like it. The Indigos don't get enough oxygen in their blood cells. It makes them sluggish; it turns them blue like the pictures of 'blue babies' in the old books."

"I never saw a picture like that in an old book," I said.

"Did you ever see a book? Sorry, Johnny. Just kidding." Ellik rubbed his hands together. "Well! I theorized that there is no basic difference in the Azures and the Indigos except improper aeration of their blood. So, you see, an Indigo is only a sick Azure, and I am going to make this Indigo well."

"How can you do that?"

"It's simple," Mike said irritably. "The Indigos must have a malformation of the heart causing an abnormal communication between the venous and arterial side of the circulation system. A little surgery and I adjust a valve in the heart. No more communication. Proper aeration. Enough oxygen. The deep blue color goes, leaving only the lighter blue of the natural pigmentation. The patient feels better, acts better, thinks better, looks better. In short, he is no longer an Indigo but an Azure."

"Is—is this what you're going to show Lee?" I ventured.

"Of course! It proves the Indigos aren't an inferior race. They are the same as the Azures except that they are sick. Their being sick can't reflect unfavourably on any terrestrial colored race. There is no analogy. But I have to prove it to Chon. We're going to tape the whole process and feed it to him."

"I think," I said, "that that might get to him."

"Sure it will." Ellik's jaw muscles flexed. "I should ruin Lee with this thing, but I won't. I'm not a vindictive man. Lee and I will probably be working together for years. But whenever he gets out of line—has some stubborn idea about doing something his way—don't think I won't remind him of this!"

Suddenly, he was smiling again. He turned to the gawking Indigo. He pointed two fingers at him.

"Mmr?" Ellik asked.

The alien tapped himself on his chest cavity twice. "Mhaw," he gave his name.

"Mhaw M'i uh M'i m M'm'-uh?" Ellik asked him, without even using the translators.

"M-m-M-m-M," the alien went, slapping himself on the chest with his opened palms.

Ellik turned to me, grinning. "I asked him if he wanted to stop being an Indigo and become an Azure. He thinks I can do anything and he's all for it."

After we fed Mhaw a dose of null-shock from our packs, Doc Ellik started to slice him open with a ceramic knife he had borrowed from the Azures.

But Ellik had forgotten that the alien might get frightened seeing himself cut open, even if he couldn't feel any pain. It had never happened to him before.

The alien lumbered to his feet, his chest hanging open, showing his heart beating like some animal caught inside a blueberry pudding.

I drove a right cross into his jaw, and felt the jar all the way up to my shoulder.