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again. I’d made it back to Nyssa. I was picked up by a routine patrol. Fortunately, I’d cached my loot, all but the sailor’s ring. I was wearing it.
    But I had the foresight to swallow it when they picked me up. I didn’t want to be traced back to him. No way! They didn’t connect me to either him or the dead chameleons. The dimwitted varks thought I was just a runaway. All they were looking for was the bribe they’d get for returning me to my parents. If they’d guessed the truth, they could have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble later on.
    But they didn’t.
    Guess the truth, I mean.

I OPENED my eyes. Instead of the underwater blur to which I’d grown accustomed, my vision was clear. Nictitating membranes had finally become complete. But the difference was negligible. There still wasn’t much to see: cratered moonscape, bathed in Earth-light; a kaleidoscope of other hybridization pods, each containing its own human larva, metamorphosing just as I was. I brought my left hand in front of my face. Five stubby fingers grew from the stump. They wriggled at me, of their own volition. But soon both feeling and motor control would return. It would be good to have my hand back.
    With my right hand, I scratched my head. The wires in my scalp no longer itched, but there was still the deeper one. That itch was as bad as ever. Yet I marveled at the grim efficiency of hypnotraining. Already I knew the twenty-three ways to kill a man using only bare hands and feet. I also knew how to dispatch a score of other creatures not quite men anymore. I was proficient with both light and heavy photonuclear weapons. I could make a bomb out of common minerals on any of the inhabited moons and planets. On those that supported carbon-based plants, I knew which plants you could eat and which ones would kill you. In a pinch, I could pilot anything from a hoverbus to a gunship to a Nova-class gravship. I could do things I’d never done, and do them well.
    I laughed out loud.
    I should have figured out how to get all this training years ago. I could have saved myself some trouble. Killing wasn’t nearly as hard as I’d always found it to be. If only I’d had the skills then that I had now. Oh, well. Live and learn. I smiled at my play on words.
    I saw movement at the edge of my vision. My peripheral vision had been considerably enhanced, I looked up. A gravtug passed overhead in orbit, towing a long train of silver pods. I searched my new memories. Strange. I had no knowledge of what the tug was towing. It passed out of sight over the horizon. The pods followed, one by one.
    Something bothered me.
    Unbidden, an image formed in my mind: frost covered the face like close-cropped fur. Red filaments fanned out from the ears. Teeth were broken into shards of ivory ice.
    I pushed the face away,
    I had more pleasant memories. I was telling you about myself, wasn’t I? You’ve seen the face I was fleeing. Maybe you’ve figured out why I was afraid of it. I probably told you sometime. But you don’t know the complete plan. I left out part of what the sailor told me. You don’t really know what the timestone was. Remember Nels, the mindrider. He can tell you all about timestones. If you can find him. If you can get him to talk. But I’ll tell you what I know about timestones. I paid the piper once. I’m ready to pay again.
    Listen.
    * * *
    I was home for the last time. You figure out what that means.
    I’ll spare you the gruesome details of my homecoming—my father worked me over with an alphawhip; my mother got in a few licks herself. What happened after I passed out, I couldn’t say. I’ve got educated guesses, from the various places that hurt, but you’re not interested in guesses. Before I lost consciousness, for some reason I thought of the sailor. I made some sense out of what he had said.
    I came to late the next morning. My vision was still a little blurred, but it cleared rapidly. A sonic shackle clasped my ankle, attached