bear-flesh gave birth to new bears, digested insects gave birth (through the tree-medium) to new insects, and trees (through the insect-medium) gave birth to new trees....

Jerry's head spun pleasantly as he tried vainly to solve the confusion. Men of science, he realized, would spend decades trying to figure out which species were responsible for which. It made the ancient chicken-or-egg question beneath consideration. And a lot of diehard evolutionists were going to be bedded down with severe migraines when his report went into circulation....

A dazzle of silent lightning, and Contact was over.

"Ready with that first tape again," Bob Ryder said as Jerry removed the Contact helmet and brushed his snow-white hair back from his tanned, youthful face. "Or do you want a breather first?"

Jerry shook his head. "I won't need to re-Contact that other species, Ensign. I got its life-relationships from the second Contact."

"Really, sir?" said Bob. "That's pretty unusual, isn't it?"

"The whole damned planet's unusual," said Jerry, rising from his supine position and stretching luxuriously in the warm jungle air. "You'll see what I mean when you process the second tape."

Bob decided that Jerry—running pretty true to form for a Space Zoologist—wasn't in a particularly talkative mood, so he had to satisfy himself with waiting for the transcription of the Contact to get the details.

Later that day, an hour after takeoff, with Viridian already vanished behind them as the great ship plowed through hyper-space toward Earth and home, Bob finished reading the report. Then he went down the passageway to the ward room for coffee. Jerry was seated there already. Bob, quickly filling a mug from the polished percolator, slid into a seat across the table from his superior and asked the question that had been bugging him since seeing the report.

"Sir—on that second Contact. Has it occurred to you that you'd relinquished control to the host before you saw that other creature move out and start swatting the gourd-thing?"

"You mean was I taking a chance on being destroyed in the host if the creature I was Contacting gave in to the urge to do the swatting?"

"Yes, sir," said Bob. "I mean, I know you can take control any time, if things get dangerous. But wasn't that cutting it kind of thin?"

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