2214 01 03 LATE

Dear Mom:

Your Christmas package got here today, and it was really nice. I loved the socks. They'll come in real handy in case I come back to Chicago for a visit before it gets warm. But the cookies were pretty crumbled, I'm afraid-delicious, though! Tonda said she could tell that they were better than anything she could bake, before they went through the CAS 43-G customs, I mean.

Torklemiggen is just about ready to solo. To tell you the truth. I'll be glad to see the last of him. The closer he gets to his license, the harder he is to get along with.

This morning he began acting crazy as soon as we got into high orbit. We were doing satellite-matching curves. You know, when you come in on an asymptotic tractrix curve, just whistling through the upper atmosphere of the satellite and then back into space. Nobody ever does that when they're actually driving, because what is there on a satellite in this system that anybody would want to visit? But they won't pass you for a license if you don't know how.

The trouble was, Torklemiggen thought he already did know how, better than I did. So I took the controls away to show him how, and that really blew his cool. "I could shoot better curves than you in my fourth instar, he snarled out of his left head, while his right head was looking at me like a rattlesnake getting ready to strike. I mean, mean. Then, when I let him have the controls back, he began shooting curves at one of the mini-black holes. Well, that's about the biggest no-no there is. "Stop that right now, I ordered. "We can't go within a hundred thousand miles of one of those things! How'd you pass your written test without knowing that?

"Do not exceed your life station, mammal, he snapped, and dived in toward the hole again, his forehands on the thrust and roll controls while his hindhands reached out to fondle the buttons for the new equipment. And all the time his left-hand head was chuckling and giggling like some fiend out of a monster movie.

"If you don't obey instructions, I warned him, "I will not approve you for your solo. Well, that fixed him. At least he calmed down. But he sulked for the rest of the lesson. Since I didn't like the way he was behaving, I took the controls for the landing. Out of curiosity I reached to see what the new buttons were. "Severely handicapped mammalian species! his left head screeched, while his right head was turning practically pale pink with terror, "do you want to destroy this planet?

I was getting pretty suspicious by then, so I asked him straight out: "What is this stuff, some kind of weapons?

That made him all quiet. His two heads whispered to each other for a minute, then he said, very stiff and formal, "Do you speak to me of weapons when you mammals have these black holes in orbit? Have you considered their potential for weaponry? Can you imagine what one of them would do, directed toward an inhabited planet? He paused for a minute, then he said something that really started me thinking. "Why, he asked, "do you suppose my people have any wish to bring culture to this system, except to demonstrate the utility of these objects?

We didn't talk much after that, but it was really on my mind.

After work, when Tonda and I were sitting in the park, feeding the flying crabs and listening to the singing trees, I told her all about it. She was silent for a moment. Then she looked up at me and said seriously, "Jim Paul, it's a rotten thing to say about any being, but it almost sounds as though Torklemiggen has some idea about conquering this system.

"Now, who would want to do something like that? I asked.

She shrugged. "It was just a thought, she apologized. But we both kept thinking about it all day long, in spite of our being so busy getting our gene tests and all-but i'll tell you about that later!

Love,

Jim Paul