Scene 1: A man and a woman sit looking at each other across a long table in a windowless, harshly lit room. The man has a digital recorder in front of him, and turns it on.
Interviewer: Well, Dr. Eckhardt, you are a heroine now on Randhu 5.
Dr. Eckhardt (with a shiver): That depends on who you ask.
Interviewer: Please start from the beginning.
Dr. Eckhardt: When Randhu 5 was settled, the supposed ancient statuary was remarkable … handsome male humanoid figures, always in anguish. It was thought that the statues were the expression of the Randhuns' sorrow for the end of their civilization.
Interviewer: That wasn't it?
Dr. Eckhardt: No. By the time I was called, five humans had joined the statuary. A sixth was brought into the field clinic we set up the same day I arrived.
Scene 2: A male patient lies on a table, screaming in pain while Dr. Eckhardt attends to him with various futuristic-looking instruments while the doctor and the interviewer provide a voiceover.
Dr. Eckhardt: I've seen men die in many ways. Never like this. He couldn't tell me anything: he was mad already from the pain and the poisoning and the exchange.
Interviewer: The exchange?
Dr. Eckhardt: Every molecule in his body was being exchanged for sodium chloride, spreading upward from his feet and a certain other … a certain other excited extremity. He was dead in four minutes, a pillar of salt in ten.
Back to Scene 1 as the interview continues.
Dr. Eckhardt: In a seventh case the next day, we cut off the head of the victim after death to preserve it, but –.
The interviewer jumps.
Dr. Eckhardt: It made no difference. Whatever had locked on to these victims had locked in down to their DNA, and could work over considerable distance.
Interviewer: Forcing the molecular exchange.
Dr. Eckhardt: Yes. We shielded the clinic with a powerful force field, and thus nearly saved an eighth victim by amputation of his legs and … well … another part … but he died of sodium poisoning anyhow.
The Interviewer: You keep referencing “another part.”
Dr. Eckhardt: You have that part to your anatomy, and I don't.
The interviewer jumps again.
Dr. Eckhardt: I examined every statue – the bulge of excitement in the clothing was tell-tale. That was the first clue.
The Interviewer: Horrible clue.
Dr. Eckhardt: The widows of the eight settlers said all the right things and were in all the right places when their husbands died. But they were lying. As a woman, I could feel it.
The Interviewer: They couldn't have done all that damage.
Dr. Eckhardt: Of course not. But someone brought me a clue on the fourth day that let me know that someone knew exactly what was happening.
Dr. Eckhardt puts a small briefcase on the table.
Dr. Eckhardt: Like humans, Randhuns used blocks to teach language to their children. This set is bilingual, likely for a child who was mixed long before we knew the two species had interacted – three sides of Randhun characters, three sides of Chinese characters and explanations.
Dr. Eckhardt opens the briefcase and turns it so the interviewer can look inside.
Dr. Eckhardt: Translating from Randhun to Chinese to German, we discovered schools, temples of worship, courthouses, mausoleums – at one of those, we found a block showing five faces of death. The one in strong relief resembled a person in bed surrounded by family … natural death, and another character underneath that meant“honor.”
The Interviewer: What were on the other faces?
Dr. Eckhardt: Only one matters. In less sharp relief because not at issue at the mausoleum, there was a portrayal of a female figure dancing in seven veils, with a face like an old legend from Earth. The character beneath: “dishonor.” I had seen this portrayal before.
The Interviewer: Where?
Dr. Eckhardt: On the backs of the heads of the handsome male statues.
The Interviewer: Uh oh …
Dr. Eckhardt: The next night, I covered my hair, bound my breasts, and changed uniforms with one of my fellow doctors after a long day. I looked and smelled like a man as much as I could at that point.
The Interviewer: Then what?
Dr. Eckhardt: I didn't hear anything, but several of the men with me did … a woman's voice, vocalizing in an alluring way.
The sound of a woman humming fills the room as Scene 3 begins: a dark evening in the woods, as the doctor and interviewer provide a voiceover.
Dr. Eckhardt: I went into the woods … presently, I smelled perfume, and saw the figure of a woman in the reflected light of Randhu 4, slowly dancing away from me into the woods and dropping veils as it went to lure me in.
The Interviewer: And then what happened?
Dr. Eckhardt: I put up a mirrored force field around myself just in the nick of time – that seventh veil came down and a massive bolt of energy hit the field and bounced back.
Return to Scene 1, and Dr. Eckhardt puts a picture on the table.
Dr. Eckhardt: The fifth face of death on Randhu 5, revealed.
The Interviewer: A Medusa!
Dr. Eckhardt: Indeed. It blasted itself to different salts than those common to humans, but all salt. Yet this was still not the most horrible thing I saw.
The Interviewer: How so?
Dr. Eckhardt: You hailed me as a heroine. All the men of Randhu 5 agree. Most of the women were angry with me.
The Interviewer: Why?
Dr. Eckhardt: Randhu 5 drew a great number of couples with certain marital troubles.
The Interviewer: You mean … ?
Dr. Eckhardt: The eight widows were self-satisfied while 42 others were angry I had destroyed their chances to cleanly end their marriages and their straying husbands.
Dr. Eckhardt shivered.
Dr. Eckhardt: That was the horror of Randhu 5 – the fifth face of death, with the fifty.