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lock me up on a rock!""I will overlook your derisive language to a superior officer. I do apologize, but my orders were to take thefastest available military tug. At the moment I arrived, that was you. It isn't as though anyone were out to getyou. Cheer up. The war may be over in another fifteen years, and then the location of IF Command won't have tobe a secret anymore. By the way, you should be aware, in case you're one of those who relies on visuals fordocking, that Eros has been blacked out. Its albedo is only slightly brighter than a black hole. You won't see it.""Thanks," said the captain.It was nearly a month into the voyage before he managed to speak civilly to Colonel Graff.The shipboard computer had a limited library -- it was geared primarily to entertainment rather than education.So during the voyage, after breakfast and morning exercises, Ender and Graff would usually talk. AboutCommand School, About Earth. About astronomy and physics and whatever Ender wanted to know.And above all, he wanted to know about the buggers."We don't know much," said Graff. "We've never had a live one in custody. Even when we caught one unarmedand alive, he died the moment it became obvious he was captured. Even the he is uncertain -- the most likelything, in fact, is that most bugger soldiers are females, but with atrophied or vestigial sexual organs. We can'ttell. It's their psychology that would be most useful to you, and we haven't exactly had a chance to interviewthem.""Tell me what you know, and maybe I'll learn something that I need."So Graff told him. The buggers were organisms that enuld conceivably have evolved on Earth, if things hadgone a different way a billion years ago. At the molecular level, there were no surprises. Even the geneticmaterial was the same. It was no accident that they looked insectlike to human beings. Though their internalorgans were now much more complex and specialized than any insects, and they had evolved an internal skeletonand shed most of the exoskeleton, their physical structure still echoed their ancestors, who could easily have beenvery much like Earth's ants. "But don't be fooled by that," said Graff. "It's just as meaningful to say that our第 261 页 共 340 页http://www.en8848.com.cn/ 原 版 英 语 阅 读 网