Lord Kelsey-Ramos gazed upward at the buttes again. "There's a small weasel-like animal that seems to have a taste for thunderhead flesh," he said. "Often hunts in packs of up to thirty family members. I wonder how clearly a group like that could be seen from up there."

"Thunderhead eyesight is pretty good," I told him, a shiver running up my back. In retrospect it was obvious that the balance of nature on Spall would include predators for the thunderheads to cope with... but the fact that the thunderheads had again deliberately obscured important information set my teeth on edge. "So when the watchmen on each of the buttes see a pack approaching... the others get ready to fight?"

"Kutzko?" Lord Kelsey-Ramos invited. "This is your specialty. What do you think?"

Kutzko looked slowly around the area, eyes measuring. I read his sense, realized the idea was new to him, as well. Lord Kelsey-Ramos had apparently been playing this one very quietly indeed. An indication that he was very worried... "It's a good setup," Kutzko said at last. "Only four approaches, none of them very wide, and with a layered defense in place at each."

"Layered defense?" Lord Kelsey-Ramos frowned.

"Yes, sir." Kutzko pointed. "See, near each gap, how there's a group of five to seven thunderheads positioned slightly upslope? In standard military placement, those would be forward sentries, responsible for stopping any lone weasel or small group who'd managed to slip in past the topside sentry." He waved toward the larger mass of thunderheads. "Then, for larger groups—which the topside sentry would presumably have warned them about—there's a good potential for concentrated firepower from the main community. See how the shorter ones tend to be at the edge, the taller ones at the middle? Again, reminiscent of a standard kneeling/standing arrangement."

I licked my lips. "Many of the shorter ones are drones," I told him. "Extra bodies, not originally sentient."

Kutzko nodded. "So much the better. They can still probably be used to fight from, and are expendable if the weasels get in that close."

"In other words," Lord Kelsey-Ramos said, something dark in his voice, "the thunderheads understand warfare."

Kutzko shrugged. "Not necessarily. Evolution often hammers this sort of strategic ability into a species."

"Except that these are intelligent creatures," Lord Kelsey-Ramos growled. "And this city isn't part of their standard living pattern."

"Yes, what about that?" I asked him. "Out in the wild, they don't have anything like this arrangement to protect them."

"They also don't cluster together in large groups that could as easily attract predators," Lord Kelsey-Ramos pointed out. "Perhaps the thick vegetation that they encourage to grow around them is supposed to discourage attacks."

"I wouldn't think so," Kutzko disagreed. "Especially since having all that stuff in the way would also interfere with their lasers."

"Mmm." Lord Kelsey-Ramos thought for a moment; and again, I could see his sense harden as some new and clearly unpleasant thought occurred to him. "What are you doing tomorrow morning, Gilead?" he asked abruptly.

"As far as I know, nothing special," I told him cautiously. "I don't think Dr. Eisenstadt has a contact session planned."

"Good. I'll pick you up at nine—be ready." He motioned to Kutzko, turned to go... hesitated. "Oh, by the way," he added, sounding almost embarrassed, "I've sent a request to Outbound for the transcripts of your friend Paquin's trial."

"Oh... thank you, sir," I said, surprised and oddly ashamed. With all the focus on the thunderheads and alien fleet, I'd almost forgotten what the original point of all this had been.

"No problem," Lord Kelsey-Ramos grunted. "Just keep in mind that I can't make any promises. Well, I'll see you in the morning. Good-night, and sleep well."

Sleep well. With a hundred ninety-two alien spacecraft streaking toward destruction... "Yes, sir," I sighed. "Good-night."

They arrived precisely at nine the next morning, flying in from commission headquarters in a sleek Pravilo aircar. We left half an hour later by mul/terrain vehicle, the intervening time taken up largely by a quiet yet sharp argument between Lord Kelsey-Ramos and Dr. Eisenstadt. I wasn't close enough to hear any of the words, but from the body language I could see I gathered that Eisenstadt, his curiosity piqued, was asking to come along on this expedition and that Lord Kelsey-Ramos was refusing him. From Eisenstadt's expression it was obvious he thought Lord Kelsey-Ramos was simply trying to cut anyone else out of whatever credit might come out of it, and he was understandably irritated by the thought of an amateur poking around scientific matters and possibly fouling them up in the process.

I could almost have wished it was indeed something that petty. To me, knowing him as I did, it was uncomfortably clear that Lord Kelsey-Ramos was limiting the group to himself, Kutzko, and me because he was expecting trouble and wanted to limit the number of potential casualties.

A noble attitude... but as we drove off into the wilderness, I couldn't help but reflect how much easier it was to applaud such consideration when it was someone else's neck on the line.

—

We drove for about an hour before Lord Kelsey-Ramos finally found what he was looking for.

"There," he pointed, offering me his noculars for a closer look. "Up there on the hillside—that single thunderhead in the middle of that weed patch?"

I nodded. The "weed patch," as he called it, was familiar enough—the sort of thick growth that Eisenstadt's studies had found was encouraged by the thunderheads' periodic root disintegrations. A few small insects were visible circling the vegetation, but other than that I could find no sign of other animal life. Shifting my angle, I gave the entire area a quick sweep. There were other thunderheads scattered around on nearby hills, but as near as I could tell none of them were in direct line of sight with the one Lord Kelsey-Ramos had picked out. "It's as isolated as we're likely to find," I agreed. "Do we get to know yet why that's important?"

He swung the car door open, and I could sense him bracing himself. "Take the noculars and head up," he said over his shoulder, an odd tightness in his voice. "Not too close—maybe by that rock outcrop over there." He pointed. "Some place where you can see everything. And keep your phone on—I don't want us to have to shout back and forth. Kutzko, where did you stow the box?"

"Left side storage," Kutzko told him. "I'll get it."

"No, I'll do it. You take the recorder and get up there with Gilead—find some place more or less opposite from him."

I looked at Kutzko, read the same uneasiness and uncertainty there that I was feeling. "Lord Kelsey-Ramos—"

"Get moving," he cut me off, moving around the back of the car to the storage compartment Kutzko had indicated and popping it open.

I didn't move. "Lord Kelsey-Ramos, there's only a limited amount of help we can give you if we don't know what it is you're trying to do."

He paused, indecision in his sense. Glancing past him, I saw a long box in the open storage compartment, a box made of metal and a heavy, opaque mesh. Lying beside the box was a set of heavy gloves; from the box itself came a faint scratching sound...

I looked back up at Lord Kelsey-Ramos, found his eyes on me. "It's one of the weasels you talked about yesterday, isn't it?" I asked carefully.

"The proper scientific name is laska myesist-something-or-other," he said with forced casualness. "And there are actually four of them in there."

"You want to see how the thunderheads fight," Kutzko said quietly, hand drifting automatically closer to his needler.