Pheylan put his old jumpsuit back on, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. It was clear now that the three domes out there were guardhouses, not the weapons clusters he'd first thought. Their arrangement, furthermore, made it equally clear that what they were guarding was the white pyramid.

The question was, why?

It was too small to be a house, at least for anyone the size of a Zhirrzh. Could it be a tomb? But again, the proportions were wrong for a Zhirrzh, and there was no reason why a tomb should be guarded that way in the first place. A monument? Again, he couldn't think of any reason why a monument would need a three-man guard on it.

Except that they were aliens. There were no guarantees that they would think or behave anything at all like humans. No guarantees that Pheylan could even hope to understand their reasons and motivations.

He shook the thought away. No. They were vicious, cold-blooded killers; but they'd brought him here, given him food and clothing, and so far seemed to be doing all they could to keep him alive. Whatever alien quirks their psychology and culture might have, there was enough overlap here for him to figure out what was going on.

Something flickered at the edge of his vision. Pheylan turned, but as always he was too slow to see anything. Outside the glass wall of the cell one of the Zhirrzh techs, attracted by his movement, looked over at him. Pheylan looked back, and the alien turned back to his work.

So what was the pyramid? If not a monument, could it be something technical? A transceiver, maybe, for that instantaneous communications system of theirs? Or something even more esoteric?—a terminal, say, for some kind of broadcast power?

But, then, why wasn't it taller? Or inside a building or protective shell where it would be out of the elements? The Commonwealth's experiments with broadcast power, he knew, had been notoriously finicky with regard to atmospheric factors. Unless the pyramid shape was its protective shell.

Pheylan shook his head. On the face of it, he had to admit, this was a pretty ridiculous waste of mental energy. The pyramid could be any of a thousand different things, from a planetary communications beacon to a traffic-control signal for the landing area. It could be the Zhirrzh equivalent of a torus music system, a wind-powered computer, a piece of government-mandated artwork—

Or a weapon.

Pheylan looked out at the Zhirrzh working at their consoles, his mouth suddenly dry. An unknown, guarded device in the middle of a Zhirrzh base. A base with no obvious ground-to-space or ground-to-air weapons clusters.

He went over to his bed and lay down on his side, folding his arms across his chest. There had been innumerable late-night bull sessions back at the Peacekeeper academy centering on the possible science and technology of the mysterious CIRCE weapon. One of the more intriguing ideas Pheylan had heard had been that it was a field-effect gadget of some sort, requiring two to five electromagnetic poles and an equal number of resonant-locked tachyon generators. The resultant radiation cascade was theorized to occur at certain specific intersection points between the field contours, supposedly unaffected by any matter elsewhere in the area.

Such as the fighter squadrons at Celadon. Or the atmosphere of a planet.

Did the Zhirrzh have a version of CIRCE? Was that white pyramid one of its poles?

All right, Cavanagh, settle down. First question to ask was whether this place was a forward military base or a colony or a major Zhirrzh world. Presumably they wouldn't bother setting up a CIRCE on just any old world they happened to land on. Second question was whether the pyramid out there was unique or whether it had lots of brothers nearby. Third question was whether the pyramid was fixed in place or had mechanisms for transport or aiming.

Good questions, all of them. Problem was, he couldn't think of any way to get any answers.

Outside the glass wall two of the Zhirrzh had gotten together and were consulting on something. Pheylan watched them, wishing that Aric were here. He, Pheylan, had always been the physical one of the family; Aric, in contrast, had been much better at manipulating words. More than once Pheylan had watched in secret awe as Aric had finessed information out of their father that he'd flat-out said he wasn't going to tell them.

Pheylan had admired that ability. Admired and envied it both, though he'd been careful to hide that from his brother. In their youth Aric would simply have taken such an admission and found a place for it in his arsenal of verbal abuse, a sport he already got far too much pleasure out of. And after they'd both become adults, the subject had somehow never come up.

Pheylan wished now that he'd said something. Now that it was very likely too late.

He swore under his breath. Thoughts like that weren't going to do him any good here. So he wasn't a wizard with words? Fine. He'd get out of here without them. He had a brain, eyes, and muscles, and it was time he started using them.

And the first step was to learn every square centimeter of this place. Every square centimeter, and every move his captors out there made.

"How much farther?" he called to Quinn ahead of him.

"I don't know," the other called back over his shoulder. A few heads turned at the sound of English words, and Aric noted with some uneasiness that not all of the expressions on those faces were friendly. "The numbering system here isn't always as clear as it could be."

There was a blood-chilling shriek from above him. Reflexively, Aric ducked, glancing up just as a troop of monkey-sized grooma scampered past on the living vine lattice that covered the entire city a few meters above their heads.

Covered the city, and most of the rest of the island. "What do you think of the mesh?" Aric asked, moving up close behind Quinn where he wouldn't have to shout. "Sentient, or not?"

"Not," Quinn said firmly. "The Parra's a plant. Plants aren't sentient. Period."

"I'm not so sure," Aric said, looking up at the vine mesh uneasily. Had anyone ever established whether or not the thing had auditory senses? He couldn't remember. "It does seem able to sense what goes on around it."

"So do sunflowers, if you want to get technical," Quinn said. "There are a lot of other plants that react on a chemical level if you poke or cut them. No one claims those are sentient."

"Except that the same reaction doesn't occur when the vine is cut naturally by lightning strikes," Aric pointed out. "The chemicals in the outer skin don't change, and the grooma don't go nuts. It's only when someone tries cutting the vine back that it counterattacks that way."

"Could be a chemical reaction to the metal in the cutting tools," Quinn said. "Or a reaction by the grooma themselves to the noise and commotion. The point is that no one's ever come up with even a candidate for a nervous system. Let alone enough of one for sentience."

Overhead, another chattering troop of grooma passed by, their claws digging small air and sunlight punctures through the tough outer surface of the vine as they traveled. The Parra seemed to need those punctures, just as it also needed the mineral-rich body oils the grooma paws left behind. In return, the grooma ate the large red buds that the Parra seemed to grow specifically for their benefit.

For their benefit alone. Any other herbivore that started eating sections of the vine would quickly be met by crazed troops of grooma that would usually drive off the intruder in short order. Whether or not it was chemical changes in the red buds that drove the frenzy was still being hotly debated in high academic circles, as was the whole question of Parra sentience.