Several Minervans kept an eye, or two, or three, on Frank Marquard as he got ready to descend. The lead male of the group was the one called Enoph. “Why are you going down?” he asked for the third time as Marquard checked and rechecked the lashing of his line around the big boulder that would secure it. “Tell me again, in words I can understand.”

“I try,” the geologist said in halting Omalo. He knew he could not have explained even if he spoke the language fluently. The Minervans had not developed the concepts they needed to grasp what he was up to.

“You know I walk on path down this far, more than halfway down J6tm” He caught himself; the human name for the canyon meant nothing to the locals. “Down Ervis Gorge.”

“Not just on the path,” Enoph said with the sinuous wriggle of his arms that Marquard mentally translated as a shudder. “Away from it, too. How do you dare go where you might fall? Especially since you have only two arms and two legs to hold on with.”

“How I go? Carefully.” Marquard sighed when Enoph only opened and closed a couple of his hands in agreement. So much for the old joke. But see how I go. When not on path, always have rope-how you say? tied to big rock. If fall, not fall far.”

“Yes, I grasp that,” Enoph said-a natural image for a six-armed folk to use. “You humans are clever with ropes. I suppose you have to be. But why do you do what you do?”

“To learn from rocks,” Marquard said. That was as close as he had come to rendering geology into Minervan.

“A rock is a rock.” Enoph had said that before. Now, though, he paused to think it over. “Maybe not,” he amended. “Some rocks are harder than others, some better to chip at than others. Do you want to learn which ones are best for tools? I could show you that.”

“No, not for tools. Want to see how rocks change in time.

New rocks near top of Ervis Gorge, rocks older down low.”

Enoph wiggled his eyestalks, which meant he was laughing at Frank. I do better as a comedian when I’m not trying, Marquard thought. “All rocks are as old as the world. How could one be older than another?” Enoph asked.

Marquard shook his head; like other Minervans who had spent a good deal of time with humans, Enoph understood the gesture. “Think of two fossils I find in rocks,” the geologist said.

The key word was in English. Again, though, Enoph followed; the locals had not really started wondering about long ago life preserved in rocks, but Marquard had shown them the couple of specimens he had discovered and had found giving them a new word easier than the elaborate circumlocution he would have needed to say the same thing in Minervan.

“I remember,” Enoph said. “One looked just like the foot of a nosver turned to stone. How can a nosver turn to stone?”

That, Marquard thought, needed a longer and more complicated explanation than he could give. Fortunately, it also was not quite relevant. “Where that rock like nosver from?”

“Not far from the top of the gorge, as I recall,” Enoph answered. “What of it?”

“Now think on other fossil.”

“That weird creature?” Enoph made the shuddery gesture again. “It looked like an eloc, or rather a piece of an eloc, but hardly bigger than a runnerpest. Even newbudded eloca are three times that size.”

“No animal like that now, yes?” Marquard asked. Enoph repeated his hand closing gesture. The geologist went on. “Then that rock old, old, old, yes? No animal like that left now, yes? And that rock from where?”

Enoph pointed an eyestalk at a spot halfway down the side of the canyon. He suddenly turned four of his other eyes toward Marquard. The geologist smiled; no Minervan had ever shown him that much respect before. He also realized Enoph was no fool-he had not had to point out all the implications to the male. With data presented the right way, Enoph was plenty smart enough to work out implications for himself.

“You humans have the oddest notions,” he said. “I see this one is true, but who would have thought rocks could have ages? How does it help you to know this?”

The Minervan, Marquard thought unfairly, sounded like a congressman about to vote against a research appropriation. “The more you know, the more you can find out,” the geologist answered. “If you know nothing, how find out anything? Know one thing: this big rock”-he pointed to the boulder to which he had lashed himself-“come down from up there.” He pointed to a level not far from the one the older fossil had come from.

Minervans did not jump when they were surprised. If they had, Enoph would have. “How can you know that? I helped move it-and a nasty job it was-to secure the bridge to the Skarmer side of the gorge.”

Getting the idea of “bridge” across took a good deal of gesturing and guessing, not least because there was no bridge for Enoph to point at. When Frank Marquard finally thought he understood, he asked the Minervan, “Where bridge now? Not see.”

That got a response from several of the males who had come down, and not a polite one. They turned all their eyestalks away from the western side of the canyon and extended sharp fingerclaws as far as they would go. They also turned the bright yellow that Marquard had learned to be the color of anger.

“The stupid Skarmer wanted to cross to this side of Ervis Gorge and take our land and our mates from us,” Enoph said. “Seeing them try with the rope bridge up would have been plenty funny. How they propose to cross the gorge without it I cannot say.”

“Anyone with the wit even of a mate would see it can’t be done,” another male said. There was loud agreement from his companions.

Marquard looked toward the western horizon, which was, in essence, the distanceblurred western wall of Jotun Canyon. He had not thought his Minervan vocabulary would need to include terms like “invasion.” He looked again. Like Enoph, he had no idea how the Skarmer would get across the canyon if the people on this side did not feel like letting them. “They say they do this?” he asked at last.

“The Skarmer say all manner of foolish things,” Enoph said scornfully. “I think that comes down to them from the first Skarmer bud. What they can do is something else again.”

“I hope you right,” Marquard said. All the same, he remembered, and rather wished he hadn’t, something he had read or heard so long before that he had forgotten just where: “Son, if a man comes up to you in a bar and wants to bet he can make the jack of spades leap out of the deck and spit apple cider in your ear, never bet with that man because, son, if you do, sure as hell you’ll end up with an earful of cider.”

He snorted, imagining the fun he would have translating that into Minervan. His breath steamed out. What he did say was, “You watch, ah, Skarmer side of gorge to know Skarmer not come?”

“Aye, we watch,” Enoph said. “A waste of time, but we watch-the domain master would have it so. Like you when you check your rope so carefully, he takes few chances.”

“Thank you,” Marquard said; being compared to Reatur had to be a compliment. The geologist gave the line another yank, though now he was convinced it would hold-if that boulder had supported a rope long enough to stretch across Jotun Canyon, his relatively tiny weight would not send it tumbling into the abyss.

He made the check just the same. It was, after all, his neck.

Moving slowly and cautiously, he began to descend. The going was still a long way from extreme; he did not need to think to pick hand and footholds. He thought about the Skarmer in stead. Jotun Canyon struck him as a handy sort of thing to have between oneself and unfriendly neighbors…

“At least,” he muttered, “till they figure out how to shoot across it.” He reminded himself to tell Irv about what Enoph had said-and Emmett Bragg, too, come to think of it. Assessing threats was part of Bragg’s job.