Fralk sounded very sure of himself, Reatur thought. He thought the Skarmer domains could do what he said they could do. Reatur was convinced of that. Fralk was no clanfather, though; he lacked the years to have learned the difference between what one wishes, even what one is sure of, and what turns out.

“Your choice is no choice,” Reatur said. “Either way, my line fails. I will defend it, as long as I may.”

“Thank you, clanfather,” Ternat said quietly. Then his voice turned savage. “Shall I now deal with this-this clankiller as he deserves?” He moved to put himself between Fralk and the one exit.

The Skarmer envoy went blue again. “The penalty I told you of will fall on you if I come to harm here,” he gabbled.

“From what you say, it will fall anyhow,” Ternat said. “So how are we worse off for punishing your filthy words?”

“Let him go, eldest,” Reatur said. “Shall we make ourselves into hunting undit, as the Skarmer seem to be?” He turned all his eyestalks away from Fralk, denying that the young male deserved to exist. Still speaking to Ternat, the domain master went on. “If ever he shows himself on our side of the gorge again, it will be the worse for him. Now take him out and send him on his way.”

“As you say, clanfather.” That was as close to criticism as Ternat would let himself come. He escorted Fralk out of the little chamber; Reatur still kept his eyes averted from the Skarmer male. Ternat was a good eldest, the domain master thought. Unlike’ so many, he did not stand around waiting for his father to die or, as also happened sometimes, try to speed the process along. A good eldest, Reatur thought again.

The domain master walked slowly back into the great hall.

Ternat soon returned. Some of his hands still had claws out. Reatur guessed that he had not been gentle in escorting Fralk away. He did not blame him for that.

“What now, clanfather?” Ternat asked.

“I don’t know.” The admission made Reatur unhappy. “None of my eyes sees any way the Skarmer could make Fralk’s boasts good. Is it the same with you?”

“Yes. But he would not have been here boasting if they did not have something. War across a Great Gorge…” Ternat’s eyestalks wiggled in disgust.

Reatur felt the same way. Wars against neighboring domains were rarely pushed to extremes. In the end, after all, everyone hereabouts sprang from the first Omalo bud. But the Skarmer would care nothing for that, would be aiming to plant their own buds on the local mates-Fralk, curse him, had come right out and said as much.

“We will have to set a watch on the gorge,” Ternat said.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, eldest.” Lost in gloomy musings, Reatur had almost missed Ternat’s words. The domain master’s wits started moving again. “See to that at once. And I suppose we will have to send word to the rest of the Omalo domains, warning them of what may be happening. And if nothing does, what a laughingstock I’ll be.”

He paused. “I wonder if that isn’t the purpose of this whole affair, to split me off from the rest of the domains and leave me alone vulnerable to the Skarmer.” He hissed. “I dare not take the chance, do I?”

“Clanfather, the answer must come from you.”

Reatur knew his eldest was right. So long as Ternat was in his power, the younger male had, and could have, no responsibility of his own. The domain master’s six arms had to bear that burden alone. “Send the messengers,” he decided. “Better to be ready for a danger that does not come than off our guard to one that does. You tend to it, in my name.”

“In your name, clanfather,” Ternat agreed proudly. He hurried off.

Reatur started to follow, then changed his mind. Instead, he walked down the corridor to the mates’ chambers. As they always did, they cried out with joy when he opened the door; they never failed to be delighted to see him. “Reatur!” they shouted. “Hello, Reatur!… Look what we’re doing!”

“Hello, Lamra, Morna, Peri, Numar,” he said, patting each one of them in turn. He did not stop until he had named and caressed them all; he made a point of remembering their names. Unlike some clanfathers, he treated mates as people, as much as he could. They could not help it that the sardonic saying “as likely as an old mate” meant something that would never happen. They had a directness of their own, a beautiful openness males outgrew too soon.

“Look, Reatur, look what I did!” Numar proudly showed him some scribbles she had made with a soft, crumbly red stone on a piece of cured hide.

“That’s very good,” he said gravely.

“It looks just like Morna,” Numar said.

“It certainly does,” he agreed with a certain amount of relief:

now he would not have to ask what the marks were supposed to be. Numar might have told him, or she might have had a tantrum. He did not feel like coping with a tantrum at the moment. He wanted the mates to be their usual happy selves, to salve his anger and worry after the encounter with Fralk.

The mates were exactly as he wished them to be, and even that did not help. “See how big Biyal’s buds are getting, Reatur,” Lamra exclaimed.

Biyal stepped up to show the domain master the six bulges that ringed her body, one not far above each foot. “I wonder which is the male,” she said.

“So do I,” Reatur said gently.

“I want to have buds,” Lamra said.

“I know you do, Lamra.” In spite of himself, Reatur felt worse instead of better. He knew that Biyal’s buds would break free of her when they were ripe, and that she would die when that happened. She knew it, too, and so did Lamra, but it meant nothing to them. They were too young. That was the one consolation of the life of a mate. Now, to Reatur, it did not seem enough.

“I want to have buds,” Lamra repeated. “Reatur, I want to have buds right now.”

“I know, Lamra.” The domain master let the air hiss out through his breathing pores. “Come here.” She squealed with glee and came. They pressed together. The other mates cheered them on. In a part of his mind, the cheering made Reatur sadder, but the exquisite sensations running through his body pushed the sadness far away.

“Roger, Houston, we are set for coded transmission, as ordered,” Emmett Bragg said. He clicked off the transmitter and looked around the Athena’s cabin. “First codes they’ve sent us since we got here,” he remarked. He sounded casual, but even without weightlessness the words would have hung in the air.

Irv Levitt asked the obvious question. “What are they telling us that they don’t want the Russians to hear about?”

“Secrets.” His wife Sarah spoke the word as if it were obscene. She pointed to Minerva rolling by on the monitor. “That’s the enemy, not the people on Tsiolkovsky. Compared to whatever’s down there, the Russians are our next of kin.”

She sounded absolutely certain. She usually did, her husband thought. A lot of MDs he knew were like that-they needed arrogant confidence to deal with their patients’ problems, and it spilled over into everything else they did.

Bragg only shrugged. “Secret is what they ordered, Sarah. Secret is what they’ll get.” He glanced over at Sarah Levitt; in his quieter way, he was at least as stubborn as she was. His voice, though, stayed mild. “I expect that’s why they handed the mission commander’s chair to somebody like me. I’ve been a soldier a long time-I can take orders, not just give ‘em.”

Irv saw a dark flush rise to Sarah’s cheeks, saw her purse her lips for an angry retort. Before she could get it out, Louise Bragg spoke. “Suppose we see what they sent us before we get ourselves all in an uproar.”

“Sensible,” her husband said. Sarah nodded a moment later, her short, curly brown hair fanning out around her face at the motion.

“Good,” Louise said. She was a large, calm, blond woman, about fifteen years younger than Emmett.

Irv remembered that she was Bragg’s second wife; they had not been married long when the selection process for Athena began. Would Emmett Bragg have dumped his ex and gone after an engineer to help himself get picked? Absolutely, Irv thought. That didn’t mean they didn’t care for each other. Had they not, the ship was too cramped to hide it.