Gosthodar Qishkur, Governor of the Okaldei, lay on his AG couch with his torso upright. His eyes were obscured by their nictitating membranes, and his upper torso rocked back and forth like a dodderer's. Not a reassuring sight, thought General Gransatt.

"If it was mine to decide?" Gransatt asked. He was tempted to answer falsely, for it seemed to him the gosthodar would order the opposite of whatever he recommended. But he would not lie; not so blatantly.

"Lordship," he said, "I would order all scouts and all fighter craft to muster here. Then search the plateau between the Broken Hills and Long Inlet on the west, and the Green River on the east. Search it so that nothing living avoids detection. All attack squadrons to be on two-hour stepped alert, ready to destroy any aliens sighted. Until we find the alien and wipe him out, or are very very sure he does not exist."

The gosthodar's rocking increased, the sight transfixing his general. After a long moment the gosthodar spoke, his voice reflecting his age. "I thought we did all that a cycle ago," he said. "Was that not you in charge?"

Gransatt's hide heated; it required effort to avoid bristling. "That was not comparable. Then we needed to search the entire planet. A single region can be searched far more thoroughly."

The gosthodar ignored the general's omission of the honorific. "Mmmm. But that first scouring-did it not begin with an intensive search first of this very region, then that of Grasslands and Basin? And despite all that, was an alien not found reconnoitering this very settlement some weeks later?" Qishkur had stopped rocking, and his eyes had cleared. "You say you would make very very sure he is wiped out. That he ceases to exist. But what does such certainty mean? You were very sure before, and I accepted that. Until suddenly, there came the alien who had hidden under the hill. Then he died, and you were very very sure. But I was no longer so sure anymore. Eh?"

The general's hide felt hot as fire. He did not reply.

"And now this. How can you have so much certainty about what you will accomplish this time, and so little in what you accomplished before?" Briefly his head swayed from side to side in rejection. "I, on the other hand, believe you did well before, you and your fliers. Not perfectly it seems, but well. This was an alien outpost world, nothing more. There were no towers. No ghats. Not even towns. There were never more than a few sophonts here, and your fighters killed most of them. The few survivors, those who did not succeed in fleeing the planet, scattered to different regions, where they have hidden. In caverns no doubt. It seems they have an affinity for caverns.

"But they cannot hide forever. They must surface, walk beneath the sky, bath in the streams"-his words slowed for emphasis-"and grow food. And when they do, our surveillance buoys will find them. The aliens know this. They are not ignorant primitives. This appearance today-if it is real; if the report is not an aberration-this appearance is an act of desperation, perhaps to collect supplies from some old cache."

The gosthodar repeated himself, as if savoring the aptness of the phrase. "An act of desperation." He paused thoughtfully. "There may be caverns behind the cliffs of the High Falls Gorge, as there were behind the lesser. You must seek them, and destroy any you find."

He straightened, his old voice sounding fuller, less aged. "You will not gather the squadrons from Grasslands and Basin. You will do your searching with what you have here. If your fears reflect fact, and the aliens retain some little potency, to gather the other squadrons here would expose Grasslands and Basin to destructive raids."

The old head swayed again, side to side, side to side, and for a moment the eyes closed entirely. "Go," the old voice said, suddenly raspy again, "and heed what I have said."

The general backed away, arms spread, forelegs bent, belly low, trunk and head lowered in deference. "As you direct, your lordship, that shall I do. And as you enjoin, your lordship, that shall I not do."

The gosthodar was rocking again.

Tech 2 Kroliss had marked his approximate crossing point on Lieutenant Zalkosh's map. Zalkosh, piloting the armed scout, reached High Falls Gorge about two linear miles north of the marked point, at 5,000 feet local reference. He saw no alien craft below, nor did Kroliss, who sat beside him.

If there was an alien craft down there, they would probably have seen it. Nonetheless, Zalkosh began descending on a gravitic vector. The gorge meandered sufficiently that one just might be concealed down there by a rock wall. And at any rate, he wanted to examine the bottom.

Tech 2 Kroliss could imagine serious personal problems if they found no alien craft. It would strongly suggest there'd been one, and that it had escaped. The obvious alternative conclusion would be that he'd hallucinated. So far, the lieutenant hadn't seemed to judge.

Zalkosh paused some twenty feet from the bottom, then started southward along the curving gorge. Both he and Kroliss watched intently for any sign that an alien craft had been there. It was the dry season, and the stream level was low, exposing the larger rocks that had fallen from the walls. If an enemy ship had made a forced landing, it should either still be there, or have left signs of having been there.

It occurred to Kroliss that the alien ship might have been hovering just above the bottom when he'd seen it, and left no trace. Left because he, Kroliss, had flown over. That's what a Board of Investigation would think, and a court-martial.

Zalkosh proceeded for more than a linear mile past the point where Kroliss reported crossing. Then he switched on his transmitter, accessing Security directly.

"Security, this is Lieutenant Zalkosh, reporting on the alien sighting. I have examined more than three linear miles of gorge bottom, centered on Tech 2 Kroliss's reported crossing point, and have seen no sign of an alien craft. I suggest other scouts be sent to search this entire quadrangle, and that the surveillance buoys be instructed to intensify surveillance of this region. Unless otherwise instructed, I will continue south down the gorge to the ocean, or until I find an alien craft.

"Zalkosh out."

Kroliss imagined himself assigned to the death platoon, making amends to the tribe.

Hours had passed when one of the marine lookouts trotted up to the Mei-Li, to report that a small alien craft had snooped the gorge from the north, just above the bottom, and passed out of sight southward. A scout, Menges thought. He felt extremely nervous. Other Wyzhnyny might be flying a search pattern above the plateau, sensors scanning.

He'd heard that the Wyzhnyny didn't take prisoners, and wondered what might happen to him if they did. He decided he'd prefer a pounding from energy bolts. A quick death. Meanwhile he wondered how the hornet hunters were doing. He wasn't about to break radio silence to ask.

While the entomologists and Olavsdottir hunted for hornets' nests, and Captain Stoorvol's men napped, Stoorvol had scanned the known Wyzhnyny radio frequencies. Hearing a lot of traffic but learning nothing, except what Wyzhnyny sounded like on the radio. Finally, after five hours, Olavsdottir collected her sixth colony of hornets. Stoorvol had seen no bogies, and had no idea what the situation was at the big gorge. When everyone and everything was loaded and secured, he took off, the second scooter close behind. He'd wait till he was nearer before radioing Menges and getting the new coordinates. Assuming the Mei-Li was still intact, and Menges alive and free.