“Where to?” She spoke in a whisper. Julius Graves would need phenomenal hearing to pick up anything she said over the hissing rain, but she was sure he was staring after them. Wondering, no doubt, where they were going and why, when the weather loomed so foul. She felt a lot better out of his presence.

“We will talk of it in a moment.” J’merlia, receiving the direct benefit of Atvar H’sial’s nervous pheromones, was hopping up and down as though the sodden apron of the aircar facility were blistering hot. The Lo’tfian’s voice quivered with urgency. “Inside the car, Darya Lang. Inside!”

They were both actually reaching out to lift her in!

She pushed the paws away. “Do you want Graves to think something illegal is going on?” she hissed at Atvar H’sial. “Calm down!”

Her reaction even made her feel a little superior. The Cecropians had such a reputation for clear, rational thought. Many — including every Cecropian — said that they were far superior to humans in intellectual powers and performance. And yet here was Atvar H’sial, as jittery as if they were planning a major crime.

The two aliens crowded into the car after her, pushing her forward.

“You do not understand, Darya Lang.” While Atvar H’sial closed the door, J’merlia was urging her toward the pilot’s seat. “This is your first encounter with a member of a major clade council. They cannot be trusted. They are supposed to confine themselves to ethical matters, but they do not! They have no shame. They feel it their right to dabble in everything, no matter how little it concerns them. We could not have discussions with Julius Graves present! He would surely have sensed and sniffed out and interfered with and ruined everything we have planned. We have to get away from him. Quickly.”

Even as J’merlia spoke, Atvar H’sial was waving frantically for Darya to take off — into storm clouds that had piled up ominously over half the sky. Darya pointed, then realized that the Cecropian’s echolocation would “see” nothing at such a distance. Even with those incredible ears, Atval H’sial’s world must be confined to a sphere no more than a hundred meters across.

“There’s bad weather — that way, to the east.”

“Then fly west,” J’merlia said. “Or north, or south. But fly.” The Lo’tfian was crouched on the floor of the aircar, while Atvar H’sial leaned with her head against the side window, her blind face staring off at nothing.

Darya took the car up in a steep climbing turn, fleeing for the lighter clouds far to their left. If once she could get above them, the car could cruise for many hours.

How many? She was not keen to find out. It would be better to keep on ascending, clear the storm completely, and seek a quiet place where she could set them down near the edge of the Sling.

Two hours later she had to abandon that idea. The rough air went on endlessly, and there was no drop in the force of the winds. They had flown to the edge of the Sling and circled far beyond it, seeking another landing spot, and found nothing. Worse than that, the dark mass of major thunderstorms was pursuing them. A solid wall of gray stretched across three quarters of the horizon. Car radio weather reported a “Level Five” storm but did not bother to define it. Mandel had set, and they flew only by the angry light of Amaranth.

She turned to Atvar H’sial. “We can’t stay up here forever, and I don’t want to leave things to the last minute. I’m going to take us higher, right over the top of the storm. Then we’ll stay above it and head back the way we came. The best place to land is the one we started from.”

Atvar H’sial nodded complacently as the message was relayed to her by J’merlia. The storm held no fears for the Cecropian — perhaps because she could not see the black and racing clouds that showed its strength. Her worries were still with Julius Graves.

As they flew Atvar H’sial laid out through J’merlia her complete plan. They would learn the official word on the proposed trips to Quake as soon as Captain Rebka came back. If permission were denied, they would then proceed at once to Quakeside, in an aircar whose rental was already paid. It sat waiting for them, on the small takeoff field of another Sling not far from Starside Port. To reach it, they would rent a local car, one whose travel range was so limited that Rebka and Perry would never dream that they intended to go so far.

Atvar H’sial, with J’merlia as interpreter, could make all those arrangements without difficulty. What she could not do, the one task for which Darya Lang was absolutely essential, was to requisition a capsule on the Umbilical.

She stated her reasons, as Darya listened with half an ear and fought the storm. No Cecropian had ever before visited Opral. The appearance of one on Quakeside, trying to board an Umbilical capsule, would produce immediate questions. Permission would not be given without checking entry permits, and that would lead back to Rebka and Perry.

“But you,” J’merlia said, “you will be accepted at once. We have the correct documents already prepared for you.” The pleated surface of Atvar H’sial’s proboscis tightened a fraction. She was leaning over Darya, forelimbs together in a position that looked like earnest prayer. “You are a human… and you are a female.”

As if that helped. Darya sighed. Full interspecies communication might be impossible. She had told them three times, but the Cecropian could not seem to accept the concept that in humans, the females were not the unquestioned and dominant ruling gender.

Darya set out to gain altitude. This storm was something. They needed to be above and beyond those thundercaps before they started any descent, and despite the stability and strength of the aircar she did not relish the job ahead of her.

“And we know the correct control sequences to employ in ascending the Umbilical,” J’merlia went on. “Once you have cleared us for access to the capsule, nothing will stand between us and the surface of Quake.”

Those words were intended to encourage Darya and soothe any worries. Curiously, they had the opposite effect. She began to wonder. The Cecropian had arrived on Opal after her — and yet she had false documents, already prepared? And she knew all about Umbilical control sequences. Who had given those to her?

“Tell Atvar H’sial that I’ll have to think about all this before I can make a final decision.”

Think, and learn a lot more for herself, before she committed to any joint trip to Quake with Atvar H’sial. The alien seemed to know just about everything on Dobelle.

Except, possibly, about the dangers of Opal’s storms.

They were descending, and the turbulence was frightening. Darya heard and felt giant wind forces on the car. She prayed that its automatic stabilization and approach system could fly better than she could. She was no superpilot.

Atvar H’sial and J’merlia were quite unperturbed. Maybe beings who were descended, however remotely, from flying ancestors had a more sanguine view of air travel.

Darya would never acquire that, for sure. Her guts were knotting. They were through the clouds and dropping in a rainstorm more violent than any she had ever known on Sentinel Gate. With visibility less than a hundred meters and no landmarks, she had to rely on the beacons of Starside’s automatic landing system.

If it worked at all, in such a downpour.

The view through the forward window was useless, nothing but driving rain. They had been descending for a long time — too long. She steadied herself on the console and peered at the instrument panel. Altitude, three hundred meters. Beacon slant range, two kilometers. They must be just seconds away from landing. But where was the field?

Darya looked up from the panel and saw the approach lights for a couple of seconds. They were right in place, dead ahead. She reduced power, drifting them down along the glowing line. The wheels touched briefly. Then a rolling crosswind grabbed the car, lifted it, and carried them up again and off to the side.