“Me say it? Who am I? According to the Alliance Council, I’m a nobody, from a nowhere little region called the Phemus Circle, not big or important enough to have clout with either the human or the interspecies Council. They took less notice of me than they did of E.C. Tally. I began to describe the Zardalu’s physical strength, and their phenomenal breeding rate. Do you know what they said? They explained to me that the Zardalu are long-extinct, because if that were not the case, then certainly their presence would have been reported somewhere, in the Fourth Alliance, or the Cecropian Federation, or the Zardalu Communion. Then they mentioned that the Fourth Alliance has evolved techniques unknown in the Phemus Circle ‘for dealing with mental disorders,’ and if I behaved myself they might be able to arrange for some kind of treatment. That’s when Graves lost his temper.”

“I can’t believe it. He never loses his temper — he doesn’t know how to.”

“He does now. Julian Graves is different from Julius or Steven. He told the Council that they are a bunch of irresponsible apes — Senior Councilor Knudsen does look just like a gorilla, I noticed that myself — who are too closed-minded to recognize a danger to the spiral arm when it’s staring them in the face. And then he quit.”

“He left the Chamber?”

“No. He resigned from the Council — something no one has ever done before. He told them that the next time they saw him, he would make them all eat their words. And then he left the Chamber, and took E.C. Tally with him.”

“Where did he go?”

“He hasn’t gone anywhere — yet. But he’s going to, as soon as he can get his hands on a ship and recruit the crew he needs. Meanwhile, he’s going to tell anyone who will listen about the Zardalu, and about how dangerous they are. And then he’s going to look for the Zardalu. He and E.C. Tally feel sure that if the Zardalu came back anywhere in the spiral arm, they will have tried to return to their cladeworld, Genizee.”

“But no one has any idea where Genizee is. The location was lost in the Great Rising.”

“So we’re going to have to look for it.”

“We? You mean that you’ll be going with Graves and E.C. Tally?”

“Yes.” Rebka sat upright. “I’m going. In fact, I’ll have to leave in just a few hours. I want to make the Council eat their words as much as Graves does. But more than that, I don’t want the Zardalu to breed themselves back to power. I don’t frighten easily, but they scare me. If they’re anywhere in the spiral arm, I want to find them.”

Darya stood up abruptly and moved across to the open window. “So you’re leaving.” It was a warm, breezy night, and the sound of rustling palm leaves blurred the hurt in her words. “You travel four days and nine light-years to get here, you’ve been with me only a couple of hours, and already you want to say good-bye.”

“If that’s all I can say.” Hans Rebka had risen quietly to his feet and moved silently across the thick pile of the carpet. “And if that’s all you can say, too.” He put his arms around Darya’s waist. “But that’s not my first choice. I’m not just visiting, love. I’m recruiting. Julian Graves and I are going a long way; no one knows how far, and no one knows if we’ll make it back. Can you come with us? Will you come with us?”

Darya glanced across to her terminal, where the remaining entries for the fifth edition were awaiting their final proofreading; and at her diary on the desk, with its heading Important Events — seminars and colloquia, publication due dates and the arrival of visiting academics, birthdays and vacations and picnics and galas and dinner parties. She went across to her desk, switched off the terminal, and closed her diary.

“When do we leave?”

The waiting rooms of Miranda Spaceport were Downside, in the ninth passenger ring twenty-six miles from the foot of the Stalk. Cleanup and maintenance was the job of the service robots, but ever since the incident when the Doradan Colubrid ambassador had accidentally been left to sit and patiently starve to death while robots dutifully dusted and mopped and polished around and over her, human supervisors had made occasional routine inspections.

One of those supervisors had been hovering around waiting room 7872, where a silent figure occupied and overflowed a couch in the room’s center. Supervisor Garnoff had three times approached, and three times retreated.

He knew the life-form well enough. It was an adult Cecropian, one of the giant blind arthropods who dominated the Cecropia Federation. This one was strange in two ways. First, she was alone. The Lo’tfian slave-translator who invariably accompanied a Cecropian was absent. And second, the Cecropian had an indefinably dusty and battered look. The six jointed legs were sprawled anyhow around the carapace, rather than being tucked neatly beneath in the conventional rest position. The end of the thin proboscis, instead of being folded into a pouch on the bottom of the pleated chin, was drooping out and down onto the dark-red segmented chest.

The big question was, was she alive and well? The Cecropian had not moved since Garnoff first came on duty five hours earlier. He came to stand in front of her. The white, eyeless head did not move.

“Are you all right?”

He did not expect a spoken answer, although the Cecropian, if she was alive, undoubtedly heard him with the yellow open horns set in the middle of her head. Since all Cecropians “saw” by echolocation, sending high-frequency sonic pulses from the pleated resonator on the chin, she had sensitive hearing all through and far beyond the human frequency range.

On the other hand, she could not speak to him in any language that he would understand. With hearing usurped for vision, Cecropians “spoke” to each other chemically, with a full and rich language, through the emission and receipt of pheromones. The pair of fernlike antennas on top of the great blind head could detect and identify single molecules of the many thousands of different airborne odors generated by the apocrine ducts on the Cecropian’s thorax.

But if she was alive, she must know that he was talking to her; and she should at least register his presence.

There was no reaction. The yellow horns did not turn in his direction; the long antennas remained furled.

“I said, are you all right?” He spoke more loudly. “Is there anything you need? Can you hear me?”

“She sure can,” said a human voice behind him. “And she thinks you’re a pain in the ass. So bug off and leave her alone.”

Garnoff turned. Standing right in front of him was a short, swarthy man in a ragged shirt and dirty trousers. He needed a shave, and his eyes were tired and bloodshot. But there was plenty of energy in his stance.

“And who the devil might you be?” It was not the supervisor’s approved form of address to Mirandan visitors, but the newcomer’s strut encouraged it.

“My name’s Louis Nenda. I’m a Karelian, though I don’t see how that’s any of your damn business.”

“I’m a supervisor here. My business is making sure everything’s going all right in the waiting rooms. And she” — Garnoff pointed — “don’t look too hot to me.”

“She’s not. She’s tired. I’m tired. We’ve come a long way. So leave us alone.”

“Oh? Since when did you learn to read Cecropian thoughts? You don’t know how she feels. Seems to me she might be in trouble.”

The squat stranger began to stretch to his full height, then changed his mind and sat down, squeezing onto the couch next to the Cecropian. “What the hell. I got too much to do to hassle on this. Atvar H’sial’s my partner. I understand her, she understands me. Here, take a look at this place from ten feet up.”

He sat silent for a second, frowning at nothing. Suddenly the Cecropian at his side moved. Two of the jointed forearms reached out to grip Garnoff by the waist. Before the supervisor could do more than shout, he was lifted into the air, high above the Cecropian’s great white head, and held there wriggling.