They reached the floating food and dug in. The preester was indeed the better tasting of the two, he quickly decided, though the fomprur wasn't all that far behind. Not that it would have mattered how the stuff tasted. The previous sundark's abbreviated meal had caught up with his stomach, and he sloshed into the two runs with a will and an appetite.

Gryntaro and Wirkani were both waiting with varying degrees of patience by the time he'd finally eaten his fill. "About time," Gryntaro grumbled. "I thought you were going to be at it all day."

"What's the hurry?" Manta asked as he scooped up one last mouthful.

"The hurry is that we don't get to go back to civilization until—"

"Which one did you like best?" Wirkani interrupted smoothly. "The preester or the fomprur?"

"Oh, the preester, definitely," Manta said, frowning at her. "You can't go back to civilization until what?"

"Until we finish your tour, of course," she said cheerfully. "I trust you're paying attention to everything we've been showing you?"

"Of course," Manta said.

"Good," Wirkani said. "It's important that you learn everything about our world."

"So can we go?" Gryntaro said. Flipping his tails, he turned to the south and swam off.

"Sure," Manta murmured. Only they hadn't really been showing him anything, he thought with a frown as he and Wirkani headed off in the Protector's wake. They'd been willing to answer his questions, but neither of them had taken any kind of initiative as far as instruction was concerned.

So what had Gryntaro really been about to say?

He had no idea. But it was something Wirkani clearly hadn't wanted said.

He sighed. Something else to worry about. Like he didn't have enough of that already.

Gryntaro was really beating the air up there, starting to pull slowly away from the others. With a grimace, Manta hurried to catch up, keeping an eye out for predators, new foodstuffs, and anything else that might be new and unfamiliar.

And, of course, for Pranlo.

They continued on without serious incident for another six ninedays. Always they headed straight south, veering only occasionally for food or to avoid predators, keeping the prevailing westerly winds steady on their right.

At first Manta had found the restless roar in his right ear to be annoying. After that he'd wondered whether the wind pressure might permanently damage his hearing, leaving him more vulnerable to predators sneaking up from that side. Now, this far into the trip, he'd gotten to where he hardly even noticed it.

They stayed mostly on Level Four, far beneath the Qanskan herds Manta could sometimes hear floating above them in the upper levels. Once in a while they spotted some Protectors and Nurturers, or a pair or group of Counselors. As with food runs, those were occasions where Gryntaro would veer off their southward course, shifting direction to avoid all contact or communication with the other Qanska. Manta never did figure out whether Gryntaro was afraid of delaying his tour with idle chatter, or whether he simply didn't want to deal with the "uncivilized" beings who lived this far off Centerline.

The Brolka became more numerous as they continued south, too. And while their presence lowered the incidence of predator attacks, it didn't eliminate them entirely. At least four Vuuka took a close look at the three travelers along the way, though only one of them was rash enough to actually give it a try. And one day, right at sundark, they were jumped by a small herd of Sivra-sized predators of a type Manta had never seen before. On both occasions the presence of an experienced Protector made the difference between serious trouble and relatively minor nuisance, though in the latter case Manta did end up with two new lumps on his fins and body as souvenirs of the battle.

Again, there was no warning from the humans that either of the attacks were coming. Apparently, the humans had written him off entirely.

Along with the obvious differences in plant and animal life, he also noticed that the sunlight was showing subtle changes as they continued on. Though the light was always diffuse this deep beneath Jupiter's cloud layers, Manta began to notice the angle of the rays shifting northward and their intensity fading as the three of them traveled farther and farther south. He tried to remember whether Jupiter had the kind of rotational angle that would leave one of the poles in continual darkness for part of its solar revolution, but if that aspect had been included in his Earthside training it had slipped his mind completely.

Still, the south pole had to be a hundred million sizes from the equator, a good two dayherds' journey at the steady pace they were making. Surely Gryntaro wasn't planning on taking them that far.

But even as the sunlight diminished, Manta also noticed that, paradoxically, the air around them seemed to be getting warmer. He'd thought he'd noticed that same effect during his northward trip, but at the time had put it down to the presence of Beltrenini and her friends, who tended to crowd closer to him than those Qanska he'd grown up among. Later, after he'd left them and was heading back home to Centerline, he'd assumed his more rapid swimming was simply warming him up.

But neither of those was the case now. Yet it was still getting warmer.

More radiation from the planetary core, perhaps? That was certainly one possibility. He knew from his conversations with McCollum that Qanskan eyes and bodies were highly efficient at utilizing the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum to see with or be warmed by, gathering everything from high-frequency radio waves all the way to hard gamma radiation. He also remembered that Jupiter's rapid rotation gave it a serious equatorial bulge, which meant that as they traveled toward the poles they were at the same time moving gradually inward toward the center of the planet.

But it didn't seem like that should be enough to account for such a noticeable temperature rise. Could there be some other factor involved, then? Something artificial, perhaps, that was giving off either extra radiation or direct heat?

Like maybe a stardrive?

It was a startling thought. To even think that Latranesto and the other Counselors would casually send him off to see their most priceless secret seemed ludicrous.

But at the same time, he could also see it making perfect sense from their point of view. The Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise had presumably been told of the demand the humans had broadcast from their child trap. Even though this particular attack had been repulsed, they understood humans well enough to know that this wouldn't be the end of it. Maybe they had decided that the best course of action would be to quietly turn the device over to the humans for them to study, in the hope that they would keep their word to return it afterward.

And he couldn't forget that their last line of questioning at his trial had centered around whether he was still human. He had denied it, but it had been clear that Latranesto, at least, hadn't been convinced.

He lashed his tails in frustration. It was subtly insulting, actually, given that he'd already told them he wasn't working for the humans anymore. But more importantly, it was a bad way to do business.

At the very least, Latranesto and the others should try to negotiate something for their stardrive instead of simply giving it away. Some kind of guarantee, though how that would work in practice Manta couldn't guess. And of course, giving in to extortion was never a good idea.

More than once he thought about trying to discuss the issue with Gryntaro and Wirkani. But each time he suppressed the urge to broach the subject. Clearly, Latranesto had taken pains to keep all this a secret from him, and they might not take kindly to the announcement that he'd figured it out.