Huck’s rear-facing eye looked disappointed, and she groused — “Lucky guess” — while making space for the rest of us.

I knew this room. Many’s the previous visit I used to stand at the doorway and stare at the goings-on within. The huge chamber held Uriel’s mystery machine-a gimcrackery of gears, cables, and revolving glass that seemed to fill the vaulted cavern with grinding motion like one of those Victorian factories you read about in books by Dickens. Only this device didn’t make a single blessed thing, as far as any of us could ever tell. Only countless glitters of light as whirling crystal disks spun like hundreds of ghostly little g’Keks, rolling against each other madly, futilely, going noplace the faster they spun.

I glimpsed the human visitor, bent over a trestle table with a precious-looking folio spread open before him, pointing at a diagram, while Uriel rocked in a circle, lifting one leg at a time, shaking her pelted head in disagreement. The smith’s gray-fringed nostril blew exasperation.

“With all due resfect, Sage Furofsky, you night have gone to Gathering instead of coning all this way. I cannot see how this vook is relevant to our frovlen — to our quandary.”

The human wore the black cloak of a lesser sage, the kind who dwell in the sacred halls of Biblos with half a million printed tomes for company, tending wisdom handed down for three hundred years. He was hoonish-handsome, which happens when one of their males gets gray head fleece and lets his facial fur grow long, an effect enhanced by a noble long nose. This worthy jabbed again at the ancient page, so hard I feared he’d hurt the priceless text.

“But I tell you this algorithm is exactly what you need! It can be executed in a tenth the space, with far fewer parts, if you’d just consider—”

I can’t write what followed, because it was in that dialect of Anglic called Engineering, and even my hoonish memory won’t help me write words I can’t understand or spell. The sage must have come to help Uriel in her project. Anyone who knew her could predict Uriel’s resistance.

Beyond those two we saw Urdonnol, a younger urrish techie, who the Master trusted with general upkeep of this whatever-it-is machine, stretching beyond the farthest reach of the single overhead skylight. Urdonnol peered through the shuddering, squeaking assembly, reaching in to tighten an elastic belt or lubricate a bearing. As senior apprentice, she was two hooves toward being Uriel’s heir.

The sole other candidate was Ur-ronn, partly because of our pal’s school scores, and also because she’s the nearest of Uriel’s scent-cousins to survive from steppe-grub to adult. No doubt Urdonnol worked here — tending the Master’s personal project — to improve her chances, though she clearly hated the big machine.

Miniature centaur figures moved amid the whirling disks, making delicate adjustments. Urrish males, normally rare to see outside their wives’ pouches, tightened belts and gears under Urdonnol’s terse direction. Striking a blow for equality, I guess.

I bent and whispered to Huck, “So much for all that talk about — hr-hrrm — starships! If they really saw one, they wouldn’t be fooling with toy gadgets right now!”

Ur-ronn must’ve overheard me. She swung her long muzzle, wearing a wounded look. Two out of three eyes narrowed. “I heard Uriel and Gyfz,” she hissed. “Anyhow, what does a snarty-fants like you know?”

“Enough to know all these whirling glass yo-yos don’t have hair on a qheuen’s backside to do with visiting spaceships!”

Even if we hadn’t been snapping at each other, it wasn’t easy for a gang like ours to peer discreetly into a room, the way you read about humans doing in detective stories. Still, those inside mightn’t have noticed us, if Huphu the noor hadn’t chosen that moment to go bounding in, yipping at those spinning pulleys and disks. Before we knew it, she leaped onto a leather belt and was running in place like mad, snapping toward a pair of cringing urs husbands.

Urdonnol noticed, waving her arms, displaying the bright glands under both brood pouches.

“This event signifies? It signifies?” the apprentice demanded with slurred interrogative trills. Her agitation grew as the Master snaked a grizzled snout around to peer at the commotion.

Despite stereotypes, a hoon can act quickly if he sees a clear need. I rushed over to snatch Huphu, rumbling my very best umble, and rejoined the others, girding for a group tongue-lashing.

“Behavior that is (astonishingly, horrifyingly) unacceptable,” declared Urdonnol in GalTwo. “Interruption of an important congress by (knavish, microcephalic, unhousebroken)—”

Uriel cut in, breaking Urdonnol’s insult-stream before the fuming, stamping Ur-ronn could be provoked to responding in kind.

“That will do, Urdonnol,” the Master commanded in GalSeven. “Kindly take the youngsters to Gybz, who has business of ers own with them, then hurry back. We have several more models to run before we are through for the day.”

“It shall be done,” Urdonnol replied in the same tongue. Turning to us with an aggressive neck-stretch, the older prentice said — “Come along, you gaggle of jeekee adventurers.”

She said it with dripping scorn, which is possible in GalSeven, though not as harsh as Anglic.

“Come swiftly. It’s been decided to take you up on your offer.

“Your grand plan.

“Your one-way expedition to Hell.”