Their final specimen was an unfortunate rock-staller, no more than a curled-up ball of spines when they cut away the webbing the robot used to restrain its victims. Ling prodded the creature with a tool that emitted a short, sharp spark, but got no reaction. She repeated, at a higher setting. Lark’s stomach turned as he caught a stench from curling smoke.

“It’s dead,” he diagnosed. “I guess your robot ain’t perfect, after all.”

Lark dug a latrine ditch and prepared a fire. His meal was leaf-wrapped bread and cheese. Hers bubbled when she broke the foil seals, stinging Lark’s nose with unfamiliar, enticing tangs. It wasn’t quite dark by the time he gathered her empty packets to be carried back and sealed as dross.

Ling seemed inclined to resume their conversation.

“Your sage, Cambel, says that no one recalls exactly why your ancestors came. Some sooners sneak into fallow worlds as rogue breeding groups. Others are fleeing war or persecution. I’d like to know what your own founders told the races already here, when they arrived.”

Among the Six, the term sooner applied to small bands who slinked away from the Slope to invade territory forbidden under the sacred Scrolls. But I guess we’re all “sooners” in that sense. Even those living on the Slope. In his heart, Lark had always known it.

Still, he had been commanded to lie.

“You are mistaken,” he said. Deceit tasted foul. “We’re castaways. Our combined ship—”

The forayer woman laughed. “Please. That clever trick set us back a day or so. But before our ship left, we knew. The story is impossible.”

Lark’s lips pressed. No one had expected the bluff to last long. “How do you figure?”

“It’s simple. Humans have only been in Galactic space four centuries or so-three hundred and fifty Jijoan cycles. It’s quite impossible for Earthlings to have been aboard the same ship that brought g’Keks to this world.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, my good rustic cousin, by the time humans entered the galactic scene, there weren’t any g’Kek to be found.”

Lark blinked while she continued.

“When we saw you all there, lining the valley rim, we recognized most of the types. But we had to look up the g’Kek. Imagine our surprise when one word flashed, right at the top.

“The word was — extinct.”

Lark could only stare.

“Your wheeled friends are rare,” Ling concluded. “Those here on Jijo are surely the last of their kind.”

And just when I was starting to like you…

Lark could swear there was a kind of satisfaction in her eyes, over the shock her news caused.

“So you see,” Ling added, “each of us has truths to share. I’ve just told you one. I hope you’ll be as open with me.”

He kept his voice even. “You haven’t found me helpful so far?”

“Don’t get me wrong! Your sages have been so obscure about certain matters. They may not have understood our questions. As you and I converse at greater length, some issues may clarify.”

Lark saw what was going on. Divide and interrogate. He had not been present when the sky-humans met with the sages. She was sure to catch him in a net of discrepancies if he weren’t extremely careful.

“For instance, when Kunn asked about sightings of other spacecraft, since the first sooners came to Jijo, we were told about visits by Zang globes, dipping down to lick the sea, and some distant lights long ago that might have been Institute survey ships. But we’re really interested in occurrences that might have taken place much more—”

A sharp trill interrupted her. Ling lifted the blue finger-ring.

“Yes?”

Her head tilted, listening to a whisper projected near one ear.

“For sure?” she demanded, surprise infecting her voice. Ling’s hands flapped at her belt pouch, pulling forth the pocketbook receiver, whose twin screens came alight with forest images, moving ahead through the lowering evening gloom. Machines don’t sleep, Lark observed.

“Switch view from probe four to probe five,” Ling requested. The scene changed abruptly to a blur of static. On the right, all the charts and graphs showed the flat slashes that denoted “zero” in Galactic Six.

“When did it happen?” the forayer woman demanded of her unseen colleague. Lark watched her face, wishing he could hear more of the other end of the conversation than a vague murmur.

“Replay the last ten minutes before the probe failed.”

The left-hand screen soon lit with images, showing a narrow green corridor with a ribbon of sky above and a stream of scummy water below. The close walls consisted of closely packed stems of towering great-boo.

“Go to double speed,” Ling asked impatiently. The great columns swept by in a blur. Lark leaned closer, finding the scene familiar.

Abruptly, the slim aisle spilled into a shallow crater, a rubble-strewn bowl with a small lake at its center, rimmed by a thorny barricade of looping vines.

Wait a minute. I know this place…

A set of livid cross-hairs crawled across the holio display, converging near the frothy lake shore, while the right-hand screen flashed red symbols in technical Gal-Six. Lark had to labor, but managed to make out certain words—

…anomaly… unknown source… strong digital activity…

His stomach churned as the camera-eye sped toward the disturbance, swooping by slabs of ancient Buyur masonry, as crimson symbols clustered toward the central field of view. Everything inside that tunnel of attention grew more vivid, while the periphery dimmed. Seething emblems flashed preparations that Lark read with dismay — the readying of weapons, powering up for use.

Dwer always said this mulc-spider was nastier than most and warned people to stay away. But what on Jijo could the robot have to worry about?

Another thought struck him.

My God, isn’t this the direction Dwer was headed, chasing after that runaway glaver?

The machine decelerated. Lark recognized the thick tangle of an aged mulc-spider, its vines splayed across the remains of some ancient Buyur structure.

The robot’s view skimmed past a pale figure, hunched on the ground, and Lark blinked.

Was that a glaver, lying in the open? Ifni, we went to such trouble hiding them, and this machine shoots past one without noticing.

Another surprise slipped by the camera’s periphery as it slowed. A lean animal, four-footed and wiry, black fur nearly blending with the dark tangle. The white teeth of a noor flashed briefly, chattering surprised defiance at the onrushing machine, then vanishing to one side as the robot cruised on, single-mindedly.

A noor? Up in the mountains? Without knowing why, Lark tasted bile.

The machine slowed to a crawling hover. Red crosshairs converged downward toward a point throbbing with rhythms of crimson menace.

…digital cognizance… level nine or greater… the GalSix symbols throbbed. Little could be made out in the gloomy snarl below, except some vague flutterings near the center of the cross-hairs. The robot must be targeting with senses other than vision.

…autonomous decision… terminate threat immediately…

Suddenly, the dim scene flashed with brilliance. The central field blazed white as shafts of angry lightning tore into the morass, slicing the mulc-spider’s medusa limbs. Boiling juices sprayed from whipping, severed vines while red targeting circles danced back and forth, seeking something that kept dodging randomly within a confined space.

Ling was reading the data-filled right-hand screen, cursing the robot’s inability to make a clean kill. So Lark felt sure he alone glimpsed a brief outline at one edge of the holio panel. It flashed just an instant but seemed to sear his optic nerve.

One — no, two clusters of arms and legs, intermeshed among the shuddering vines, cowering from the burning fury above.