Is that all? I could have delivered it for Henrik myself. No need to send the boy on what might be a perilous mission.

If anyone knew about events up the Rimmers, it would be those in this room. But Sara held back. The explosers seemed busy. Besides, she had her own source of information, nearby. And now it was time to go there.

Engril the Copier refilled cups of tea while Sara read a slim sheaf of pages — a chronology of events and conjectures that had arrived from the Glade of Gathering, by urrish galloper, this very morning. Sara’s first emotion was a flood of relief. Till now, there had been no way of knowing which rampant rumor to believe. Now she knew the landing in the mountains had occurred without casualties. Those at Gathering were safe, including her brothers. For the time being.

In the next room, Engril’s aides could be seen duplicating photostats of the report’s pen-and-ink illustrations, while an offset press turned out printed versions of the text. Soon copies would reach notice boards in Tarek Town, then surrounding hives, hamlets, and herds.

“Criminals!” Sara sighed, putting down the first page. She couldn’t believe it. “Criminals from space. Of all the possibilities—”

“It always seemed the most far-fetched,” Engril agreed. She was a portly, red-headed woman, normally jovial and motherly but today more somber than Sara recalled. “Perhaps it wasn’t much discussed because we dared not think of the consequences.”

“But if they came illegally, isn’t that better than Institute police putting us all under arrest? Crooks can’t report us without admitting their own crime.”

Engril nodded. “Unfortunately, that logic twists around the other way. Criminals cannot afford to let us report them.”

“How reasonable a fear is that? It’s been several thousand years since the g’Kek came, and in all that time there’s been just this one direct contact with Galactic culture. The ancients calculated a half-million-year gap before the next orbital survey, and two million before a major inspection.”

“That’s not so very long.”

Sara blinked. “I don’t get it.”

The older woman lifted a steaming pot. “More tea? Well, it’s like this. Vubben suspects these are gene raiders. If true, the crime has no — what did the ancients call it? — no sculpture of limitations? No time limit for punishing perpetrators. Individuals from the foray party might be long dead, but not the species or Galactic clan they represent, which can still be sanctioned, from the eldest patron race down to the youngest client. Even a million years is short by the reckoning of the Great Library, whose memory spans a thousand times that long.”

“But the sages don’t think we’ll even be around in a million years! The ancestors’ plan— the Scrolls—”

“Gene raiders can’t count on that, Sara. It’s too serious a felony.”

Sara shook her head. “All right, let’s say some distant descendants of the Six are still around by then, telling blurry legends about something that happened long ago. Who would believe their story?”

Engril lifted her shoulders. “I can’t say. Records show there are many jealous, even feuding, factions among the oxygen-breathing clans of the Five Galaxies. Perhaps all it would take is a hint, just a clue, to put rivals on the scent. Given such a hint, they might sift the biosphere of Jijo for stronger proof. The entire crime could come unraveled.”

Silence fell as Sara pondered. In Galactic society, the greatest treasures were biological — especially those rare natural species rising now and then out of fallow worlds. Species with a spark called Potential. Potential to be uplifted. To be adopted by a patron race and given a boost — through teaching and genetic manipulation- crucial to cross the gap from mere clever beasts to starfaring citizens. Crucial, unless one believed the Earthlihgs’ legend of lonely transcendence. But who in all the Five Galaxies credited that nonsense?

Both wilderness and civilization had roles to play in the process by which intelligent life renewed itself. Neither could do it alone. The complex, draconian rules of migration — including forced abandonment of planets, systems, even whole galaxies — were meant to give biospheres time to recover and cultivate feral potential. New races were then apportioned for adoption, according to codes time-tested over aeons.

The raiders hoped to bypass those codes. To find something precious here on Jijo, off limits and ahead of schedule. But then, even if they made a lucky strike, what could they do with their treasure?

Take some mated pairs far away from here, to some world the thieves already control, and seed the stock quietly, nudging them along with gene infusions so they fit into a natural-seeming niche. Then wait patiently for millennia, or much longer, till the time seems right to “find” the treasure, right under their noses. Eureka!

“So you’re saying,” she resumed, “the raiders may not want to leave witnesses. But then why land here on the Slope? Why not beyond the Sunrise Desert, or even the small continent on the far side of Jijo, instead of barging in on us!”

Engril shook her head. “Who can say? The forayers claim to want our expertise, and they say they’re willing to pay for it. But we are the ones likely to pay in the end.”

Sara felt her heart thud. “They— have to kill us all.”

“There may be less drastic answers. But that’s the one that strikes the sages as most practical.”

“Practical!”

“From the raiders’ point of view, of course.”

Sara absorbed this quietly. To think, part of me looked forward to meeting Galactics, and maybe asking to peek at their portable libraries.

Through the door to Engril’s workshop, she glimpsed the copier’s assistants hard at work. One girl piloted a coelostat, a big mirror on a long arm that followed the sun, casting a bright beam through the window onto whatever document was being duplicated. A moving slit scanned that reflected light across a turning drum of precious metal, cranked by two strong men, causing it to pick up carbon powder from a tray, pressing it on fresh pages, making photostatic duplicates of drawings, art works, designs — anything but typescript text, which was cheaper to reproduce on a printing press.

Since this technology came to Jijo, nothing so dire had ever been copied.

“This is awful news,” Sara murmured.

Engril agreed. “Alas, child, it’s not the worst. Not by far.” The old woman motioned toward the report. “Read on.”

Hands trembling, Sara turned more sheets over. Her own memory of the starship was of a blurry tablet, hurtling overhead, shattering the peaceful life of Dolo Village. Now sketches showed the alien cylinder plain as day, even more fearsome standing still than it had seemed in motion. Measurements of its scale, prepared by engineering adepts using arcane means of triangulation, were hard to believe.

Then she turned another page and saw two of the plunderers themselves.

She stared, dismayed, at the portrayal. “My God.”

Engril nodded. “Indeed. Now you see why we delayed printing a new edition of the Dispatch. Already some hotheads among the qheuens and urs, and even a few traeki and hoon, have begun muttering about human collusion. There’s even talk of breaking the Great Peace.

“Of course, it may never come to that. If the interlopers find what they seek soon enough, there may not he time for war to break out among the Six. We human exiles may get to prove our loyalty in the most decisive way — by dying alongside everyone else.”

Engril’s bleak prospect made awful sense. But Sara looked at the older woman, shaking her head.

“You’re wrong. That’s not the worst thing.” Her voice was hoarse with worry. Engril looked back at her, puzzled. “What could be worse than annihilation of every sapient being on the Slope?”