“Shall we try to hide?”

Recall, my rings, the confused braying as folk scattered like chaff before a whirlwind, tearing down the festival pavilions, hauling dross from our encampment toward nearby caves. Yet amid all this, some were calm, resigned. From each race, a few understood. This time there would be no hiding from the stars.

Among the High Sages, Vubben spoke first, turning ah eyestalk toward each of us.

“Never before has a ship landed right in our midst. Clearly, we are already seen.”

“Perhaps not,” Ur-Jah suggested in hopeful Galactic Seven, stamping one hoof. Agitated white fur outlined her flared urrish nostril. “They may be tracking emanations of the Egg! Perhaps if we hide swiftly …”

Ur-Jah’s voice trailed off as Lester, the human, rocked his head — a simple gesture of negation lately fashionable throughout the Commons, among those with heads.

“At this range, our infrared signatures would be unmistakable. Their onboard library will have categorized us down to each subspecies. If they didn’t know about us before entering the atmosphere, they surely do by now.”

Out of habit, we took his word for such things, about which humans oft know best.

“Perhaps they are refugees like us!” burst forth our qheuenish sage, venting hope from all five leg-vents. But Vubben was not sanguine.

“You saw the manner of their arrival. Was that the style of refugees, treading in fear, hiding from Izmunuti’s stare? Did any of our ancestors come thus? Screaming brutishly across the sky?”

Lifting his forward eye to regard the crowd, Vubben called for order. “Let no one leave the festival valley, lest their flight be tracked to our scattered clans and holds. But seek all glavers that have come to browse among us, and push those simple ones away, so our guilt won’t stain their reclaimed innocence.

“As for those of the Six who are here now, where the ship’s dark shadow fell… we all must live or die as fate wills.”

i/we sensed solidification among the rings of my/our body. Fear merged into noble resignation as the Commons saw.truth in Vubben’s words.

“Nor shall we scurry uselessly,” he went on. “For the Scrolls also say — When every veil is torn, cower no more. For that day comes your judgment. Stand as you are.”

So clear was his wisdom, there rose no dissent. We gathered then, tribe by tribe, did we not, my rings? From many, we coalesced as one.

Together our Commons turned toward the ship, to meet our destiny.

The weird noor still dogged his heels, leering down at him from tree branches, being an utter pest.

Sometimes the sleek, black-pelted creature vanished for a while, raising Dwer’s hopes. Perhaps it finally had tired of dusty alpine air, so far from the swamps where most noor dwelled.

Then it reappeared, a grin splitting its stubby snout, perched on some ledge to watch Dwer hack through thorn-hedges and scramble over upended slabs of ancient pavement, kneeling often to check footprint traces of a runaway glaver.

The scent was already cool when Dwer had first noticed the spoor, just outside the Glade of Gathering. His brother and the other pilgrims had continued toward sounds of gala music, floating from the festival pavilions. But alas for Dwer, it was his job to stop glavers who took a strange notion to leave the cozy lowlands and make a break for perilous freedom. Festival would have to wait.

The noor barked high-pitched yelps, pretending to be helpful, its sinuous body streaking along at root level while Dwer had to chop and scramble. Finally, Dwer could tell they were gaining. The glaver’s tired footprints lay close together, pressing the heel. When the wind changed, Dwer caught a scent. About time, he thought, gauging how little mountain remained before a cleft led to the next watershed-in effect another world.

Why do glavers keep doing this? Their lives aren’t so rough on this side, where everyone dotes on them. Beyond the pass, by contrast, lay a poison plain, unfit for all but the hardiest hunters.

Or tourists, he thought, recalling Lena Strong’s offer to pay him to lead a trip east. A journey whose sole aim was sightseeing — a word Dwer had only heard in tales from Old Earth.

These are crazy times, he thought. Yet the “tour organizers” claimed to have approval from the sages — under certain conditions. Dwer shook his head. He didn’t need idiotic ideas clouding his mind right now, with a quarry just ahead.

The noor, too, showed signs of fatigue, though it kept snuffing along the glaver’s track, then rising on its hind legs to scan with black, forward-facing eyes. Suddenly, it gave a guttural purr and took off through the montane thicket-and soon Dwer heard a glaver’s unmistakable squawl, followed by the thud of running feet.

Great, now he’s spooked it!

At last Dwer spilled from the undergrowth onto a stretch of ancient Buyur highway. Sprinting along the broken pavement, he sheathed the machete and drew his compound bow, cranking the string taut.

Sounds of hissing confrontation spilled from a narrow side canyon, forcing Dwer to leave the old road again, dodging amid vine-crusted trees. Finally he saw them, just beyond a screen of shrubs-two creatures, poised in a showdown of sable and iridescent pale.

Cornered in a slit ravine, the glaver was obviously female, possibly pregnant. She had climbed a long way and was pulling deep breaths. Globelike eyes rotated independently, one tracking the dark noor while the other scanned for dangers yet unseen.

Dwer cursed both of them — the glaver for drawing him on a profitless chase when he had been looking forward to festival, and the meddlesome noor for daring to interfere!

Doubly cursed, because now he was in its debt. If the glaver had reached the plains beyond the Rimmer Range, it would have been no end of trouble.

Neither creature seemed to notice Dwer-though he wouldn’t bet against the noor’s keen senses. What is the little devil doing up here? What’s it trying to prove?

Dwer had named it Mudfoot, for the brown forepaws marring an ebony pelt, from a flattish tail to whiskers that twitched all around a stubby snout. The black-furred creature kept still, its gaze riveted on the flighty glaver, but Dwer wasn’t fooled. You know I’m watching, show-off. Of all species left on Jijo when the ancient Buyur departed, Dwer found noor the least fathomable, and fathoming other creatures was a hunter’s art.

Quietly, he lowered the bow and unfastened a buckskin thong, taking up his coiled lariat. Using patient, stealthy care, he edged forward.

Grinning with jagged, angular teeth, Mudfoot reared almost to the glaver’s height-roughly as tall as Dwer’s thigh. The glaver retreated with a snarl, till her bony back plates brushed rock, causing a rain of pebbles. In her forked tail she brandished a stick-some branchlet or sapling with the twigs removed. A sophisticated tool, given the present state of glaverdom.

Dwer took another step and this time could not avoid crushing some leaves. Behind the noor’s pointy ears, gray spines jutted from the fur, waving independently. Mudfoot kept facing the glaver, but something in its stance said — “Be quiet, fool!”

Dwer didn’t like being told what to do. Especially by a noor. Still, a hunt is judged only by success, and Dwer wanted a clean capture. Shooting the glaver now would be to admit failure.

Her loose skin had lost some opal luster since leaving familiar haunts, scavenging near some village of the Six, as glavers had done for centuries, ever since their innocence was new.

Why do they do this? Why do a few try for the passes, every year?

One might as well guess the motives of a noor. Among the Six, only the patient hoon had a knack for working with the puckish, disruptive beasts.