An element of relief was more personal, if ungallant. My choice in a future mate might go beyond Jenin, Lena, or some surly cousin of Rety’s.

Something still nagged at Dwer, however, making him reluctant to put down the bow. He was counting wallows — the depressions made by donkeys as they lay — and realized there were just too many. Or rather, there were two different kinds of wallow. Nearer the fire they were smaller, closer…

No. It can’t be.

Anywhere else, scent would have hit him long before this. Now a sharp, familiar pungency smacked Dwer in his sinuses. He bent to pluck a clump of stringy fur, still coated from when the owner rolled, in ash after an unpleasantly wet river crossing.

Glossy strands from an urrish mane.

It had been generations since the last war. Regardless, instinctive fear surged in Dwer’s chest — a heart-pounding wave of angst.

An urrish caravan in these parts could not be up to anything good.

Here in the wilderness, far from the restraint of sages and the Commons, with the Six possibly already extinct back home, all the old rules were clearly moot. As in days before the Great Peace,. Dwer knew how dangerous these beings would be to have as enemies.

Silent as a ghost, he crept away, then crossed the river in a zigzag dash, leaping behind a boulder, then swiveling to cover the opposite bank while Mudfoot came splashing behind, clearly as eager to get out of there as he was.

Dwer kept wary watch for a whole midura, till long after his pounding pulse finally settled.

At last, when it seemed safe, he slung his bow and set off downstream, running when and where he could, hurrying southward with news.

Can you see the smoke, oh my rings? Spiraling from a fresh cavity in Jijo’s ruptured soil? Two Umoons cast wan beams through that sooty pall, piercing a crater wherein twisty metal shapes flicker and burn.

Distracting thoughts rise from our second torus-of-cognition.

What is that you say, my ring? That this is a very large amount of dross? Dross that will not degrade back to nature on its own?

Indeed it is. Shall we hope that the aliens themselves will clean up the mess? It would take a hundred donkey-caravans to haul so much hard waste down to the sea.

Another ring suggests a stream be diverted, to form a lake. A transplanted mulc-spider might dissolve the sinful wreckage over the course of centuries.

By mass vote, we send these thoughts to waxy storage for later reflection. For now, let us watch events flow in real time.

A roiling mob of onlookers teems the slopes overlooking this savaged vale, held in check by stunned, overworked proctors. Higher on tree-shrouded hills, we glimpse murky ranks of disciplined silhouettes, wheeling and maneuvering — militia units taking up positions. From here we cannot tell the companies’ intent. Are they preparing, counter to all hope, to defend the Commons against overpowering vengeance? Or else have inter-sept grudges finally torn the Great Peace, so that we hasten doomsday tearing each other apart with our own bloody hands?

Perhaps even the commanders of those dark battalions don’t yet know for sure.

Meanwhile, closer to the heat, Ur-Jah and Lester Cambel supervise teams of brave urs, men, hoon, and gray qheuens, •who descend into the pit armed with ropes and tools of Buyur steel.

Ro-kenn protests at first, does he not, my rings? In hasty GalSeven, the Rothen emissary decries those he calls “wanton looters.” One of the remnant robots rises, unfolding spiky organs of punishment.

Vubben urges that Ro-kenn look again. Can he not recognize sincere efforts at rescue? For two tense duras we poise on a precipice. Then, with a grudging mutter, the Rothen recalls his death machine — for now.

From Ro-kenn’s charismatic, human-handsome face, our steady old rewq translates undertones of grief and rage. True, this race is new to us, and rewq can be fooled. Yet what else should we expect from one whose home/campsite lies in ruins? Whose comrades languish, dead or dying, in the twisted tangle of their buried station?

The male sky-human, Rann, wears torment openly as he rides the other robot, shouting at those working through the rubble, directing their efforts. A tense but encouraging sign of cooperation.

Ling, the other sky-human, appears in shock, leaning against young Lark as he pokes his foot through debris at the crater’s rim. He bends to lift a smoldering plank, sniffing suspiciously. We perceive his head rock back, exclaiming surprise.

Ling draws away, demanding an explanation. Through our rewq, we perceive Lark’s reluctance as he shows her the smoky plank, a strip of burned wood from a Jijoan box or crate.

Ling drops her hand from his arm. She spins about, hurrying toward Rann’s hovering robot steed.

Much closer to this stack of rings, Ro-kenn has become embroiled in argument. A delegation accosts the Rothen emissary, demanding answers.

Why did he earlier claim the right and power to command the Holy Egg, since it is now clear that the sacred stone violently rejects him and his kind?

Furthermore, why did he seek to sow dissension among the Six with his baseless calumny about the human sept? His groundless lie, claiming that our Earthling brethren are not descendants of sinners, just like the other Five.

“You Rothen may or may not be the high patrons of humanity,” the spokesman contends. “But that takes nothing from our ancestors who came here on the Tabernacle. Not from their crime, or their hope, when they set us on the Path of Redemption.”

There is anger in the voice of the human intercessor. But we/i also descry thick brushstrokes of theater. An effort to smother the fire of disharmony that Ro-kenn ignited with his tale. Indeed, urrish voices rise in approval of his anger.

Now our second cognition-torus vents yet another thought-hypothesis.

What is it, my ring? You suggest disharmony was Ro-kenn’s intent, all along? A deliberate scheme to create strife among the Six?

Our fourth ring rebuts — what purpose might such a bizarre plot serve? To have Five gang up on One? To cause vendetta against the very sept these Rothen claim as beloved clients?

Store and wick this weird postulate, oh my rings. Argue it later. For now the Rothen prepares to respond. Drawing himself up, he surveys the crowd with an expression that seems awesome both to humans and to those who know them — to rewq-wearers and those without.

There is kindness in his expressive gaze. Overstrained patience and love.

“Dear, misguided children. This explosive manifestation was not rejection by Jijo, or the Egg. Rather, some malfunction of the mighty forces contained in our station must have released—”

Abruptly, he stops as Rann and Ling approach, each riding a robot. Each wearing looks of dark anger. They murmur into devices, and the Rothen stares back, listening. Again, my rewq reveals dissonance across his features, coalescing at last in raging fury.

Ro-kenn speaks.

“So, now the (dire) truth is known. Learned. Verified!

“No accident, this (slaying) explosion.

“No (unlikely) malfunction — nor any rejection by your (overly-vaunted) Egg.

“Now it is known. Verified. That this was (foul, unprovoked) murder!

“Murder by deceit, by subterfuge.

“By use of subterranean explosives. By sneak attack.

“By you!”

He points, stabbing with a long, graceful finger. The crowd reels back from Ro-kenn’s fierce wrath, and this news.

At once it is clear what the zealots have done. Secretly, taking advantage of natural caverns lacing these hills, they must have laboriously burrowed deep beneath the station to lay chests of eruptive powder — crude but plentiful — which then awaited a signal, the right symbolic moment, to burst forth flame and destruction.