There. He blinked. Had he imagined a faint blue flash?

“Kault.”

The Thennanin lumbered to a stop. “Mmm?” He turned around to face Uthacalthing. “Did you speak, colleague?”

“Kault, I think we should head that way. We can reach those hills in time to make camp and forage before dark.”

“Mmm. It is somewhat off our path.” Kault puffed for a moment. “Very well. I will defer to you in this.” Without delay he bent and began striding toward the three green-topped mounds.

It was about an hour before sunset when they arrived by the watercourse and began setting camp. While Kault erected their camouflaged shelter, Uthacalthing tested pulpy, reddish, oblong fruits plucked from the branches of nearby trees. His portable meter declared them nutritious. They had a sweet, tangy taste.

The seeds inside, though, were hard, obdurate, obviously evolved to withstand stomach acids, to pass through an animal’s digestive system and scatter on the ground with its feces. It was a common adaptation for fruit-bearing trees on many worlds.

Probably some large, omnivorous creature had once depended on the fruit as a food source and repaid the favor by spreading the seeds far and wide. If it climbed for its meals it probably had the rudiments of hands. Perhaps it even had Potential. The creatures might have someday become pre-sentient, entered into the cycle of Uplift, and eventually become a race of sophisticated people.

But all that ended with the Bururalli. And not only the large animals died. The tree’s fruit now fell too close to the parent. Few embryos could break out of tough seeds that had evolved to be etched away in the stomachs of the missing symbionts. Those saplings that did germinate languished in their parents’ shade.

There should have been a forest here instead of a tiny, scrabbling woody patch.

I wonder if this is the place, Uthacalthing thought. There were so few landmarks out on this rolling plain. He looked around, but there were no more tantalizing flashes of blue.

Kault sat in the entrance of their shelter and whistled low, atonal melodies through his breathing slits. Uthacalthing dropped an armload of fruit in front of the Thennanin and wandered down toward the gurgling water. The stream rolled over a bank of semi-clear stones, taking up the reddening hues of twilight.

That was where Uthacalthing found the artifact.

He bent and picked it up. Examined it.

Native chert, chipped and rubbed, flaked along sharp, glassy-edged lines, dull and round on one side where a hand could find a grip. …

Uthacalthing’s corona waved. Lurrunanu took form again, wafting among his silvery tendrils. The glyph rotated slowly as Uthacalthing turned the little stone axe in his hand. He contemplated the primitive tool, and lurrunanu regarded Kault, still whistling to himself higher up the hillside.

The’ glyph tensed and launched itself toward the hulking Thennanin.

Stone tools — among the hallmarks of pre-sentience, Uthacalthing thought. He had asked Athaclena to watch out for signs, for there were rumors… tales that told of sight-ings in the wild back country of Garth…

“Uthacalthing!”

He swiveled, shifting to hide the artifact behind his back as he faced the big Thennanin. “Yes, Kault?”

“I…” Kault appeared uncertain. “Metoh kanmi, b’twuil’ph… I…” Kault shook his head. His eyes closed and opened again. “I wonder if you have tested these fruits for my needs, as well as yours.”

Uthacalthing sighed. What does it take? Do Thennanin have any curiosity at all?

He let the crude artifact slip out of his hand, to drop into the river mud where he had found it. “Aye, my colleague. They are nutritious, so long as you remember to take your supplements.”

He walked back to join his companion for a fireless supper by the growing sparkle of the galaxies’ light.

Gorillas dropped over both sharp rims of the narrow canyon, lowering themselves on stripped forest vines. They slipped carefully past smoking crevices where recent explosions had torn the escarpment. Landslides were still a danger. Nevertheless, they hurried.

On their way down they passed through shimmering rainbows. The gorillas’ fur glistened under coatings of tiny water droplets.

A terrible growling accompanied their descent, echoing from the cliff faces and covering their labored breathing. It had hidden the noise of battle, smothering the bellow of death that had raged here only minutes before. Briefly, the dinsome waterfall had had competition but not for long.

Where its fremescent torrent had formerly fallen to crash upon glistening smooth stones, it now splattered and spumed against torn metal and polymers. Boulders’dislodged from the cliffsides had pounded the new debris at the foot of the falls. Now the water worked it flatter still.

Athaclena watched from atop the overlooking bluffs. “We do not want them to know how we managed this,” she said to Benjamin.

“The filament we bunched up under the falls was pretreated to decay. It’ll all wash away within a few hours, ser. When the enemy gets a relief party in here, they won’t know what ruse we used to trap this bunch.”

They watched the gorillas join a party of chim warriors poking through the wreckage of three Gubru hover tanks. Finally satisfied that all was clear, the chims slung their crossbows and began pulling out bits of salvage, directing the gorillas to lift this boulder or that shattered piece of armor plate out of the way.

The enemy patrol had come in fast, following the scent of hidden prey. Their instruments told them that someone had taken refuge behind the waterfall. And it was a perfectly logical place for such a hideaway — a barrier hard for their normal detectors to penetrate. Only their special resonance scanners had flared, betraying the Earthlings who had taken technology under there.

In order to take those hiding by surprise, the tanks had flown directly up the canyon, covered overhead by swarming battle drones of the highest quality, ready for combat.

Only they did not find much of a battle awaiting them. There were, in fact, no Earthlings at all behind the torrent. Only bundles of thin, spider-silk fiber.

And a trip wire.

And — planted all through the cliffsides — a few hundred kilos of homemade nitroglycerin.

Water spray had cleared away the dust, and swirling eddies had carried off myriad tiny pieces. Still the greater part of the Gubru strike force lay where it had been when explosions rocked the overhanging walls, filling the sky with a rain of dark volcanic stone. Athaclena watched a chim emerge from the wreckage. He hooted and held up a small, deadly Gubru missile. Soon a stream of alien munitions found its way into the packs of the waiting gorillas. The large pre-sentients began climbing out again through the multi-hued spray.

Athaclena scanned the narrow streaks of blue sky that could be seen through the forest canopy. In minutes the invader would have its fighters here. The colonial irregulars must be gone by then, or their fate would be the same as the poor chims who rose last week in the Vale of Sind.

A few refugees had made it to the mountains after that debacle. Fiben Bolger was not one of them. No messenger had come with Gailet Jones’s promised notes. For lack of information, Athaclena’s staff could only guess how long it would take for the Gubru to respond to this latest ambush.

“Pace, Benjamin.” Athaclena glanced meaningfully at her timepiece.

Her aide nodded. “I’ll go hurry ’em up, ser.” He sidled over next to their signaler. The young chimmie began waving flapping flags.

More gorillas and chims appeared at the cliff edge, scrambling up onto the wet, glistening grass. As the chim scavengers climbed out of the water-carved chasm, they grinned at Athaclena and hurried off, guiding their larger cousins toward secret paths through the forest.