"I'm trying to get an idea how introduced forms were designed to fit in, and how much adaptation took place afterward. You have some pretty sophisticated ecologists at the university, but figures are hardly a substitute for getting out and seeing for yourself."

Although they were hard to make out in the dim starlight, his features seemed revived from the earlier moodiness. Maia found herself wondering if his eyes would shine strange colors by day, or if his skin, which she had only seen in lantern or moonlight, would turn out to be some weird, exotic shade.

Perhaps it was a mistake to interpret an alien's facial expressions by past experience, but Renna seemed excited to be here, away from cities and savants and, especially, his prison cell, finally exploring the surface of Stratos itself. It was contagious.

"All told, it seems your Founders were pretty good designers, making clever changes in the humans, plants, and animals they set down here, before fitting them into the ecosystem. They made some mistakes of course. That's hardly unusual. …"

It felt blasphemous, hearing an outsider say such things. Perkinites and other heretics, were known to criticize some of the choices made by Lysos and the other Founders, but never before had Maia heard anyone speak this way about their competence.

". . . Time has erased most of the errors, by extinction or adaptation. It's been long enough for things to settle down, at least among the lower life-forms."

"Well, after all, it's been hundreds of years," Maia responded.

Renna tilted his head. "Is that how long you think humans have lived on Stratos?"

Maia frowned. "Um . . . sure. I mean, I don't remember an exact figure. Does it matter?"

He looked at her in a way she found odd. "I suppose not. Still, that fits with the way your calendars . . ." Renna shook his head. "Never mind. Say, is that the sextant you told me about? The one you used to correct my latitude figures?"

Maia glanced at her wrist and the little instrument wrapped in its leather case. Renna was being kind again. Her improvements to his coordinates, back in jail, had been minimal. "Would you like to see it?" she asked, unstrapping the sextant and holding it toward him.

He handled it carefully, first using his fingertips to trace the engraved zep'lin design on the brass cover, then unfolding and delicately experimenting with the sighting arms. "Very nice tool," he commented. "Handmade, you say? I'd love to see the workshop."

Maia shivered at the thought. She had seen enough of male sanctuaries.

"Is this the dial you use for adjusting azimuth?" he asked.

"Azimuth? Oh, you mean star-height. Of course, you need a good horizon …"

Soon they were immersed in talk about the art of navigation, picking their way through a maze of terms inherited from altogether different traditions — his using complex machines to cross unimaginable emptiness, and hers from a heritage of countless lives spent refining rules learnt the hard way, battling the elements on Stratos's capricious seas. Renna spoke respectfully of techniques that she knew had to seem primitive, in view of how far he had come — from those very lights Maia used as guideposts in the sky.

Sometimes, when a moon cleared the canyon walls to shine directly on his face, Maia was struck by a subtle difference which seemed suddenly enhanced. The long shadow of his cheekbone, or the way, in dim light, his pupils seemed to open wider than normal for Stratoin eyes. Would she have even noticed if she didn't already know who, or what, he was?

They cut short the discussion when Baltha called a break. Their guide indicated a path to take their tired mounts onto a stony beach, where the party dismounted and spent some time rubbing and drying the horses' feet and ankles, restoring circulation to parts numbed by cold water. It was hard labor, and Renna soon stripped off his coat. Maia could feel heat radiating from his body as he worked nearby. She remembered the sailors on the Wotan, whose powerful torsos always seemed so spendthrift of energy, wasting half of what they ate and drank in sweat and radiation. As cold as she was, especially in her fingers and toes, Renna's nearby presence was rather pleasant. She felt tempted to draw closer, strictly to share the warmth he squandered so freely. Even the inevitable male odor wasn't so bad.

Renna stood up, a puzzled expression on his face. Scanning the sky, his eyes narrowed and his brows came together in a furrow. Only as Maia rose to come alongside did she begin to notice something as well, a soft sound from overhead, like the distant buzzing of a swarm of bees.

"There!" he shouted, pointing to the west, just above the rim of the canyon.

Maia tried to sight along his arm. "Where? I can't . . . Oh!"

She had seldom seen flying machines, even by daylight. Port Sanger's small airfield was hidden beyond hills, with flight paths chosen not to disturb city dwellers. Not counting the weekly mail dirigible, true aircraft came only a few times a year. But what else could those lights be? Maia counted two . . . three pairs of winking pinpoints passing overhead as the delayed rumbling peaked and then followed the glitters eastward.

"Cy must've heard!" Renna shouted, as the canyon cut off sight of the moving stars. "She got through to Groves. They've come for us!"

For you, don't you mean? Maia thought. Still, she was glad, intensely glad. This certainly verified Renna's importance, for Caria to have sent such a force so far, impinging on the sovereignty of Long Valley Commonwealth, and even risking a fight.

Baltha, Thalia, and Kiel refused to even consider turning back.

"But it's a rescue party! Surely they've come with enough force to—"

"That's good," Kiel agreed. "It'll distract the bitches. Keep them off our trail. Maybe they'll be so busy scrapping and arguing, we'll have smooth sailing to the coast."

Maia saw what was going on. Kiel and her friends had invested a lot in rescuing Renna. Apparently, they weren't about to hand him over to a platoon of policewomen, who could claim they would have had him free tonight anyway. Far better from Kiel's point of view to deliver him personally to a magistrate at Grange Head, where their success would be indisputable and the reward guaranteed.

Maia saw Renna consider. Would the women try to stop him if he turned around by himself? A male's strength might not compensate much for the world-wise ferocity of Baltha, who looked like a born fighter and was never far from her effective-looking crowbar. The match was doubly dubious in winter, when male tempers ebbed toward nadir. Renna's odds would improve with Maia by his side, but she wasn't sure she could bring herself to fight Thalia and Kiel.

Anyway, suppose he did turn around. Tizbe wouldn't have waited long to set out on their trail. Even if the prison-citadel was taken by Carian forces, Renna and Maia were likely to stumble into the Beller and her guards on the open prairie. They'd only be captured and taken to another hole, probably far worse than the one they had just left.

We really haven't got much choice, Maia realized.

Still, in that moment her loyalties crystallized. She moved to stand next to Renna, ready to support whatever he decided. There was a long pause while the drone of engines faded gradually to a whisper, and then nothing. At last, the man shrugged.

"All right, let's ride."

Peripatetic's Log:

Stratos Mission:

Arrival + 40.157 Ms

Cy complained about having to use archaic codes to guide my shuttle down the ancient landing beam. I was too nervous to be sympathetic. "Who had to learn an entirely new language?" I groused, while white flame licked the viewing ports and a heavy atmosphere tried to crush my cocoon like a grape in a vice. "It's supposedly a dialect based on Florentinan, but they have parts of speech nobody's seen before — feminine, masculine, neuter, and clonal . . . with redundancy cases, declensions, and drift-stop participles …"