“It would seem so, Miss Ariel,” Jacob confirmed.

“Wohler, I must speak to this alien-now, tonight.”

“That will not be possible, Miss Welsh,” Wohler said. “He has already retired to his balloon.”

“What to do, Jacob?” she said in exasperation, as much to herself as to Jacob. “What to do?”

“It appears you can do nothing until morning, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said.

“How do we contact him in the morning, Wohler?” Ariel asked.

“I know of no way to contact him, Miss Welsh, nor to lead you to him. I can't tell one of the blackbodies from another. And even if I could, they are seldom on the ground except at night, and then they are isolated in a hydrogen-filled balloon.”

“So what do we do?” Ariel asked.

“We must wait for him to come to us.”

“And when will that be?”

“He generally comes to the west side of the opening in the dome each morning.”

“That reminds me, Wohler, pass the word over the comlink that all future references to time of day and passage of time in general are to be expressed in alien terminology. I want to become accustomed to their way of thinking. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

“So when will this blackbody come to the dome?”

There was a pause before Wohler replied.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Welsh, but the encyclopedic file shows nothing regarding behavior under either Rome or Romans. “

“Forget that, Wohler. Just an old saying. I wouldn't know a Roman if I saw one. Answer my question please.”

“He comes to the dome near ten AM each morning, just before the aliens begin their construction work. He seems to be inspecting that effort. “

“A good supervisor,” Ariel said.

“No. I have the impression that he does not approve of the construction; that it is being performed by a tribe to which he does not belong. His terse comments seem to be more a critique of their work in an artistic sense.”

Ariel did not sleep well that night. She longed for Derec to be there beside her, and she was homesick as well. Compared to this alien planet with its insidious dome and its blackbody creatures straight out of hell, Aurora seemed the most desirable of places: comfortable and quiet, typical of Spacer worlds. She longed for its cultivated farms and green fields, its open, hardly discernible cities with their manicured lawns and gardens, its junk food shops and underground malls where she and Derec had had such fun with their friends. It startled her then to realize she had had fun. She had ignored the old friends who had ostracized her, but the new ones-though they might still covet her wealth as much as those old ones-had been genuine fun.

And fun with Derec. She yearned to see him intensely; she missed him so.

She had become quite fond of Jacob and didn't think of him as a robot with her fun mind, for he was fun to be with. He had a wry way of saying things that was quite amusing, and Ariel suspected he had cultivated it for that very reason, but of course, he would never admit that he had the faintest conception of human humor. Yes, she had become quite fond of Jacob.

But it was Derec she longed for: his pinched face, his skinny frame. Typically male, his rapid teen growth had sacrificed meat and breadth to bones and height. Yet she could still look down on him by several centimeters. But she had stopped growing, while he would probably reach and pass her as he filled out. For the time she had, she was going to enjoy being taller than he and use it to advantage whenever that seemed appropriate. She loved teasing him. He was so loveable.

And she slipped off into a lonely, scary dream.

Chapter 4. Dialogue

Synapo had never drained himself quite so low before. The musculature of the legs particularly seemed weak as he walked toward the brook that morning. He had exhausted the fat juice cells for long-term storage around his chest and waist and buttocks and now he was drawing on the prompt supply cells that fed his muscles. And those in his legs were nowhere near as plentiful as those that supplied the large pectoral muscles that powered the downbeat of his wings. The legs were always the first to go. That was an old Myostrian saying that Sarco and his ilk were fond of iterating for some reason beyond the fact that it was true.

And the truth of that adage was never more apparent than when he had started for the brook that morning. He had actually felt sort of faint after the long inactivity of a night's tether.

Sarco had already left. That became apparent after breakfast as Synapo climbed to optimum charge altitude. Sarco was already on station in Synapo's favorite space immediately over the center of the compensator. Naturally, Sarco would be the only one of both tribes not to recognize that and defer to him. It was the first time he had violated that space without permission.

Yet, the times were unusual; old, little-used protocols were easier to violate than those reinforced by continual use. The concept of preferred location was not a natural one with the Cerebrons as it was with the Myostrians, who tended to stay in one location for long periods in the process of constructing and destroying weather node compensators like the domed glimmer below. The Cerebrons did not normally spend the night on the ground, but instead tethered their reflectors together in large drifting nightpacks by interlacing their hooks. They were normally nomads, continually roaming allover the world in the state of deep cogitation that had brought their race to the intellectual heights it now enjoyed.

The last time they had anchored for any significant period of time was when both tribes were battling the weather effects of the great meteor fall a quarter-century before the aliens arrived.

Thus, preferred space was the Cerebron equivalent to the Myostrian preferred location. The preferred space was naturally toward the center of the pack, and the most exalted was dead center where the less taxing audio communication reached the greatest number of Cerebrons-and the surrounding elite first-and where the more taxing radio communication reached all the Cerebrons with the least expenditure of energy.

When the two tribes interacted-as they were doing now, and as they had during the meteor incident-the dominant tribe tended to be the Cerebrons unless the Myostrians had an unusually aggressive leader, and up until that morning, Synapo had been the more aggressive in their interaction despite the fact that it was Sarco and his Myostrians who were aggressively building the compensator. That was to be expected. Synapo would have been a little alarmed-contrary to the tenor of his words-if the Myostrians had performed otherwise.

So in the context of past behavior, it was surprising to find Sarco-with his hook pointed aggressively forward-on station in Synapo's space. The natural disposition of both tribes was peaceful, so Synapo meekly left his hook pointed aft and took up his station two wingspreads to the right of Sarco as Sarco circled around the center of the dome far below.

“You are on the wing a tad early, Sarco,” Synapo said.

“I watched the alien land last night,” Sarco said. “And monitored its jump into our zone two days before. That, perhaps, explains their discrete modulation of hyperwave. But not entirely. The metal monsters phased in with continuous modulation. How do you explain the jump? Do we have two different sets of aliens?”

“No. Not if I understand what Wohler-9 was telling me. This new being is clearly a master of the metal ones.”

“Well, this morning, I'm joining you. I'll be able to observe the construction almost as well from your station as from mine. And though I care not a whit for either set of aliens, it would be a shame to destroy life unnecessarily. I want to see for myself how you handle them.”