“Lewis and Clark.” Atvar took no small relish in correcting his colleague and rival over even minute details that shouldn’t have mattered to anyone save a Big Ugly. “That it is under tiny acceleration does not matter. That it is under continuous acceleration does. If we are to observe it closely and continually, our reconnaissance must be under acceleration, too. And how, I ask, do you propose to keep that secret? A spacecraft with a working engine is by the nature of things anything but secret.”

“By the Emperor!” Reffet burst out. He lowered his eyes to the floor when naming his sovereign. So did Atvar, on hearing the title. From training since hatchlinghood, any member of the Race would have done the same. Still furious, Reffet went on, “These accursed Tosevites have no business flying in space?” He used an emphatic cough to underline his words. “They have no business having instruments that let them detect what we do when we fly in space, either.”

Atvar let his mouth fall open in amusement. “Come here, Reffet,” he said, walking over to the window. “Come here-it is safe enough. I intend no tricks, and the riots seem to have quieted down again, so no Big Ugly is likely to be aiming a sniper’s rifle in this direction at the moment. I want to show you something.”

Suspicion manifest in every line of his forward-sloping body, Reffet came. “What is it?” The suspicion filled his voice, too.

“There.” Atvar pointed west across the great river that flowed past Cairo. “Do you see those three stone pyramids, there in the sand?”

Reffet deigned to turn one eye turret in that direction. “I see them. What of it? They look massive, but weathered and primitive.”

“They are primitive-that is my point,” Atvar said. “They are as old as any monuments on this world. They were built as memorials to local rulers eight thousand years ago, more or less: eight thousand of our years-half that many for the years of Tosev 3.