Bunny smiled. I'd said the right thing.

"Surveillance," Tananda mused. "Where are they based, Wensley?"

"Oh, in the castle," the Wuhs informed her. "The prince wasn't using it. He prefers to live in the suburbs, and it's just too centrally located. It's very sturdy, he said. Stone walls and tiled ceilings with big heavy beams. Very protective. We Wuhses like protective buildings."

"Good," stated Tananda.

"Good?" I echoed. "It's not like they're out in a field somewhere, where it would be easy to hear what they're saying."

She gave me an amused look. "That would make it impossible to eavesdrop on them. Have you ever tried to sneak up on someone in the middle of a field?"

"Of course not," I replied indignantly. "They'd see you coming for miles ... oh."

"Exactly, exactly," Zol beamed. "See? You're already building on one another's strengths. So the Pervect Ten feel very secure and certain no one will sneak up on them. It should be a simple matter to find a good listening post and learn all."

FOUR

"One's biggest problems are almost always of one's own making."

-V. FRANKENSTEIN, MD

"Run those figures again for me, Caitlin, darling," asked the elderly Pervect in the flowered dress. She tapped the side of the console with her cane.

"Don't do that, Vergetta," snapped the very young female at the keyboard. She turned deepset amber eyes at her senior. "It upsets the gremlins in the motherboard."

"Well, they need waking up, if those are the answers you're giving to me," Vergetta remarked peevishly. "They shouldn't talk this way to anyone's mother. This is a wrong answer. It has to be."

"I think she's right," declared Oshleen, a tall, willowy Pervect, sashaying into the room with a slighter, shorter compatriot in her wake. She waited for the