Was he a scholar, then? The T’carais was uncertain of the word “scout.”

“What you ask may be possible,” he conceded. “I will consider it. However, a decision will not be made this moons’ phase, for I leave tomorrow moontime for a visit to another Clan.” He paused.

“Perhaps it would be wisest for you to go someplace else. Or, if you must stay here, to avoid the egglings. You frighten them.”

Once again that ironic glance down at his soft self, the straight look into Edger’s face.

“I think that, beside yourself, the egglings are the only people I have seen here who are not frightened of me.”

This eggling was out of reason perceptive. Edger turned away, speaking the wellwish.

“K’mentopak, eggling. Be you well.”

“K’mentopak, T’carais,” came the soft reply. “My thanks to you.”

VAL CON STRETCHED taut in the pilot’s chair and relaxed, abruptly boneless. The log was once more up-to-date.

He considered the T’carais, grinning as it occurred to him to wonder if that person thought him Terran. There were those of that long, burly race who would not be best pleased by that. Though, to be fair, the general configuration was the same, and perhaps, from a height of nearly nine feet, a seven-foot person and a five-foot one are both merely small.

Knives. Growing knives? They had passed nothing that looked to his untutored eyes to be blades a-growing on their way out of the cavern last night. Of course, Edger had said he might not, as punishment. Possibly, the T’carais had chosen a route that bypassed such wonders.

But growing? And sensitive to—energies—created by music, but not the everyday radiant variety?

What sort of energy, he wondered, nourishes a sense of direction?

A senseless question, certainly: A sense of direction was nothing but itself.

Or was it?

He snapped to his feet; moved to the center of the ship.