Some of the sailors hissed angrily at that. Ekrekek shouted them down. "He says he is the captain, and they will have to fight him before they can get to the Gormanians," Chives translated for Terry. She knew she wouldn't want to take on Ekrekek, not without a neuronic whip tuned to his species--or maybe a portable rocket launcher.

  Lorah said, "Folk from any truly intelligent race would learn a language for themselves instead of giving the work to an unreliable machine."

  "Oh, shut up," Terry muttered. The other five starfaring peoples were all better linguists than humans. That was true of Crotonites even without the brain amplifiers they had unplanted when they needed to carry several extra languages around for a limited time, as Lorah was doing now. Terry stifled the urge to tell him to place the amplifier in a body cavity for which it had not been designed.

  Chives drew a flare pistol from the pocket in his right thigh and fired it up and out, being careful to miss the Hewnall's rigging. As the brilliant red flare slowly descended toward the sea, Lorah screeched, "What did you do that for, you-" English invective failed him; he squawked something offensive in his own language. "I think the salt spray is corroding your circuits."

  Unlike Terry, Chives had no temper to lose; none had been programmed into him. She envied him for that. He answered calmly, "The flare will let the Gormanians know our ship carries off-planet folk. That should make them less eager to attack these Azusans on sight."

  "I hope so," Terry said. She carried nothing more lethal than a stunner that could not outrange a Gormanian crossbow. She did not think Lorah bore any more dangerous weapons. No one was supposed to, not on worlds with intelligent but low-tech natives. Of course, Crotonites were almost as good as humans at getting around rules they didn't care for.

  The Hewnall glided into the habor of the Island of the Gods. Chives fired off another flare, blue this time. Lorah said nothing, by which Terry concluded he'd decided it was a good idea.

  Ibe ship grounded with a jolt. Terry grabbed a rail to keep from being pitched over the side. Ekrekek shouted orders. Azusans sprang down onto the sand. Others pitched ropes to them. They dragged the Hewnall further out of the water so it would not refloat at high tide.

  "The crew of the Gormanian vessel is being very quiet," Chives observed.

  The other ship was beached three or four hundred meters away from the Hewnall.

  "You're right. They should be paying us some attention, shouldn't they?" Terry brought her binoculars up to her eyes again. The Gormanian ship seemed to leap closer. She could spell out its name in the syflabic script the Gormanians used: Agwadulsi. She could not see anyone aboard. She said as much.

  "You must be wrong. Not even barbarians would be stupid enough to abandon their ship without leaving so much as a sentry behind," Lorah said.

  "Perhaps this is especially true of barbarians, in fact, as they often need to make sure they are not about to be attacked."

  "I would have thought the same." Terry did not like agreeing with the

  Crotonite about anything, but had no choice here. "But I saw what I saw.

  Look for yourself." She held the binoculars out to him.

  "I don't need your toys." Lorah used one of his short, feeble arms to wave the binoculars away. He peered toward the Agwadulsi, boasting, "Eyes modified in the genes serve me better."

  "Eyes modified in the genes won't see anything if there's nothing to see,"

  Terry said.

  Lorah did not answer for some little while. Then, grudgingly, he admitted, "I also see no one. Perhaps the Gormanians observed our approach and are hiding on the deck below our level of vision. "

  "I'liat is unlikely on two counts," Chives said. "First, Gormanian ships are not often constructed with such a deck. Second, I make no infrared signature that would indicate the presence of any warm-blooded life-forms aboard. From some of the hasty lashings I observe, and the missing section of rail, I would say this ship has recently encountered heavy weather. Whether that is germane, I could not speculate."

  The Crotonite took no notice of the robot. From that, Terry concluded he

  could not argue with Chives. Chives might be an artificial intelligence,

  she thought, but it was not a petulant one. Such musings vanished in her greater concern: "Where are the Gormanians?" she said.

  No one had an answer. Terry and Chives walked down the gangplank. Her boots dug into fine gray sand. Lorah scrambled to the top of the rail and glided down beside her. However much he despised humans-which went double for human-built Als-he preferred civilized company to that of the locals.

  Some of the Azusan sailors, spears and axes at the ready, advanced on the Agvwdulsi. After a cautious pause, one of the Azusans cast a looped line until it caught on a belaying pin. Tails flailed as a couple of sailors scrambled up the line onto the Gormanian galley. When they reappeared, they spread their hands in a very humanlike gesture of bewilderment.

  "The ship is empty, then," Terry said.

  Chives translated the remark for Ekrekek, who was standing close by. The Azusan captain let out a baffled hiss. "What are the stinking sixlegs playing at?" he demanded. "We have only to bum their ship and sail off to put them in desperate straits. They are vile, but they are not stupid. Why do they leave themselves vulnerable to us?"

  "If we knew, we would tell you," Terry said, though she doubted Lorah would tell anyone not a Crotonite anything of any importance if he could help it. No, she admitted to herself, that was not entirely true. "We depend on you, after all, to return us to our base on Azusa."

  "Will I be able to?" Ekrekek asked. "Can I be sure the accursed Gormanians have not found . some sorcery that lets them turn themselves invisible so they can fall on us without danger?" He stuck out his long, bifurcated tongue in an apotropaic gesture.

  "There is no such a thing as magic," Lorah said contemptuously.

  "Of course there is," Ekrekek told him, shocked. "How else to account for things like you?" -So there, Terry thought. Before she could answer, Chives said, "Good captain, you surely know that the inside of the eye must be dark to see. If the Gormanians made their flesh invisible, light would strike their eyes from all sides and they would be blind. That, then, is a magic you need not fear. "

  "It may be so," Ekrekek admitted after pausing for a while to work through the robot's logic.

  -An Azusan came dashing back from the Agwadulsi, his torso held almost parallel to the ground and his tail stuck straight out behind to balance him. "Captain, a scent trail from the sixlegs' ship leads into the jungle. We find no other traces of their reek. For whatever reason, they all seem to have gone that way."

  Ekrekek's tail lashed back and forth. "Something mad, but something all the

  same. Very well." He glanced at the sky. Light was fading fast. "Come

  morning, we-some of us-will follow. The Gormanian stench will not have vanished by then, and I do not care to enter the jungle in the dark. When we can see as well as smell, we will learn what evil reasons they have for disturbing the Island of the Gods." He turned to Terry, Lorah, and Chives. "Will you accompany my males? Seeing you among us might make the Gormanians less willing to attack from ambush."

  6 'Yes," Terry said at once. Lorah also agreed, though more slowly and less enthusiastically.

  "You track by scent?" Chives asked Ekrekek the next morning as an armed Azusan party, and the off-worlders with it, headed down a trail through thick green-blue vegetation. The captain did not risk his whole crew; about

  half waited back at the Hewnall.

  "My nose is not keen like a ftorek's," Ekrekek answered, "but I can pick up the dead-meat stink of a sixlegs well enough. Don't you smell it yourself?" "I have no sense of smell," Chives said. "I was not built with one."

  Ekrekek stared at the robot, perhaps out

  of pity for its lack, perhaps because it spoke of itself as being built rather than born or hatched.

  When Chives relayed the conversation to Terry, she sniffed the air, trying to pick out the odor Ekrekek had described. Maybe the Azusans' noses were better than they thought, or perhaps the trail they were following was to her swallowed up by all the other unfamiliar scents in the jungle, for she noticed no smell like the one the captain had mentioned.

  Nostrils low to the ground, the captain and his crewmales moved confidently down the narrow paths that meandered, seemingly at random, through the jungle. The leafy canopy overhead blocked off the sun so well that Terry did not know in which direction they were going until she checked her wrist compass.

  The jungle plants were not much different from the ones that grew near the Azusan port out of which the Hewnall had sailed. The ocean currents flowed from east to west, from Azusa toward Gorman, so few if any Gormanian plants had ever established themselves on the Island of the Gods.

  The animals, what little Terry saw of them, were also related to those of Azusa: four-limbed, scaly, often erect on their hind legs. Between the Island of the Gods and the continent of Gorman lay Tonclif IV's equivalent of Wallace's Line: a stretch of deep ocean that had been deep ocean for several hundred million years, preventing any interchange of land fauna until the Azusans and the very different Gormanians discovered one another. The Azusan band came out into a clearing. Even so, no sun shone overhead: One of the Hidden Folk's huge floating mysteries blocked it fi-om view. Another, smaller, noncomprehensible object sat in the center of the clearing.

  Terry raised her camera, took a holo of it, then shifted from still to vid and walked all the way around it, photographing as she went. As was true of all Hidden Folk gadgets, this one showed no sign of wear. All its edges .were sharp, all its colors bright and unfaded. Groundcovering plants grew up to it, but not on it or over it. If it was for anything more than keeping itself tidy, though, no one knew what.

  "You have a curious ritual," Ekrekek said when Terry returned to the band. "Our worship is simpler." He and his sailors saluted the artifact as they might have a superior officer, then walked around it to follow the Gormanians' odor trail.

  "We must stop to make a thorough examination of this tool of the Hidden Folk," Lorah said. "That, after all, is why we came to this wing-forsaken place. Stop, I say!" he shouted as Ekrekek prepared to press on.

  "Lorah, that whatsit has been sitting there for close to a million years," Terry said. "It's not going to up and run away while we're finding out what happened to the Gormanians. "

  "I suppose not," the Crotonite admitted with poor grace. "But it remains galling to have to bypass the mission for which we have traveled so far." "Yes, I know. At a first quick look, that one reminds me of Hidden Folk remains on Bongliich HI and Rop and maybe Mopona H. Those are supposed to be late sites. If this is another one, it might help us figure out in which direction the Hidden Folk pulled out of the galaxy, if not why. it "The why is simple," Lorah said, fixing her with his usual stare of dislike. "They were sickened by the evolution of so many wingless races here, and withdrew in disgust."

  Terry did not bother to reply. Crotonites were even fonder of writing racially flavored history than h ever had been. They took the stuff seriously, too, no matter how nonsensical it sounded to everyone else in the galaxy. Terry supposed that being the only starfaring species with wings gave them a skewed view of things.

  Being winged also leftLorah slow and clumsy on the ground. Without his supplementary atmosphere, he would not have lasted long on Tonclif IV. Even with it, he kept falling to the rear of the Azusan troop. Finally, Ekrekek snapped, "If you cannot move more quickly, starfarer, we will leave you behind alone."

  "Would you like me to carry you?" Chives asked the Crotonite. "Your weight would not impede me to any great degree. "

  Terry expected Lorah to snarl and say no. Instead, he opened his mouth wide, the Crotonite equivalent of a big smile. "Certainly. It will be a pleasure to see a machine employed as a machine, rather than fancying itself an intelligent being."

  "I am designed to do my best to ameliorate the inefficiencies of organic life," Chives said, which made Lorah shut his jaws with a snap. Nevertheless, he let the robot lift him and carry him along.

  Artifacts of the Hidden Folk appeared with greater and greater frequency as Ekrekek and his band pushed deeper into the jungle. Terry photographed each one as she hurried by; the Azusans began saluting without stopping. Most of the remains kept on reminding the human of Hidden Folk remains presumed to be late. Past that, no one resembled any other in amything save being both incomprehensible and apparently indestructible.

  "How much further will you go?" Terry asked Ekrekek after several kilometers. "Do you want to risk being cut off from the Hewnalff'

  "No." The captain's mouth gaped wider than Lorah's ever had; Azusans panted rather than sweated. "But the sixlegs, curse them, are moving toward the temples we have set up to the gods of the island, toward land upon which they have no business setting their stinking furry feet at any time of the year, let alone during a moon when their kind are not allowed here. We will punish them for that. ' t

  The Azusans and their off-world companions hurried on. The next object the Hidden Folk left behind was what looked like an empty plastic wading pool, save that its orange jagged wall surrounded a fifty-meter circle. A gap perhaps two meters wide let people enter that circle. After the ritual salutes, Ekrekek and his sailors cautiously went inside, Terry, Chives, and Lorah in their midst.

  -whaes the matter?" Terry asked when the Azusans began to mill about in confusion.

  Ekrekek pointed to the ground. It was bare rock. It was, Terry thought, likely the same bare rock that had been dwre when the Hidden Folk did whatever they did to set

  this structure in place---as far as anyone could tell, they built for

  eternity. But the captain of the Hewnall did not care about that. "The trafl--ends here~- he said.

  "But it can't," Terry protested automatically.

  "But it does," Ekrekek said. "For all I know, the gods grew angry at the Gormanians for trespassing on holy ground and swallowed them up."

  That remark made several of the sailors with him hastily scurry back out of the circle. It also made Terry's eyes go wide. "There's no record of any Hidden Folk artifact on Tonclif IV ever going active, is there?" she asked Chives and Lorah.

  "None," the Crotonite and the robot answered at the same time. They both sounded positive.

  "I didn't think so, either." Terry's voice was taut with excitement. Some things the Hidden Folk had left behind on other worlds and in space were still live (for all that anyone could figure out about Hidden Folk technology, that might have been literally true). They did what they did no matter what starfarers tried with them. Some were beautiful, some exciting, some dangerous-some all dime at once. Assuming one lived to get them back to a civilized world, active Hidden Folk artifacts could make one-or even three-rich for life.

  Assuming ... Terry got out of the circle herself. If it had already disposed of a good many Gormanians, she saw no reason to doubt it might do the same to her. When Chives followed, Lorah said not a word in protest.

  She walked around the artifact, taking pictures.

  A voice speaking Azusan-but not a hissing Azusan voice, rather one deep and

  diroaty---called from the. cover of the undergrowth ahead: "I have a good

  bow. I can slay several of you before you hunt me down. But I will speak to

  you of what I saw the gods do if you pledge not to harm me once I show

  myself."

  Terry nodded vigorously. On Chives's shoulders, Lorah half spread his wings in a Crotonite gesture of agreement. But the decision was not theirs to make. They both looked to Ekrekek. The captain said'. "Aye, come ahead, sixlegs.

  1 promise safe conduct for you. With so many of my folk here, one Gormanian is scarcely worth killing.

  Bushes rustled. The Gormanian, still carrying a bow, but with no arrow in it, stepped out into the clearing. The dominant life-forms of Tonclif IV's western continent were hexapodal mammaloids: funny-looking centaurs, in other words.

  That was close enough for government work, anyhow, even if the local's

  south end wasn't particularly horselike and his---no, her, for six bright

  pink nipples poked through the matted gray fur-4orso even less humanoid.

  She said, "My queen will pay ransom for me. I am Gussaw, captain of the Agiwdulsi. "

  "You are also on the Island of the Gods out of season," Ekrekek said. "Will your queen ransom such an oathbreaker as you?"

  Some of Ekrekek's crewmales snarled at the Gormanian, hefted their weapons. Terry said quickly, "Let Captain Gussaw tell what happened to her crew.

  That is of interest to all of us."

  "Thank you-off-worlder?" Gussaw's voice was unsure; starfarers had rather more to do with Azusa than Gorman. The centaur's round, shaggy ears twitched as her head swiveled to take in the human and then to robot and Crotonite. She went on, "Yes, I know it is not our time here, but we caught a storm and were forced to make the best-the only-landfall we could." Ekrekek's tail lashed back and forth. "There looked to be damage," he admitted. "Whether it was true storinhurt or applied with intention to deceive remains as yet unhatched. "

  "You are seeing threats where none exists, Captain," Lorah said. Terry squeaked, but managed to swallow her laugh. This sort of comment from a member of the most paranoid species in the galaxy? Lorah had to be even more eager to find out about the circle of the Hidden Folk than Terry was. "When it comes to sixlegs, I always see threats," Ekrekek said.

  "Scale-face, right now I am too tired and hungry to threaten anyone,"

  Gussaw said.

  Terry supposed it was inevitable that the. Gormanians would have as unflattering a name for the Azusans as vice versa. She said, "Captain Ekrekek, could you or your sailors give Gussaw something to eat? After she's fed, I expect she will tell us what happened to the rest of her crew.

  "Feed the Gormanian?" Ekrekek could not have sounded more scandalized if she'd asked him to mate with Gussaw. But he was not a fool, nor unadaptable. Though he hissed and spluttered to himself, at last he said, "Well, the situation is unusual, and I suppose we have to keep the sixlegs alive to ransom her. Saniri, you have some meat there. Give the Gormanian a chunk."