Lorah folded his wings about himself as if they were a cloak. Only the tip of his muzzle stuck out as he said, "For once, human, I cannot disagree with you."

  "As I do not require sleep, I will continue to monitor the circular artifact until the two of you arise," Chives said. "In view of our present cooperation, Lorah, shall I provide you with a copy of my data record for the night?"

  "Would you?" Lorah lowered his wings until he could peer out at the robot. "That would be uncommonly"--he hesitated-"forthcoming of you." He wouldn't say generous, Terry thought, not to an Al, or probably to anyone who wasn't a Crotonite.

  "This is for the good of all," Chives said. After a moment, he added, "Who knows what the starfarers of the galaxy could accomplish if they worked together on all occasions as we do here? And not only we starfarers are cooperating now. Who would have imagined that Azusans and Gormanians could also perceive the advantages of at least postponing hostilities until a more propitious time?"

  "Who would have imagined that a robot would end up turning social philosopher on us?" A yawn blurred Terry's words. She snuggled deeper into her sleeping bag and drifted off almost at once.

  Tonclif was shining in her face when she woke. Local sunrise what not what had roused her; one of the arboreal jungle lizards hereabouts had a mating call that sounded like a giant breaking wind. Another machine-gun burst of reptilian pseudoflatulence made her snicker as she scrambled out of the sleeping bag.

  Since the weather was tropically warm and she was the only human for several hundred kilometers, she hadn't bothered sleeping in clothes. She did wear them during the day; she needed shoes, and liked the convenience of pockets. Gussaw watched as she dressed. Chives translated the Gormanian captain's comment: "I see by your nipples that you are a true mammal, even if you have but two of them. Strange, then, that you should have come to the Island of the Gods with the scaly Azusans. "

  So much for the brotherhood of all beings, Terry thought. She answered, "I am not the same as an Azusan; I am not the same as a Gormanian. Should I despise you as the Azusans do, because you have six legs? Of course not. So why should I despise them because they have scales?"

  Gussaw scratched her head and walked off. Sounding as wistful as a robot could, Chives said, "I wish the principle you propounded could also be extended from organic lifeforms to electronic ones."

  "Humans think it can," Terry said. "We'd be lost without Als, and we know it. If the other starfaring races can't see that Als are people too, wen, they're the ones making the mistake."

  Lorah's hearing seemed as amplified as his vision. He looked up from the reptile meat he was devouring for breakfast and said, "I am forced to admit that this robot of yours has proven moderately useful. Still, I am of the opinion that machines should be tools rather than colleagues. "

  "In a word, nonsense," Terry said. She was just as glad when Lorah went back to eating: The argument about Als had grown old for her, and she doubted that anything short of a miracle would convince the Crotonite to change his mind. A large miracle, she thought, digging through her backpack for a ration pouch. She could eat smoked lizard

  haunch if she had to, but it was bad enough to make even survival rations tasty by comparison.

  She hurried back to the spot where Gussaw had been standing when the rest of the Gormanians vanished. The red band was still there. Since she had no fancy sensors, she took out an old-fashioned tape and measured it. "Three hundred seventeen millimeters," she said for the record.

  Lorah and Chives were standing outside the circle by another of the red bands. Looking down at it, the Crotonite said, "This one is twenty-seven and a third shalmod across. "

  "That works out to three hundred seventeen millimeters, " Chives added helpfully.

  They had spoken English. Gussaw asked Terry, "What are you talking about?" Terry understood enough Azusan to follow that (she had not a word of any Gormanian tongue, and was glad Gussaw stuck with her captors' language). Still, she was pleased to see Chives put Lorah down and hurry over to translate for her.

  "Most interesting," Gussaw said when the robot was done explaining. "So you and the winged one there do not use the same system of measurement?"

  "No," Terry said with a rueful shake of her head. "My race spent hundreds of years getting to the point where we all used one system. Then we got into space and had to start converting all over again, because each species that travels between the stars has its own units for distance, time, and weight."

  "It is the same here," Gussaw said. "Most Gormanians use the same set of weights and measures, but the Azusans have several different ones." The captain of the Agwadulsi walked partway around the circular relic of the Hidden Folk to another red band. "Now I would say that this line is about three quatkuma across. Elaekek"--the Gormanian raised her voice to catch

  the Azusan's notice---you're near that last band. How wide do you make it

  out to be?"

  The captain of the Hewnall considered. "About four hands, I'd say."

  "Ah, you're from one of the Azusan countries that-"

  Gussaw's comment was left unfinished. Except for showing the red bands, the relic of the Hidden Folk had been

  altogether inactive while Tonclff was in the sky. That inactivity now ended. The bands began to glow, brighter and brighter. At the same time, the yellow of the rest of the circular wall faded until it was clear as air.

  "Do you see that red square that's suddenly appeared in the center of the circle?" Chives said.

  "All I see is rock and dirt," Terry answered.

  "And I," Lorah said. "Human, I think your machine has need of repair." "Interesting," Chives said. "I perceive the spot and you do not. Yet you should, for it radiates light at a fi-equency that your eyes can see and it is quite bright, I assure you--as bright as the red bands by which the two of you are standing. " The robot raised its voice, shifted languages: "Gussaw, Ekrekek--does either of you see a red square in the center of the area inside this circle?"

  "No," the Azusan said. The Gormanian added, "It looks the same to me as it did before."

  Terry had the feeling that she was missing something, that someone should have been doing something that wasn't getting done. When she tried to put a mental finger on what was wrong, the idea slipped away. The harder she thought about it, the blurrier her wits became. That was annoying. After a moment, it was also familiar.

  'A psychic compulsion field is operating here!" she exclaimed. "We ought to do something, but it won't let us figure out what. "

  "You are right." Lorah flapped his wings in frustration and waddled about close by the second pulsing red band. "How demeaning to be deliberately befuddled, as if I were an animal."

  "I feel no psychic compulsion," Chives said. "Perhaps the field does not affect the electronic workings of an Al mind. The answer to our dilemma, in any case, would seem to be the investigation of that red square which I see and all of you do not. Your blindness, I conjecture, may well be another aspect of the mental field. "

  What the robot said made sense to Terry-but only for a moment. Chives's words slipped out of her mind even as she considered them. She wanted to ask the Al to repeat

  itself, but waited too long. She'd even forgotten why what it said was important. She saw Lorah open his mouth. The Crotonite shut it again, as if he too had lost track of what he wanted to say.

  Chives felt no such mental qualms. The robot climbed over the now-transparent border of the circle, walked briskly toward the center. Try as she would, Terry saw nothing there but gray, boring rock.

  With mechanical smoothness, Chives squatted, peered down. "I see," the AI said. "I am intended to stand Within the square. Then this entire installation will do what it was built to do." Chives rose, took a step forward.

  Terry cried out. Now she saw a beam of light shooting straight up from the ground. ft bathed Chives in a fierce glow. Then Terry cried out again, along with everyone else, for the circle was no longer empty but for the robot. Dozens of Gormanians milled about inside.

  They shouted when they saw the Azusans. The Azusans, most of whom had paid no particular attention to what the off-worlders with them were up to, shouted back and grabbed for their weapons.

  Gussaw and Ekrekek locked eyes over the circle's wal"t was yellow again, Terry noted dazedly. Ekrekek's gaze broke away first. He whirled, yelled to his crewmates, "Hold up! Don't attack unless the sixlegs do! The gods have

  given them back---they're no longer fit meat for us to slaughter. "

  Gussaw bellowed at the Gormanians in their own language-"The captain of the Agwadulsi says much the same thing to her crew." Chives's amplified voice overrode even the shouting locals as the robot passed Gussaw's meaning on to Terry.

  "Find out where the Gormanians were when the circle took them away," Terry

  called to the robot.

  "Finding out whether we are about to find ourselves in the middle of a battle strikes me as being of more immediate importance," Chives said.

  "They can't fight now," Terry said, though she knew full well they could. But they didn't, at least not right

  away. The Gormanians' dramatic appearance was enough to awe the Azusans out of an immediate onslaught against their ancient foes. And the spectacle of two captains, one from each race, both crying out for peace, was a miracle hardly more credible than mammaloid centaurs springing from thin air. With Chives electronically bellowing for peace in both languages, and with the robot and the two off-worlders to keep the Gormanians off balance by their mere presence, no one made the first fatal move.

  Terry scrambled over the waist-high fence and dropped down among the Gormanians. Chives hurried toward her to protect her if the locals showed hostility. She was glad to see the robot coming up, but not on account of that-at the moment, it hardly entered her mind. "Translate for me," she said to Chives.

  "For one so easily damaged as yourself, do you think this the ideal moment to come into close proximity to locals who are both upset and armed?"

  Chives asked.

  "Hell, yes. I want to find out what happened to them while it's still fresh in their minds. Ask this female here'!-Terry paused to fi-ame her question as precisely as possible-"what she felt when the circle took her away, what the place she went to was like, how long she thought she was gone, and how she came back here."

  Chives emitted an eerily accurate imitation of a sigh. "Very well," it said, then began speaking the throaty language the crew of the Agwadulsi used.

  The Gormanian next to Terry had listened in some impatience as two strange creatures spoke with each other in an unknown tongue. When one of them switched to her language immediately afterward, her ears furled in surprise. Then she spoke herself, loudly and volubly.

  "Her name is Canlaster," Chives reported. "She says that she and her fellow

  sailors felt nothing out of the ordinary, but suddenly they were not here

  any longer. They were-someplace else, she says. She does not define it more

  closely than that, but I am compelled to be of the opinion that they were on another planet, either in this galaxy or another."

  "Why?" Terry said.

  "The sky was the wrong color, she says, and everyone felt too light, and the sun even looked the wrong color all the time--it was red or orange even at noon, not yellow. "

  "That's another planet," Terry agreed. After a moment, she went on, "But it's impossible! It would mean the Hidden Folk have a way to make a hype~ump straight off a planetary surface. By all the physics the six starfaring races know, you can't do that."

  "Perhaps the Hidden Folk have not had the inestimable benefit of reading our physics texts," Chives said. Terry still wondered how they managed to program irony into Als. The robot continued, "Days and nights both seemed

  too short, so Canlaster has trouble reckoning how long she and the other

  Gormanians were on this strange world. Her best guess, though, is not far

  from the length of time that Gussaw states had elapsed here."

  "That has to mean the hypedurnp, no matter what our physics books say," Terry said.

  "I often wonder at the human ability to come to sweeping conclusions from completely inadequate data," Chives said. "Your speculation is possible, certainly, perhaps even probable, but by no means sure. "

  Terry knew the robot was right. She didn't care. Chives was welcome to call her conclusion a leap into the dark if it wanted to. She thought she was on target just the same.

  Then something else occurred to her, something that filled her with awe.

  "Do you know what we did?" she said to Chives. "We made this device work-we activated it when it was dead."

  "That does seem to be the case," the robot said. "Understanding precisely how we did it, however, will take more work."

  Trying to understand gnawed at Terry as she and her off-world companions marched with the Azusans and Gormanians back toward their ships. The two species kept apart from one another, with the human and robot (the latter with the Crotonite on its shoulders) tramping between them and acting as a sort of spiritual buffer.

  Ekrekek and Gussaw both seemed to decide to say something to the starfarers at the 'same time; the one hung

  back from his sailors while the other moved forward from hers. They eyed each other warily, but they both kept coming. Ekrekek spoke first: "How did the gods' creation first swallow the Gormanians and then restore them? You folk who travel between the stars are learned artificerssurely you must know."

  "I wish we did," Terry answered, "but I fear I still cannot tell you. We came to your Island of the Gods to try to learn that very thing." We got more than we bargained for, too, she thought: did we ever! Aloud, she went on, "I saw what the circle did, but I could no more explain how it did it

  than I could tell you what this pillar here does." She pointed to what

  might have been a blue ceramic light pole a few meters to one side of the path.

  As her finger went up and toward it, though, her jaw dropped. The pillar, which presumably had stood unchanging since the Hidden Folk set it in place for their own hidden reasons, suddenly turned as transparent as had the circular wall of the-the transporter, Terry thought. And, as with the transporter, four red bands appeared upon it, one above the next.

  "It's active too," Terry whispered.

  As if drawn by a lodestone, she stepped toward the pillar. Fkrekek and Gussaw followed her. Chives stood still until Lorah pounded on the robot's metallic cranium with both puny fists. "Go on!" the Crotonite squawked

  indignantly. "Do you want me to be the only one not in on this discovery?"

  "Indeed not," Chives answered, stepping forward at last. "In fact, upon reflection I believe your presence may be required for any discovery to take place. " Lorah preened at what sounded like a compliment.

  "I see four red bands, each about the same width-" Terry began.

  "The same three hundred seventeen millimeters we observed in the circle," Chives put in.

  "Are they? I thought so." Terry went on, "They're separated from one another by clear areas about half as wide as they are." She turned to her companions. "Is that

  what you see too? Translate for the locals, Chives, and also let me know if you perceive anything I'm missing."

  No one, the robot included, saw anything different from what Terry had described. "In this case, it appears the mous f

  fa arti Icial intelligence has no special value," Lorah sneered. But he was still in the middle of his sentence when another red band began to shine above the four.

  "As there are now five bands and five beings present, an obvious hypothesis is that one band is intended for each of us," Chives said. "Shall we test it?" He reached out and put a hand on the newly visible band of color.

  Terry touched one also. The pillar was cool and smooth. From Chives's shoulder, Lorah bent down and set a hand on the red strip between Chives's and Terry's. Through Chives, Terry asked Gussaw and Ekrekek, "Will each of you touch a red band too?"

  Ekrekek immediately reached out for one. Gussaw asked, "What will happen if I do?"

  That, Terry thought, was what the ancients for some reason called the sixty-four dollar question. "I don't know," she said. "That's what we're trying to find out."

  She did not need Chives to interpret Gussaw's skeptical grunt. Nonetheless, the Gormanian also extended a hand toward the pillar. In a sudden loss of nerve, Terry wanted to shout at her, to tell her to take her hand away. She wanted to jerk back her own hand, so the presumed fivefold circuit would remain incomplete. Who could say what the newly activated relic of the Hidden Folk might do?

  Too lah>-~ussaw's hand flattened against the pillar. For a long moment, nothing happened at all. Terry wondered if even the Hidden Folk's marvelous machinery-4f that was what it was-could wear out over the eons. Then all the bands of color flared so blindingly bright that her eyes squeezed shut of their own accord.

  Looking at her watch afterward, she found that she and her companions were caught up in that flash of light for about a minute and a half. That never seemed right to her. Either the experience had taken no time whatever, or it lasted an eternity. A minute and a half of real time did not fit well with either view.

  And yet, considering what the pillar of the Hidden Folk imparted, a minute and a half was not long to spend to acquire it. For by the time Terry's hand fell away from the pillar, she knew, at a level far deeper than words, what it was like to be a Crotonite, an Azusan, a Gormanian, even a robot. The closest she could come to describing the feeling was to compare it to the Naxians' empathic sense, which let them grasp emotions.

  What she'd experienced surpassed empathy, though: For that timeless instant or endless minute and a half, she'd been Lorah, Ekrekek, Gussaw, Chives.

  She knew them as well as they knew themselves, and knew they knew her and one another the same way.

  "How can we fight now?" Ekrekek said to Gussaw. The words were pacific; hearing the tone, Terry understood, as she would not have before, that the Azusan felt he had lost something of great price.

  And Chives murmured, "So that is what the urgency of organic life derives from. Much about which Als have only speculated now becomes clear. " Remembering the clean, crisp, orderly confines of the robot's mind, Terry wondered how it would deal with everything it had learned. A pity Chives had not been designed to blush, she thought.