"Yet theirs is a harsh holding."

"You know Aerie's not just far off from anywhere else human, it's a lump that never would've been settled if planets where people can settle at all weren't scarce."

"Vanishingly scarce. The sun of Aerie dim, its light across the lands of summer like the light of hazy autumn over Earth. The glaciers north and south, mountain-high. The cold seas that clash around the one tropical continent that our race could make its own. But the rings, the remnants of a shattered moon, the rings on a clear night are very beautiful."

"Well, the land's not that bad everywhere. The region where we set up our pitch, after Fleetwing Fleetwing took orbit, was shirtsleeve in its fashion. Naturally, that was the spot we negotiated to stay at, and, naturally, it belonged to the grand high rambuck." took orbit, was shirtsleeve in its fashion. Naturally, that was the spot we negotiated to stay at, and, naturally, it belonged to the grand high rambuck."

Shaun continued with incidents from first contact, the establishment of groundside camp, trade, personal encounters, mostly as amusing as he could make them. Erody filled in descriptions.

"Our cabins were on pastureland, for they keep herds and sow crops on Aerie," she explained. "They dare not trust entirely to robotics and synthesis, when quake or storm or the mites that gnaw metal may strike terribly in any year. Terrestrial grass stretched away southward from us, deeply green in the pale day, on one side the neatly arrayed houses and shops of the Magistrate's retainers and their kindred. Northward persisted native forest, a murky realm into which few ventured and none deeply. The castle loomed between us and the wildwood, its towers stark athwart the clouds. No need for curtain walls, when aircraft, missiles, and armed men stood watch. The castle was a community in itself, homes, worksteads, chapels, stadium, even laboratories and a museum."

"Aerie's not under a tyranny," Shaun said. "The way things had worked out - at least, as of when we were there - government was mostly by town meetings scattered around the continent. The Magistrate provided peace and order; police, through his militia, and higher justice - court of appeal, court of legal review - through his telepresence. Otherwise he generally left people alone, which most times is the best thing government can do. But after several generations had passed the office down from one to the next, he held a huge lot of assorted properties, and people didn't give him much backchat. He was a reasonable sort, though, in his rough-hewn style. We had no trouble ranging about in our own flitters, seeing things and making deals. And we were on a live, uncluttered world. Yes, that was a good three, four months."

"For us," Erody laid to this. Her music throbbed and keened. "We were not wholly benign. In some whom we met, we from the stars awakened dreams forgotten, wishes ungrantable, and belike we will never know what has afterward brewed from that discontent."

"One boy in particular," Shaun said. "Valdi Ronen, his name was. A bastard son of the Magistrate, raised at the castle in a hit-or-miss way, but with fairish prospects ahead of him. He might become an officer in the militia, for instance, or a rancher or an engineer, he being bright and lively. By Earth reckoning, he was about fourteen."

"A thin lad, shooting upward, his hands and feet too big for him, though he was not overly awkward," Erody remembered. "Pale-skinned, like most on Aerie, hair a flaxen shock, large blue eyes, sharp features. He often went hunting in the wilderness - sometimes alone, despite his mother's command that he have ever a companion or two; and we gathered that at those times he ventured farther in than men thought wise."

"He didn't after we arrived," Shaun said. "No, he hung around us like a moon around a planet. Most of us had studied and practiced the local language en route, of course. It hadn't changed a lot from what was in the database. I got pretty fluent, myself. We could talk, we two.

"I was willing to put up with him when I wasn't too busy, his countless questions, his bursts of brashness, everything that goes with being that age. My son had been, too, not terribly long ago, and had metamorphosed into a presentable human being. Besides, Valdi told me and showed me quite a bit, better than grown-ups probably could, about native wildlife and youngsters' games and lower-class superstitions and whatnot. Some of that might well go into the documentary our production team was planning, might help it sell when we got back. In fact, Valdi couldn't do enough for us. If we asked anything of him, he'd try his best, no matter how tough or dirty a chore it was."

"We meet not wondersmitten youth like this on worlds elsewhere as often as erstwhile, do we?" Erody asked low. "That may be as well. It was painful to see the grief in them when we bade good-bye."

"Yes, I saw what was coming, and tried to head it off," Shaun continued. " 'Valdi,' I told him, 'starfaring is our life and we wouldn't change if we could, but we were raised to it.' "

" 'We were born to it,' I told him," the woman recalled. " 'Our forebears for many generations were those who wanted it. They who could not endure it left, taking their genes with them. Kithfolk today are as chosen for space as birds are chosen to wing aloft.' His ancestors had brought some birds here and several species had flourished."

" 'But people don't grow wings!' he argued," Shaun added. "His voice broke in a squeak. He went red. Just the same, he pushed on. 'People build ships and - and l-l-learn to sail them.'

"I hadn't the heart to answer that nobody but a groundhugger would speak of sailing a spaceship. Instead, I set out the grim side for him. I talked about weeks, months, maybe years crowded into a metal shell or into still more cramped sealdomes, never able to step outside for a breath of clean air, only in a suit - because, I reminded him, planets where humans can walk freely are bloody few, and to make the profit that keeps us going we often have to call at other kinds. I talked about danger, death, and the worse than death that environments may bring down on us, bodies crippled, minds gone to ruin, and little our meditechs can do to remedy things. And coming back from even a fairly short voyage, after ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, or more years have gone by, the people you knew old or dead, and every voyage leaves you more and more an alien. And how they react to this on the planets - Earth - Oh, I laid it on kind of thick, maybe, but I was trying to convince him he'd better be content with what he had.

"No use. 'You have each other,' he said. And you go to all those worlds, you go to the stars. Everything here is always the same.' " same.' " Shaun sighed. "When did a fourteen-year-old boy ever listen to reason?" Shaun sighed. "When did a fourteen-year-old boy ever listen to reason?"

Erody nodded. "Yes, he dreamed of joining us." Her hand struck a chord that was like a cry. "Or else it was the vision that dreamed him, for he came to be consumed by it; nothing else was quite real to him any longer."

"M-m, I don't know about that," Shaun countered. "He stayed smart and cocky. In fact, once in a while he'd revert to his age and be downright obnoxious, like when he slipped what they call a squishbug into Nando Fanion's shoe or, guiding me around in the woods, got me to fall into a lurkfang's muckpit, and in either case stood there cackling with laughter. I'd have decked him if he hadn't been the Magistrate's son." He shrugged. "Or maybe not. A boy, after all, hopelessly in love with what he could never have."

"Our scoldings eventually stopped the pranks," Erody said. "He came to me and asked my help in learning our language. I warned him that would be pointless, but he begged, oh, so winningly clumsily, until I set up a program for him. He applied himself as if he were attacking a foe. I was amazed at how quickly he began to speak some Kithic and how fast he improved. And when he heard how widely used Xyrese is around the heart stars, naught would do but that he study this also, and again he was on his way to mastery."

Shaun nodded. "It got me wondering if he might not actually be recruitable. Planetsiders had joined the Kith now and then in the past. And . . . some fresh DNA in our bloodlines wouldn't hurt.

"I hinted to his father, and gathered that he he wouldn't mind. He'd never see his son again, but on the other hand, wouldn't have to worry about providing for him or sibling rivalry or whatnot. So I put it to Captain Du one day, privately, just for consideration. He wanted no part of it, though. We were too close-knit, he said, our ways too special, a newcomer would have too much to learn. And supposing he could - which I did believe Valdi was able to - would whatever he contributed during the rest of his life be enough to make up for the time and trouble his education, his integration with us, had cost?" wouldn't mind. He'd never see his son again, but on the other hand, wouldn't have to worry about providing for him or sibling rivalry or whatnot. So I put it to Captain Du one day, privately, just for consideration. He wanted no part of it, though. We were too close-knit, he said, our ways too special, a newcomer would have too much to learn. And supposing he could - which I did believe Valdi was able to - would whatever he contributed during the rest of his life be enough to make up for the time and trouble his education, his integration with us, had cost?"

"Our margin is thin at best," Erody whispered through a rippling of cold string-sounds, "in material profits and still more in the spirit."

"I tossed the notion aside. Naturally, I didn't mention any of this to Valdi. But I felt kind of glad that we'd be leaving soon."

"We know not to this day how he discovered whatever he did discover.

He may have had other, more secret friends among us. Ormer was not the sole Kithperson for whom he did favors. Somebody may have heard something in our camp and given it onward to him. Or he may simply have guessed. Bodies - stance, gait, glance, tone - often say what tongues do not. We know only that of a sudden Valdi Ronen grew most kind to little Alisa Du, she of the brown bangs, freckled nose, prim dresses, and great black cat."

"The captain's daughter, and the midpoint of his universe," Shaun explained. "Nothing untoward took place, nothing erotic at all. She was half his age. But she'd been fascinated by him ever since he made himself a fixture amongst us. To her he was as strange and romantic a figure as any of us was to him. She'd follow him around whenever and wherever she possibly could, maybe lugging Rowl in her arms."

The bard smiled. "Rowl was a ship's cat, a torn, but pleasant enough when chemoneutered as he usually was, quite intelligent, with a mortgage on Alisa's love second only to Daddy's and Mommy's. He shared her bed and each night purred her to sleep. Yes, she became Valdi's adoring admirer, her violet eyes never let slip of him while he was nigh, but Rowl was whom she went back to."

Shaun resumed. "Till now, Valdi hadn't been more than polite to her. That couldn't have come easy to him, but he knew what she meant to the captain - well, to quite a few of us. So he spoke kindly, and sometimes told her a story or sketched her a picture. He had a talent for drawing, among other things. If he expected that'd stop her tagging after him, he was wrong. Talk about counterproductive! However, he bore with the nuisance, because he had to if he wanted to stay welcome in our camp.

"Suddenly this changed. He didn't seek her out or anything, no need of that, but he let her come to him and received her gladly. He'd hunker down and listen to her chatter, carry on a straightfaced conversation like with an equal. He spun longer yarns and drew fancier pictures than before. He showed her flowers and wildlife, took her for a ride in an open hovercar, led her through local skipdances and games like bounceball, till her laughter trilled. And, yes, he took special pains to make friends with Rowl. He brought treats stolen from the castle kitchen, he stroked the cat under the chin and down the belly, he'd sit for an hour or two after Rowl got on his lap and fell asleep, till Rowl deigned to jump off - Ah, every ship has cats. You know what I mean.

"I couldn't quite figure this out. Surely he didn't imagine it would butter Captain Du into approving his adoption - which'd call for a vote anyway, of course. At best, he got the Old Man and the Vanguard Lady to regard him as less of a lout. What use that? Vacuum, poison air, hard radiation, celestial mechanics - they've got no respect for niceness."

The music went briefly sinister. "I wondered also," Erody related. "Could it be a subtle vengeance, striking out at the thwarting of his hopes? Soon we would depart. None now alive on Aerie would see us again, nor would we ever see them. Did he mean to send Alisa off with her heart ripped asunder?" The notes gentled. "No, I could not believe that. Valdi had no cruelty in him -"

"No more than most boys," Shaun muttered.

" - and besides, he must have realized it would not happen. Alisa would miss him for a while, but she was healthy and a child; new adventures awaited her; and she had her Rowl."

"Then things exploded," Shaun said. "The sun was going down, it was getting bedtime for kids - Aerie's got a twenty-six-hour rotation period, you may recall, so we'd easily adapted - and all at once Rowl wasn't to be found. Consternation!"

"The news spread among us like waves over a pond where someone has thrown in a stone," Erody adjoined. "No enormous matter, no crisis of life and death. But throughout our camp, we began to peer and grope about. The bleak eventide light streamed over us, casting shadows that went on and on across the grass, while the castle hulked ever more darkling to north and beyond it night welled up in the forest. 'Here, kitty, kitty!' we cried, ridiculously to and fro, around the shelters, probing under cots and into crannies, while the sun left us, dusk deepened from silver-blue to black, and the rings stood forth in their ghostly magnificence. It mattered not that Captain and Lady Du had offered a reward. Our Alisa wept."

"No luck," Shaun said. "The cats had roamed freely. They seldom wandered far outside our perimeter, and never toward the woods. Things there probably didn't smell right. Rowl, though, even when his tomhood was suppressed, had always been an active and inquisitive sort. Had he, maybe, come on something like a scuttermouse and chased it till he couldn't find his way home? I don't think Alisa's parents suggested that to her. Nor do I think she slept well through the night."

"In the morning, we did not entirely go on preparing for departure," Erody told. "Some who found time to spare went more widely than before, into the very forest. None entered it beyond sight of sunlight aslant between those hunched boles and clutching boughs, down through that dense, ragged leafage. If nothing else, the brush caught at a man, slashed, concealed sucking mudholes, while the bloodmites swarmed, stung, crawled up nostrils until breath was well-nigh stopped. Noises croaked, gabbled, mumbled from the shadows. Hunters in these parts had means and tricks for coping, yet they themselves never ranged deeply. When Captain Du asked whether any of them would help search, they answered nay. If Rowl had strayed into the wildwood, whatever got him could too easily take a human. Those creatures can eat our kind of flesh."

"Just a cat gone," Shaun said. "The girl would get over it. We had work to do.

"About midday, Valdi arrived. I asked where he'd been. He told me his school had gotten flappy about him skipping too many lessons, and he'd had to take a remedial section at the instruction terminal. Once free, he'd come straight to us. I gave him the news, not as any big thing."

"I was there," Erody said. "I saw him flush red." A note twanged. " 'I will go look!' he fried. 'I know the forest, I'll find him!' " Her instrument sounded a bugle call.

"The boy's voice cracked again," Shaun observed anticlimactically. "Sure, I thought, sure; adolescent heroics. He dashed off. After a while he returned, outfitted like a huntsman, green airbreath skinsuit, canteen and ration pouch and knife at hip, locator on right wrist and satphone on left, rifle slung at shoulder, and a plume in the hat on that unkempt head of his. Ho, how dramatic! 'I will find Rowl,' he promised Alisa, who'd heard he was there and come out in fairy-tale hopes. And off he loped."

"Stars kindled in her eyes behind the tears," Erody said. "I thought how callous he was to raise her heart thus, when it must be dashed back down onto the stones. Heedless, rather - a boy, a boy."

"I sort of thought the same," Shaun went on. "However, like the rest of us, I was busy readymaking. Besides, Alisa's no crybaby."

"A gallant little soul. As the day wore on, she swallowed her sorrow and took up her own duties. But she did not smile. Often and often I saw her gaze stray northward to the forest."

"I glanced that way myself, now and then," Shaun admitted. "More and more, I fretted. How long did the pup mean to try? What sense did it make? Had he quit, slunk into the castle, not wanted to tell us he'd failed? Really, he couldn't have expected to succeed. He wasn't that stupid-cocky. Or might he also have come to grief?"

"It was an evil wood." Music hissed.

"Hostile, anyway. You and I weren't the only Kithfolk who worried. Most of us liked Valdi Ronen. We called an inquiry to the castle. Had he checked in? No, he had not."

"Once more, darkness crept over us. The evening star glowed in western heaven. The rings were a banded bridge of pallid hues, around them the true stars and beyond those the galactic belt, as chill as the airs that sent mists aswirl about our ankles. Afar, some animal howled. Did it crouch above its prey? Windows and windows glowed yellow on the black bulk of the castle. Lights flickered like glowflies in the hands of servants and soldiers, out searching for Valdi. Their shouts drifted to us faint and forlorn."

"We Kithfolk huddled in. Our blundering efforts couldn't help. The boy hadn't phoned. No satellite had spotted anything. Well, Aerie didn't have many in orbit. Besides, the leaf canopy hindered their spying. Come morning, when a wider spectrum was available, we'd see what they could see."

"I have heard that now Alisa wept for her friend. Her mother rocked her in her arms for hours before she won to sleep. They do not trust psychodrugs on Aerie."

"Me, I lay awake, too, thinking some harsh thoughts. I recollected tales of what could find a human lost in those woods. And night whistlers, clingthorn - I didn't care to go through the list. Finally I took a soporific. My wife was smarter; she'd already done that.

"Our dock roused us when dawn was sneaking up into the eastern sky. We threw our clothes on and stumbled out, aimed more or less at the nearest mess cabin, desperate for coffee. People grunted and stirred in the shadows around us. Not that I was eager to be fully conscious. When the sun rose, its rays felt as cold as the lingering night mists.

"And then . . . there across the wet, trampled ground came Valdi Ronen."

"His hair hung drenched with dew, his clothes dripped, he snuffled and sneezed," Erody said. "But pressed to his breast he carried a cage, rough-made of withes, and in it stirred and yowled a black furriness."

"We crowded around, jolted wide awake. Huh? He'd found Rowl? How ever? By what crazy chance? And why hadn't he called home? We babbled. He looked straight at me in particular -"

"The level young sunlight blazed from his eyes."

"He answered us quietly, the way a man should. Yes, he'd assumed the cat had strayed into the forest. Being a better woodsman than average, he knew what traces to look for, bent twigs, pug marks in the duff - Well, I'm no tracker myself. I can't detail it. He didn't actually go any big straight-line distance, he said. But the hunt was slow, with many false leads. By the time he'd found the beast, night was falling.

"Then he discovered his satphone was dead. Sometimes on Aerie, in spite of every safeguard, metalmites get into equipment. He should have checked before he started out, but didn't. A boy in a hurry.

"To stumble back through the dark would be too risky. He wove a cage for Rowl out of shoots, so the idiot animal wouldn't wander off, and settled down as best he could. Once, he said, something huge passed by-he didn't see, he heard the brush break, felt the footfalls through the ground - and he unslung his rifle; but nothing happened. At daybreak he started home."

"Alisa jubilated. Will I ever again see such utter happiness, and afterward such adoration?" wondered Erody. "Alisa's mother hugged Valdi to her breast and kissed him in sight of every soul. Her father wrung his hand, while swallowing hard."

"Oh, yes," Shaun said. "Only a cat rescued, a pet. The Dus, the ship, owed Valdi the reward, our thanks, and nothing else. Still, the lad had proven himself. Maybe he'd been reckless, but that goes with being a boy. Besides, he had in fact carried out a difficult operation. Taking a chance when you have to goes with being Kith.

"And, then, we were in turmoil, also in our feelings - close to departure, we'd nevermore see the friends we'd made, this or that love affair was ending - You understand.

"The upshot was, we adopted Valdi Ronen. He's apprentice crew. And, I may say, in spite of his handicaps, quite promising."

"Which pleases Alisa and Rowl," Erody laughed.

For a short span there was silence, beneath the rollicking of the Fair.

Shaun grinned at his audience. "No doubt you're puzzled what the point of this story is," he said. "And no doubt, we being a race of traders, you suspect.

"If so, you're right. I'd had my own suspicions - not unique to me, but I was the officer who took Valdi aside and braced him after the ship was outbound."

"The sun of Aerie lost to sight," Erody murmured, "and around us, anew, the stars."

" 'This was too convenient,' I told him. 'I am now your superior and you will obey orders. I want to know what really happened to that poor cat.'

"He laughed. Not a cackle; a man's laugh, from down in the chest and straight out the throat. 'What poor cat?' he answered. 'A victim? Why, sir, I lured Rowl with delicacies my father enjoys only on feast days. Yes, then I caged him and kept him hidden away till I could carry him off to the woods. But I kept him fed with the same treats.'

"And in fact," Shaun remarked, "it took Rowl a while before he stopped turning up his nose at his regular rations.

" 'Didn't anybody notice that when I let him out he didn't race for food or water?' Valdi asked me. 'I was three-quarters expecting somebody would. But with you about to leave forever, what had I to lose? Uh, sir.' I saw him struggle to keep a sober face.

" 'Well, it was an emotional scene, as you'd counted on,' I said. 'We Kithfolk are slobbery sentimental about things like that.' I gave him my sternest look. 'They include the welfare of an innocent little girl.'

"He had the grace to look down at the deck. 'I'm sorry about that, sir,' he mumbled. 'I didn't really think of her, how hurt she'd be, till too late.' Maybe this was true. A boy, raised in hard company, often neglected, and possessed by a dream. 'I will try to make it up to her, sir,' he finished.

" 'Well,' I said, 'those of us who guessed have kept quiet, which may count as conniving. Punishment would make Alisa cry more. No society could run for long without a certain amount of hypocrisy to grease the wheels. But you had better justify our estimate of you, Apprentice Ronen.' "

Shaun paused. His glance roved through the pavilion entrance, past the dancing and hallooing, to the sky.

"I didn't spell out that estimate for him," he said. "He needed chastening. But our ship needs more bold, clever rascals than she's got.

"Valdi's rambling about the Fair today, in the middle of all the glamour he ever wished for. I imagine he's observing, too, learning, thinking. I hope so."

Erody's instrument clanged.

Shaun brought his attention back to the people who had come to hear him and began another story.

CHAPTER 18.

Fickle as Earth's, because in the narrowness of a ship every inconstancy was a tonic to organisms that evolved on Earth, at present the air through the command center blew slightly chill, wet, tangy with ozone, as if a thunderstorm were approaching. The two persons who stood among instruments and screens gave it no heed, unless subliminally. To one side, enhanced against interior illumination, the cluster burned in splendor. They were also unaware of it. Their eyes were on the view ahead, the stars of their destination.

Nansen spoke slowly, trying for dryness and failing: "There is no more doubt. Here, where the detectors get continuous input - The traces are dying out."

"What?" Kilbirnie whispered.

"It wasn't certain earlier. Therefore Yu and I announced nothing. Perhaps that was a mistake. But . . . throughout the region we're bound for - and the region has shrunk - we're receiving signs of less than a fourth as many ships as we observed at home."

She was mute for a span. The ghost storm gusted around her. A strand of hair fluttered below her headband.

"And that's as of more than three thousand years ago," she said at last. "By now, how many are running?"

" 'Now' means nothing across these distances."

"Oh, but it does, in a way, when we're like this, not hell-driving zero-zero but moving no faster than the stars. . . . Have the instruments looked back at Sol?"

Sol, long since lost in the horde, unrecoverable. "No Why? We would pick up a few traces at best, voyages that were going on when we left."

Kilbirnie's gaze remained fixed on the screen, as if she refused to yield and look away. "It would be a comfort, though."

"I didn't expect you to need comfort," he said.

She fashioned a rueful smile and turned her head about to regard him. "No, not really. I am taken aback. I hoped we'd find the Yonderfolk in an even bigger and finer bailiwick."

His mouth tried to imitate hers. "We all hoped that." Somberness claimed him. "Perhaps we should not be surprised. They never came to us, did they?"

She strengthened her accent. "Aweel, we still want to ken why."