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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30458 ***
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1962.
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+  on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+                                novice
+
+
+                         by James H. Schmitz
+
+
+     A novice is one who is inexperienced--but that doesn't mean
+     incompetent. Nor does it mean stupid!
+
+
+                      ILLUSTRATED BY SCHOENHERR
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+There was, Telzey Amberdon thought, someone besides TT and herself in
+the garden. Not, of course, Aunt Halet, who was in the house waiting
+for an early visitor to arrive, and not one of the servants. Someone
+or something else must be concealed among the thickets of
+magnificently flowering native Jontarou shrubs about Telzey.
+
+She could think of no other way to account for Tick-Tock's spooked
+behavior--nor, to be honest about it, for the manner her own nerves
+were acting up without visible cause this morning.
+
+Telzey plucked a blade of grass, slipped the end between her lips and
+chewed it gently, her face puzzled and concerned. She wasn't
+ordinarily afflicted with nervousness. Fifteen years old, genius
+level, brown as a berry and not at all bad looking in her sunbriefs,
+she was the youngest member of one of Orado's most prominent families
+and a second-year law student at one of the most exclusive schools in
+the Federation of the Hub. Her physical, mental, and emotional health,
+she'd always been informed, was excellent. Aunt Halet's frequent
+cracks about the inherent instability of the genius level could be
+ignored; Halet's own stability seemed questionable at best.
+
+But none of that made the present odd situation any less
+disagreeable....
+
+The trouble might have begun, Telzey decided, during the night, within
+an hour after they arrived from the spaceport at the guest house
+Halet had rented in Port Nichay for their vacation on Jontarou. Telzey
+had retired at once to her second-story bedroom with Tick-Tock; but
+she barely got to sleep before something awakened her again. Turning
+over, she discovered TT reared up before the window, her forepaws on
+the sill, big cat-head outlined against the star-hazed night sky,
+staring fixedly down into the garden.
+
+Telzey, only curious at that point, climbed out of bed and joined TT
+at the window. There was nothing in particular to be seen, and if the
+scents and minor night-sounds which came from the garden weren't
+exactly what they were used to, Jontarou was after all an unfamiliar
+planet. What else would one expect here?
+
+But Tick-Tock's muscular back felt tense and rigid when Telzey laid
+her arm across it, and except for an absent-minded dig with her
+forehead against Telzey's shoulder, TT refused to let her attention be
+distracted from whatever had absorbed it. Now and then, a low, ominous
+rumble came from her furry throat, a half-angry, half-questioning
+sound. Telzey began to feel a little uncomfortable. She managed
+finally to coax Tick-Tock away from the window, but neither of them
+slept well the rest of the night. At breakfast, Aunt Halet made one of
+her typical nasty-sweet remarks.
+
+"You look so fatigued, dear--as if you were under some severe mental
+strain ... which, of course, you might be," Halet added musingly. With
+her gold-blond hair piled high on her head and her peaches and cream
+complexion, Halet looked fresh as a daisy herself ... a malicious
+daisy. "Now wasn't I right in insisting to Jessamine that you needed a
+vacation away from that terribly intellectual school?" She smiled
+gently.
+
+"Absolutely," Telzey agreed, restraining the impulse to fling a
+spoonful of egg yolk at her father's younger sister. Aunt Halet often
+inspired such impulses, but Telzey had promised her mother to avoid
+actual battles on the Jontarou trip, if possible. After breakfast, she
+went out into the back garden with Tick-Tock, who immediately walked
+into a thicket, camouflaged herself and vanished from sight. It seemed
+to add up to something. But what?
+
+Telzey strolled about the garden a while, maintaining a pretense of
+nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She
+experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time,
+but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then,
+for half an hour or more, she'd just sat cross-legged in the grass,
+waiting quietly for Tick-Tock to show up of her own accord. And the
+big lunk-head hadn't obliged.
+
+Telzey scratched a tanned knee-cap, scowling at Port Nichay's park
+trees beyond the garden wall. It seemed idiotic to feel scared when
+she couldn't even tell whether there was anything to be scared about!
+And, aside from that, another unreasonable feeling kept growing
+stronger by the minute now. This was to the effect that she should be
+doing some unstated but specific thing....
+
+In fact, that Tick-Tock _wanted_ her to do some specific thing!
+
+Completely idiotic!
+
+Abruptly, Telzey closed her eyes, thought sharply, "Tick-Tock?" and
+waited--suddenly very angry at herself for having given in to her
+fancies to this extent--for whatever might happen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had never really established that she was able to tell, by a kind
+of symbolic mind-picture method, like a short waking dream,
+approximately what TT was thinking and feeling. Five years before,
+when she'd discovered Tick-Tock--an odd-looking and odder-behaved
+stray kitten then--in the woods near the Amberdons' summer home on
+Orado, Telzey had thought so. But it might never have been more than a
+colorful play of her imagination; and after she got into law school
+and grew increasingly absorbed in her studies, she almost forgot the
+matter again.
+
+Today, perhaps because she was disturbed about Tick-Tock's behavior,
+the customary response was extraordinarily prompt. The warm glow of
+sunlight shining through her closed eyelids faded out quickly and was
+replaced by some inner darkness. In the darkness there appeared then
+an image of Tick-Tock sitting a little way off beside an open door in
+an old stone wall, green eyes fixed on Telzey. Telzey got the
+impression that TT was inviting her to go through the door, and, for
+some reason, the thought frightened her.
+
+Again, there was an immediate reaction. The scene with Tick-Tock and
+the door vanished; and Telzey felt she was standing in a pitch-black
+room, knowing that if she moved even one step forwards, something that
+was waiting there silently would reach out and grab her.
+
+Naturally, she recoiled ... and at once found herself sitting, eyes
+still closed and the sunlight bathing her lids, in the grass of the
+guest house garden.
+
+She opened her eyes, looked around. Her heart was thumping rapidly.
+The experience couldn't have lasted more than four or five seconds,
+but it had been extremely vivid, a whole, compact little nightmare.
+None of her earlier experiments at getting into mental communication
+with TT had been like that.
+
+It served her right, Telzey thought, for trying such a childish stunt
+at the moment! What she should have done at once was to make a
+methodical search for the foolish beast--TT was bound to be
+_somewhere_ nearby--locate her behind her camouflage, and hang on to
+her then until this nonsense in the garden was explained! Talented as
+Tick-Tock was at blotting herself out, it usually was possible to spot
+her if one directed one's attention to shadow patterns. Telzey began a
+surreptitious study of the flowering bushes about her.
+
+Three minutes later, off to her right, where the ground was banked
+beneath a six-foot step in the garden's terraces, Tick-Tock's outline
+suddenly caught her eye. Flat on her belly, head lifted above her
+paws, quite motionless, TT seemed like a transparent wraith stretched
+out along the terrace, barely discernible even when stared at
+directly. It was a convincing illusion; but what seemed to be rocks,
+plant leaves, and sun-splotched earth seen through the wraith-outline
+was simply the camouflage pattern TT had printed for the moment on her
+hide. She could have changed it completely in an instant to conform to
+a different background.
+
+Telzey pointed an accusing finger.
+
+"See you!" she announced, feeling a surge of relief which seemed as
+unaccountable as the rest of it.
+
+The wraith twitched one ear in acknowledgment, the head outlines
+shifting as the camouflaged face turned towards Telzey. Then the
+inwardly uncamouflaged, very substantial looking mouth opened slowly,
+showing Tick-Tock's red tongue and curved white tusks. The mouth
+stretched in a wide yawn, snapped shut with a click of meshing teeth,
+became indistinguishable again. Next, a pair of camouflaged lids drew
+back from TT's round, brilliant-green eyes. The eyes stared across the
+lawn at Telzey.
+
+Telzey said irritably, "Quit clowning around, TT!"
+
+The eyes blinked, and Tick-Tock's natural bronze-brown color suddenly
+flowed over her head, down her neck and across her body into legs and
+tail. Against the side of the terrace, as if materializing into
+solidity at that moment, appeared two hundred pounds of supple, rangy,
+long-tailed cat ... or catlike creature. TT's actual origin had never
+been established. The best guesses were that what Telzey had found
+playing around in the woods five years ago was either a bio-structural
+experiment which had got away from a private laboratory on Orado, or
+some spaceman's lost pet, brought to the capital planet from one of
+the remote colonies beyond the Hub. On top of TT's head was a large,
+fluffy pompom of white fur, which might have looked ridiculous on
+another animal, but didn't on her. Even as a fat kitten, hanging head
+down from the side of a wall by the broad sucker pads in her paws, TT
+had possessed enormous dignity.
+
+Telzey studied her, the feeling of relief fading again. Tick-Tock,
+ordinarily the most restful and composed of companions, definitely was
+still tensed up about something. That big, lazy yawn a moment ago, the
+attitude of stretched-out relaxation ... all pure sham!
+
+"What _is_ eating you?" she asked in exasperation.
+
+The green eyes stared at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that
+fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old
+question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now?
+After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year,
+nobody had cared any more.
+
+For a moment, Telzey had the uncanny certainty of having had the
+answer to this situation almost in her grasp. An answer which appeared
+to involve the world of Jontarou, Tick-Tock, and of all unlikely
+factors--Aunt Halet.
+
+She shook her head, TT's impassive green eyes blinked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jontarou? The planet lay outside Telzey's sphere of personal
+interests, but she'd read up on it on the way here from Orado. Among
+all the worlds of the Hub, Jontarou was _the_ paradise for zoologists
+and sportsmen, a gigantic animal preserve, its continents and seas
+swarming with magnificent game. Under Federation law, it was being
+retained deliberately in the primitive state in which it had been
+discovered. Port Nichay, the only city, actually the only inhabited
+point on Jontarou, was beautiful and quiet, a pattern of vast but
+elegantly slender towers, each separated from the others by four or
+five miles of rolling parkland and interconnected only by the threads
+of transparent skyways. Near the horizon, just visible from the
+garden, rose the tallest towers of all, the green and gold spires of
+the Shikaris' Club, a center of Federation affairs and of social
+activity. From the aircar which brought them across Port Nichay the
+evening before, Telzey had seen occasional strings of guest houses,
+similar to the one Halet had rented, nestling along the park slopes.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Nothing very sinister about Port Nichay or green Jontarou, surely!
+
+Halet? That blond, slinky, would-be Machiavelli? What could--?
+
+Telzey's eyes narrowed reflectively. There'd been a minor
+occurrence--at least, it had seemed minor--just before the spaceliner
+docked last night. A young woman from one of the newscasting services
+had asked for an interview with the daughter of Federation
+Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon. This happened occasionally; and
+Telzey had no objections until the newshen's gossipy persistence in
+inquiring about the "unusual pet" she was bringing to Port Nichay with
+her began to be annoying. TT might be somewhat unusual, but that was
+not a matter of general interest; and Telzey said so. Then Halet moved
+smoothly into the act and held forth on Tick-Tock's appearance,
+habits, and mysterious antecedents, in considerable detail.
+
+Telzey had assumed that Halet was simply going out of her way to be
+irritating, as usual. Looking back on the incident, however, it
+occurred to her that the chatter between her aunt and the newscast
+woman had sounded oddly stilted--almost like something the two might
+have rehearsed.
+
+Rehearsed for what purpose? Tick-Tock ... Jontarou.
+
+Telzey chewed gently on her lower lip. A vacation on Jontarou for the
+two of them and TT had been Halet's idea, and Halet had enthused about
+it so much that Telzey's mother at last talked her into accepting.
+Halet, Jessamine explained privately to Telzey, had felt they were
+intruders in the Amberdon family, had bitterly resented Jessamine's
+political honors and, more recently, Telzey's own emerging promise of
+brilliance. This invitation was Halet's way of indicating a change of
+heart. Wouldn't Telzey oblige?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Telzey had obliged, though she took very little stock in Halet's
+change of heart. She wasn't, in fact, putting it past her aunt to have
+some involved dirty trick up her sleeve with this trip to Jontarou.
+Halet's mind worked like that.
+
+So far there had been no actual indications of purposeful mischief.
+But logic did seem to require a connection between the various
+puzzling events here.... A newscaster's rather forced looking interest
+in Tick-Tock--Halet could easily have paid for that interview. Then
+TT's disturbed behavior during their first night in Port Nichay, and
+Telzey's own formless anxieties and fancies in connection with the
+guest house garden.
+
+The last remained hard to explain. But Tick-Tock ... and Halet ...
+might know something about Jontarou that she didn't know.
+
+Her mind returned to the results of the half-serious attempt she'd
+made to find out whether there was something Tick-Tock "wanted her to
+do." An open door? A darkness where somebody waited to grab her if she
+took even one step forwards? It couldn't have had any significance. Or
+could it?
+
+So you'd like to try magic, Telzey scoffed at herself. Baby games....
+How far would you have got at law school if you'd asked TT to help
+with your problems?
+
+Then why had she been thinking about it again?
+
+She shivered, because an eerie stillness seemed to settle on the
+garden. From the side of the terrace, TT's green eyes watched her.
+
+Telzey had a feeling of sinking down slowly into a sunlit dream, into
+something very remote from law school problems.
+
+"Should I go through the door?" she whispered.
+
+The bronze cat-shape raised its head slowly. TT began to purr.
+
+Tick-Tock's name had been derived in kittenhood from the manner in
+which she purred--a measured, oscillating sound, shifting from high to
+low, as comfortable and often as continuous as the unobtrusive pulse
+of an old clock. It was the first time, Telzey realized now, that
+she'd heard the sound since their arrival on Jontarou. It went on for
+a dozen seconds or so, then stopped. Tick-Tock continued to look at
+her.
+
+It appeared to have been an expression of definite assent....
+
+The dreamlike sensation increased, hazing over Telzey's thoughts. If
+there was nothing to this mind-communication thing, what harm could
+symbols do? This time, she wouldn't let them alarm her. And if they
+did mean something....
+
+She closed her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sunglow outside faded instantly. Telzey caught a fleeting picture
+of the door in the wall, and knew in the same moment that she'd
+already passed through it.
+
+She was not in the dark room then, but poised at the edge of a
+brightness which seemed featureless and without limit, spread out
+around her with a feeling-tone like "sea" or "sky." But it was an
+unquiet place. There was a sense of unseen things on all sides
+watching her and waiting.
+
+Was this another form of the dark room--a trap set up in her mind?
+Telzey's attention did a quick shift. She was seated in the grass
+again; the sunlight beyond her closed eyelids seemed to shine in
+quietly through rose-tinted curtains. Cautiously, she let her
+awareness return to the bright area; and it was still there. She had a
+moment of excited elation. She was controlling this! And why not, she
+asked herself. These things were happening in her mind, after all!
+
+She would find out what they seemed to mean; but she would be in no
+rush to....
+
+An impression as if, behind her, Tick-Tock had thought, "Now I can
+help again!"
+
+Then a feeling of being swept swiftly, irresistibly forwards, thrust
+out and down. The brightness exploded in thundering colors around her.
+In fright, she made the effort to snap her eyes open, to be back in
+the garden; but now she couldn't make it work. The colors continued to
+roar about her, like a confusion of excited, laughing, triumphant
+voices. Telzey felt caught in the middle of it all, suspended in
+invisible spider webs. Tick-Tock seemed to be somewhere nearby,
+looking on. Faithless, treacherous TT!
+
+Telzey's mind made another wrenching effort, and there was a change.
+She hadn't got back into the garden, but the noisy, swirling colors
+were gone and she had the feeling of reading a rapidly moving
+microtape now, though she didn't actually see the tape.
+
+The tape, she realized, was another symbol for what was happening, a
+symbol easier for her to understand. There were voices, or what might
+be voices, around her; on the invisible tape she seemed to be reading
+what they said.
+
+A number of speakers, apparently involved in a fast, hot argument
+about what to do with her. Impressions flashed past....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Why waste time with her? It was clear that kitten-talk was all she was
+capable of!... Not necessarily; that was a normal first step. Give her
+a little time!... But what--exasperatedly--could such a small-bite
+_possibly_ know that would be of significant value?
+
+There was a slow, blurred, awkward-seeming interruption. Its content
+was not comprehensible to Telzey at all, but in some unmistakable
+manner it was defined as Tick-Tock's thought.
+
+A pause as the circle of speakers stopped to consider whatever TT had
+thrown into the debate.
+
+Then another impression ... one that sent a shock of fear through
+Telzey as it rose heavily into her awareness. Its sheer intensity
+momentarily displaced the tape-reading symbolism. A savage voice
+seemed to rumble:
+
+"Toss the tender small-bite to me"--malevolent crimson eyes fixed on
+Telzey from somewhere not far away--"and let's be done here!"
+
+Startled, stammering protest from Tick-Tock, accompanied by gusts of
+laughter from the circle. Great sense of humor these characters had,
+Telzey thought bitterly. That crimson-eyed thing wasn't joking at all!
+
+More laughter as the circle caught her thought. Then a kind of
+majority opinion found sudden expression:
+
+"Small-bite _is_ learning! No harm to wait--We'll find out
+quickly--Let's...."
+
+The tape ended; the voices faded; the colors went blank. In whatever
+jumbled-up form she'd been getting the impressions at that
+point--Telzey couldn't have begun to describe it--the whole thing
+suddenly stopped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She found herself sitting in the grass, shaky, scared, eyes open.
+Tick-Tock stood beside the terrace, looking at her. An air of hazy
+unreality still hung about the garden.
+
+She might have flipped! She didn't think so; but it certainly seemed
+possible! Otherwise ... Telzey made an attempt to sort over what had
+happened.
+
+Something _had_ been in the garden! Something had been inside her
+mind. Something that was at home on Jontarou.
+
+There'd been a feeling of perhaps fifty or sixty of these ... well,
+beings. Alarming beings! Reckless, wild, hard ... and that red-eyed
+nightmare! Telzey shuddered.
+
+They'd contacted Tick-Tock first, during the night. TT understood them
+better than she could. Why? Telzey found no immediate answer.
+
+Then Tick-Tock had tricked her into letting her mind be invaded by
+these beings. There must have been a very definite reason for that.
+
+She looked over at Tick-Tock. TT looked back. Nothing stirred in
+Telzey's thoughts. Between _them_ there was still no direct
+communication.
+
+Then how had the beings been able to get through to her?
+
+Telzey wrinkled her nose. Assuming this was real, it seemed clear that
+the game of symbols she'd made up between herself and TT had provided
+the opening. Her whole experience just now had been in the form of
+symbols, translating whatever occurred into something she could
+consciously grasp.
+
+"Kitten-talk" was how the beings referred to the use of symbols; they
+seemed contemptuous of it. Never mind, Telzey told herself; they'd
+agreed she was learning.
+
+The air over the grass appeared to flicker. Again she had the
+impression of reading words off a quickly moving, not quite visible
+tape.
+
+"You're being taught and you're learning," was what she seemed to
+read. "The question was whether you were capable of partial
+understanding as your friend insisted. Since you were, everything else
+that can be done will be accomplished very quickly."
+
+A pause, then with a touch of approval, "You're a well-formed mind,
+small-bite! Odd and with incomprehensibilities, but well-formed--"
+
+One of the beings, and a fairly friendly one--at least not unfriendly.
+Telzey framed a tentative mental question. "Who are you?"
+
+"You'll know very soon." The flickering ended; she realized she and
+the question had been dismissed for the moment. She looked over at
+Tick-Tock again.
+
+"Can't _you_ talk to me now, TT?" she asked silently.
+
+A feeling of hesitation.
+
+"Kitten-talk!" was the impression that formed itself with difficulty
+then. It was awkward, searching; but it came unquestionably from TT.
+"Still learning too, Telzey!" TT seemed half anxious, half angry.
+"We--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sharp buzz-note reached Telzey's ears, wiping out the groping
+thought-impression. She jumped a little, glanced down. Her
+wrist-talker was signaling. For a moment, she seemed poised
+uncertainly between a world where unseen, dangerous-sounding beings
+referred to one as small-bite and where TT was learning to talk, and
+the familiar other world where wrist-communicators buzzed periodically
+in a matter-of-fact manner. Settling back into the more familiar
+world, she switched on the talker.
+
+"Yes?" she said. Her voice sounded husky.
+
+"Telzey, dear," Halet murmured honey-sweet from the talker, "would you
+come back into the house, please? The living room--We have a visitor
+who very much wants to meet you."
+
+Telzey hesitated, eyes narrowing. Halet's visitor wanted to meet
+_her_?
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"He has something _very_ interesting to tell you, dear." The edge of
+triumphant malice showed for an instant, vanished in murmuring
+sweetness again. "So please hurry!"
+
+"All right." Telzey stood up. "I'm coming."
+
+"Fine, dear!" The talker went dead.
+
+Telzey switched off the instrument, noticed that Tick-Tock had chosen
+to disappear meanwhile.
+
+Flipped? She wondered, starting up towards the house. It was clear
+Aunt Halet had prepared some unpleasant surprise to spring on her,
+which was hardly more than normal behavior for Halet. The other
+business? She couldn't be certain of anything there. Leaving out TT's
+strange actions--which might have a number of causes, after all--that
+entire string of events could have been created inside her head. There
+was no contradictory evidence so far.
+
+But it could do no harm to take what _seemed_ to have happened at face
+value. Some pretty grim event might be shaping up, in a very real way,
+around here....
+
+"You reason logically!" The impression now was of a voice speaking to
+her, a voice that made no audible sound. It was the same being who'd
+addressed her a minute or two ago.
+
+The two worlds between which Telzey had felt suspended seemed to glide
+slowly together and become one.
+
+"I go to Law school," she explained to the being, almost absently.
+
+Amused agreement. "So we heard."
+
+"What do you want of me?" Telzey inquired.
+
+"You'll know soon enough."
+
+"Why not tell me now?" Telzey urged. It seemed about to dismiss her
+again.
+
+Quick impatience flared at her. "Kitten-pictures! Kitten-thoughts!
+Kitten-talk! Too slow, too slow! YOUR pictures--too much YOU! Wait
+till the...."
+
+Circuits close ... channels open.... Obstructions clear? What _had_ it
+said? There'd been only the blurred image of a finicky, delicate, but
+perfectly normal technical operation of some kind.
+
+"... Minutes now!" the voice concluded. A pause, then another thought
+tossed carelessly at her. "This is more important to you, small-bite,
+than to _us_!" The voice impression ended as sharply as if a
+communicator had snapped off.
+
+Not _too_ friendly! Telzey walked on towards the house, a new fear
+growing inside her ... a fear like the awareness of a storm gathered
+nearby, still quiet--deadly quiet, but ready to break.
+
+"Kitten-pictures!" a voice seemed to jeer distantly, a whispering in
+the park trees beyond the garden wall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Halet's cheeks were lightly pinked; her blue eyes sparkled. She looked
+downright stunning, which meant to anyone who knew her that the worst
+side of Halet's nature was champing at the bit again. On uninformed
+males it had a dazzling effect, however; and Telzey wasn't surprised
+to find their visitor wearing a tranced expression when she came into
+the living room. He was a tall, outdoorsy man with a tanned, bony
+face, a neatly trained black mustache, and a scar down one cheek which
+would have seemed dashing if it hadn't been for the stupefied look.
+Beside his chair stood a large, clumsy instrument which might have
+been some kind of telecamera.
+
+Halet performed introductions. Their visitor was Dr. Droon, a
+zoologist. He had been tuned in on Telzey's newscast interview on the
+liner the night before, and wondered whether Telzey would care to
+discuss Tick-Tock with him.
+
+"Frankly, no," Telzey said.
+
+Dr. Droon came awake and gave Telzey a surprised look. Halet smiled
+easily.
+
+"My niece doesn't intend to be discourteous, doctor," she explained.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Of course not," the zoologist agreed doubtfully.
+
+"It's just," Halet went on, "that Telzey is a little, oh, sensitive
+where Tick-Tock is concerned. In her own way, she's attached to the
+animal. Aren't you, dear?"
+
+"Yes," Telzey said blandly.
+
+"Well, we hope this isn't going to disturbed you too much, dear."
+Halet glanced significantly at Dr. Droon. "Dr. Droon, you must
+understand, is simply doing ... well, there is something very
+important he must tell you now."
+
+Telzey transferred her gaze back to the zoologist. Dr. Droon cleared
+his throat. "I, ah, understand, Miss Amberdon, that you're unaware of
+what kind of creature your, ah, Tick-Tock is?"
+
+Telzey started to speak, then checked herself, frowning. She had been
+about to state that she knew exactly what kind of creature TT was ...
+but she didn't, of course!
+
+Or did she? She....
+
+She scowled absent-mindedly at Dr. Droon, biting her lip.
+
+"Telzey!" Halet prompted gently.
+
+"Huh?" Telzey said. "Oh ... please go on, doctor!"
+
+Dr. Droon steepled his fingers. "Well," he said, "she ... your pet ... is,
+ah, a young crest cat. Nearly full grown now, apparently, and--"
+
+"Why, yes!" Telzey cried.
+
+The zoologist looked at her. "You knew that--"
+
+"Well, not really," Telzey admitted. "Or sort of." She laughed, her
+cheeks flushed. "This is the most ... go ahead please! Sorry I
+interrupted." She stared at the wall beyond Dr. Droon with a rapt
+expression.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The zoologist and Halet exchanged glances. Then Dr. Droon resumed
+cautiously. The crest cats, he said, were a species native to
+Jontarou. Their existence had been known for only eight years. The
+species appeared to have had a somewhat limited range--the Baluit
+mountains on the opposite side of the huge continent on which Port
+Nichay had been built....
+
+Telzey barely heard him. A very curious thing was happening. For every
+sentence Dr. Droon uttered, a dozen other sentences appeared in her
+awareness. More accurately, it was as if an instantaneous smooth flow
+of information relevant to whatever he said arose continuously from
+what might have been almost her own memory, but wasn't. Within a
+minute or two, she knew more about the crest cats of Jontarou than Dr.
+Droon could have told her in hours ... much more than he'd ever known.
+
+She realized suddenly that he'd stopped talking, that he had asked her
+a question. "Miss Amberdon?" he repeated now, with a note of
+uncertainty.
+
+"Yar-rrr-REE!" Telzey told him softly. "I'll drink your blood!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+Telzey blinked, focused on Dr. Droon, wrenching her mind away from a
+splendid view of the misty-blue peaks of the Baluit range.
+
+"Sorry," she said briskly. "Just a joke!" She smiled. "Now what were
+you saying?"
+
+The zoologist looked at her in a rather odd manner for a moment. "I
+was inquiring," he said then, "whether you were familiar with the
+sporting rules established by the various hunting associations of the
+Hub in connection with the taking of game trophies?"
+
+Telzey shook her head. "No, I never heard of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rules, Dr. Droon explained, laid down the type of equipment ...
+weapons, spotting and tracking instruments, number of assistants, and
+so forth ... a sportsman could legitimately use in the pursuit of any
+specific type of game. "Before the end of the first year after their
+discovery," he went on, "the Baluit crest cats had been placed in the
+ultra-equipment class."
+
+"What's ultra-equipment?" Telzey asked.
+
+"Well," Dr. Droon said thoughtfully, "it doesn't quite involve the use
+of full battle armor ... not quite! And, of course, even with that
+classification the sporting principle of mutual accessibility must be
+observed."
+
+"Mutual ... oh, I see!" Telzey paused as another wave of silent
+information rose into her awareness; went on, "So the game has to be
+able to get at the sportsman too, eh?"
+
+"That's correct. Except in the pursuit of various classes of flying
+animals, a shikari would not, for example, be permitted the use of an
+aircar other than as means of simple transportation. Under these
+conditions, it was soon established that crest cats were being
+obtained by sportsmen who went after them at a rather consistent
+one-to-one ration."
+
+Telzey's eyes widened. She'd gathered something similar from her other
+information source but hadn't quite believed it. "One hunter killed
+for each cat bagged?" she said. "That's pretty rough sport, isn't it?
+
+"Extremely rough sport!" Dr. Droon agreed dryly. "In fact, when the
+statistics were published, the sporting interest in winning a Baluit
+cat trophy appears to have suffered a sudden and sharp decline. On the
+other hand, a more scientific interest in these remarkable animals was
+coincidingly created, and many permits for their acquisition by the
+agents of museums, universities, public and private collections were
+issued. Sporting rules, of course, do not apply to that activity."
+
+Telzey nodded absently. "I see! _They_ used aircars, didn't they? A
+sort of heavy knockout gun--"
+
+"Aircars, long-range detectors and stunguns are standard equipment in
+such work," Dr. Droon acknowledged. "Gas and poison are employed, of
+course, as circumstances dictate. The collectors were relatively
+successful for a while."
+
+"And then a curious thing happened. Less than two years after their
+existence became known, the crest cats of the Baluit range were
+extinct! The inroads made on their numbers by man cannot begin to
+account for this, so it must be assumed that a sudden plague wiped
+them out. At any rate, not another living member of the species has
+been seen on Jontarou until you landed here with your pet last night."
+
+Telzey sat silent for some seconds. Not because of what he had said,
+but because the other knowledge was still flowing into her mind. On
+one very important point _that_ was at variance with what the
+zoologist had stated; and from there a coldly logical pattern was
+building up. Telzey didn't grasp the pattern in complete detail yet,
+but what she saw of it stirred her with a half incredulous dread.
+
+She asked, shaping the words carefully but with only a small part of
+her attention on what she was really saying. "Just what does all that
+have to do with Tick-Tock, Dr. Droon?"
+
+Dr. Droon glanced at Halet, and returned his gaze to Telzey. Looking
+very uncomfortable but quite determined, he told her, "Miss Amberdon,
+there is a Federation law which states that when a species is
+threatened with extinction, any available survivors must be
+transferred to the Life Banks of the University League, to insure
+their indefinite preservation. Under the circumstances, this law
+applies to, ah, Tick-Tock!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So that had been Halet's trick. She'd found out about the crest cats,
+might have put in as much as a few months arranging to make the
+discovery of TT's origin on Jontarou seem a regrettable
+mischance--something no one could have foreseen or prevented. In the
+Life Banks, from what Telzey had heard of them, TT would cease to
+exist as an individual awareness while scientists tinkered around with
+the possibilities of reconstructing her species.
+
+Telzey studied her aunt's carefully sympathizing face for an instant,
+asked Dr. Droon, "What about the other crest cats--you said were
+collected before they became extinct here? Wouldn't they be enough for
+what the Life Banks need?"
+
+He shook his head. "Two immature male specimens are know to exist, and
+they are at present in the Life Banks. The others that were taken
+alive at the time have been destroyed ... often under nearly
+disastrous circumstances. They are enormously cunning, enormously
+savage creatures, Miss Amberdon! The additional fact that they can
+conceal themselves to the point of being virtually indetectable except
+by the use of instruments makes them one of the most dangerous animals
+known. Since the young female which you raised as a pet has remained
+docile ... so far ... you may not really be able to appreciate that."
+
+"Perhaps I can," Telzey said. She nodded at the heavy-looking
+instrument standing beside his chair. "And that's--?"
+
+"It's a life detector combined with a stungun, Miss Amberdon. I have
+no intention of harming your pet, but we can't take chances with an
+animal of that type. The gun's charge will knock it unconscious for
+several minutes--just long enough to let me secure it with paralysis
+belts."
+
+"You're a collector for the Life Banks, Dr. Droon?"
+
+"That's correct."
+
+"Dr. Droon," Halet remarked, "has obtained a permit from the Planetary
+Moderator, authorizing him to claim Tick-Tock for the University
+League and remove her from the planet, dear. So you see there is
+simply nothing we can do about the matter! Your mother wouldn't like
+us to attempt to obstruct the law, would she?" Halet paused. "The
+permit should have your signature, Telzey, but I can sign in your
+stead if necessary."
+
+That was Halet's way of saying it would do no good to appeal to
+Jontarou's Planetary Moderator. She'd taken the precaution of getting
+his assent to the matter first.
+
+"So now if you'll just call Tick-Tock, dear..." Halet went on.
+
+Telzey barely heard the last words. She felt herself stiffening
+slowly, while the living room almost faded from her sight. Perhaps, in
+that instant, some additional new circuit had closed in her mind, or
+some additional new channel had opened, for TT's purpose in tricking
+her into contact with the reckless, mocking beings outside was
+suddenly and numbingly clear.
+
+And what it meant immediately was that she'd have to get out of the
+house without being spotted at it, and go some place where she could
+be undisturbed for half an hour.
+
+She realized that Halet and the zoologist were both staring at her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Are you ill, dear?"
+
+"No." Telzey stood up. It would be worse than useless to try to tell
+these two anything! Her face must be pretty white at the moment--she
+could feel it--but they assumed, of course, that the shock of losing
+TT had just now sunk in on her.
+
+"I'll have to check on that law you mentioned before I sign anything,"
+she told Dr. Droon.
+
+"Why, yes ..." He started to get out of his chair. "I'm sure that can
+be arranged, Miss Amberdon!"
+
+"Don't bother to call the Moderator's office," Telzey said. "I brought
+my law library along. I'll look it up myself." She turned to leave the
+room.
+
+"My niece," Halet explained to Dr. Droon who was beginning to look puzzled,
+"attends law school. She's always so absorbed in her studies ... Telzey?"
+
+"Yes, Halet?" Telzey paused at the door.
+
+"I'm very glad you've decided to be sensible about this, dear. But
+don't take too long, will you? We don't want to waste Dr. Droon's
+time."
+
+"It shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes," Telzey told her
+agreeably. She closed the door behind her, and went directly to her
+bedroom on the second floor. One of her two valises was still
+unpacked. She locked the door behind her, opened the unpacked valise,
+took out a pocket edition law library and sat down at the table with
+it.
+
+She clicked on the library's view-screen, tapped the clearing and
+index buttons. Behind the screen, one of the multiple rows of pinhead
+tapes shifted slightly as the index was flicked into reading position.
+Half a minute later, she was glancing over the legal section on which
+Dr. Droon had based his claim. The library confirmed what he had said.
+
+Very neat of Halet, Telzey thought, very nasty ... and pretty idiotic!
+Even a second-year law student could think immediately of two or three
+ways in which a case like that could have been dragged out in the
+Federation's courts for a couple of decades before the question of
+handing Tick-Tock over to the Life Banks became too acute.
+
+Well, Halet simply wasn't really intelligent. And the plot to shanghai
+TT was hardly even a side issue now.
+
+Telzey snapped the tiny library shut, fastened it to the belt of her
+sunsuit and went over to the open window. A two-foot ledge passed
+beneath the window, leading to the roof of a patio on the right.
+Fifty yards beyond the patio, the garden ended in a natural-stone
+wall. Behind it lay one of the big wooded park areas which formed most
+of the ground level of Port Nichay.
+
+Tick-Tock wasn't in sight. A sound of voices came from ground-floor
+windows on the left. Halet had brought her maid and chauffeur along;
+and a chef had showed up in time to make breakfast this morning, as
+part of the city's guest house service. Telzey took the empty valise
+to the window, set it on end against the left side of the frame, and
+let the window slide down until its lower edge rested on the valise.
+She went back to the house guard-screen panel beside the door, put her
+finger against the lock button, and pushed.
+
+The sound of voices from the lower floor was cut off as outer doors
+and windows slid silently shut all about the house. Telzey glanced
+back at the window. The valise had creaked a little as the guard field
+drove the frame down on it, but it was supporting the thrust. She
+returned to the window, wriggled feet foremost through the opening,
+twisted around and got a footing on the ledge.
+
+A minute later, she was scrambling quietly down a vine-covered patio
+trellis to the ground. Even after they discovered she was gone, the
+guard screen would keep everybody in the house for some little while.
+They'd either have to disengage the screen's main mechanisms and start
+poking around in them, or force open the door to her bedroom and get
+the lock unset. Either approach would involve confusion, upset
+tempers, and generally delay any organized pursuit.
+
+Telzey edged around the patio and started towards the wall, keeping
+close to the side of the house so she couldn't be seen from the
+windows. The shrubbery made minor rustling noises as she threaded her
+way through it ... and then there was a different stirring which might
+have been no more than a slow, steady current of air moving among the
+bushes behind her. She shivered involuntarily but didn't look back.
+
+She came to the wall, stood still, measuring its height, jumped and
+got an arm across it, swung up a knee and squirmed up and over. She
+came down on her feet with a small thump in the grass on the other
+side, glanced back once at the guest house, crossed a path and went on
+among the park trees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within a few hundred yards, it became apparent that she had an escort.
+She didn't look around for them, but spread out to right and left like
+a skirmish line, keeping abreast with her, occasional shadows slid
+silently through patches of open, sunlit ground, disappeared again
+under the trees. Otherwise, there was hardly anyone in sight. Port
+Nichay's human residents appeared to make almost no personal use of
+the vast parkland spread out beneath their tower apartments; and its
+traffic moved over the airways, visible from the ground only as
+rainbow-hued ribbons which bisected the sky between the upper tower
+levels. An occasional private aircar went by overhead.
+
+Wisps of thought which were not her own thoughts flicked through
+Telzey's mind from moment to moment as the silent line of shadows
+moved deeper into the park with her. She realized she was being sized
+up, judged, evaluated again. No more information was coming through;
+they had given her as much information as she needed. In the main
+perhaps, they were simply curious now. This was the first human mind
+they'd been able to make heads or tails of, and that hadn't seemed
+deaf and silent to their form of communication. They were taking time
+out to study it. They'd been assured she would have something of
+genuine importance to tell them; and there was some derision about
+that. But they were willing to wait a little, and find out. They were
+curious and they liked games. At the moment, Telzey and what she might
+try to do to change their plans was the game on which their attention
+was fixed.
+
+Twelve minutes passed before the talker on Telzey's wrist began to
+buzz. It continued to signal off and on for another few minutes, then
+stopped. Back in the guest house they couldn't be sure yet whether she
+wasn't simply locked inside her room and refusing to answer them. But
+Telzey quickened her pace.
+
+The park's trees gradually became more massive, reached higher above
+her, stood spaced more widely apart. She passed through the morning
+shadow of the residential tower nearest the guest house, and emerged
+from it presently on the shore of a small lake. On the other side of
+the lake, a number of dappled grazing animals like long-necked, tall
+horses lifted their heads to watch her. For some seconds they seemed
+only mildly interested, but then a breeze moved across the lake,
+crinkling the surface of the water, and as it touched the opposite
+shore, abrupt panic exploded among the grazers. They wheeled, went
+flashing away in effortless twenty-foot strides, and were gone among
+the trees.
+
+Telzey felt a crawling along her spine. It was the first objective
+indication she'd had of the nature of the company she had brought to
+the lake, and while it hardly came as a surprise, for a moment her
+urge was to follow the example of the grazers.
+
+"Tick-Tock?" she whispered, suddenly a little short of breath.
+
+A single up-and-down purring note replied from the bushes on her
+right. TT was still around, for whatever good that might do. Not too
+much, Telzey thought, if it came to serious trouble. But the knowledge
+was somewhat reassuring ... and this, meanwhile, appeared to be as far
+as she needed to get from the guest house. They'd be looking for her
+by aircar presently, but there was nothing to tell them in which
+direction to turn first.
+
+She climbed the bank of the lake to a point where she was screened
+both by thick, green shrubbery and the top of a single immense tree
+from the sky, sat down on some dry, mossy growth, took the law library
+from her belt, opened it and placed it in her lap. Vague stirrings
+indicated that her escort was also settling down in an irregular
+circle about her; and apprehension shivered on Telzey's skin again. It
+wasn't that their attitude was hostile; they were simply overawing.
+And no one could predict what they might do next. Without looking up,
+she asked a question in her mind.
+
+"Ready?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Sense of multiple acknowledgment, variously tinged--sardonic;
+interestingly amused; attentive; doubtful. Impatience quivered through
+it too, only tentatively held in restraint, and Telzey's forehead was
+suddenly wet. Some of them seemed on the verge of expressing
+disapproval with what was being done here--
+
+Her fingers quickly flicked in the index tape, and the stir of feeling
+about her subsided, their attention captured again for the moment. Her
+thoughts became to some degree detached, ready to dissect another
+problem in the familiar ways and present the answers to it. Not a very
+involved problem essentially, but this time it wasn't a school
+exercise. Her company waited, withdrawn, silent, aloof once more,
+while the index blurred, checked, blurred and checked. Within a minute
+and a half, she had noted a dozen reference symbols. She tapped in
+another of the pinhead tapes, glanced over a few paragraphs, licked
+salty sweat from her lip, and said in her thoughts, emphasizing the
+meaning of each detail of the sentence so that there would be no
+misunderstanding, "This is the Federation law that applies to the
+situation which existed originally on this planet...."
+
+There were no interruptions, no commenting thoughts, no intrusions of
+any kind, as she went step by step through the section, turned to
+another one, and another. In perhaps twelve minutes she came to the
+end of the last one, and stopped. Instantly, argument exploded about
+her.
+
+Telzey was not involved in the argument; in fact, she could grasp only
+scraps of it. Either they were excluding her deliberately, or the
+exchange was too swift, practiced and varied to allow her to keep up.
+But their vehemence was not encouraging. And was it reasonable to
+assume that the Federation's laws would have any meaning for minds
+like these? Telzey snapped the library shut with fingers that had
+begun to tremble, and placed it on the ground. Then she stiffened. In
+the sensations washing about her, a special excitement rose suddenly,
+a surge of almost gleeful wildness that choked away her breath.
+Awareness followed of a pair of malignant crimson eyes fastened on
+her, moving steadily closer. A kind of nightmare paralysis seized
+Telzey--they'd turned her over to that red-eyed horror! She sat still,
+feeling mouse-sized.
+
+Something came out with a crash from a thicket behind her. Her muscles
+went tight. But it was TT who rubbed a hard head against her shoulder,
+took another three stiff-legged steps forward and stopped between
+Telzey and the bushes on their right, back rigid, neck fur erect, tail
+twisting.
+
+Expectant silence closed in about them. The circle was waiting. In the
+greenery on the right something made a slow, heavy stir.
+
+TT's lips peeled back from her teeth. Her head swung towards the
+motion, ears flattening, transformed to a split, snarling demon-mask.
+A long shriek ripped from her lungs, raw with fury, blood lust and
+challenge.
+
+The sound died away. For some seconds the tension about them held;
+then came a sense of gradual relaxation mingled with a partly amused
+approval. Telzey was shaking violently. It had been, she was telling
+herself, a deliberate test ... not of herself, of course, but of TT.
+And Tick-Tock had passed with honors. That _her_ nerves had been half
+ruined in the process would seem a matter of no consequence to this
+rugged crew....
+
+She realized next that someone here was addressing her personally.
+
+It took a few moments to steady her jittering thoughts enough to gain
+a more definite impression than that. This speaker, she discovered
+then, was a member of the circle of whom she hadn't been aware before.
+The thought-impressions came hard and cold as iron--a personage who
+was very evidently in the habit of making major decisions and seeing
+them carried out. The circle, its moment of sport over, was listening
+with more than a suggestion of deference. Tick-Tock, far from
+conciliated, green eyes still blazing, nevertheless was settling down
+to listen, too.
+
+Telzey began to understand.
+
+Her suggestions, Iron Thoughts informed her, might appear without
+value to a number of foolish minds here, but _he_ intended to see they
+were given a fair trial. Did he perhaps hear, he inquired next of the
+circle, throwing in a casual but horridly vivid impression of snapping
+spines and slashed shaggy throats spouting blood, any objection to
+that?
+
+Dead stillness all around. There was, definitely, no objection.
+Tick-Tock began to grin like a pleased kitten.
+
+That point having been settled in an orderly manner now, Iron Thoughts
+went on coldly to Telzey, what specifically did she propose they
+should do?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Halet's long, pearl-gray sportscar showed up above the park trees
+twenty minutes later. Telzey, face turned down towards the open law
+library in her lap, watched the car from the corner of her eyes. She
+was in plain view, sitting beside the lake, apparently absorbed in
+legal research. Tick-Tock, camouflaged among the bushes thirty feet
+higher up the bank, had spotted the car an instant before she did and
+announced the fact with a three-second break in her purring. Neither
+of them made any other move.
+
+The car was approaching the lake but still a good distance off. Its
+canopy was down, and Telzey could just make out the heads of three
+people inside. Delquos, Halet's chauffeur, would be flying the
+vehicle, while Halet and Dr. Droon looked around for her from the
+sides. Three hundred yards away, the aircar began a turn to the right.
+Delquos didn't like his employer much; at a guess, he had just spotted
+Telzey and was trying to warn her off.
+
+Telzey closed the library and put it down, picked up a handful of
+pebbles and began flicking them idly, one at a time, into the water.
+The aircar vanished to her left.
+
+Three minutes later, she watched its shadow glide across the surface
+of the lake towards her. Her heart began to thump almost audibly, but
+she didn't look up. Tick-Tock's purring continued, on its regular,
+unhurried note. The car came to a stop almost directly overhead. After
+a couple of seconds, there was a clicking noise. The purring ended
+abruptly.
+
+Telzey climbed to her feet as Delquos brought the car down to the bank
+of the lake. The chauffeur grinned ruefully at her. A side door had
+been opened, and Halet and Dr. Droon stood behind it. Halet watched
+Telzey with a small smile while the naturalist put the heavy
+life-detector-and-stungun device carefully down on the floorboards.
+
+"If you're looking for Tick-Tock," Telzey said, "she isn't here."
+
+Halet just shook her head sorrowfully.
+
+"There's no use lying to us, dear. Dr Droon just stunned her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They found TT collapsed on her side among the shrubs, wearing her
+natural color. Her eyes were shut, her chest rose and fell in a slow
+breathing motion. Dr. Droon, looking rather apologetic, pointed out to
+Telzey that her pet was in no pain, that the stungun had simply put
+her comfortably to sleep. He also explained the use of the two sets of
+webbed paralysis belts which he fastened about TT's legs. The effect
+of the stun charge would wear off in a few minutes, and contact with
+the inner surfaces of the energized belts would then keep TT
+anesthetized and unable to move until the belts were removed. She
+would, he repeated, be suffering no pain throughout the process.
+
+Telzey didn't comment. She watched Delquos raise TT's limp body above
+the level of the bushes with a gravity hoist belonging to Dr. Droon,
+and maneuver her back to the car, the others following. Delquos
+climbed into the car first, opened the big trunk compartment in the
+rear. TT was slid inside and the trunk compartment locked.
+
+"Where are you taking her?" Telzey asked sullenly as Delquos lifted
+the car into the air.
+
+"To the spaceport, dear," Halet said. "Dr. Droon and I both felt it
+would be better to spare your feelings by not prolonging the matter
+unnecessarily."
+
+Telzey wrinkled her nose disdainfully, and walked up the aircar to
+stand behind Delquos' seat. She leaned against the back of the seat
+for an instant. Her legs felt shaky.
+
+The chauffeur gave her a sober wink from the side.
+
+"That's a dirty trick she's played on you, Miss Telzey!" he murmured.
+"I tried to warn you."
+
+"I know." Telzey took a deep breath. "Look, Delquos, in just a minute
+something's going to happen! It'll look dangerous, but it won't be.
+Don't let it get you nervous ... right?"
+
+"Huh?" Delquos appeared startled, but kept his voice low. "Just
+_what's_ going to happen?"
+
+"No time to tell you. Remember what I said."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Telzey moved back a few steps from the driver's seat, turned around,
+said unsteadily, "Halet ... Dr. Droon--"
+
+Halet had been speaking quietly to Dr. Droon; they both looked up.
+
+"If you don't move, and don't do anything stupid," Telzey said
+rapidly, "you won't get hurt. If you do ... well, I don't know! You
+see, there's another crest cat in the car...." In her mind she added,
+"Now!"
+
+It was impossible to tell in just what section of the car Iron
+Thoughts had been lurking. The carpeting near the rear passenger seats
+seemed to blur for an instant. Then he was there, camouflage dropped,
+sitting on the floorboards five feet from the naturalist and Halet.
+
+Halet's mouth opened wide; she tried to scream but fainted instead.
+Dr. Droon's right hand started out quickly towards the big stungun
+device beside his seat. Then he checked himself and sat still,
+ashen-faced.
+
+Telzey didn't blame him for changing his mind. She felt he must be a
+remarkably brave man to have moved at all. Iron Thoughts, twice as
+broad across the back as Tick-Tock, twice as massively muscled, looked
+like a devil-beast even to her. His dark-green marbled hide was
+criss-crossed with old scar patterns; half his tossing crimson crest
+appeared to have been ripped away. He reached out now in a fluid,
+silent motion, hooked a paw under the stungun and flicked upwards. The
+big instrument rose in an incredibly swift, steep arc eighty feet
+into the air, various parts flying away from it, before it started
+curving down towards the treetops below the car. Iron Thoughts lazily
+swung his head around and looked at Telzey with yellow fire-eyes.
+
+"Miss Telzey! Miss Telzey!" Delquos was muttering behind her. "You're
+_sure_ it won't...."
+
+Telzey swallowed. At the moment, she felt barely mouse-sized again.
+"Just relax!" she told Delquos in a shaky voice. "He's really quite
+t-t-t-tame."
+
+Iron Thoughts produced a harsh but not unamiable chuckle in her mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The pearl-gray sportscar, covered now by its streamlining canopy,
+drifted down presently to a parking platform outside the suite of
+offices on Jontarou's Planetary Moderator, on the fourteenth floor of
+the Shikaris' Club Tower. An attendant waved it on into a vacant slot.
+
+Inside the car, Delquos set the brakes, switched off the engine,
+asked, "Now what?"
+
+"I think," Telzey said reflectively, "we'd better lock you in the
+trunk compartment with my aunt and Dr. Droon while I talk to the
+Moderator."
+
+The chauffeur shrugged. He'd regained most of his aplomb during the
+unhurried trip across the parklands. Iron Thoughts had done nothing
+but sit in the center of the car, eyes half shut, looking like instant
+death enjoying a dignified nap and occasionally emitting a ripsawing
+noise which might have been either his style of purring or a snore.
+And Tick-Tock, when Delquos peeled the paralysis belts off her legs at
+Telzey's direction, had greeted him with her usual reserved
+affability. What the chauffeur was suffering from at the moment was
+intense curiosity, which Telzey had done nothing to relieve.
+
+"Just as you say, Miss Telzey," he agreed. "I hate to miss whatever
+you're going to be doing here, but if you _don't_ lock me up now, Miss
+Halet will figure I was helping you and fire me as soon as you let her
+out."
+
+Telzey nodded, then cocked her head in the direction of the rear
+compartment. Faint sounds coming through the door indicated that Halet
+had regained consciousness and was having hysterics.
+
+"You might tell her," Telzey suggested, "that there'll be a grown-up
+crest cat sitting outside the compartment door." This wasn't true, but
+neither Delquos nor Halet could know it. "If there's too much racket
+before I get back, it's likely to irritate him...."
+
+A minute later, she set both car doors on lock and went outside,
+wishing she were less informally clothed. Sunbriefs and sandals tended
+to make her look juvenile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The parking attendant appeared startled when she approached him with
+Tick-Tock striding alongside.
+
+"They'll never let you into the offices with that thing, miss," he
+informed her. "Why, it doesn't even have a collar!"
+
+"Don't worry about it." Telzey told him aloofly.
+
+She dropped a two-credit piece she'd taken from Halet's purse into his
+hand, and continued on towards the building entrance. The attendant
+squinted after her, trying unsuccessfully to dispel an odd impression
+that the big catlike animal with the girl was throwing a double
+shadow.
+
+The Moderator's chief receptionist also had some doubts about TT, and
+possibly about the sunbriefs, though she seemed impressed when
+Telzey's identification tag informed her she was speaking to the
+daughter of Federation Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon.
+
+"You feel you can discuss this ... emergency ... only with the
+Moderator himself, Miss Amberdon?" she repeated.
+
+"Exactly," Telzey said firmly. A buzzer sounded as she spoke. The
+receptionist excused herself and picked up an earphone. She listened a
+moment, said blandly, "Yes.... Of course.... Yes, I understand,"
+replaced the earphone and stood up, smiling at Telzey.
+
+"Would you come with me, Miss Amberdon?" she said. "I think the
+Moderator will see you immediately...."
+
+Telzey followed her, chewing thoughtfully at her lip. This was easier
+than she'd expected--in fact, too easy! Halet's work? Probably. A few
+comments to the effect of "A highly imaginative child ...
+overexcitable," while Halet was arranging to have the Moderator's
+office authorize Tick-Tock's transfer to the life Banks, along with
+the implication that Jessamine Amberdon would appreciate a discreet
+handling of any disturbance Telzey might create as a result.
+
+It was the sort of notion that would appeal to Halet--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They passed through a series of elegantly equipped offices and
+hallways, Telzey grasping TT's neck-fur in lieu of a leash, their
+appearance creating a tactfully restrained wave of surprise among
+secretaries and clerks. And if somebody here and there was troubled by
+a fleeting, uncanny impression that not one large beast but two seemed
+to be trailing the Moderator's visitor down the aisles, no mention was
+made of what could have been only a momentary visual distortion.
+Finally, a pair of sliding doors opened ahead, and the receptionist
+ushered Telzey into a large, cool balcony garden on the shaded side of
+the great building. A tall, gray-haired man stood up from the desk at
+which he was working, and bowed to Telzey. The receptionist withdrew
+again.
+
+"My pleasure, Miss Amberdon," Jontarou's Planetary Moderator said, "Be
+seated, please." He studied Tick-Tock with more than casual interest
+while Telzey was settling herself into a chair, added, "And what may I
+and my office do for you?"
+
+Telzey hesitated. She'd observed his type on Orado in her mother's
+circle of acquaintances--a senior diplomat, a man not easy to impress.
+It was a safe bet that he'd had her brought out to his balcony office
+only to keep her occupied while Halet was quietly informed where the
+Amberdon problem child was and requested to come over and take charge.
+
+What she had to tell him now would have sounded rather wild even if
+presented by a presumably responsible adult. She could provide proof,
+but until the Moderator was already nearly sold on her story, that
+would be a very unsafe thing to do. Old Iron Thoughts was backing her
+up, but if it didn't look as if her plans were likely to succeed, he
+would be willing to ride herd on his devil's pack just so long....
+
+Better start the ball rolling without any preliminaries, Telzey
+decided. The Moderator's picture of her must be that of a spoiled,
+neurotic brat in a stew about the threatened loss of a pet animal. He
+expected her to start arguing with him immediately about Tick-Tock.
+
+She said "Do you have a personal interest in keeping the Baluit crest
+cats from becoming extinct?"
+
+Surprise flickered in his eyes for an instant. Then he smiled.
+
+"I admit I do, Miss Amberdon," he said pleasantly. "I should like to
+see the species re-established. I count myself almost uniquely
+fortunate in having had the opportunity to bag two of the magnificent
+brutes before disease wiped them out on the planet."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The last seemed a less than fortunate statement just now. Telzey
+felt a sharp tingle of alarm, then sensed that in the minds which were
+drawing the meaning of the Moderator's speech from her mind there had
+been only a brief stir of interest.
+
+She cleared her throat, said, "The point is that they weren't wiped
+out by disease."
+
+He considered her quizzically, seemed to wonder what she was trying to
+lead up to. Telzey gathered her courage, plunged on, "Would you like
+to hear what did happen?"
+
+"I should be very much interested, Miss Amberdon," the Moderator said
+without change of expression. "But first, if you'll excuse me a
+moment...."
+
+There had been some signal from his desk which Telzey hadn't noticed,
+because he picked up a small communicator now and said "Yes?" After a
+few seconds, he resumed, "That's rather curious, isn't it?... Yes, I'd
+try that.... No, that shouldn't be necessary.... Yes, please do.
+Thank you." He replaced the communicator, his face very sober; then,
+his eyes flicking for an instant to TT, he drew one of the upper desk
+drawers open a few inches, and turned back to Telzey.
+
+"Now, Miss Amberdon," he said affably, "you were about to say? About
+these crest cats...."
+
+Telzey swallowed. She hadn't heard the other side of the conversation,
+but she could guess what it had been about. His office had called the
+guest house, had been told by Halet's maid that Halet, the chauffeur
+and Dr. Droon were out looking for Miss Telzey and her pet. The
+Moderator's office had then checked on the sportscar's communication
+number and attempted to call it. And, of course, there had been no
+response.
+
+To the Moderator, considering what Halet would have told him, it must
+add up to the grim possibility that the young lunatic he was talking
+to had let her three-quarters-grown crest cat slaughter her aunt and
+the two men when they caught up with her! The office would be
+notifying the police now to conduct an immediate search for the
+missing aircar.
+
+When it would occur to them to look for it on the Moderator's parking
+terrace was something Telzey couldn't know. But if Halet and Dr. Droon
+were released before the Moderator accepted her own version of what
+had occurred, and the two reported the presence of wild crest cats in
+Port Nichay, there would be almost no possibility of keeping the
+situation under control. Somebody was bound to make some idiotic move,
+and the fat would be in the fire....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two things might be in her favor. The Moderator seemed to have the
+sort of steady nerve one would expect in a man who had bagged two
+Baluit crest cats. The partly opened desk drawer beside him must have
+a gun in it; apparently he considered that a sufficient precaution
+against an attack by TT. He wasn't likely to react in a panicky
+manner. And the mere fact that he suspected Telzey of homicidal
+tendencies would make him give the closest attention to what she said.
+Whether he believed her then was another matter, of course.
+
+Slightly encouraged, Telzey began to talk. It did sound like a
+thoroughly wild story, but the Moderator listened with an appearance
+of intent interest. When she had told him as much as she felt he could
+be expected to swallow for a start, he said musingly, "So they weren't
+wiped out--they went into hiding! Do I understand you to say they did
+it to avoid being hunted?"
+
+Telzey chewed her lip frowningly before replying. "There's something
+about that part I don't quite get," she admitted. "Of course I don't
+quite get either why you'd want to go hunting ... twice ... for
+something that's just as likely to bag you instead!"
+
+"Well, those are, ah, merely the statistical odds," the Moderator
+explained. "If one has enough confidence, you see--"
+
+"I don't really. But the crest cats seem to have felt the same way--at
+first. They were getting around one hunter for every cat that got
+shot. Humans were the most exciting game they'd ever run into.
+
+"But then that ended, and the humans started knocking them out with
+stunguns from aircars where they couldn't be got at, and hauling them
+off while they were helpless. After it had gone on for a while, they
+decided to keep out of sight.
+
+"But they're still around ... thousands and thousands of them!
+Another thing nobody's known about them is that they weren't only in
+the Baluit mountains. There were crest cats scattered all through the
+big forests along the other side of the continent."
+
+"Very interesting," the Moderator commented. "Very interesting,
+indeed!" He glanced towards the communicator, then returned his gaze
+to Telzey, drumming his fingers lightly on the desk top.
+
+She could tell nothing at all from his expression now, but she guessed
+he was thinking hard. There was supposed to be no native intelligent
+life in the legal sense on Jontarou, and she had been careful to say
+nothing so far to make the Baluit cats look like more than rather
+exceptionally intelligent animals. The next--rather large--question
+should be how she'd come by such information.
+
+If the Moderator asked her that, Telzey thought, she could feel she'd
+made a beginning at getting him to buy the whole story.
+
+"Well," he said abruptly, "if the crest cats are not extinct or
+threatened with extinction, the Life Banks obviously have no claim on
+your pet." He smiled confidingly at her. "And that's the reason you're
+here, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, no," Telzey began, dismayed. "I--"
+
+"Oh, it's quite all right, Miss Amberdon! I'll simply rescind the
+permit which was issued for the purpose. You need feel no further
+concern about that." He paused. "Now, just one question ... do you
+happen to know where your aunt is at present?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Telzey had a dead, sinking feeling. So he hadn't believed a word she
+said. He'd been stalling her along until the aircar could be found.
+
+She took a deep breath. "You'd better listen to the rest of it."
+
+"Why, is there more?" the Moderator asked politely.
+
+"Yes. The important part! The kind of creatures they are, they
+wouldn't go into hiding indefinitely just because someone was after
+them."
+
+Was there a flicker of something beyond watchfulness in his
+expression. "What would they do, Miss Amberdon?" he asked quietly.
+
+"If they couldn't get at the men in the aircars and couldn't
+communicate with them"--the flicker again!--"they'd start looking for
+the place the men came from, wouldn't they? It might take them some
+years to work their way across the continent and locate us here in
+Port Nichay. But supposing they did it finally and a few thousand of
+them are sitting around in the parks down there right now? They could
+come up the side of these towers as easily as they go up the side of a
+mountain. And supposing they'd decided that the only way to handle the
+problem was to clean out the human beings in Port Nichay?"
+
+The Moderator stared at her in silence a few seconds. "You're saying,"
+he observed then, "that they're rational beings--above the Critical
+I.Q. level."
+
+"Well," Telzey said, "legally they're rational. I checked on that.
+About as rational as we are, I suppose."
+
+"Would you mind telling me now how you happen to know this?"
+
+"They told me," Telzey said.
+
+He was silent again, studying her face. "You mentioned, Miss Amberdon,
+that they have been unable to communicate with other human beings.
+This suggests then that you are a xenotelepath...."
+
+"I am?" Telzey hadn't heard the term before. "If it means that I can
+tell what the cats are thinking, and they can tell what I'm thinking,
+I guess that's the word for it." She considered him, decided she had
+him almost on the ropes, went on quickly.
+
+"I looked up the laws, and told them they could conclude a treaty with
+the Federation which would establish them as an Affiliated Species ...
+and that would settle everything the way they would want it settled,
+without trouble. Some of them believed me. They decided to wait until
+I could talk to you. If it works out, fine! If it doesn't"--she felt
+her voice falter for an instant--"they're going to cut loose fast!"
+
+The Moderator seemed undisturbed. "What am I supposed to do?"
+
+"I told them you'd contact the Council of the Federation on Orado."
+
+"Contact the Council?" he repeated coolly. "With no more proof for
+this story than your word Miss Amberdon?"
+
+Telzey felt a quick, angry stirring begin about her, felt her face
+whiten.
+
+"All right," she said "I'll give you proof! I'll have to now. But
+that'll be it. Once they've tipped their hand all the way, you'll
+have about thirty seconds left to make the right move. I hope you
+remember that!"
+
+He cleared his throat. "I--"
+
+"NOW!" Telzey said.
+
+Along the walls of the balcony garden, beside the ornamental flower
+stands, against the edges of the rock pool, the crest cats appeared.
+Perhaps thirty of them. None quite as physically impressive as Iron
+Thoughts who stood closest to the Moderator; but none very far from
+it. Motionless as rocks, frightening as gargoyles, they waited, eyes
+glowing with hellish excitement.
+
+"This is _their_ council, you see," Telzey heard herself saying.
+
+The Moderator's face had also paled. But he was, after all, an old
+shikari and a senior diplomat. He took an unhurried look around the
+circle, said quietly, "Accept my profound apologies for doubting you.
+Miss Amberdon!" and reached for the desk communicator.
+
+Iron Thoughts swung his demon head in Telzey's direction. For an
+instant, she picked up the mental impression of a fierce yellow eye
+closing in an approving wink.
+
+"... An open transmitter line to Orado," the Moderator was saying into
+the communicator. "The Council. And snap it up! Some very important
+visitors are waiting."
+
+The offices of Jontarou's Planetary Moderator became an extremely busy
+and interesting area then. Quite two hours passed before it occurred
+to anyone to ask Telzey again whether she knew where her aunt was at
+present.
+
+Telzey smote her forehead.
+
+"Forgot all about that!" she admitted, fishing the sportscar's keys
+out of the pocket of her sunbriefs. "They're out on the parking
+platform...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The preliminary treaty arrangements between the Federation of the Hub
+and the new Affiliated Species of the Planet of Jontarou were formally
+ratified two weeks later, the ceremony taking place on Jontarou, in
+the Champagne Hall of the Shikaris' Club.
+
+Telzey was able to follow the event only by news viewer in her
+ship-cabin, she and Halet being on the return trip to Orado by then.
+She wasn't too interested in the treaty's details--they conformed
+almost exactly to what she had read out to Iron Thoughts and his
+co-chiefs and companions in the park. It was the smooth bridging of
+the wide language gap between the contracting parties by a row of
+interpreting machines and a handful of human xenotelepaths which held
+her attention.
+
+As she switched off the viewer, Halet came wandering in from the
+adjoining cabin.
+
+"I was watching it, too!" Halet observed. She smiled. "I was hoping to
+see dear Tick-Tock."
+
+Telzey looked over at her. "Well, TT would hardly be likely to show up
+in Port Nichay," she said. "She's having too good a time now finding
+out what life in the Baluit range is like."
+
+"I suppose so," Halet agreed doubtfully, sitting down on a hassock.
+"But I'm glad she promised to get in touch with us again in a few
+years. I'll miss her."
+
+Telzey regarded her aunt with a reflective frown. Halet meant it quite
+sincerely, of course, she had undergone a profound change of heart
+during the past two weeks. But Telzey wasn't without some doubts about
+the actual value of a change of heart brought on by telepathic means.
+The learning process the crest cats had started in her mind appeared
+to have continued automatically several days longer than her rugged
+teachers had really intended; and Telzey had reason to believe that by
+the end of that time she'd developed associated latent abilities of
+which the crest cats had never heard. She'd barely begun to get it all
+sorted out yet, but ... as an example ... she'd found it remarkably
+easy to turn Halet's more obnoxious attitudes virtually upside down.
+It had taken her a couple of days to get the hang of her aunt's
+personal symbolism, but after that there had been no problem.
+
+She was reasonably certain she'd broken no laws so far, though the
+sections in the law library covering the use and abuse of psionic
+abilities were veiled in such intricate and downright obscuring
+phrasing--deliberately, Telzey suspected--that it was really difficult
+to say what they did mean. But even aside from that, there were a
+number of arguments in favor of exercising great caution.
+
+Jessamine, for one thing, was bound to start worrying about her
+sister-in-law's health if Halet turned up on Orado in her present
+state of mind, even though it would make for a far more agreeable
+atmosphere in the Amberdon household.
+
+"Halet," Telzey inquired mentally, "do you remember what an all-out
+stinker you used to be?"
+
+"Of course, dear," Halet said aloud. "I can hardly wait to tell dear
+Jessamine how much I regret the many times I...."
+
+"Well," Telzey went on, still verbalizing it silently. "I think you'd
+really enjoy life more if you were, let's say, about halfway between
+your old nasty self and the sort of sickening-good kind you are now."
+
+"Why, Telzey!" Halet cried out with dopey amiability. "What a
+delightful idea!"
+
+"Let's try it," Telzey said.
+
+There was silence in the cabin for some twenty minutes then while she
+went painstakingly about remolding a number of Halet's character
+traits for the second time. She still felt some misgivings about it;
+but if it became necessary, she probably could always restore the old
+Halet _in toto_.
+
+These, she told herself, definitely were powers one should treat with
+respect! Better rattle through law school first; then, with that out
+of the way, she could start hunting around to see who in the
+Federation was qualified to instruct a genius-level novice in the
+proper handling of psionics.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Novice, by James H. Schmitz
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30458 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30458 ***</div>
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact &amp; Fiction June 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="400" height="613" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>novice</h1>
+
+<h2>by James H. Schmitz</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A novice is one who is inexperienced&mdash;but<br />
+that doesn't mean incompetent. Nor does it mean stupid!</p></div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">illustrated by schoenherr</span></h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>here was, Telzey Amberdon thought, someone besides TT and herself in
+the garden. Not, of course, Aunt Halet, who was in the house waiting
+for an early visitor to arrive, and not one of the servants. Someone
+or something else must be concealed among the thickets of
+magnificently flowering native Jontarou shrubs about Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>She could think of no other way to account for Tick-Tock's spooked
+behavior&mdash;nor, to be honest about it, for the manner her own nerves
+were acting up without visible cause this morning.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey plucked a blade of grass, slipped the end between her lips and
+chewed it gently, her face puzzled and concerned. She wasn't
+ordinarily afflicted with nervousness. Fifteen years old, genius
+level, brown as a berry and not at all bad looking in her sunbriefs,
+she was the youngest member of one of Orado's most prominent families
+and a second-year law student at one of the most exclusive schools in
+the Federation of the Hub. Her physical, mental, and emotional health,
+she'd always been informed, was excellent. Aunt Halet's frequent
+cracks about the inherent instability of the genius level could be
+ignored; Halet's own stability seemed questionable at best.</p>
+
+<p>But none of that made the present odd situation any less
+disagreeable....</p>
+
+<p>The trouble might have begun, Telzey decided, during the night, within
+an hour after they arrived from the spaceport at the guest house
+Halet had rented in Port Nichay for their vacation on Jontarou. Telzey
+had retired at once to her second-story bedroom with Tick-Tock; but
+she barely got to sleep before something awakened her again. Turning
+over, she discovered TT reared up before the window, her forepaws on
+the sill, big cat-head outlined against the star-hazed night sky,
+staring fixedly down into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey, only curious at that point, climbed out of bed and joined TT
+at the window. There was nothing in particular to be seen, and if the
+scents and minor night-sounds which came from the garden weren't
+exactly what they were used to, Jontarou was after all an unfamiliar
+planet. What else would one expect here?</p>
+
+<p>But Tick-Tock's muscular back felt tense and rigid when Telzey laid
+her arm across it, and except for an absent-minded dig with her
+forehead against Telzey's shoulder, TT refused to let her attention be
+distracted from whatever had absorbed it. Now and then, a low, ominous
+rumble came from her furry throat, a half-angry, half-questioning
+sound. Telzey began to feel a little uncomfortable. She managed
+finally to coax Tick-Tock away from the window, but neither of them
+slept well the rest of the night. At breakfast, Aunt Halet made one of
+her typical nasty-sweet remarks.</p>
+
+<p>"You look so fatigued, dear&mdash;as if you were under some severe mental
+strain ... which, of course, you might be," Halet added musingly. With
+her gold-blond hair piled high on her head and her peaches and cream
+complexion, Halet looked fresh as a daisy herself ... a malicious
+daisy. "Now wasn't I right in insisting to Jessamine that you needed a
+vacation away from that terribly intellectual school?" She smiled
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely," Telzey agreed, restraining the impulse to fling a
+spoonful of egg yolk at her father's younger sister. Aunt Halet often
+inspired such impulses, but Telzey had promised her mother to avoid
+actual battles on the Jontarou trip, if possible. After breakfast, she
+went out into the back garden with Tick-Tock, who immediately walked
+into a thicket, camouflaged herself and vanished from sight. It seemed
+to add up to something. But what?</p>
+
+<p>Telzey strolled about the garden a while, maintaining a pretense of
+nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She
+experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time,
+but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then,
+for half an hour or more, she'd just sat cross-legged in the grass,
+waiting quietly for Tick-Tock to show up of her own accord. And the
+big lunk-head hadn't obliged.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey scratched a tanned knee-cap, scowling at Port Nichay's park
+trees beyond the garden wall. It seemed idiotic to feel scared when
+she couldn't even tell whether there was anything to be scared about!
+And, aside from that, another unreasonable feeling kept growing
+stronger by the minute now. This was to the effect that she should be
+doing some unstated but specific thing....</p>
+
+<p>In fact, that Tick-Tock <i>wanted</i> her to do some specific thing!</p>
+
+<p>Completely idiotic!</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly, Telzey closed her eyes, thought sharply, "Tick-Tock?" and
+waited&mdash;suddenly very angry at herself for having given in to her
+fancies to this extent&mdash;for whatever might happen.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">S</span>he had never really established that she was able to tell, by a kind
+of symbolic mind-picture method, like a short waking dream,
+approximately what TT was thinking and feeling. Five years before,
+when she'd discovered Tick-Tock&mdash;an odd-looking and odder-behaved
+stray kitten then&mdash;in the woods near the Amberdons' summer home on
+Orado, Telzey had thought so. But it might never have been more than a
+colorful play of her imagination; and after she got into law school
+and grew increasingly absorbed in her studies, she almost forgot the
+matter again.</p>
+
+<p>Today, perhaps because she was disturbed about Tick-Tock's behavior,
+the customary response was extraordinarily prompt. The warm glow of
+sunlight shining through her closed eyelids faded out quickly and was
+replaced by some inner darkness. In the darkness there appeared then
+an image of Tick-Tock sitting a little way off beside an open door in
+an old stone wall, green eyes fixed on Telzey. Telzey got the
+impression that TT was inviting her to go through the door, and, for
+some reason, the thought frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there was an immediate reaction. The scene with Tick-Tock and
+the door vanished; and Telzey felt she was standing in a pitch-black
+room, knowing that if she moved even one step forwards, something that
+was waiting there silently would reach out and grab her.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, she recoiled ... and at once found herself sitting, eyes
+still closed and the sunlight bathing her lids, in the grass of the
+guest house garden.</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes, looked around. Her heart was thumping rapidly.
+The experience couldn't have lasted more than four or five seconds,
+but it had been extremely vivid, a whole, compact little nightmare.
+None of her earlier experiments at getting into mental communication
+with TT had been like that.</p>
+
+<p>It served her right, Telzey thought, for trying such a childish stunt
+at the moment! What she should have done at once was to make a
+methodical search for the foolish beast&mdash;TT was bound to be
+<i>somewhere</i> nearby&mdash;locate her behind her camouflage, and hang on to
+her then until this nonsense in the garden was explained! Talented as
+Tick-Tock was at blotting herself out, it usually was possible to spot
+her if one directed one's attention to shadow patterns. Telzey began a
+surreptitious study of the flowering bushes about her.</p>
+
+<p>Three minutes later, off to her right, where the ground was banked
+beneath a six-foot step in the garden's terraces, Tick-Tock's outline
+suddenly caught her eye. Flat on her belly, head lifted above her
+paws, quite motionless, TT seemed like a transparent wraith stretched
+out along the terrace, barely discernible even when stared at
+directly. It was a convincing illusion; but what seemed to be rocks,
+plant leaves, and sun-splotched earth seen through the wraith-outline
+was simply the camouflage pattern TT had printed for the moment on her
+hide. She could have changed it completely in an instant to conform to
+a different background.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey pointed an accusing finger.</p>
+
+<p>"See you!" she announced, feeling a surge of relief which seemed as
+unaccountable as the rest of it.</p>
+
+<p>The wraith twitched one ear in acknowledgment, the head outlines
+shifting as the camouflaged face turned towards Telzey. Then the
+inwardly uncamouflaged, very substantial looking mouth opened slowly,
+showing Tick-Tock's red tongue and curved white tusks. The mouth
+stretched in a wide yawn, snapped shut with a click of meshing teeth,
+became indistinguishable again. Next, a pair of camouflaged lids drew
+back from TT's round, brilliant-green eyes. The eyes stared across the
+lawn at Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey said irritably, "Quit clowning around, TT!"</p>
+
+<p>The eyes blinked, and Tick-Tock's natural bronze-brown color suddenly
+flowed over her head, down her neck and across her body into legs and
+tail. Against the side of the terrace, as if materializing into
+solidity at that moment, appeared two hundred pounds of supple, rangy,
+long-tailed cat ... or catlike creature. TT's actual origin had never
+been established. The best guesses were that what Telzey had found
+playing around in the woods five years ago was either a bio-structural
+experiment which had got away from a private laboratory on Orado, or
+some spaceman's lost pet, brought to the capital planet from one of
+the remote colonies beyond the Hub. On top of TT's head was a large,
+fluffy pompom of white fur, which might have looked ridiculous on
+another animal, but didn't on her. Even as a fat kitten, hanging head
+down from the side of a wall by the broad sucker pads in her paws, TT
+had possessed enormous dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey studied her, the feeling of relief fading again. Tick-Tock,
+ordinarily the most restful and composed of companions, definitely was
+still tensed up about something. That big, lazy yawn a moment ago, the
+attitude of stretched-out relaxation ... all pure sham!</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>is</i> eating you?" she asked in exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>The green eyes stared at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that
+fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old
+question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now?
+After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year,
+nobody had cared any more.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, Telzey had the uncanny certainty of having had the
+answer to this situation almost in her grasp. An answer which appeared
+to involve the world of Jontarou, Tick-Tock, and of all unlikely
+factors&mdash;Aunt Halet.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, TT's impassive green eyes blinked.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">J</span>ontarou? The planet lay outside Telzey's sphere of personal
+interests, but she'd read up on it on the way here from Orado. Among
+all the worlds of the Hub, Jontarou was <i>the</i> paradise for zoologists
+and sportsmen, a gigantic animal preserve, its continents and seas
+swarming with magnificent game. Under Federation law, it was being
+retained deliberately in the primitive state in which it had been
+discovered. Port Nichay, the only city, actually the only inhabited
+point on Jontarou, was beautiful and quiet, a pattern of vast but
+elegantly slender towers, each separated from the others by four or
+five miles of rolling parkland and interconnected only by the threads
+of transparent skyways. Near the horizon, just visible from the
+garden, rose the tallest towers of all, the green and gold spires of
+the Shikaris' Club, a center of Federation affairs and of social
+activity. From the aircar which brought them across Port Nichay the
+evening before, Telzey had seen occasional strings of guest houses,
+similar to the one Halet had rented, nestling along the park slopes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="400" height="454" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing very sinister about Port Nichay or green Jontarou, surely!</p>
+
+<p>Halet? That blond, slinky, would-be Machiavelli? What could&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>Telzey's eyes narrowed reflectively. There'd been a minor
+occurrence&mdash;at least, it had seemed minor&mdash;just before the spaceliner
+docked last night. A young woman from one of the newscasting services
+had asked for an interview with the daughter of Federation
+Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon. This happened occasionally; and
+Telzey had no objections until the newshen's gossipy persistence in
+inquiring about the "unusual pet" she was bringing to Port Nichay with
+her began to be annoying. TT might be somewhat unusual, but that was
+not a matter of general interest; and Telzey said so. Then Halet moved
+smoothly into the act and held forth on Tick-Tock's appearance,
+habits, and mysterious antecedents, in considerable detail.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey had assumed that Halet was simply going out of her way to be
+irritating, as usual. Looking back on the incident, however, it
+occurred to her that the chatter between her aunt and the newscast
+woman had sounded oddly stilted&mdash;almost like something the two might
+have rehearsed.</p>
+
+<p>Rehearsed for what purpose? Tick-Tock ... Jontarou.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey chewed gently on her lower lip. A vacation on Jontarou for the
+two of them and TT had been Halet's idea, and Halet had enthused about
+it so much that Telzey's mother at last talked her into accepting.
+Halet, Jessamine explained privately to Telzey, had felt they were
+intruders in the Amberdon family, had bitterly resented Jessamine's
+political honors and, more recently, Telzey's own emerging promise of
+brilliance. This invitation was Halet's way of indicating a change of
+heart. Wouldn't Telzey oblige?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>So Telzey had obliged, though she took very little stock in Halet's
+change of heart. She wasn't, in fact, putting it past her aunt to have
+some involved dirty trick up her sleeve with this trip to Jontarou.
+Halet's mind worked like that.</p>
+
+<p>So far there had been no actual indications of purposeful mischief.
+But logic did seem to require a connection between the various
+puzzling events here.... A newscaster's rather forced looking interest
+in Tick-Tock&mdash;Halet could easily have paid for that interview. Then
+TT's disturbed behavior during their first night in Port Nichay, and
+Telzey's own formless anxieties and fancies in connection with the
+guest house garden.</p>
+
+<p>The last remained hard to explain. But Tick-Tock ... and Halet ...
+might know something about Jontarou that she didn't know.</p>
+
+<p>Her mind returned to the results of the half-serious attempt she'd
+made to find out whether there was something Tick-Tock "wanted her to
+do." An open door? A darkness where somebody waited to grab her if she
+took even one step forwards? It couldn't have had any significance. Or
+could it?</p>
+
+<p>So you'd like to try magic, Telzey scoffed at herself. Baby games....
+How far would you have got at law school if you'd asked TT to help
+with your problems?</p>
+
+<p>Then why had she been thinking about it again?</p>
+
+<p>She shivered, because an eerie stillness seemed to settle on the
+garden. From the side of the terrace, TT's green eyes watched her.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey had a feeling of sinking down slowly into a sunlit dream, into
+something very remote from law school problems.</p>
+
+<p>"Should I go through the door?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>The bronze cat-shape raised its head slowly. TT began to purr.</p>
+
+<p>Tick-Tock's name had been derived in kittenhood from the manner in
+which she purred&mdash;a measured, oscillating sound, shifting from high to
+low, as comfortable and often as continuous as the unobtrusive pulse
+of an old clock. It was the first time, Telzey realized now, that
+she'd heard the sound since their arrival on Jontarou. It went on for
+a dozen seconds or so, then stopped. Tick-Tock continued to look at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared to have been an expression of definite assent....</p>
+
+<p>The dreamlike sensation increased, hazing over Telzey's thoughts. If
+there was nothing to this mind-communication thing, what harm could
+symbols do? This time, she wouldn't let them alarm her. And if they
+did mean something....</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he sunglow outside faded instantly. Telzey caught a fleeting picture
+of the door in the wall, and knew in the same moment that she'd
+already passed through it.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in the dark room then, but poised at the edge of a
+brightness which seemed featureless and without limit, spread out
+around her with a feeling-tone like "sea" or "sky." But it was an
+unquiet place. There was a sense of unseen things on all sides
+watching her and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Was this another form of the dark room&mdash;a trap set up in her mind?
+Telzey's attention did a quick shift. She was seated in the grass
+again; the sunlight beyond her closed eyelids seemed to shine in
+quietly through rose-tinted curtains. Cautiously, she let her
+awareness return to the bright area; and it was still there. She had a
+moment of excited elation. She was controlling this! And why not, she
+asked herself. These things were happening in her mind, after all!</p>
+
+<p>She would find out what they seemed to mean; but she would be in no
+rush to....</p>
+
+<p>An impression as if, behind her, Tick-Tock had thought, "Now I can
+help again!"</p>
+
+<p>Then a feeling of being swept swiftly, irresistibly forwards, thrust
+out and down. The brightness exploded in thundering colors around her.
+In fright, she made the effort to snap her eyes open, to be back in
+the garden; but now she couldn't make it work. The colors continued to
+roar about her, like a confusion of excited, laughing, triumphant
+voices. Telzey felt caught in the middle of it all, suspended in
+invisible spider webs. Tick-Tock seemed to be somewhere nearby,
+looking on. Faithless, treacherous TT!</p>
+
+<p>Telzey's mind made another wrenching effort, and there was a change.
+She hadn't got back into the garden, but the noisy, swirling colors
+were gone and she had the feeling of reading a rapidly moving
+microtape now, though she didn't actually see the tape.</p>
+
+<p>The tape, she realized, was another symbol for what was happening, a
+symbol easier for her to understand. There were voices, or what might
+be voices, around her; on the invisible tape she seemed to be reading
+what they said.</p>
+
+<p>A number of speakers, apparently involved in a fast, hot argument
+about what to do with her. Impressions flashed past....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Why waste time with her? It was clear that kitten-talk was all she was
+capable of!... Not necessarily; that was a normal first step. Give her
+a little time!... But what&mdash;exasperatedly&mdash;could such a small-bite
+<i>possibly</i> know that would be of significant value?</p>
+
+<p>There was a slow, blurred, awkward-seeming interruption. Its content
+was not comprehensible to Telzey at all, but in some unmistakable
+manner it was defined as Tick-Tock's thought.</p>
+
+<p>A pause as the circle of speakers stopped to consider whatever TT had
+thrown into the debate.</p>
+
+<p>Then another impression ... one that sent a shock of fear through
+Telzey as it rose heavily into her awareness. Its sheer intensity
+momentarily displaced the tape-reading symbolism. A savage voice
+seemed to rumble:</p>
+
+<p>"Toss the tender small-bite to me"&mdash;malevolent crimson eyes fixed on
+Telzey from somewhere not far away&mdash;"and let's be done here!"</p>
+
+<p>Startled, stammering protest from Tick-Tock, accompanied by gusts of
+laughter from the circle. Great sense of humor these characters had,
+Telzey thought bitterly. That crimson-eyed thing wasn't joking at all!</p>
+
+<p>More laughter as the circle caught her thought. Then a kind of
+majority opinion found sudden expression:</p>
+
+<p>"Small-bite <i>is</i> learning! No harm to wait&mdash;We'll find out
+quickly&mdash;Let's...."</p>
+
+<p>The tape ended; the voices faded; the colors went blank. In whatever
+jumbled-up form she'd been getting the impressions at that
+point&mdash;Telzey couldn't have begun to describe it&mdash;the whole thing
+suddenly stopped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">S</span>he found herself sitting in the grass, shaky, scared, eyes open.
+Tick-Tock stood beside the terrace, looking at her. An air of hazy
+unreality still hung about the garden.</p>
+
+<p>She might have flipped! She didn't think so; but it certainly seemed
+possible! Otherwise ... Telzey made an attempt to sort over what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>Something <i>had</i> been in the garden! Something had been inside her
+mind. Something that was at home on Jontarou.</p>
+
+<p>There'd been a feeling of perhaps fifty or sixty of these ... well,
+beings. Alarming beings! Reckless, wild, hard ... and that red-eyed
+nightmare! Telzey shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>They'd contacted Tick-Tock first, during the night. TT understood them
+better than she could. Why? Telzey found no immediate answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then Tick-Tock had tricked her into letting her mind be invaded by
+these beings. There must have been a very definite reason for that.</p>
+
+<p>She looked over at Tick-Tock. TT looked back. Nothing stirred in
+Telzey's thoughts. Between <i>them</i> there was still no direct
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>Then how had the beings been able to get through to her?</p>
+
+<p>Telzey wrinkled her nose. Assuming this was real, it seemed clear that
+the game of symbols she'd made up between herself and TT had provided
+the opening. Her whole experience just now had been in the form of
+symbols, translating whatever occurred into something she could
+consciously grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Kitten-talk" was how the beings referred to the use of symbols; they
+seemed contemptuous of it. Never mind, Telzey told herself; they'd
+agreed she was learning.</p>
+
+<p>The air over the grass appeared to flicker. Again she had the
+impression of reading words off a quickly moving, not quite visible
+tape.</p>
+
+<p>"You're being taught and you're learning," was what she seemed to
+read. "The question was whether you were capable of partial
+understanding as your friend insisted. Since you were, everything else
+that can be done will be accomplished very quickly."</p>
+
+<p>A pause, then with a touch of approval, "You're a well-formed mind,
+small-bite! Odd and with incomprehensibilities, but well-formed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>One of the beings, and a fairly friendly one&mdash;at least not unfriendly.
+Telzey framed a tentative mental question. "Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll know very soon." The flickering ended; she realized she and
+the question had been dismissed for the moment. She looked over at
+Tick-Tock again.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't <i>you</i> talk to me now, TT?" she asked silently.</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Kitten-talk!" was the impression that formed itself with difficulty
+then. It was awkward, searching; but it came unquestionably from TT.
+"Still learning too, Telzey!" TT seemed half anxious, half angry.
+"We&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">A</span>&nbsp; sharp buzz-note reached Telzey's ears, wiping out the groping
+thought-impression. She jumped a little, glanced down. Her
+wrist-talker was signaling. For a moment, she seemed poised
+uncertainly between a world where unseen, dangerous-sounding beings
+referred to one as small-bite and where TT was learning to talk, and
+the familiar other world where wrist-communicators buzzed periodically
+in a matter-of-fact manner. Settling back into the more familiar
+world, she switched on the talker.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" she said. Her voice sounded husky.</p>
+
+<p>"Telzey, dear," Halet murmured honey-sweet from the talker, "would you
+come back into the house, please? The living room&mdash;We have a visitor
+who very much wants to meet you."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey hesitated, eyes narrowing. Halet's visitor wanted to meet
+<i>her</i>?</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He has something <i>very</i> interesting to tell you, dear." The edge of
+triumphant malice showed for an instant, vanished in murmuring
+sweetness again. "So please hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right." Telzey stood up. "I'm coming."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, dear!" The talker went dead.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey switched off the instrument, noticed that Tick-Tock had chosen
+to disappear meanwhile.</p>
+
+<p>Flipped? She wondered, starting up towards the house. It was clear
+Aunt Halet had prepared some unpleasant surprise to spring on her,
+which was hardly more than normal behavior for Halet. The other
+business? She couldn't be certain of anything there. Leaving out TT's
+strange actions&mdash;which might have a number of causes, after all&mdash;that
+entire string of events could have been created inside her head. There
+was no contradictory evidence so far.</p>
+
+<p>But it could do no harm to take what <i>seemed</i> to have happened at face
+value. Some pretty grim event might be shaping up, in a very real way,
+around here....</p>
+
+<p>"You reason logically!" The impression now was of a voice speaking to
+her, a voice that made no audible sound. It was the same being who'd
+addressed her a minute or two ago.</p>
+
+<p>The two worlds between which Telzey had felt suspended seemed to glide
+slowly together and become one.</p>
+
+<p>"I go to Law school," she explained to the being, almost absently.</p>
+
+<p>Amused agreement. "So we heard."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want of me?" Telzey inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll know soon enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not tell me now?" Telzey urged. It seemed about to dismiss her
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Quick impatience flared at her. "Kitten-pictures! Kitten-thoughts!
+Kitten-talk! Too slow, too slow! YOUR pictures&mdash;too much YOU! Wait
+till the...."</p>
+
+<p>Circuits close ... channels open.... Obstructions clear? What <i>had</i> it
+said? There'd been only the blurred image of a finicky, delicate, but
+perfectly normal technical operation of some kind.</p>
+
+<p>"... Minutes now!" the voice concluded. A pause, then another thought
+tossed carelessly at her. "This is more important to you, small-bite,
+than to <i>us</i>!" The voice impression ended as sharply as if a
+communicator had snapped off.</p>
+
+<p>Not <i>too</i> friendly! Telzey walked on towards the house, a new fear
+growing inside her ... a fear like the awareness of a storm gathered
+nearby, still quiet&mdash;deadly quiet, but ready to break.</p>
+
+<p>"Kitten-pictures!" a voice seemed to jeer distantly, a whispering in
+the park trees beyond the garden wall.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">H</span>alet's cheeks were lightly pinked; her blue eyes sparkled. She looked
+downright stunning, which meant to anyone who knew her that the worst
+side of Halet's nature was champing at the bit again. On uninformed
+males it had a dazzling effect, however; and Telzey wasn't surprised
+to find their visitor wearing a tranced expression when she came into
+the living room. He was a tall, outdoorsy man with a tanned, bony
+face, a neatly trained black mustache, and a scar down one cheek which
+would have seemed dashing if it hadn't been for the stupefied look.
+Beside his chair stood a large, clumsy instrument which might have
+been some kind of telecamera.</p>
+
+<p>Halet performed introductions. Their visitor was Dr. Droon, a
+zoologist. He had been tuned in on Telzey's newscast interview on the
+liner the night before, and wondered whether Telzey would care to
+discuss Tick-Tock with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Frankly, no," Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Droon came awake and gave Telzey a surprised look. Halet smiled
+easily.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece doesn't intend to be discourteous, doctor," she explained.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_003.jpg" width="600" height="256" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Of course not," the zoologist agreed doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just," Halet went on, "that Telzey is a little, oh, sensitive
+where Tick-Tock is concerned. In her own way, she's attached to the
+animal. Aren't you, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Telzey said blandly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we hope this isn't going to disturbed you too much, dear."
+Halet glanced significantly at Dr. Droon. "Dr. Droon, you must
+understand, is simply doing ... well, there is something very
+important he must tell you now."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey transferred her gaze back to the zoologist. Dr. Droon cleared
+his throat. "I, ah, understand, Miss Amberdon, that you're unaware of
+what kind of creature your, ah, Tick-Tock is?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey started to speak, then checked herself, frowning. She had been
+about to state that she knew exactly what kind of creature TT was ...
+but she didn't, of course!</p>
+
+<p>Or did she? She....</p>
+
+<p>She scowled absent-mindedly at Dr. Droon, biting her lip.</p>
+
+<p>"Telzey!" Halet prompted gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh?" Telzey said. "Oh ... please go on, doctor!"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Droon steepled his fingers. "Well," he said, "she ... your pet ... is,
+ah, a young crest cat. Nearly full grown now, apparently, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes!" Telzey cried.</p>
+
+<p>The zoologist looked at her. "You knew that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not really," Telzey admitted. "Or sort of." She laughed, her
+cheeks flushed. "This is the most ... go ahead please! Sorry I
+interrupted." She stared at the wall beyond Dr. Droon with a rapt
+expression.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The zoologist and Halet exchanged glances. Then Dr. Droon resumed
+cautiously. The crest cats, he said, were a species native to
+Jontarou. Their existence had been known for only eight years. The
+species appeared to have had a somewhat limited range&mdash;the Baluit
+mountains on the opposite side of the huge continent on which Port
+Nichay had been built....</p>
+
+<p>Telzey barely heard him. A very curious thing was happening. For every
+sentence Dr. Droon uttered, a dozen other sentences appeared in her
+awareness. More accurately, it was as if an instantaneous smooth flow
+of information relevant to whatever he said arose continuously from
+what might have been almost her own memory, but wasn't. Within a
+minute or two, she knew more about the crest cats of Jontarou than Dr.
+Droon could have told her in hours ... much more than he'd ever known.</p>
+
+<p>She realized suddenly that he'd stopped talking, that he had asked her
+a question. "Miss Amberdon?" he repeated now, with a note of
+uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>"Yar-rrr-REE!" Telzey told him softly. "I'll drink your blood!"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey blinked, focused on Dr. Droon, wrenching her mind away from a
+splendid view of the misty-blue peaks of the Baluit range.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry," she said briskly. "Just a joke!" She smiled. "Now what were
+you saying?"</p>
+
+<p>The zoologist looked at her in a rather odd manner for a moment. "I
+was inquiring," he said then, "whether you were familiar with the
+sporting rules established by the various hunting associations of the
+Hub in connection with the taking of game trophies?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey shook her head. "No, I never heard of them."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he rules, Dr. Droon explained, laid down the type of equipment ...
+weapons, spotting and tracking instruments, number of assistants, and
+so forth ... a sportsman could legitimately use in the pursuit of any
+specific type of game. "Before the end of the first year after their
+discovery," he went on, "the Baluit crest cats had been placed in the
+ultra-equipment class."</p>
+
+<p>"What's ultra-equipment?" Telzey asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Dr. Droon said thoughtfully, "it doesn't quite involve the use
+of full battle armor ... not quite! And, of course, even with that
+classification the sporting principle of mutual accessibility must be
+observed."</p>
+
+<p>"Mutual ... oh, I see!" Telzey paused as another wave of silent
+information rose into her awareness; went on, "So the game has to be
+able to get at the sportsman too, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's correct. Except in the pursuit of various classes of flying
+animals, a shikari would not, for example, be permitted the use of an
+aircar other than as means of simple transportation. Under these
+conditions, it was soon established that crest cats were being
+obtained by sportsmen who went after them at a rather consistent
+one-to-one ration."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey's eyes widened. She'd gathered something similar from her other
+information source but hadn't quite believed it. "One hunter killed
+for each cat bagged?" she said. "That's pretty rough sport, isn't it?</p>
+
+<p>"Extremely rough sport!" Dr. Droon agreed dryly. "In fact, when the
+statistics were published, the sporting interest in winning a Baluit
+cat trophy appears to have suffered a sudden and sharp decline. On the
+other hand, a more scientific interest in these remarkable animals was
+coincidingly created, and many permits for their acquisition by the
+agents of museums, universities, public and private collections were
+issued. Sporting rules, of course, do not apply to that activity."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey nodded absently. "I see! <i>They</i> used aircars, didn't they? A
+sort of heavy knockout gun&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Aircars, long-range detectors and stunguns are standard equipment in
+such work," Dr. Droon acknowledged. "Gas and poison are employed, of
+course, as circumstances dictate. The collectors were relatively
+successful for a while."</p>
+
+<p>"And then a curious thing happened. Less than two years after their
+existence became known, the crest cats of the Baluit range were
+extinct! The inroads made on their numbers by man cannot begin to
+account for this, so it must be assumed that a sudden plague wiped
+them out. At any rate, not another living member of the species has
+been seen on Jontarou until you landed here with your pet last night."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey sat silent for some seconds. Not because of what he had said,
+but because the other knowledge was still flowing into her mind. On
+one very important point <i>that</i> was at variance with what the
+zoologist had stated; and from there a coldly logical pattern was
+building up. Telzey didn't grasp the pattern in complete detail yet,
+but what she saw of it stirred her with a half incredulous dread.</p>
+
+<p>She asked, shaping the words carefully but with only a small part of
+her attention on what she was really saying. "Just what does all that
+have to do with Tick-Tock, Dr. Droon?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Droon glanced at Halet, and returned his gaze to Telzey. Looking
+very uncomfortable but quite determined, he told her, "Miss Amberdon,
+there is a Federation law which states that when a species is
+threatened with extinction, any available survivors must be
+transferred to the Life Banks of the University League, to insure
+their indefinite preservation. Under the circumstances, this law
+applies to, ah, Tick-Tock!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">S</span>o that had been Halet's trick. She'd found out about the crest cats,
+might have put in as much as a few months arranging to make the
+discovery of TT's origin on Jontarou seem a regrettable
+mischance&mdash;something no one could have foreseen or prevented. In the
+Life Banks, from what Telzey had heard of them, TT would cease to
+exist as an individual awareness while scientists tinkered around with
+the possibilities of reconstructing her species.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey studied her aunt's carefully sympathizing face for an instant,
+asked Dr. Droon, "What about the other crest cats&mdash;you said were
+collected before they became extinct here? Wouldn't they be enough for
+what the Life Banks need?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "Two immature male specimens are know to exist, and
+they are at present in the Life Banks. The others that were taken
+alive at the time have been destroyed ... often under nearly
+disastrous circumstances. They are enormously cunning, enormously
+savage creatures, Miss Amberdon! The additional fact that they can
+conceal themselves to the point of being virtually indetectable except
+by the use of instruments makes them one of the most dangerous animals
+known. Since the young female which you raised as a pet has remained
+docile ... so far ... you may not really be able to appreciate that."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I can," Telzey said. She nodded at the heavy-looking
+instrument standing beside his chair. "And that's&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a life detector combined with a stungun, Miss Amberdon. I have
+no intention of harming your pet, but we can't take chances with an
+animal of that type. The gun's charge will knock it unconscious for
+several minutes&mdash;just long enough to let me secure it with paralysis
+belts."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a collector for the Life Banks, Dr. Droon?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's correct."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Droon," Halet remarked, "has obtained a permit from the Planetary
+Moderator, authorizing him to claim Tick-Tock for the University
+League and remove her from the planet, dear. So you see there is
+simply nothing we can do about the matter! Your mother wouldn't like
+us to attempt to obstruct the law, would she?" Halet paused. "The
+permit should have your signature, Telzey, but I can sign in your
+stead if necessary."</p>
+
+<p>That was Halet's way of saying it would do no good to appeal to
+Jontarou's Planetary Moderator. She'd taken the precaution of getting
+his assent to the matter first.</p>
+
+<p>"So now if you'll just call Tick-Tock, dear..." Halet went on.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey barely heard the last words. She felt herself stiffening
+slowly, while the living room almost faded from her sight. Perhaps, in
+that instant, some additional new circuit had closed in her mind, or
+some additional new channel had opened, for TT's purpose in tricking
+her into contact with the reckless, mocking beings outside was
+suddenly and numbingly clear.</p>
+
+<p>And what it meant immediately was that she'd have to get out of the
+house without being spotted at it, and go some place where she could
+be undisturbed for half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>She realized that Halet and the zoologist were both staring at her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">A</span>re you ill, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." Telzey stood up. It would be worse than useless to try to tell
+these two anything! Her face must be pretty white at the moment&mdash;she
+could feel it&mdash;but they assumed, of course, that the shock of losing
+TT had just now sunk in on her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to check on that law you mentioned before I sign anything,"
+she told Dr. Droon.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes ..." He started to get out of his chair. "I'm sure that can
+be arranged, Miss Amberdon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother to call the Moderator's office," Telzey said. "I brought
+my law library along. I'll look it up myself." She turned to leave the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece," Halet explained to Dr. Droon who was beginning to look puzzled,
+"attends law school. She's always so absorbed in her studies ... Telzey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Halet?" Telzey paused at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad you've decided to be sensible about this, dear. But
+don't take too long, will you? We don't want to waste Dr. Droon's
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"It shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes," Telzey told her
+agreeably. She closed the door behind her, and went directly to her
+bedroom on the second floor. One of her two valises was still
+unpacked. She locked the door behind her, opened the unpacked valise,
+took out a pocket edition law library and sat down at the table with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>She clicked on the library's view-screen, tapped the clearing and
+index buttons. Behind the screen, one of the multiple rows of pinhead
+tapes shifted slightly as the index was flicked into reading position.
+Half a minute later, she was glancing over the legal section on which
+Dr. Droon had based his claim. The library confirmed what he had said.</p>
+
+<p>Very neat of Halet, Telzey thought, very nasty ... and pretty idiotic!
+Even a second-year law student could think immediately of two or three
+ways in which a case like that could have been dragged out in the
+Federation's courts for a couple of decades before the question of
+handing Tick-Tock over to the Life Banks became too acute.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Halet simply wasn't really intelligent. And the plot to shanghai
+TT was hardly even a side issue now.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey snapped the tiny library shut, fastened it to the belt of her
+sunsuit and went over to the open window. A two-foot ledge passed
+beneath the window, leading to the roof of a patio on the right.
+Fifty yards beyond the patio, the garden ended in a natural-stone
+wall. Behind it lay one of the big wooded park areas which formed most
+of the ground level of Port Nichay.</p>
+
+<p>Tick-Tock wasn't in sight. A sound of voices came from ground-floor
+windows on the left. Halet had brought her maid and chauffeur along;
+and a chef had showed up in time to make breakfast this morning, as
+part of the city's guest house service. Telzey took the empty valise
+to the window, set it on end against the left side of the frame, and
+let the window slide down until its lower edge rested on the valise.
+She went back to the house guard-screen panel beside the door, put her
+finger against the lock button, and pushed.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of voices from the lower floor was cut off as outer doors
+and windows slid silently shut all about the house. Telzey glanced
+back at the window. The valise had creaked a little as the guard field
+drove the frame down on it, but it was supporting the thrust. She
+returned to the window, wriggled feet foremost through the opening,
+twisted around and got a footing on the ledge.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later, she was scrambling quietly down a vine-covered patio
+trellis to the ground. Even after they discovered she was gone, the
+guard screen would keep everybody in the house for some little while.
+They'd either have to disengage the screen's main mechanisms and start
+poking around in them, or force open the door to her bedroom and get
+the lock unset. Either approach would involve confusion, upset
+tempers, and generally delay any organized pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey edged around the patio and started towards the wall, keeping
+close to the side of the house so she couldn't be seen from the
+windows. The shrubbery made minor rustling noises as she threaded her
+way through it ... and then there was a different stirring which might
+have been no more than a slow, steady current of air moving among the
+bushes behind her. She shivered involuntarily but didn't look back.</p>
+
+<p>She came to the wall, stood still, measuring its height, jumped and
+got an arm across it, swung up a knee and squirmed up and over. She
+came down on her feet with a small thump in the grass on the other
+side, glanced back once at the guest house, crossed a path and went on
+among the park trees.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">W</span>ithin a few hundred yards, it became apparent that she had an escort.
+She didn't look around for them, but spread out to right and left like
+a skirmish line, keeping abreast with her, occasional shadows slid
+silently through patches of open, sunlit ground, disappeared again
+under the trees. Otherwise, there was hardly anyone in sight. Port
+Nichay's human residents appeared to make almost no personal use of
+the vast parkland spread out beneath their tower apartments; and its
+traffic moved over the airways, visible from the ground only as
+rainbow-hued ribbons which bisected the sky between the upper tower
+levels. An occasional private aircar went by overhead.</p>
+
+<p>Wisps of thought which were not her own thoughts flicked through
+Telzey's mind from moment to moment as the silent line of shadows
+moved deeper into the park with her. She realized she was being sized
+up, judged, evaluated again. No more information was coming through;
+they had given her as much information as she needed. In the main
+perhaps, they were simply curious now. This was the first human mind
+they'd been able to make heads or tails of, and that hadn't seemed
+deaf and silent to their form of communication. They were taking time
+out to study it. They'd been assured she would have something of
+genuine importance to tell them; and there was some derision about
+that. But they were willing to wait a little, and find out. They were
+curious and they liked games. At the moment, Telzey and what she might
+try to do to change their plans was the game on which their attention
+was fixed.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve minutes passed before the talker on Telzey's wrist began to
+buzz. It continued to signal off and on for another few minutes, then
+stopped. Back in the guest house they couldn't be sure yet whether she
+wasn't simply locked inside her room and refusing to answer them. But
+Telzey quickened her pace.</p>
+
+<p>The park's trees gradually became more massive, reached higher above
+her, stood spaced more widely apart. She passed through the morning
+shadow of the residential tower nearest the guest house, and emerged
+from it presently on the shore of a small lake. On the other side of
+the lake, a number of dappled grazing animals like long-necked, tall
+horses lifted their heads to watch her. For some seconds they seemed
+only mildly interested, but then a breeze moved across the lake,
+crinkling the surface of the water, and as it touched the opposite
+shore, abrupt panic exploded among the grazers. They wheeled, went
+flashing away in effortless twenty-foot strides, and were gone among
+the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey felt a crawling along her spine. It was the first objective
+indication she'd had of the nature of the company she had brought to
+the lake, and while it hardly came as a surprise, for a moment her
+urge was to follow the example of the grazers.</p>
+
+<p>"Tick-Tock?" she whispered, suddenly a little short of breath.</p>
+
+<p>A single up-and-down purring note replied from the bushes on her
+right. TT was still around, for whatever good that might do. Not too
+much, Telzey thought, if it came to serious trouble. But the knowledge
+was somewhat reassuring ... and this, meanwhile, appeared to be as far
+as she needed to get from the guest house. They'd be looking for her
+by aircar presently, but there was nothing to tell them in which
+direction to turn first.</p>
+
+<p>She climbed the bank of the lake to a point where she was screened
+both by thick, green shrubbery and the top of a single immense tree
+from the sky, sat down on some dry, mossy growth, took the law library
+from her belt, opened it and placed it in her lap. Vague stirrings
+indicated that her escort was also settling down in an irregular
+circle about her; and apprehension shivered on Telzey's skin again. It
+wasn't that their attitude was hostile; they were simply overawing.
+And no one could predict what they might do next. Without looking up,
+she asked a question in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Ready?"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_004.jpg" width="500" height="365" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Sense of multiple acknowledgment, variously tinged&mdash;sardonic;
+interestingly amused; attentive; doubtful. Impatience quivered through
+it too, only tentatively held in restraint, and Telzey's forehead was
+suddenly wet. Some of them seemed on the verge of expressing
+disapproval with what was being done here&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers quickly flicked in the index tape, and the stir of feeling
+about her subsided, their attention captured again for the moment. Her
+thoughts became to some degree detached, ready to dissect another
+problem in the familiar ways and present the answers to it. Not a very
+involved problem essentially, but this time it wasn't a school
+exercise. Her company waited, withdrawn, silent, aloof once more,
+while the index blurred, checked, blurred and checked. Within a minute
+and a half, she had noted a dozen reference symbols. She tapped in
+another of the pinhead tapes, glanced over a few paragraphs, licked
+salty sweat from her lip, and said in her thoughts, emphasizing the
+meaning of each detail of the sentence so that there would be no
+misunderstanding, "This is the Federation law that applies to the
+situation which existed originally on this planet...."</p>
+
+<p>There were no interruptions, no commenting thoughts, no intrusions of
+any kind, as she went step by step through the section, turned to
+another one, and another. In perhaps twelve minutes she came to the
+end of the last one, and stopped. Instantly, argument exploded about
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey was not involved in the argument; in fact, she could grasp only
+scraps of it. Either they were excluding her deliberately, or the
+exchange was too swift, practiced and varied to allow her to keep up.
+But their vehemence was not encouraging. And was it reasonable to
+assume that the Federation's laws would have any meaning for minds
+like these? Telzey snapped the library shut with fingers that had
+begun to tremble, and placed it on the ground. Then she stiffened. In
+the sensations washing about her, a special excitement rose suddenly,
+a surge of almost gleeful wildness that choked away her breath.
+Awareness followed of a pair of malignant crimson eyes fastened on
+her, moving steadily closer. A kind of nightmare paralysis seized
+Telzey&mdash;they'd turned her over to that red-eyed horror! She sat still,
+feeling mouse-sized.</p>
+
+<p>Something came out with a crash from a thicket behind her. Her muscles
+went tight. But it was TT who rubbed a hard head against her shoulder,
+took another three stiff-legged steps forward and stopped between
+Telzey and the bushes on their right, back rigid, neck fur erect, tail
+twisting.</p>
+
+<p>Expectant silence closed in about them. The circle was waiting. In the
+greenery on the right something made a slow, heavy stir.</p>
+
+<p>TT's lips peeled back from her teeth. Her head swung towards the
+motion, ears flattening, transformed to a split, snarling demon-mask.
+A long shriek ripped from her lungs, raw with fury, blood lust and
+challenge.</p>
+
+<p>The sound died away. For some seconds the tension about them held;
+then came a sense of gradual relaxation mingled with a partly amused
+approval. Telzey was shaking violently. It had been, she was telling
+herself, a deliberate test ... not of herself, of course, but of TT.
+And Tick-Tock had passed with honors. That <i>her</i> nerves had been half
+ruined in the process would seem a matter of no consequence to this
+rugged crew....</p>
+
+<p>She realized next that someone here was addressing her personally.</p>
+
+<p>It took a few moments to steady her jittering thoughts enough to gain
+a more definite impression than that. This speaker, she discovered
+then, was a member of the circle of whom she hadn't been aware before.
+The thought-impressions came hard and cold as iron&mdash;a personage who
+was very evidently in the habit of making major decisions and seeing
+them carried out. The circle, its moment of sport over, was listening
+with more than a suggestion of deference. Tick-Tock, far from
+conciliated, green eyes still blazing, nevertheless was settling down
+to listen, too.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey began to understand.</p>
+
+<p>Her suggestions, Iron Thoughts informed her, might appear without
+value to a number of foolish minds here, but <i>he</i> intended to see they
+were given a fair trial. Did he perhaps hear, he inquired next of the
+circle, throwing in a casual but horridly vivid impression of snapping
+spines and slashed shaggy throats spouting blood, any objection to
+that?</p>
+
+<p>Dead stillness all around. There was, definitely, no objection.
+Tick-Tock began to grin like a pleased kitten.</p>
+
+<p>That point having been settled in an orderly manner now, Iron Thoughts
+went on coldly to Telzey, what specifically did she propose they
+should do?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">H</span>alet's long, pearl-gray sportscar showed up above the park trees
+twenty minutes later. Telzey, face turned down towards the open law
+library in her lap, watched the car from the corner of her eyes. She
+was in plain view, sitting beside the lake, apparently absorbed in
+legal research. Tick-Tock, camouflaged among the bushes thirty feet
+higher up the bank, had spotted the car an instant before she did and
+announced the fact with a three-second break in her purring. Neither
+of them made any other move.</p>
+
+<p>The car was approaching the lake but still a good distance off. Its
+canopy was down, and Telzey could just make out the heads of three
+people inside. Delquos, Halet's chauffeur, would be flying the
+vehicle, while Halet and Dr. Droon looked around for her from the
+sides. Three hundred yards away, the aircar began a turn to the right.
+Delquos didn't like his employer much; at a guess, he had just spotted
+Telzey and was trying to warn her off.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey closed the library and put it down, picked up a handful of
+pebbles and began flicking them idly, one at a time, into the water.
+The aircar vanished to her left.</p>
+
+<p>Three minutes later, she watched its shadow glide across the surface
+of the lake towards her. Her heart began to thump almost audibly, but
+she didn't look up. Tick-Tock's purring continued, on its regular,
+unhurried note. The car came to a stop almost directly overhead. After
+a couple of seconds, there was a clicking noise. The purring ended
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey climbed to her feet as Delquos brought the car down to the bank
+of the lake. The chauffeur grinned ruefully at her. A side door had
+been opened, and Halet and Dr. Droon stood behind it. Halet watched
+Telzey with a small smile while the naturalist put the heavy
+life-detector-and-stungun device carefully down on the floorboards.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're looking for Tick-Tock," Telzey said, "she isn't here."</p>
+
+<p>Halet just shook her head sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no use lying to us, dear. Dr Droon just stunned her."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>They found TT collapsed on her side among the shrubs, wearing her
+natural color. Her eyes were shut, her chest rose and fell in a slow
+breathing motion. Dr. Droon, looking rather apologetic, pointed out to
+Telzey that her pet was in no pain, that the stungun had simply put
+her comfortably to sleep. He also explained the use of the two sets of
+webbed paralysis belts which he fastened about TT's legs. The effect
+of the stun charge would wear off in a few minutes, and contact with
+the inner surfaces of the energized belts would then keep TT
+anesthetized and unable to move until the belts were removed. She
+would, he repeated, be suffering no pain throughout the process.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey didn't comment. She watched Delquos raise TT's limp body above
+the level of the bushes with a gravity hoist belonging to Dr. Droon,
+and maneuver her back to the car, the others following. Delquos
+climbed into the car first, opened the big trunk compartment in the
+rear. TT was slid inside and the trunk compartment locked.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you taking her?" Telzey asked sullenly as Delquos lifted
+the car into the air.</p>
+
+<p>"To the spaceport, dear," Halet said. "Dr. Droon and I both felt it
+would be better to spare your feelings by not prolonging the matter
+unnecessarily."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey wrinkled her nose disdainfully, and walked up the aircar to
+stand behind Delquos' seat. She leaned against the back of the seat
+for an instant. Her legs felt shaky.</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur gave her a sober wink from the side.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a dirty trick she's played on you, Miss Telzey!" he murmured.
+"I tried to warn you."</p>
+
+<p>"I know." Telzey took a deep breath. "Look, Delquos, in just a minute
+something's going to happen! It'll look dangerous, but it won't be.
+Don't let it get you nervous ... right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Huh?" Delquos appeared startled, but kept his voice low. "Just
+<i>what's</i> going to happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"No time to tell you. Remember what I said."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>elzey moved back a few steps from the driver's seat, turned around,
+said unsteadily, "Halet ... Dr. Droon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Halet had been speaking quietly to Dr. Droon; they both looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't move, and don't do anything stupid," Telzey said
+rapidly, "you won't get hurt. If you do ... well, I don't know! You
+see, there's another crest cat in the car...." In her mind she added,
+"Now!"</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible to tell in just what section of the car Iron
+Thoughts had been lurking. The carpeting near the rear passenger seats
+seemed to blur for an instant. Then he was there, camouflage dropped,
+sitting on the floorboards five feet from the naturalist and Halet.</p>
+
+<p>Halet's mouth opened wide; she tried to scream but fainted instead.
+Dr. Droon's right hand started out quickly towards the big stungun
+device beside his seat. Then he checked himself and sat still,
+ashen-faced.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey didn't blame him for changing his mind. She felt he must be a
+remarkably brave man to have moved at all. Iron Thoughts, twice as
+broad across the back as Tick-Tock, twice as massively muscled, looked
+like a devil-beast even to her. His dark-green marbled hide was
+criss-crossed with old scar patterns; half his tossing crimson crest
+appeared to have been ripped away. He reached out now in a fluid,
+silent motion, hooked a paw under the stungun and flicked upwards. The
+big instrument rose in an incredibly swift, steep arc eighty feet
+into the air, various parts flying away from it, before it started
+curving down towards the treetops below the car. Iron Thoughts lazily
+swung his head around and looked at Telzey with yellow fire-eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Telzey! Miss Telzey!" Delquos was muttering behind her. "You're
+<i>sure</i> it won't...."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey swallowed. At the moment, she felt barely mouse-sized again.
+"Just relax!" she told Delquos in a shaky voice. "He's really quite
+t-t-t-tame."</p>
+
+<p>Iron Thoughts produced a harsh but not unamiable chuckle in her mind.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he pearl-gray sportscar, covered now by its streamlining canopy,
+drifted down presently to a parking platform outside the suite of
+offices on Jontarou's Planetary Moderator, on the fourteenth floor of
+the Shikaris' Club Tower. An attendant waved it on into a vacant slot.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the car, Delquos set the brakes, switched off the engine,
+asked, "Now what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think," Telzey said reflectively, "we'd better lock you in the
+trunk compartment with my aunt and Dr. Droon while I talk to the
+Moderator."</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur shrugged. He'd regained most of his aplomb during the
+unhurried trip across the parklands. Iron Thoughts had done nothing
+but sit in the center of the car, eyes half shut, looking like instant
+death enjoying a dignified nap and occasionally emitting a ripsawing
+noise which might have been either his style of purring or a snore.
+And Tick-Tock, when Delquos peeled the paralysis belts off her legs at
+Telzey's direction, had greeted him with her usual reserved
+affability. What the chauffeur was suffering from at the moment was
+intense curiosity, which Telzey had done nothing to relieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you say, Miss Telzey," he agreed. "I hate to miss whatever
+you're going to be doing here, but if you <i>don't</i> lock me up now, Miss
+Halet will figure I was helping you and fire me as soon as you let her
+out."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey nodded, then cocked her head in the direction of the rear
+compartment. Faint sounds coming through the door indicated that Halet
+had regained consciousness and was having hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>"You might tell her," Telzey suggested, "that there'll be a grown-up
+crest cat sitting outside the compartment door." This wasn't true, but
+neither Delquos nor Halet could know it. "If there's too much racket
+before I get back, it's likely to irritate him...."</p>
+
+<p>A minute later, she set both car doors on lock and went outside,
+wishing she were less informally clothed. Sunbriefs and sandals tended
+to make her look juvenile.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The parking attendant appeared startled when she approached him with
+Tick-Tock striding alongside.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll never let you into the offices with that thing, miss," he
+informed her. "Why, it doesn't even have a collar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry about it." Telzey told him aloofly.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped a two-credit piece she'd taken from Halet's purse into his
+hand, and continued on towards the building entrance. The attendant
+squinted after her, trying unsuccessfully to dispel an odd impression
+that the big catlike animal with the girl was throwing a double
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator's chief receptionist also had some doubts about TT, and
+possibly about the sunbriefs, though she seemed impressed when
+Telzey's identification tag informed her she was speaking to the
+daughter of Federation Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon.</p>
+
+<p>"You feel you can discuss this ... emergency ... only with the
+Moderator himself, Miss Amberdon?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," Telzey said firmly. A buzzer sounded as she spoke. The
+receptionist excused herself and picked up an earphone. She listened a
+moment, said blandly, "Yes.... Of course.... Yes, I understand,"
+replaced the earphone and stood up, smiling at Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you come with me, Miss Amberdon?" she said. "I think the
+Moderator will see you immediately...."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey followed her, chewing thoughtfully at her lip. This was easier
+than she'd expected&mdash;in fact, too easy! Halet's work? Probably. A few
+comments to the effect of "A highly imaginative child ...
+overexcitable," while Halet was arranging to have the Moderator's
+office authorize Tick-Tock's transfer to the life Banks, along with
+the implication that Jessamine Amberdon would appreciate a discreet
+handling of any disturbance Telzey might create as a result.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sort of notion that would appeal to Halet&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>hey passed through a series of elegantly equipped offices and
+hallways, Telzey grasping TT's neck-fur in lieu of a leash, their
+appearance creating a tactfully restrained wave of surprise among
+secretaries and clerks. And if somebody here and there was troubled by
+a fleeting, uncanny impression that not one large beast but two seemed
+to be trailing the Moderator's visitor down the aisles, no mention was
+made of what could have been only a momentary visual distortion.
+Finally, a pair of sliding doors opened ahead, and the receptionist
+ushered Telzey into a large, cool balcony garden on the shaded side of
+the great building. A tall, gray-haired man stood up from the desk at
+which he was working, and bowed to Telzey. The receptionist withdrew
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"My pleasure, Miss Amberdon," Jontarou's Planetary Moderator said, "Be
+seated, please." He studied Tick-Tock with more than casual interest
+while Telzey was settling herself into a chair, added, "And what may I
+and my office do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey hesitated. She'd observed his type on Orado in her mother's
+circle of acquaintances&mdash;a senior diplomat, a man not easy to impress.
+It was a safe bet that he'd had her brought out to his balcony office
+only to keep her occupied while Halet was quietly informed where the
+Amberdon problem child was and requested to come over and take charge.</p>
+
+<p>What she had to tell him now would have sounded rather wild even if
+presented by a presumably responsible adult. She could provide proof,
+but until the Moderator was already nearly sold on her story, that
+would be a very unsafe thing to do. Old Iron Thoughts was backing her
+up, but if it didn't look as if her plans were likely to succeed, he
+would be willing to ride herd on his devil's pack just so long....</p>
+
+<p>Better start the ball rolling without any preliminaries, Telzey
+decided. The Moderator's picture of her must be that of a spoiled,
+neurotic brat in a stew about the threatened loss of a pet animal. He
+expected her to start arguing with him immediately about Tick-Tock.</p>
+
+<p>She said "Do you have a personal interest in keeping the Baluit crest
+cats from becoming extinct?"</p>
+
+<p>Surprise flickered in his eyes for an instant. Then he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I admit I do, Miss Amberdon," he said pleasantly. "I should like to
+see the species re-established. I count myself almost uniquely
+fortunate in having had the opportunity to bag two of the magnificent
+brutes before disease wiped them out on the planet."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_005.jpg" width="400" height="537" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The last seemed a less than fortunate statement just now. Telzey
+felt a sharp tingle of alarm, then sensed that in the minds which were
+drawing the meaning of the Moderator's speech from her mind there had
+been only a brief stir of interest.</p>
+
+<p>She cleared her throat, said, "The point is that they weren't wiped
+out by disease."</p>
+
+<p>He considered her quizzically, seemed to wonder what she was trying to
+lead up to. Telzey gathered her courage, plunged on, "Would you like
+to hear what did happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very much interested, Miss Amberdon," the Moderator said
+without change of expression. "But first, if you'll excuse me a
+moment...."</p>
+
+<p>There had been some signal from his desk which Telzey hadn't noticed,
+because he picked up a small communicator now and said "Yes?" After a
+few seconds, he resumed, "That's rather curious, isn't it?... Yes, I'd
+try that.... No, that shouldn't be necessary.... Yes, please do.
+Thank you." He replaced the communicator, his face very sober; then,
+his eyes flicking for an instant to TT, he drew one of the upper desk
+drawers open a few inches, and turned back to Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Miss Amberdon," he said affably, "you were about to say? About
+these crest cats...."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey swallowed. She hadn't heard the other side of the conversation,
+but she could guess what it had been about. His office had called the
+guest house, had been told by Halet's maid that Halet, the chauffeur
+and Dr. Droon were out looking for Miss Telzey and her pet. The
+Moderator's office had then checked on the sportscar's communication
+number and attempted to call it. And, of course, there had been no
+response.</p>
+
+<p>To the Moderator, considering what Halet would have told him, it must
+add up to the grim possibility that the young lunatic he was talking
+to had let her three-quarters-grown crest cat slaughter her aunt and
+the two men when they caught up with her! The office would be
+notifying the police now to conduct an immediate search for the
+missing aircar.</p>
+
+<p>When it would occur to them to look for it on the Moderator's parking
+terrace was something Telzey couldn't know. But if Halet and Dr. Droon
+were released before the Moderator accepted her own version of what
+had occurred, and the two reported the presence of wild crest cats in
+Port Nichay, there would be almost no possibility of keeping the
+situation under control. Somebody was bound to make some idiotic move,
+and the fat would be in the fire....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>wo things might be in her favor. The Moderator seemed to have the
+sort of steady nerve one would expect in a man who had bagged two
+Baluit crest cats. The partly opened desk drawer beside him must have
+a gun in it; apparently he considered that a sufficient precaution
+against an attack by TT. He wasn't likely to react in a panicky
+manner. And the mere fact that he suspected Telzey of homicidal
+tendencies would make him give the closest attention to what she said.
+Whether he believed her then was another matter, of course.</p>
+
+<p>Slightly encouraged, Telzey began to talk. It did sound like a
+thoroughly wild story, but the Moderator listened with an appearance
+of intent interest. When she had told him as much as she felt he could
+be expected to swallow for a start, he said musingly, "So they weren't
+wiped out&mdash;they went into hiding! Do I understand you to say they did
+it to avoid being hunted?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey chewed her lip frowningly before replying. "There's something
+about that part I don't quite get," she admitted. "Of course I don't
+quite get either why you'd want to go hunting ... twice ... for
+something that's just as likely to bag you instead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, those are, ah, merely the statistical odds," the Moderator
+explained. "If one has enough confidence, you see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't really. But the crest cats seem to have felt the same way&mdash;at
+first. They were getting around one hunter for every cat that got
+shot. Humans were the most exciting game they'd ever run into.</p>
+
+<p>"But then that ended, and the humans started knocking them out with
+stunguns from aircars where they couldn't be got at, and hauling them
+off while they were helpless. After it had gone on for a while, they
+decided to keep out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"But they're still around ... thousands and thousands of them!
+Another thing nobody's known about them is that they weren't only in
+the Baluit mountains. There were crest cats scattered all through the
+big forests along the other side of the continent."</p>
+
+<p>"Very interesting," the Moderator commented. "Very interesting,
+indeed!" He glanced towards the communicator, then returned his gaze
+to Telzey, drumming his fingers lightly on the desk top.</p>
+
+<p>She could tell nothing at all from his expression now, but she guessed
+he was thinking hard. There was supposed to be no native intelligent
+life in the legal sense on Jontarou, and she had been careful to say
+nothing so far to make the Baluit cats look like more than rather
+exceptionally intelligent animals. The next&mdash;rather large&mdash;question
+should be how she'd come by such information.</p>
+
+<p>If the Moderator asked her that, Telzey thought, she could feel she'd
+made a beginning at getting him to buy the whole story.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said abruptly, "if the crest cats are not extinct or
+threatened with extinction, the Life Banks obviously have no claim on
+your pet." He smiled confidingly at her. "And that's the reason you're
+here, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no," Telzey began, dismayed. "I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's quite all right, Miss Amberdon! I'll simply rescind the
+permit which was issued for the purpose. You need feel no further
+concern about that." He paused. "Now, just one question ... do you
+happen to know where your aunt is at present?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>elzey had a dead, sinking feeling. So he hadn't believed a word she
+said. He'd been stalling her along until the aircar could be found.</p>
+
+<p>She took a deep breath. "You'd better listen to the rest of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, is there more?" the Moderator asked politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The important part! The kind of creatures they are, they
+wouldn't go into hiding indefinitely just because someone was after
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Was there a flicker of something beyond watchfulness in his
+expression. "What would they do, Miss Amberdon?" he asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"If they couldn't get at the men in the aircars and couldn't
+communicate with them"&mdash;the flicker again!&mdash;"they'd start looking for
+the place the men came from, wouldn't they? It might take them some
+years to work their way across the continent and locate us here in
+Port Nichay. But supposing they did it finally and a few thousand of
+them are sitting around in the parks down there right now? They could
+come up the side of these towers as easily as they go up the side of a
+mountain. And supposing they'd decided that the only way to handle the
+problem was to clean out the human beings in Port Nichay?"</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator stared at her in silence a few seconds. "You're saying,"
+he observed then, "that they're rational beings&mdash;above the Critical
+I.Q. level."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Telzey said, "legally they're rational. I checked on that.
+About as rational as we are, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind telling me now how you happen to know this?"</p>
+
+<p>"They told me," Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>He was silent again, studying her face. "You mentioned, Miss Amberdon,
+that they have been unable to communicate with other human beings.
+This suggests then that you are a xenotelepath...."</p>
+
+<p>"I am?" Telzey hadn't heard the term before. "If it means that I can
+tell what the cats are thinking, and they can tell what I'm thinking,
+I guess that's the word for it." She considered him, decided she had
+him almost on the ropes, went on quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked up the laws, and told them they could conclude a treaty with
+the Federation which would establish them as an Affiliated Species ...
+and that would settle everything the way they would want it settled,
+without trouble. Some of them believed me. They decided to wait until
+I could talk to you. If it works out, fine! If it doesn't"&mdash;she felt
+her voice falter for an instant&mdash;"they're going to cut loose fast!"</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator seemed undisturbed. "What am I supposed to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told them you'd contact the Council of the Federation on Orado."</p>
+
+<p>"Contact the Council?" he repeated coolly. "With no more proof for
+this story than your word Miss Amberdon?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey felt a quick, angry stirring begin about her, felt her face
+whiten.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she said "I'll give you proof! I'll have to now. But
+that'll be it. Once they've tipped their hand all the way, you'll
+have about thirty seconds left to make the right move. I hope you
+remember that!"</p>
+
+<p>He cleared his throat. "I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"NOW!" Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>Along the walls of the balcony garden, beside the ornamental flower
+stands, against the edges of the rock pool, the crest cats appeared.
+Perhaps thirty of them. None quite as physically impressive as Iron
+Thoughts who stood closest to the Moderator; but none very far from
+it. Motionless as rocks, frightening as gargoyles, they waited, eyes
+glowing with hellish excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"This is <i>their</i> council, you see," Telzey heard herself saying.</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator's face had also paled. But he was, after all, an old
+shikari and a senior diplomat. He took an unhurried look around the
+circle, said quietly, "Accept my profound apologies for doubting you.
+Miss Amberdon!" and reached for the desk communicator.</p>
+
+<p>Iron Thoughts swung his demon head in Telzey's direction. For an
+instant, she picked up the mental impression of a fierce yellow eye
+closing in an approving wink.</p>
+
+<p>"... An open transmitter line to Orado," the Moderator was saying into
+the communicator. "The Council. And snap it up! Some very important
+visitors are waiting."</p>
+
+<p>The offices of Jontarou's Planetary Moderator became an extremely busy
+and interesting area then. Quite two hours passed before it occurred
+to anyone to ask Telzey again whether she knew where her aunt was at
+present.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey smote her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgot all about that!" she admitted, fishing the sportscar's keys
+out of the pocket of her sunbriefs. "They're out on the parking
+platform...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he preliminary treaty arrangements between the Federation of the Hub
+and the new Affiliated Species of the Planet of Jontarou were formally
+ratified two weeks later, the ceremony taking place on Jontarou, in
+the Champagne Hall of the Shikaris' Club.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey was able to follow the event only by news viewer in her
+ship-cabin, she and Halet being on the return trip to Orado by then.
+She wasn't too interested in the treaty's details&mdash;they conformed
+almost exactly to what she had read out to Iron Thoughts and his
+co-chiefs and companions in the park. It was the smooth bridging of
+the wide language gap between the contracting parties by a row of
+interpreting machines and a handful of human xenotelepaths which held
+her attention.</p>
+
+<p>As she switched off the viewer, Halet came wandering in from the
+adjoining cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"I was watching it, too!" Halet observed. She smiled. "I was hoping to
+see dear Tick-Tock."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey looked over at her. "Well, TT would hardly be likely to show up
+in Port Nichay," she said. "She's having too good a time now finding
+out what life in the Baluit range is like."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," Halet agreed doubtfully, sitting down on a hassock.
+"But I'm glad she promised to get in touch with us again in a few
+years. I'll miss her."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey regarded her aunt with a reflective frown. Halet meant it quite
+sincerely, of course, she had undergone a profound change of heart
+during the past two weeks. But Telzey wasn't without some doubts about
+the actual value of a change of heart brought on by telepathic means.
+The learning process the crest cats had started in her mind appeared
+to have continued automatically several days longer than her rugged
+teachers had really intended; and Telzey had reason to believe that by
+the end of that time she'd developed associated latent abilities of
+which the crest cats had never heard. She'd barely begun to get it all
+sorted out yet, but ... as an example ... she'd found it remarkably
+easy to turn Halet's more obnoxious attitudes virtually upside down.
+It had taken her a couple of days to get the hang of her aunt's
+personal symbolism, but after that there had been no problem.</p>
+
+<p>She was reasonably certain she'd broken no laws so far, though the
+sections in the law library covering the use and abuse of psionic
+abilities were veiled in such intricate and downright obscuring
+phrasing&mdash;deliberately, Telzey suspected&mdash;that it was really difficult
+to say what they did mean. But even aside from that, there were a
+number of arguments in favor of exercising great caution.</p>
+
+<p>Jessamine, for one thing, was bound to start worrying about her
+sister-in-law's health if Halet turned up on Orado in her present
+state of mind, even though it would make for a far more agreeable
+atmosphere in the Amberdon household.</p>
+
+<p>"Halet," Telzey inquired mentally, "do you remember what an all-out
+stinker you used to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, dear," Halet said aloud. "I can hardly wait to tell dear
+Jessamine how much I regret the many times I...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Telzey went on, still verbalizing it silently. "I think you'd
+really enjoy life more if you were, let's say, about halfway between
+your old nasty self and the sort of sickening-good kind you are now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Telzey!" Halet cried out with dopey amiability. "What a
+delightful idea!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's try it," Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence in the cabin for some twenty minutes then while she
+went painstakingly about remolding a number of Halet's character
+traits for the second time. She still felt some misgivings about it;
+but if it became necessary, she probably could always restore the old
+Halet <i>in toto</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These, she told herself, definitely were powers one should treat with
+respect! Better rattle through law school first; then, with that out
+of the way, she could start hunting around to see who in the
+Federation was qualified to instruct a genius-level novice in the
+proper handling of psionics.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30458 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Novice, by James H. Schmitz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Novice
+
+Author: James H. Schmitz
+
+Illustrator: Schoenherr
+
+Release Date: November 12, 2009 [EBook #30458]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOVICE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="center">This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact &amp; Fiction June 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="400" height="613" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>novice</h1>
+
+<h2>by James H. Schmitz</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A novice is one who is inexperienced&mdash;but<br />
+that doesn't mean incompetent. Nor does it mean stupid!</p></div>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">illustrated by schoenherr</span></h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>here was, Telzey Amberdon thought, someone besides TT and herself in
+the garden. Not, of course, Aunt Halet, who was in the house waiting
+for an early visitor to arrive, and not one of the servants. Someone
+or something else must be concealed among the thickets of
+magnificently flowering native Jontarou shrubs about Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>She could think of no other way to account for Tick-Tock's spooked
+behavior&mdash;nor, to be honest about it, for the manner her own nerves
+were acting up without visible cause this morning.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey plucked a blade of grass, slipped the end between her lips and
+chewed it gently, her face puzzled and concerned. She wasn't
+ordinarily afflicted with nervousness. Fifteen years old, genius
+level, brown as a berry and not at all bad looking in her sunbriefs,
+she was the youngest member of one of Orado's most prominent families
+and a second-year law student at one of the most exclusive schools in
+the Federation of the Hub. Her physical, mental, and emotional health,
+she'd always been informed, was excellent. Aunt Halet's frequent
+cracks about the inherent instability of the genius level could be
+ignored; Halet's own stability seemed questionable at best.</p>
+
+<p>But none of that made the present odd situation any less
+disagreeable....</p>
+
+<p>The trouble might have begun, Telzey decided, during the night, within
+an hour after they arrived from the spaceport at the guest house
+Halet had rented in Port Nichay for their vacation on Jontarou. Telzey
+had retired at once to her second-story bedroom with Tick-Tock; but
+she barely got to sleep before something awakened her again. Turning
+over, she discovered TT reared up before the window, her forepaws on
+the sill, big cat-head outlined against the star-hazed night sky,
+staring fixedly down into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey, only curious at that point, climbed out of bed and joined TT
+at the window. There was nothing in particular to be seen, and if the
+scents and minor night-sounds which came from the garden weren't
+exactly what they were used to, Jontarou was after all an unfamiliar
+planet. What else would one expect here?</p>
+
+<p>But Tick-Tock's muscular back felt tense and rigid when Telzey laid
+her arm across it, and except for an absent-minded dig with her
+forehead against Telzey's shoulder, TT refused to let her attention be
+distracted from whatever had absorbed it. Now and then, a low, ominous
+rumble came from her furry throat, a half-angry, half-questioning
+sound. Telzey began to feel a little uncomfortable. She managed
+finally to coax Tick-Tock away from the window, but neither of them
+slept well the rest of the night. At breakfast, Aunt Halet made one of
+her typical nasty-sweet remarks.</p>
+
+<p>"You look so fatigued, dear&mdash;as if you were under some severe mental
+strain ... which, of course, you might be," Halet added musingly. With
+her gold-blond hair piled high on her head and her peaches and cream
+complexion, Halet looked fresh as a daisy herself ... a malicious
+daisy. "Now wasn't I right in insisting to Jessamine that you needed a
+vacation away from that terribly intellectual school?" She smiled
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely," Telzey agreed, restraining the impulse to fling a
+spoonful of egg yolk at her father's younger sister. Aunt Halet often
+inspired such impulses, but Telzey had promised her mother to avoid
+actual battles on the Jontarou trip, if possible. After breakfast, she
+went out into the back garden with Tick-Tock, who immediately walked
+into a thicket, camouflaged herself and vanished from sight. It seemed
+to add up to something. But what?</p>
+
+<p>Telzey strolled about the garden a while, maintaining a pretense of
+nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She
+experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time,
+but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then,
+for half an hour or more, she'd just sat cross-legged in the grass,
+waiting quietly for Tick-Tock to show up of her own accord. And the
+big lunk-head hadn't obliged.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey scratched a tanned knee-cap, scowling at Port Nichay's park
+trees beyond the garden wall. It seemed idiotic to feel scared when
+she couldn't even tell whether there was anything to be scared about!
+And, aside from that, another unreasonable feeling kept growing
+stronger by the minute now. This was to the effect that she should be
+doing some unstated but specific thing....</p>
+
+<p>In fact, that Tick-Tock <i>wanted</i> her to do some specific thing!</p>
+
+<p>Completely idiotic!</p>
+
+<p>Abruptly, Telzey closed her eyes, thought sharply, "Tick-Tock?" and
+waited&mdash;suddenly very angry at herself for having given in to her
+fancies to this extent&mdash;for whatever might happen.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">S</span>he had never really established that she was able to tell, by a kind
+of symbolic mind-picture method, like a short waking dream,
+approximately what TT was thinking and feeling. Five years before,
+when she'd discovered Tick-Tock&mdash;an odd-looking and odder-behaved
+stray kitten then&mdash;in the woods near the Amberdons' summer home on
+Orado, Telzey had thought so. But it might never have been more than a
+colorful play of her imagination; and after she got into law school
+and grew increasingly absorbed in her studies, she almost forgot the
+matter again.</p>
+
+<p>Today, perhaps because she was disturbed about Tick-Tock's behavior,
+the customary response was extraordinarily prompt. The warm glow of
+sunlight shining through her closed eyelids faded out quickly and was
+replaced by some inner darkness. In the darkness there appeared then
+an image of Tick-Tock sitting a little way off beside an open door in
+an old stone wall, green eyes fixed on Telzey. Telzey got the
+impression that TT was inviting her to go through the door, and, for
+some reason, the thought frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>Again, there was an immediate reaction. The scene with Tick-Tock and
+the door vanished; and Telzey felt she was standing in a pitch-black
+room, knowing that if she moved even one step forwards, something that
+was waiting there silently would reach out and grab her.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, she recoiled ... and at once found herself sitting, eyes
+still closed and the sunlight bathing her lids, in the grass of the
+guest house garden.</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes, looked around. Her heart was thumping rapidly.
+The experience couldn't have lasted more than four or five seconds,
+but it had been extremely vivid, a whole, compact little nightmare.
+None of her earlier experiments at getting into mental communication
+with TT had been like that.</p>
+
+<p>It served her right, Telzey thought, for trying such a childish stunt
+at the moment! What she should have done at once was to make a
+methodical search for the foolish beast&mdash;TT was bound to be
+<i>somewhere</i> nearby&mdash;locate her behind her camouflage, and hang on to
+her then until this nonsense in the garden was explained! Talented as
+Tick-Tock was at blotting herself out, it usually was possible to spot
+her if one directed one's attention to shadow patterns. Telzey began a
+surreptitious study of the flowering bushes about her.</p>
+
+<p>Three minutes later, off to her right, where the ground was banked
+beneath a six-foot step in the garden's terraces, Tick-Tock's outline
+suddenly caught her eye. Flat on her belly, head lifted above her
+paws, quite motionless, TT seemed like a transparent wraith stretched
+out along the terrace, barely discernible even when stared at
+directly. It was a convincing illusion; but what seemed to be rocks,
+plant leaves, and sun-splotched earth seen through the wraith-outline
+was simply the camouflage pattern TT had printed for the moment on her
+hide. She could have changed it completely in an instant to conform to
+a different background.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey pointed an accusing finger.</p>
+
+<p>"See you!" she announced, feeling a surge of relief which seemed as
+unaccountable as the rest of it.</p>
+
+<p>The wraith twitched one ear in acknowledgment, the head outlines
+shifting as the camouflaged face turned towards Telzey. Then the
+inwardly uncamouflaged, very substantial looking mouth opened slowly,
+showing Tick-Tock's red tongue and curved white tusks. The mouth
+stretched in a wide yawn, snapped shut with a click of meshing teeth,
+became indistinguishable again. Next, a pair of camouflaged lids drew
+back from TT's round, brilliant-green eyes. The eyes stared across the
+lawn at Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey said irritably, "Quit clowning around, TT!"</p>
+
+<p>The eyes blinked, and Tick-Tock's natural bronze-brown color suddenly
+flowed over her head, down her neck and across her body into legs and
+tail. Against the side of the terrace, as if materializing into
+solidity at that moment, appeared two hundred pounds of supple, rangy,
+long-tailed cat ... or catlike creature. TT's actual origin had never
+been established. The best guesses were that what Telzey had found
+playing around in the woods five years ago was either a bio-structural
+experiment which had got away from a private laboratory on Orado, or
+some spaceman's lost pet, brought to the capital planet from one of
+the remote colonies beyond the Hub. On top of TT's head was a large,
+fluffy pompom of white fur, which might have looked ridiculous on
+another animal, but didn't on her. Even as a fat kitten, hanging head
+down from the side of a wall by the broad sucker pads in her paws, TT
+had possessed enormous dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey studied her, the feeling of relief fading again. Tick-Tock,
+ordinarily the most restful and composed of companions, definitely was
+still tensed up about something. That big, lazy yawn a moment ago, the
+attitude of stretched-out relaxation ... all pure sham!</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>is</i> eating you?" she asked in exasperation.</p>
+
+<p>The green eyes stared at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that
+fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old
+question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now?
+After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year,
+nobody had cared any more.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, Telzey had the uncanny certainty of having had the
+answer to this situation almost in her grasp. An answer which appeared
+to involve the world of Jontarou, Tick-Tock, and of all unlikely
+factors&mdash;Aunt Halet.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, TT's impassive green eyes blinked.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">J</span>ontarou? The planet lay outside Telzey's sphere of personal
+interests, but she'd read up on it on the way here from Orado. Among
+all the worlds of the Hub, Jontarou was <i>the</i> paradise for zoologists
+and sportsmen, a gigantic animal preserve, its continents and seas
+swarming with magnificent game. Under Federation law, it was being
+retained deliberately in the primitive state in which it had been
+discovered. Port Nichay, the only city, actually the only inhabited
+point on Jontarou, was beautiful and quiet, a pattern of vast but
+elegantly slender towers, each separated from the others by four or
+five miles of rolling parkland and interconnected only by the threads
+of transparent skyways. Near the horizon, just visible from the
+garden, rose the tallest towers of all, the green and gold spires of
+the Shikaris' Club, a center of Federation affairs and of social
+activity. From the aircar which brought them across Port Nichay the
+evening before, Telzey had seen occasional strings of guest houses,
+similar to the one Halet had rented, nestling along the park slopes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_002.jpg" width="400" height="454" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing very sinister about Port Nichay or green Jontarou, surely!</p>
+
+<p>Halet? That blond, slinky, would-be Machiavelli? What could&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>Telzey's eyes narrowed reflectively. There'd been a minor
+occurrence&mdash;at least, it had seemed minor&mdash;just before the spaceliner
+docked last night. A young woman from one of the newscasting services
+had asked for an interview with the daughter of Federation
+Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon. This happened occasionally; and
+Telzey had no objections until the newshen's gossipy persistence in
+inquiring about the "unusual pet" she was bringing to Port Nichay with
+her began to be annoying. TT might be somewhat unusual, but that was
+not a matter of general interest; and Telzey said so. Then Halet moved
+smoothly into the act and held forth on Tick-Tock's appearance,
+habits, and mysterious antecedents, in considerable detail.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey had assumed that Halet was simply going out of her way to be
+irritating, as usual. Looking back on the incident, however, it
+occurred to her that the chatter between her aunt and the newscast
+woman had sounded oddly stilted&mdash;almost like something the two might
+have rehearsed.</p>
+
+<p>Rehearsed for what purpose? Tick-Tock ... Jontarou.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey chewed gently on her lower lip. A vacation on Jontarou for the
+two of them and TT had been Halet's idea, and Halet had enthused about
+it so much that Telzey's mother at last talked her into accepting.
+Halet, Jessamine explained privately to Telzey, had felt they were
+intruders in the Amberdon family, had bitterly resented Jessamine's
+political honors and, more recently, Telzey's own emerging promise of
+brilliance. This invitation was Halet's way of indicating a change of
+heart. Wouldn't Telzey oblige?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>So Telzey had obliged, though she took very little stock in Halet's
+change of heart. She wasn't, in fact, putting it past her aunt to have
+some involved dirty trick up her sleeve with this trip to Jontarou.
+Halet's mind worked like that.</p>
+
+<p>So far there had been no actual indications of purposeful mischief.
+But logic did seem to require a connection between the various
+puzzling events here.... A newscaster's rather forced looking interest
+in Tick-Tock&mdash;Halet could easily have paid for that interview. Then
+TT's disturbed behavior during their first night in Port Nichay, and
+Telzey's own formless anxieties and fancies in connection with the
+guest house garden.</p>
+
+<p>The last remained hard to explain. But Tick-Tock ... and Halet ...
+might know something about Jontarou that she didn't know.</p>
+
+<p>Her mind returned to the results of the half-serious attempt she'd
+made to find out whether there was something Tick-Tock "wanted her to
+do." An open door? A darkness where somebody waited to grab her if she
+took even one step forwards? It couldn't have had any significance. Or
+could it?</p>
+
+<p>So you'd like to try magic, Telzey scoffed at herself. Baby games....
+How far would you have got at law school if you'd asked TT to help
+with your problems?</p>
+
+<p>Then why had she been thinking about it again?</p>
+
+<p>She shivered, because an eerie stillness seemed to settle on the
+garden. From the side of the terrace, TT's green eyes watched her.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey had a feeling of sinking down slowly into a sunlit dream, into
+something very remote from law school problems.</p>
+
+<p>"Should I go through the door?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>The bronze cat-shape raised its head slowly. TT began to purr.</p>
+
+<p>Tick-Tock's name had been derived in kittenhood from the manner in
+which she purred&mdash;a measured, oscillating sound, shifting from high to
+low, as comfortable and often as continuous as the unobtrusive pulse
+of an old clock. It was the first time, Telzey realized now, that
+she'd heard the sound since their arrival on Jontarou. It went on for
+a dozen seconds or so, then stopped. Tick-Tock continued to look at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared to have been an expression of definite assent....</p>
+
+<p>The dreamlike sensation increased, hazing over Telzey's thoughts. If
+there was nothing to this mind-communication thing, what harm could
+symbols do? This time, she wouldn't let them alarm her. And if they
+did mean something....</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he sunglow outside faded instantly. Telzey caught a fleeting picture
+of the door in the wall, and knew in the same moment that she'd
+already passed through it.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in the dark room then, but poised at the edge of a
+brightness which seemed featureless and without limit, spread out
+around her with a feeling-tone like "sea" or "sky." But it was an
+unquiet place. There was a sense of unseen things on all sides
+watching her and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Was this another form of the dark room&mdash;a trap set up in her mind?
+Telzey's attention did a quick shift. She was seated in the grass
+again; the sunlight beyond her closed eyelids seemed to shine in
+quietly through rose-tinted curtains. Cautiously, she let her
+awareness return to the bright area; and it was still there. She had a
+moment of excited elation. She was controlling this! And why not, she
+asked herself. These things were happening in her mind, after all!</p>
+
+<p>She would find out what they seemed to mean; but she would be in no
+rush to....</p>
+
+<p>An impression as if, behind her, Tick-Tock had thought, "Now I can
+help again!"</p>
+
+<p>Then a feeling of being swept swiftly, irresistibly forwards, thrust
+out and down. The brightness exploded in thundering colors around her.
+In fright, she made the effort to snap her eyes open, to be back in
+the garden; but now she couldn't make it work. The colors continued to
+roar about her, like a confusion of excited, laughing, triumphant
+voices. Telzey felt caught in the middle of it all, suspended in
+invisible spider webs. Tick-Tock seemed to be somewhere nearby,
+looking on. Faithless, treacherous TT!</p>
+
+<p>Telzey's mind made another wrenching effort, and there was a change.
+She hadn't got back into the garden, but the noisy, swirling colors
+were gone and she had the feeling of reading a rapidly moving
+microtape now, though she didn't actually see the tape.</p>
+
+<p>The tape, she realized, was another symbol for what was happening, a
+symbol easier for her to understand. There were voices, or what might
+be voices, around her; on the invisible tape she seemed to be reading
+what they said.</p>
+
+<p>A number of speakers, apparently involved in a fast, hot argument
+about what to do with her. Impressions flashed past....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Why waste time with her? It was clear that kitten-talk was all she was
+capable of!... Not necessarily; that was a normal first step. Give her
+a little time!... But what&mdash;exasperatedly&mdash;could such a small-bite
+<i>possibly</i> know that would be of significant value?</p>
+
+<p>There was a slow, blurred, awkward-seeming interruption. Its content
+was not comprehensible to Telzey at all, but in some unmistakable
+manner it was defined as Tick-Tock's thought.</p>
+
+<p>A pause as the circle of speakers stopped to consider whatever TT had
+thrown into the debate.</p>
+
+<p>Then another impression ... one that sent a shock of fear through
+Telzey as it rose heavily into her awareness. Its sheer intensity
+momentarily displaced the tape-reading symbolism. A savage voice
+seemed to rumble:</p>
+
+<p>"Toss the tender small-bite to me"&mdash;malevolent crimson eyes fixed on
+Telzey from somewhere not far away&mdash;"and let's be done here!"</p>
+
+<p>Startled, stammering protest from Tick-Tock, accompanied by gusts of
+laughter from the circle. Great sense of humor these characters had,
+Telzey thought bitterly. That crimson-eyed thing wasn't joking at all!</p>
+
+<p>More laughter as the circle caught her thought. Then a kind of
+majority opinion found sudden expression:</p>
+
+<p>"Small-bite <i>is</i> learning! No harm to wait&mdash;We'll find out
+quickly&mdash;Let's...."</p>
+
+<p>The tape ended; the voices faded; the colors went blank. In whatever
+jumbled-up form she'd been getting the impressions at that
+point&mdash;Telzey couldn't have begun to describe it&mdash;the whole thing
+suddenly stopped.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">S</span>he found herself sitting in the grass, shaky, scared, eyes open.
+Tick-Tock stood beside the terrace, looking at her. An air of hazy
+unreality still hung about the garden.</p>
+
+<p>She might have flipped! She didn't think so; but it certainly seemed
+possible! Otherwise ... Telzey made an attempt to sort over what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>Something <i>had</i> been in the garden! Something had been inside her
+mind. Something that was at home on Jontarou.</p>
+
+<p>There'd been a feeling of perhaps fifty or sixty of these ... well,
+beings. Alarming beings! Reckless, wild, hard ... and that red-eyed
+nightmare! Telzey shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>They'd contacted Tick-Tock first, during the night. TT understood them
+better than she could. Why? Telzey found no immediate answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then Tick-Tock had tricked her into letting her mind be invaded by
+these beings. There must have been a very definite reason for that.</p>
+
+<p>She looked over at Tick-Tock. TT looked back. Nothing stirred in
+Telzey's thoughts. Between <i>them</i> there was still no direct
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>Then how had the beings been able to get through to her?</p>
+
+<p>Telzey wrinkled her nose. Assuming this was real, it seemed clear that
+the game of symbols she'd made up between herself and TT had provided
+the opening. Her whole experience just now had been in the form of
+symbols, translating whatever occurred into something she could
+consciously grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Kitten-talk" was how the beings referred to the use of symbols; they
+seemed contemptuous of it. Never mind, Telzey told herself; they'd
+agreed she was learning.</p>
+
+<p>The air over the grass appeared to flicker. Again she had the
+impression of reading words off a quickly moving, not quite visible
+tape.</p>
+
+<p>"You're being taught and you're learning," was what she seemed to
+read. "The question was whether you were capable of partial
+understanding as your friend insisted. Since you were, everything else
+that can be done will be accomplished very quickly."</p>
+
+<p>A pause, then with a touch of approval, "You're a well-formed mind,
+small-bite! Odd and with incomprehensibilities, but well-formed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>One of the beings, and a fairly friendly one&mdash;at least not unfriendly.
+Telzey framed a tentative mental question. "Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll know very soon." The flickering ended; she realized she and
+the question had been dismissed for the moment. She looked over at
+Tick-Tock again.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't <i>you</i> talk to me now, TT?" she asked silently.</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Kitten-talk!" was the impression that formed itself with difficulty
+then. It was awkward, searching; but it came unquestionably from TT.
+"Still learning too, Telzey!" TT seemed half anxious, half angry.
+"We&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">A</span>&nbsp; sharp buzz-note reached Telzey's ears, wiping out the groping
+thought-impression. She jumped a little, glanced down. Her
+wrist-talker was signaling. For a moment, she seemed poised
+uncertainly between a world where unseen, dangerous-sounding beings
+referred to one as small-bite and where TT was learning to talk, and
+the familiar other world where wrist-communicators buzzed periodically
+in a matter-of-fact manner. Settling back into the more familiar
+world, she switched on the talker.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" she said. Her voice sounded husky.</p>
+
+<p>"Telzey, dear," Halet murmured honey-sweet from the talker, "would you
+come back into the house, please? The living room&mdash;We have a visitor
+who very much wants to meet you."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey hesitated, eyes narrowing. Halet's visitor wanted to meet
+<i>her</i>?</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He has something <i>very</i> interesting to tell you, dear." The edge of
+triumphant malice showed for an instant, vanished in murmuring
+sweetness again. "So please hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right." Telzey stood up. "I'm coming."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine, dear!" The talker went dead.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey switched off the instrument, noticed that Tick-Tock had chosen
+to disappear meanwhile.</p>
+
+<p>Flipped? She wondered, starting up towards the house. It was clear
+Aunt Halet had prepared some unpleasant surprise to spring on her,
+which was hardly more than normal behavior for Halet. The other
+business? She couldn't be certain of anything there. Leaving out TT's
+strange actions&mdash;which might have a number of causes, after all&mdash;that
+entire string of events could have been created inside her head. There
+was no contradictory evidence so far.</p>
+
+<p>But it could do no harm to take what <i>seemed</i> to have happened at face
+value. Some pretty grim event might be shaping up, in a very real way,
+around here....</p>
+
+<p>"You reason logically!" The impression now was of a voice speaking to
+her, a voice that made no audible sound. It was the same being who'd
+addressed her a minute or two ago.</p>
+
+<p>The two worlds between which Telzey had felt suspended seemed to glide
+slowly together and become one.</p>
+
+<p>"I go to Law school," she explained to the being, almost absently.</p>
+
+<p>Amused agreement. "So we heard."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want of me?" Telzey inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll know soon enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not tell me now?" Telzey urged. It seemed about to dismiss her
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Quick impatience flared at her. "Kitten-pictures! Kitten-thoughts!
+Kitten-talk! Too slow, too slow! YOUR pictures&mdash;too much YOU! Wait
+till the...."</p>
+
+<p>Circuits close ... channels open.... Obstructions clear? What <i>had</i> it
+said? There'd been only the blurred image of a finicky, delicate, but
+perfectly normal technical operation of some kind.</p>
+
+<p>"... Minutes now!" the voice concluded. A pause, then another thought
+tossed carelessly at her. "This is more important to you, small-bite,
+than to <i>us</i>!" The voice impression ended as sharply as if a
+communicator had snapped off.</p>
+
+<p>Not <i>too</i> friendly! Telzey walked on towards the house, a new fear
+growing inside her ... a fear like the awareness of a storm gathered
+nearby, still quiet&mdash;deadly quiet, but ready to break.</p>
+
+<p>"Kitten-pictures!" a voice seemed to jeer distantly, a whispering in
+the park trees beyond the garden wall.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">H</span>alet's cheeks were lightly pinked; her blue eyes sparkled. She looked
+downright stunning, which meant to anyone who knew her that the worst
+side of Halet's nature was champing at the bit again. On uninformed
+males it had a dazzling effect, however; and Telzey wasn't surprised
+to find their visitor wearing a tranced expression when she came into
+the living room. He was a tall, outdoorsy man with a tanned, bony
+face, a neatly trained black mustache, and a scar down one cheek which
+would have seemed dashing if it hadn't been for the stupefied look.
+Beside his chair stood a large, clumsy instrument which might have
+been some kind of telecamera.</p>
+
+<p>Halet performed introductions. Their visitor was Dr. Droon, a
+zoologist. He had been tuned in on Telzey's newscast interview on the
+liner the night before, and wondered whether Telzey would care to
+discuss Tick-Tock with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Frankly, no," Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Droon came awake and gave Telzey a surprised look. Halet smiled
+easily.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece doesn't intend to be discourteous, doctor," she explained.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_003.jpg" width="600" height="256" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Of course not," the zoologist agreed doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just," Halet went on, "that Telzey is a little, oh, sensitive
+where Tick-Tock is concerned. In her own way, she's attached to the
+animal. Aren't you, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Telzey said blandly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we hope this isn't going to disturbed you too much, dear."
+Halet glanced significantly at Dr. Droon. "Dr. Droon, you must
+understand, is simply doing ... well, there is something very
+important he must tell you now."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey transferred her gaze back to the zoologist. Dr. Droon cleared
+his throat. "I, ah, understand, Miss Amberdon, that you're unaware of
+what kind of creature your, ah, Tick-Tock is?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey started to speak, then checked herself, frowning. She had been
+about to state that she knew exactly what kind of creature TT was ...
+but she didn't, of course!</p>
+
+<p>Or did she? She....</p>
+
+<p>She scowled absent-mindedly at Dr. Droon, biting her lip.</p>
+
+<p>"Telzey!" Halet prompted gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Huh?" Telzey said. "Oh ... please go on, doctor!"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Droon steepled his fingers. "Well," he said, "she ... your pet ... is,
+ah, a young crest cat. Nearly full grown now, apparently, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes!" Telzey cried.</p>
+
+<p>The zoologist looked at her. "You knew that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not really," Telzey admitted. "Or sort of." She laughed, her
+cheeks flushed. "This is the most ... go ahead please! Sorry I
+interrupted." She stared at the wall beyond Dr. Droon with a rapt
+expression.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The zoologist and Halet exchanged glances. Then Dr. Droon resumed
+cautiously. The crest cats, he said, were a species native to
+Jontarou. Their existence had been known for only eight years. The
+species appeared to have had a somewhat limited range&mdash;the Baluit
+mountains on the opposite side of the huge continent on which Port
+Nichay had been built....</p>
+
+<p>Telzey barely heard him. A very curious thing was happening. For every
+sentence Dr. Droon uttered, a dozen other sentences appeared in her
+awareness. More accurately, it was as if an instantaneous smooth flow
+of information relevant to whatever he said arose continuously from
+what might have been almost her own memory, but wasn't. Within a
+minute or two, she knew more about the crest cats of Jontarou than Dr.
+Droon could have told her in hours ... much more than he'd ever known.</p>
+
+<p>She realized suddenly that he'd stopped talking, that he had asked her
+a question. "Miss Amberdon?" he repeated now, with a note of
+uncertainty.</p>
+
+<p>"Yar-rrr-REE!" Telzey told him softly. "I'll drink your blood!"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey blinked, focused on Dr. Droon, wrenching her mind away from a
+splendid view of the misty-blue peaks of the Baluit range.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry," she said briskly. "Just a joke!" She smiled. "Now what were
+you saying?"</p>
+
+<p>The zoologist looked at her in a rather odd manner for a moment. "I
+was inquiring," he said then, "whether you were familiar with the
+sporting rules established by the various hunting associations of the
+Hub in connection with the taking of game trophies?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey shook her head. "No, I never heard of them."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he rules, Dr. Droon explained, laid down the type of equipment ...
+weapons, spotting and tracking instruments, number of assistants, and
+so forth ... a sportsman could legitimately use in the pursuit of any
+specific type of game. "Before the end of the first year after their
+discovery," he went on, "the Baluit crest cats had been placed in the
+ultra-equipment class."</p>
+
+<p>"What's ultra-equipment?" Telzey asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Dr. Droon said thoughtfully, "it doesn't quite involve the use
+of full battle armor ... not quite! And, of course, even with that
+classification the sporting principle of mutual accessibility must be
+observed."</p>
+
+<p>"Mutual ... oh, I see!" Telzey paused as another wave of silent
+information rose into her awareness; went on, "So the game has to be
+able to get at the sportsman too, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's correct. Except in the pursuit of various classes of flying
+animals, a shikari would not, for example, be permitted the use of an
+aircar other than as means of simple transportation. Under these
+conditions, it was soon established that crest cats were being
+obtained by sportsmen who went after them at a rather consistent
+one-to-one ration."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey's eyes widened. She'd gathered something similar from her other
+information source but hadn't quite believed it. "One hunter killed
+for each cat bagged?" she said. "That's pretty rough sport, isn't it?</p>
+
+<p>"Extremely rough sport!" Dr. Droon agreed dryly. "In fact, when the
+statistics were published, the sporting interest in winning a Baluit
+cat trophy appears to have suffered a sudden and sharp decline. On the
+other hand, a more scientific interest in these remarkable animals was
+coincidingly created, and many permits for their acquisition by the
+agents of museums, universities, public and private collections were
+issued. Sporting rules, of course, do not apply to that activity."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey nodded absently. "I see! <i>They</i> used aircars, didn't they? A
+sort of heavy knockout gun&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Aircars, long-range detectors and stunguns are standard equipment in
+such work," Dr. Droon acknowledged. "Gas and poison are employed, of
+course, as circumstances dictate. The collectors were relatively
+successful for a while."</p>
+
+<p>"And then a curious thing happened. Less than two years after their
+existence became known, the crest cats of the Baluit range were
+extinct! The inroads made on their numbers by man cannot begin to
+account for this, so it must be assumed that a sudden plague wiped
+them out. At any rate, not another living member of the species has
+been seen on Jontarou until you landed here with your pet last night."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey sat silent for some seconds. Not because of what he had said,
+but because the other knowledge was still flowing into her mind. On
+one very important point <i>that</i> was at variance with what the
+zoologist had stated; and from there a coldly logical pattern was
+building up. Telzey didn't grasp the pattern in complete detail yet,
+but what she saw of it stirred her with a half incredulous dread.</p>
+
+<p>She asked, shaping the words carefully but with only a small part of
+her attention on what she was really saying. "Just what does all that
+have to do with Tick-Tock, Dr. Droon?"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Droon glanced at Halet, and returned his gaze to Telzey. Looking
+very uncomfortable but quite determined, he told her, "Miss Amberdon,
+there is a Federation law which states that when a species is
+threatened with extinction, any available survivors must be
+transferred to the Life Banks of the University League, to insure
+their indefinite preservation. Under the circumstances, this law
+applies to, ah, Tick-Tock!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">S</span>o that had been Halet's trick. She'd found out about the crest cats,
+might have put in as much as a few months arranging to make the
+discovery of TT's origin on Jontarou seem a regrettable
+mischance&mdash;something no one could have foreseen or prevented. In the
+Life Banks, from what Telzey had heard of them, TT would cease to
+exist as an individual awareness while scientists tinkered around with
+the possibilities of reconstructing her species.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey studied her aunt's carefully sympathizing face for an instant,
+asked Dr. Droon, "What about the other crest cats&mdash;you said were
+collected before they became extinct here? Wouldn't they be enough for
+what the Life Banks need?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "Two immature male specimens are know to exist, and
+they are at present in the Life Banks. The others that were taken
+alive at the time have been destroyed ... often under nearly
+disastrous circumstances. They are enormously cunning, enormously
+savage creatures, Miss Amberdon! The additional fact that they can
+conceal themselves to the point of being virtually indetectable except
+by the use of instruments makes them one of the most dangerous animals
+known. Since the young female which you raised as a pet has remained
+docile ... so far ... you may not really be able to appreciate that."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I can," Telzey said. She nodded at the heavy-looking
+instrument standing beside his chair. "And that's&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a life detector combined with a stungun, Miss Amberdon. I have
+no intention of harming your pet, but we can't take chances with an
+animal of that type. The gun's charge will knock it unconscious for
+several minutes&mdash;just long enough to let me secure it with paralysis
+belts."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a collector for the Life Banks, Dr. Droon?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's correct."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Droon," Halet remarked, "has obtained a permit from the Planetary
+Moderator, authorizing him to claim Tick-Tock for the University
+League and remove her from the planet, dear. So you see there is
+simply nothing we can do about the matter! Your mother wouldn't like
+us to attempt to obstruct the law, would she?" Halet paused. "The
+permit should have your signature, Telzey, but I can sign in your
+stead if necessary."</p>
+
+<p>That was Halet's way of saying it would do no good to appeal to
+Jontarou's Planetary Moderator. She'd taken the precaution of getting
+his assent to the matter first.</p>
+
+<p>"So now if you'll just call Tick-Tock, dear..." Halet went on.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey barely heard the last words. She felt herself stiffening
+slowly, while the living room almost faded from her sight. Perhaps, in
+that instant, some additional new circuit had closed in her mind, or
+some additional new channel had opened, for TT's purpose in tricking
+her into contact with the reckless, mocking beings outside was
+suddenly and numbingly clear.</p>
+
+<p>And what it meant immediately was that she'd have to get out of the
+house without being spotted at it, and go some place where she could
+be undisturbed for half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>She realized that Halet and the zoologist were both staring at her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">A</span>re you ill, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." Telzey stood up. It would be worse than useless to try to tell
+these two anything! Her face must be pretty white at the moment&mdash;she
+could feel it&mdash;but they assumed, of course, that the shock of losing
+TT had just now sunk in on her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to check on that law you mentioned before I sign anything,"
+she told Dr. Droon.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes ..." He started to get out of his chair. "I'm sure that can
+be arranged, Miss Amberdon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother to call the Moderator's office," Telzey said. "I brought
+my law library along. I'll look it up myself." She turned to leave the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece," Halet explained to Dr. Droon who was beginning to look puzzled,
+"attends law school. She's always so absorbed in her studies ... Telzey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Halet?" Telzey paused at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad you've decided to be sensible about this, dear. But
+don't take too long, will you? We don't want to waste Dr. Droon's
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"It shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes," Telzey told her
+agreeably. She closed the door behind her, and went directly to her
+bedroom on the second floor. One of her two valises was still
+unpacked. She locked the door behind her, opened the unpacked valise,
+took out a pocket edition law library and sat down at the table with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>She clicked on the library's view-screen, tapped the clearing and
+index buttons. Behind the screen, one of the multiple rows of pinhead
+tapes shifted slightly as the index was flicked into reading position.
+Half a minute later, she was glancing over the legal section on which
+Dr. Droon had based his claim. The library confirmed what he had said.</p>
+
+<p>Very neat of Halet, Telzey thought, very nasty ... and pretty idiotic!
+Even a second-year law student could think immediately of two or three
+ways in which a case like that could have been dragged out in the
+Federation's courts for a couple of decades before the question of
+handing Tick-Tock over to the Life Banks became too acute.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Halet simply wasn't really intelligent. And the plot to shanghai
+TT was hardly even a side issue now.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey snapped the tiny library shut, fastened it to the belt of her
+sunsuit and went over to the open window. A two-foot ledge passed
+beneath the window, leading to the roof of a patio on the right.
+Fifty yards beyond the patio, the garden ended in a natural-stone
+wall. Behind it lay one of the big wooded park areas which formed most
+of the ground level of Port Nichay.</p>
+
+<p>Tick-Tock wasn't in sight. A sound of voices came from ground-floor
+windows on the left. Halet had brought her maid and chauffeur along;
+and a chef had showed up in time to make breakfast this morning, as
+part of the city's guest house service. Telzey took the empty valise
+to the window, set it on end against the left side of the frame, and
+let the window slide down until its lower edge rested on the valise.
+She went back to the house guard-screen panel beside the door, put her
+finger against the lock button, and pushed.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of voices from the lower floor was cut off as outer doors
+and windows slid silently shut all about the house. Telzey glanced
+back at the window. The valise had creaked a little as the guard field
+drove the frame down on it, but it was supporting the thrust. She
+returned to the window, wriggled feet foremost through the opening,
+twisted around and got a footing on the ledge.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later, she was scrambling quietly down a vine-covered patio
+trellis to the ground. Even after they discovered she was gone, the
+guard screen would keep everybody in the house for some little while.
+They'd either have to disengage the screen's main mechanisms and start
+poking around in them, or force open the door to her bedroom and get
+the lock unset. Either approach would involve confusion, upset
+tempers, and generally delay any organized pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey edged around the patio and started towards the wall, keeping
+close to the side of the house so she couldn't be seen from the
+windows. The shrubbery made minor rustling noises as she threaded her
+way through it ... and then there was a different stirring which might
+have been no more than a slow, steady current of air moving among the
+bushes behind her. She shivered involuntarily but didn't look back.</p>
+
+<p>She came to the wall, stood still, measuring its height, jumped and
+got an arm across it, swung up a knee and squirmed up and over. She
+came down on her feet with a small thump in the grass on the other
+side, glanced back once at the guest house, crossed a path and went on
+among the park trees.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">W</span>ithin a few hundred yards, it became apparent that she had an escort.
+She didn't look around for them, but spread out to right and left like
+a skirmish line, keeping abreast with her, occasional shadows slid
+silently through patches of open, sunlit ground, disappeared again
+under the trees. Otherwise, there was hardly anyone in sight. Port
+Nichay's human residents appeared to make almost no personal use of
+the vast parkland spread out beneath their tower apartments; and its
+traffic moved over the airways, visible from the ground only as
+rainbow-hued ribbons which bisected the sky between the upper tower
+levels. An occasional private aircar went by overhead.</p>
+
+<p>Wisps of thought which were not her own thoughts flicked through
+Telzey's mind from moment to moment as the silent line of shadows
+moved deeper into the park with her. She realized she was being sized
+up, judged, evaluated again. No more information was coming through;
+they had given her as much information as she needed. In the main
+perhaps, they were simply curious now. This was the first human mind
+they'd been able to make heads or tails of, and that hadn't seemed
+deaf and silent to their form of communication. They were taking time
+out to study it. They'd been assured she would have something of
+genuine importance to tell them; and there was some derision about
+that. But they were willing to wait a little, and find out. They were
+curious and they liked games. At the moment, Telzey and what she might
+try to do to change their plans was the game on which their attention
+was fixed.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve minutes passed before the talker on Telzey's wrist began to
+buzz. It continued to signal off and on for another few minutes, then
+stopped. Back in the guest house they couldn't be sure yet whether she
+wasn't simply locked inside her room and refusing to answer them. But
+Telzey quickened her pace.</p>
+
+<p>The park's trees gradually became more massive, reached higher above
+her, stood spaced more widely apart. She passed through the morning
+shadow of the residential tower nearest the guest house, and emerged
+from it presently on the shore of a small lake. On the other side of
+the lake, a number of dappled grazing animals like long-necked, tall
+horses lifted their heads to watch her. For some seconds they seemed
+only mildly interested, but then a breeze moved across the lake,
+crinkling the surface of the water, and as it touched the opposite
+shore, abrupt panic exploded among the grazers. They wheeled, went
+flashing away in effortless twenty-foot strides, and were gone among
+the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey felt a crawling along her spine. It was the first objective
+indication she'd had of the nature of the company she had brought to
+the lake, and while it hardly came as a surprise, for a moment her
+urge was to follow the example of the grazers.</p>
+
+<p>"Tick-Tock?" she whispered, suddenly a little short of breath.</p>
+
+<p>A single up-and-down purring note replied from the bushes on her
+right. TT was still around, for whatever good that might do. Not too
+much, Telzey thought, if it came to serious trouble. But the knowledge
+was somewhat reassuring ... and this, meanwhile, appeared to be as far
+as she needed to get from the guest house. They'd be looking for her
+by aircar presently, but there was nothing to tell them in which
+direction to turn first.</p>
+
+<p>She climbed the bank of the lake to a point where she was screened
+both by thick, green shrubbery and the top of a single immense tree
+from the sky, sat down on some dry, mossy growth, took the law library
+from her belt, opened it and placed it in her lap. Vague stirrings
+indicated that her escort was also settling down in an irregular
+circle about her; and apprehension shivered on Telzey's skin again. It
+wasn't that their attitude was hostile; they were simply overawing.
+And no one could predict what they might do next. Without looking up,
+she asked a question in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Ready?"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/image_004.jpg" width="500" height="365" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Sense of multiple acknowledgment, variously tinged&mdash;sardonic;
+interestingly amused; attentive; doubtful. Impatience quivered through
+it too, only tentatively held in restraint, and Telzey's forehead was
+suddenly wet. Some of them seemed on the verge of expressing
+disapproval with what was being done here&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers quickly flicked in the index tape, and the stir of feeling
+about her subsided, their attention captured again for the moment. Her
+thoughts became to some degree detached, ready to dissect another
+problem in the familiar ways and present the answers to it. Not a very
+involved problem essentially, but this time it wasn't a school
+exercise. Her company waited, withdrawn, silent, aloof once more,
+while the index blurred, checked, blurred and checked. Within a minute
+and a half, she had noted a dozen reference symbols. She tapped in
+another of the pinhead tapes, glanced over a few paragraphs, licked
+salty sweat from her lip, and said in her thoughts, emphasizing the
+meaning of each detail of the sentence so that there would be no
+misunderstanding, "This is the Federation law that applies to the
+situation which existed originally on this planet...."</p>
+
+<p>There were no interruptions, no commenting thoughts, no intrusions of
+any kind, as she went step by step through the section, turned to
+another one, and another. In perhaps twelve minutes she came to the
+end of the last one, and stopped. Instantly, argument exploded about
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey was not involved in the argument; in fact, she could grasp only
+scraps of it. Either they were excluding her deliberately, or the
+exchange was too swift, practiced and varied to allow her to keep up.
+But their vehemence was not encouraging. And was it reasonable to
+assume that the Federation's laws would have any meaning for minds
+like these? Telzey snapped the library shut with fingers that had
+begun to tremble, and placed it on the ground. Then she stiffened. In
+the sensations washing about her, a special excitement rose suddenly,
+a surge of almost gleeful wildness that choked away her breath.
+Awareness followed of a pair of malignant crimson eyes fastened on
+her, moving steadily closer. A kind of nightmare paralysis seized
+Telzey&mdash;they'd turned her over to that red-eyed horror! She sat still,
+feeling mouse-sized.</p>
+
+<p>Something came out with a crash from a thicket behind her. Her muscles
+went tight. But it was TT who rubbed a hard head against her shoulder,
+took another three stiff-legged steps forward and stopped between
+Telzey and the bushes on their right, back rigid, neck fur erect, tail
+twisting.</p>
+
+<p>Expectant silence closed in about them. The circle was waiting. In the
+greenery on the right something made a slow, heavy stir.</p>
+
+<p>TT's lips peeled back from her teeth. Her head swung towards the
+motion, ears flattening, transformed to a split, snarling demon-mask.
+A long shriek ripped from her lungs, raw with fury, blood lust and
+challenge.</p>
+
+<p>The sound died away. For some seconds the tension about them held;
+then came a sense of gradual relaxation mingled with a partly amused
+approval. Telzey was shaking violently. It had been, she was telling
+herself, a deliberate test ... not of herself, of course, but of TT.
+And Tick-Tock had passed with honors. That <i>her</i> nerves had been half
+ruined in the process would seem a matter of no consequence to this
+rugged crew....</p>
+
+<p>She realized next that someone here was addressing her personally.</p>
+
+<p>It took a few moments to steady her jittering thoughts enough to gain
+a more definite impression than that. This speaker, she discovered
+then, was a member of the circle of whom she hadn't been aware before.
+The thought-impressions came hard and cold as iron&mdash;a personage who
+was very evidently in the habit of making major decisions and seeing
+them carried out. The circle, its moment of sport over, was listening
+with more than a suggestion of deference. Tick-Tock, far from
+conciliated, green eyes still blazing, nevertheless was settling down
+to listen, too.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey began to understand.</p>
+
+<p>Her suggestions, Iron Thoughts informed her, might appear without
+value to a number of foolish minds here, but <i>he</i> intended to see they
+were given a fair trial. Did he perhaps hear, he inquired next of the
+circle, throwing in a casual but horridly vivid impression of snapping
+spines and slashed shaggy throats spouting blood, any objection to
+that?</p>
+
+<p>Dead stillness all around. There was, definitely, no objection.
+Tick-Tock began to grin like a pleased kitten.</p>
+
+<p>That point having been settled in an orderly manner now, Iron Thoughts
+went on coldly to Telzey, what specifically did she propose they
+should do?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">H</span>alet's long, pearl-gray sportscar showed up above the park trees
+twenty minutes later. Telzey, face turned down towards the open law
+library in her lap, watched the car from the corner of her eyes. She
+was in plain view, sitting beside the lake, apparently absorbed in
+legal research. Tick-Tock, camouflaged among the bushes thirty feet
+higher up the bank, had spotted the car an instant before she did and
+announced the fact with a three-second break in her purring. Neither
+of them made any other move.</p>
+
+<p>The car was approaching the lake but still a good distance off. Its
+canopy was down, and Telzey could just make out the heads of three
+people inside. Delquos, Halet's chauffeur, would be flying the
+vehicle, while Halet and Dr. Droon looked around for her from the
+sides. Three hundred yards away, the aircar began a turn to the right.
+Delquos didn't like his employer much; at a guess, he had just spotted
+Telzey and was trying to warn her off.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey closed the library and put it down, picked up a handful of
+pebbles and began flicking them idly, one at a time, into the water.
+The aircar vanished to her left.</p>
+
+<p>Three minutes later, she watched its shadow glide across the surface
+of the lake towards her. Her heart began to thump almost audibly, but
+she didn't look up. Tick-Tock's purring continued, on its regular,
+unhurried note. The car came to a stop almost directly overhead. After
+a couple of seconds, there was a clicking noise. The purring ended
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey climbed to her feet as Delquos brought the car down to the bank
+of the lake. The chauffeur grinned ruefully at her. A side door had
+been opened, and Halet and Dr. Droon stood behind it. Halet watched
+Telzey with a small smile while the naturalist put the heavy
+life-detector-and-stungun device carefully down on the floorboards.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're looking for Tick-Tock," Telzey said, "she isn't here."</p>
+
+<p>Halet just shook her head sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no use lying to us, dear. Dr Droon just stunned her."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>They found TT collapsed on her side among the shrubs, wearing her
+natural color. Her eyes were shut, her chest rose and fell in a slow
+breathing motion. Dr. Droon, looking rather apologetic, pointed out to
+Telzey that her pet was in no pain, that the stungun had simply put
+her comfortably to sleep. He also explained the use of the two sets of
+webbed paralysis belts which he fastened about TT's legs. The effect
+of the stun charge would wear off in a few minutes, and contact with
+the inner surfaces of the energized belts would then keep TT
+anesthetized and unable to move until the belts were removed. She
+would, he repeated, be suffering no pain throughout the process.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey didn't comment. She watched Delquos raise TT's limp body above
+the level of the bushes with a gravity hoist belonging to Dr. Droon,
+and maneuver her back to the car, the others following. Delquos
+climbed into the car first, opened the big trunk compartment in the
+rear. TT was slid inside and the trunk compartment locked.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you taking her?" Telzey asked sullenly as Delquos lifted
+the car into the air.</p>
+
+<p>"To the spaceport, dear," Halet said. "Dr. Droon and I both felt it
+would be better to spare your feelings by not prolonging the matter
+unnecessarily."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey wrinkled her nose disdainfully, and walked up the aircar to
+stand behind Delquos' seat. She leaned against the back of the seat
+for an instant. Her legs felt shaky.</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur gave her a sober wink from the side.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a dirty trick she's played on you, Miss Telzey!" he murmured.
+"I tried to warn you."</p>
+
+<p>"I know." Telzey took a deep breath. "Look, Delquos, in just a minute
+something's going to happen! It'll look dangerous, but it won't be.
+Don't let it get you nervous ... right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Huh?" Delquos appeared startled, but kept his voice low. "Just
+<i>what's</i> going to happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"No time to tell you. Remember what I said."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>elzey moved back a few steps from the driver's seat, turned around,
+said unsteadily, "Halet ... Dr. Droon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Halet had been speaking quietly to Dr. Droon; they both looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't move, and don't do anything stupid," Telzey said
+rapidly, "you won't get hurt. If you do ... well, I don't know! You
+see, there's another crest cat in the car...." In her mind she added,
+"Now!"</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible to tell in just what section of the car Iron
+Thoughts had been lurking. The carpeting near the rear passenger seats
+seemed to blur for an instant. Then he was there, camouflage dropped,
+sitting on the floorboards five feet from the naturalist and Halet.</p>
+
+<p>Halet's mouth opened wide; she tried to scream but fainted instead.
+Dr. Droon's right hand started out quickly towards the big stungun
+device beside his seat. Then he checked himself and sat still,
+ashen-faced.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey didn't blame him for changing his mind. She felt he must be a
+remarkably brave man to have moved at all. Iron Thoughts, twice as
+broad across the back as Tick-Tock, twice as massively muscled, looked
+like a devil-beast even to her. His dark-green marbled hide was
+criss-crossed with old scar patterns; half his tossing crimson crest
+appeared to have been ripped away. He reached out now in a fluid,
+silent motion, hooked a paw under the stungun and flicked upwards. The
+big instrument rose in an incredibly swift, steep arc eighty feet
+into the air, various parts flying away from it, before it started
+curving down towards the treetops below the car. Iron Thoughts lazily
+swung his head around and looked at Telzey with yellow fire-eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Telzey! Miss Telzey!" Delquos was muttering behind her. "You're
+<i>sure</i> it won't...."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey swallowed. At the moment, she felt barely mouse-sized again.
+"Just relax!" she told Delquos in a shaky voice. "He's really quite
+t-t-t-tame."</p>
+
+<p>Iron Thoughts produced a harsh but not unamiable chuckle in her mind.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he pearl-gray sportscar, covered now by its streamlining canopy,
+drifted down presently to a parking platform outside the suite of
+offices on Jontarou's Planetary Moderator, on the fourteenth floor of
+the Shikaris' Club Tower. An attendant waved it on into a vacant slot.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the car, Delquos set the brakes, switched off the engine,
+asked, "Now what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think," Telzey said reflectively, "we'd better lock you in the
+trunk compartment with my aunt and Dr. Droon while I talk to the
+Moderator."</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur shrugged. He'd regained most of his aplomb during the
+unhurried trip across the parklands. Iron Thoughts had done nothing
+but sit in the center of the car, eyes half shut, looking like instant
+death enjoying a dignified nap and occasionally emitting a ripsawing
+noise which might have been either his style of purring or a snore.
+And Tick-Tock, when Delquos peeled the paralysis belts off her legs at
+Telzey's direction, had greeted him with her usual reserved
+affability. What the chauffeur was suffering from at the moment was
+intense curiosity, which Telzey had done nothing to relieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you say, Miss Telzey," he agreed. "I hate to miss whatever
+you're going to be doing here, but if you <i>don't</i> lock me up now, Miss
+Halet will figure I was helping you and fire me as soon as you let her
+out."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey nodded, then cocked her head in the direction of the rear
+compartment. Faint sounds coming through the door indicated that Halet
+had regained consciousness and was having hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>"You might tell her," Telzey suggested, "that there'll be a grown-up
+crest cat sitting outside the compartment door." This wasn't true, but
+neither Delquos nor Halet could know it. "If there's too much racket
+before I get back, it's likely to irritate him...."</p>
+
+<p>A minute later, she set both car doors on lock and went outside,
+wishing she were less informally clothed. Sunbriefs and sandals tended
+to make her look juvenile.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The parking attendant appeared startled when she approached him with
+Tick-Tock striding alongside.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll never let you into the offices with that thing, miss," he
+informed her. "Why, it doesn't even have a collar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry about it." Telzey told him aloofly.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped a two-credit piece she'd taken from Halet's purse into his
+hand, and continued on towards the building entrance. The attendant
+squinted after her, trying unsuccessfully to dispel an odd impression
+that the big catlike animal with the girl was throwing a double
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator's chief receptionist also had some doubts about TT, and
+possibly about the sunbriefs, though she seemed impressed when
+Telzey's identification tag informed her she was speaking to the
+daughter of Federation Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon.</p>
+
+<p>"You feel you can discuss this ... emergency ... only with the
+Moderator himself, Miss Amberdon?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," Telzey said firmly. A buzzer sounded as she spoke. The
+receptionist excused herself and picked up an earphone. She listened a
+moment, said blandly, "Yes.... Of course.... Yes, I understand,"
+replaced the earphone and stood up, smiling at Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you come with me, Miss Amberdon?" she said. "I think the
+Moderator will see you immediately...."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey followed her, chewing thoughtfully at her lip. This was easier
+than she'd expected&mdash;in fact, too easy! Halet's work? Probably. A few
+comments to the effect of "A highly imaginative child ...
+overexcitable," while Halet was arranging to have the Moderator's
+office authorize Tick-Tock's transfer to the life Banks, along with
+the implication that Jessamine Amberdon would appreciate a discreet
+handling of any disturbance Telzey might create as a result.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sort of notion that would appeal to Halet&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>hey passed through a series of elegantly equipped offices and
+hallways, Telzey grasping TT's neck-fur in lieu of a leash, their
+appearance creating a tactfully restrained wave of surprise among
+secretaries and clerks. And if somebody here and there was troubled by
+a fleeting, uncanny impression that not one large beast but two seemed
+to be trailing the Moderator's visitor down the aisles, no mention was
+made of what could have been only a momentary visual distortion.
+Finally, a pair of sliding doors opened ahead, and the receptionist
+ushered Telzey into a large, cool balcony garden on the shaded side of
+the great building. A tall, gray-haired man stood up from the desk at
+which he was working, and bowed to Telzey. The receptionist withdrew
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"My pleasure, Miss Amberdon," Jontarou's Planetary Moderator said, "Be
+seated, please." He studied Tick-Tock with more than casual interest
+while Telzey was settling herself into a chair, added, "And what may I
+and my office do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey hesitated. She'd observed his type on Orado in her mother's
+circle of acquaintances&mdash;a senior diplomat, a man not easy to impress.
+It was a safe bet that he'd had her brought out to his balcony office
+only to keep her occupied while Halet was quietly informed where the
+Amberdon problem child was and requested to come over and take charge.</p>
+
+<p>What she had to tell him now would have sounded rather wild even if
+presented by a presumably responsible adult. She could provide proof,
+but until the Moderator was already nearly sold on her story, that
+would be a very unsafe thing to do. Old Iron Thoughts was backing her
+up, but if it didn't look as if her plans were likely to succeed, he
+would be willing to ride herd on his devil's pack just so long....</p>
+
+<p>Better start the ball rolling without any preliminaries, Telzey
+decided. The Moderator's picture of her must be that of a spoiled,
+neurotic brat in a stew about the threatened loss of a pet animal. He
+expected her to start arguing with him immediately about Tick-Tock.</p>
+
+<p>She said "Do you have a personal interest in keeping the Baluit crest
+cats from becoming extinct?"</p>
+
+<p>Surprise flickered in his eyes for an instant. Then he smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I admit I do, Miss Amberdon," he said pleasantly. "I should like to
+see the species re-established. I count myself almost uniquely
+fortunate in having had the opportunity to bag two of the magnificent
+brutes before disease wiped them out on the planet."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/image_005.jpg" width="400" height="537" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The last seemed a less than fortunate statement just now. Telzey
+felt a sharp tingle of alarm, then sensed that in the minds which were
+drawing the meaning of the Moderator's speech from her mind there had
+been only a brief stir of interest.</p>
+
+<p>She cleared her throat, said, "The point is that they weren't wiped
+out by disease."</p>
+
+<p>He considered her quizzically, seemed to wonder what she was trying to
+lead up to. Telzey gathered her courage, plunged on, "Would you like
+to hear what did happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very much interested, Miss Amberdon," the Moderator said
+without change of expression. "But first, if you'll excuse me a
+moment...."</p>
+
+<p>There had been some signal from his desk which Telzey hadn't noticed,
+because he picked up a small communicator now and said "Yes?" After a
+few seconds, he resumed, "That's rather curious, isn't it?... Yes, I'd
+try that.... No, that shouldn't be necessary.... Yes, please do.
+Thank you." He replaced the communicator, his face very sober; then,
+his eyes flicking for an instant to TT, he drew one of the upper desk
+drawers open a few inches, and turned back to Telzey.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Miss Amberdon," he said affably, "you were about to say? About
+these crest cats...."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey swallowed. She hadn't heard the other side of the conversation,
+but she could guess what it had been about. His office had called the
+guest house, had been told by Halet's maid that Halet, the chauffeur
+and Dr. Droon were out looking for Miss Telzey and her pet. The
+Moderator's office had then checked on the sportscar's communication
+number and attempted to call it. And, of course, there had been no
+response.</p>
+
+<p>To the Moderator, considering what Halet would have told him, it must
+add up to the grim possibility that the young lunatic he was talking
+to had let her three-quarters-grown crest cat slaughter her aunt and
+the two men when they caught up with her! The office would be
+notifying the police now to conduct an immediate search for the
+missing aircar.</p>
+
+<p>When it would occur to them to look for it on the Moderator's parking
+terrace was something Telzey couldn't know. But if Halet and Dr. Droon
+were released before the Moderator accepted her own version of what
+had occurred, and the two reported the presence of wild crest cats in
+Port Nichay, there would be almost no possibility of keeping the
+situation under control. Somebody was bound to make some idiotic move,
+and the fat would be in the fire....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>wo things might be in her favor. The Moderator seemed to have the
+sort of steady nerve one would expect in a man who had bagged two
+Baluit crest cats. The partly opened desk drawer beside him must have
+a gun in it; apparently he considered that a sufficient precaution
+against an attack by TT. He wasn't likely to react in a panicky
+manner. And the mere fact that he suspected Telzey of homicidal
+tendencies would make him give the closest attention to what she said.
+Whether he believed her then was another matter, of course.</p>
+
+<p>Slightly encouraged, Telzey began to talk. It did sound like a
+thoroughly wild story, but the Moderator listened with an appearance
+of intent interest. When she had told him as much as she felt he could
+be expected to swallow for a start, he said musingly, "So they weren't
+wiped out&mdash;they went into hiding! Do I understand you to say they did
+it to avoid being hunted?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey chewed her lip frowningly before replying. "There's something
+about that part I don't quite get," she admitted. "Of course I don't
+quite get either why you'd want to go hunting ... twice ... for
+something that's just as likely to bag you instead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, those are, ah, merely the statistical odds," the Moderator
+explained. "If one has enough confidence, you see&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't really. But the crest cats seem to have felt the same way&mdash;at
+first. They were getting around one hunter for every cat that got
+shot. Humans were the most exciting game they'd ever run into.</p>
+
+<p>"But then that ended, and the humans started knocking them out with
+stunguns from aircars where they couldn't be got at, and hauling them
+off while they were helpless. After it had gone on for a while, they
+decided to keep out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"But they're still around ... thousands and thousands of them!
+Another thing nobody's known about them is that they weren't only in
+the Baluit mountains. There were crest cats scattered all through the
+big forests along the other side of the continent."</p>
+
+<p>"Very interesting," the Moderator commented. "Very interesting,
+indeed!" He glanced towards the communicator, then returned his gaze
+to Telzey, drumming his fingers lightly on the desk top.</p>
+
+<p>She could tell nothing at all from his expression now, but she guessed
+he was thinking hard. There was supposed to be no native intelligent
+life in the legal sense on Jontarou, and she had been careful to say
+nothing so far to make the Baluit cats look like more than rather
+exceptionally intelligent animals. The next&mdash;rather large&mdash;question
+should be how she'd come by such information.</p>
+
+<p>If the Moderator asked her that, Telzey thought, she could feel she'd
+made a beginning at getting him to buy the whole story.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said abruptly, "if the crest cats are not extinct or
+threatened with extinction, the Life Banks obviously have no claim on
+your pet." He smiled confidingly at her. "And that's the reason you're
+here, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no," Telzey began, dismayed. "I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's quite all right, Miss Amberdon! I'll simply rescind the
+permit which was issued for the purpose. You need feel no further
+concern about that." He paused. "Now, just one question ... do you
+happen to know where your aunt is at present?"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>elzey had a dead, sinking feeling. So he hadn't believed a word she
+said. He'd been stalling her along until the aircar could be found.</p>
+
+<p>She took a deep breath. "You'd better listen to the rest of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, is there more?" the Moderator asked politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The important part! The kind of creatures they are, they
+wouldn't go into hiding indefinitely just because someone was after
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Was there a flicker of something beyond watchfulness in his
+expression. "What would they do, Miss Amberdon?" he asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"If they couldn't get at the men in the aircars and couldn't
+communicate with them"&mdash;the flicker again!&mdash;"they'd start looking for
+the place the men came from, wouldn't they? It might take them some
+years to work their way across the continent and locate us here in
+Port Nichay. But supposing they did it finally and a few thousand of
+them are sitting around in the parks down there right now? They could
+come up the side of these towers as easily as they go up the side of a
+mountain. And supposing they'd decided that the only way to handle the
+problem was to clean out the human beings in Port Nichay?"</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator stared at her in silence a few seconds. "You're saying,"
+he observed then, "that they're rational beings&mdash;above the Critical
+I.Q. level."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Telzey said, "legally they're rational. I checked on that.
+About as rational as we are, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind telling me now how you happen to know this?"</p>
+
+<p>"They told me," Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>He was silent again, studying her face. "You mentioned, Miss Amberdon,
+that they have been unable to communicate with other human beings.
+This suggests then that you are a xenotelepath...."</p>
+
+<p>"I am?" Telzey hadn't heard the term before. "If it means that I can
+tell what the cats are thinking, and they can tell what I'm thinking,
+I guess that's the word for it." She considered him, decided she had
+him almost on the ropes, went on quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked up the laws, and told them they could conclude a treaty with
+the Federation which would establish them as an Affiliated Species ...
+and that would settle everything the way they would want it settled,
+without trouble. Some of them believed me. They decided to wait until
+I could talk to you. If it works out, fine! If it doesn't"&mdash;she felt
+her voice falter for an instant&mdash;"they're going to cut loose fast!"</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator seemed undisturbed. "What am I supposed to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told them you'd contact the Council of the Federation on Orado."</p>
+
+<p>"Contact the Council?" he repeated coolly. "With no more proof for
+this story than your word Miss Amberdon?"</p>
+
+<p>Telzey felt a quick, angry stirring begin about her, felt her face
+whiten.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she said "I'll give you proof! I'll have to now. But
+that'll be it. Once they've tipped their hand all the way, you'll
+have about thirty seconds left to make the right move. I hope you
+remember that!"</p>
+
+<p>He cleared his throat. "I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"NOW!" Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>Along the walls of the balcony garden, beside the ornamental flower
+stands, against the edges of the rock pool, the crest cats appeared.
+Perhaps thirty of them. None quite as physically impressive as Iron
+Thoughts who stood closest to the Moderator; but none very far from
+it. Motionless as rocks, frightening as gargoyles, they waited, eyes
+glowing with hellish excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"This is <i>their</i> council, you see," Telzey heard herself saying.</p>
+
+<p>The Moderator's face had also paled. But he was, after all, an old
+shikari and a senior diplomat. He took an unhurried look around the
+circle, said quietly, "Accept my profound apologies for doubting you.
+Miss Amberdon!" and reached for the desk communicator.</p>
+
+<p>Iron Thoughts swung his demon head in Telzey's direction. For an
+instant, she picked up the mental impression of a fierce yellow eye
+closing in an approving wink.</p>
+
+<p>"... An open transmitter line to Orado," the Moderator was saying into
+the communicator. "The Council. And snap it up! Some very important
+visitors are waiting."</p>
+
+<p>The offices of Jontarou's Planetary Moderator became an extremely busy
+and interesting area then. Quite two hours passed before it occurred
+to anyone to ask Telzey again whether she knew where her aunt was at
+present.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey smote her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgot all about that!" she admitted, fishing the sportscar's keys
+out of the pocket of her sunbriefs. "They're out on the parking
+platform...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><span class="p1">T</span>he preliminary treaty arrangements between the Federation of the Hub
+and the new Affiliated Species of the Planet of Jontarou were formally
+ratified two weeks later, the ceremony taking place on Jontarou, in
+the Champagne Hall of the Shikaris' Club.</p>
+
+<p>Telzey was able to follow the event only by news viewer in her
+ship-cabin, she and Halet being on the return trip to Orado by then.
+She wasn't too interested in the treaty's details&mdash;they conformed
+almost exactly to what she had read out to Iron Thoughts and his
+co-chiefs and companions in the park. It was the smooth bridging of
+the wide language gap between the contracting parties by a row of
+interpreting machines and a handful of human xenotelepaths which held
+her attention.</p>
+
+<p>As she switched off the viewer, Halet came wandering in from the
+adjoining cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"I was watching it, too!" Halet observed. She smiled. "I was hoping to
+see dear Tick-Tock."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey looked over at her. "Well, TT would hardly be likely to show up
+in Port Nichay," she said. "She's having too good a time now finding
+out what life in the Baluit range is like."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," Halet agreed doubtfully, sitting down on a hassock.
+"But I'm glad she promised to get in touch with us again in a few
+years. I'll miss her."</p>
+
+<p>Telzey regarded her aunt with a reflective frown. Halet meant it quite
+sincerely, of course, she had undergone a profound change of heart
+during the past two weeks. But Telzey wasn't without some doubts about
+the actual value of a change of heart brought on by telepathic means.
+The learning process the crest cats had started in her mind appeared
+to have continued automatically several days longer than her rugged
+teachers had really intended; and Telzey had reason to believe that by
+the end of that time she'd developed associated latent abilities of
+which the crest cats had never heard. She'd barely begun to get it all
+sorted out yet, but ... as an example ... she'd found it remarkably
+easy to turn Halet's more obnoxious attitudes virtually upside down.
+It had taken her a couple of days to get the hang of her aunt's
+personal symbolism, but after that there had been no problem.</p>
+
+<p>She was reasonably certain she'd broken no laws so far, though the
+sections in the law library covering the use and abuse of psionic
+abilities were veiled in such intricate and downright obscuring
+phrasing&mdash;deliberately, Telzey suspected&mdash;that it was really difficult
+to say what they did mean. But even aside from that, there were a
+number of arguments in favor of exercising great caution.</p>
+
+<p>Jessamine, for one thing, was bound to start worrying about her
+sister-in-law's health if Halet turned up on Orado in her present
+state of mind, even though it would make for a far more agreeable
+atmosphere in the Amberdon household.</p>
+
+<p>"Halet," Telzey inquired mentally, "do you remember what an all-out
+stinker you used to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, dear," Halet said aloud. "I can hardly wait to tell dear
+Jessamine how much I regret the many times I...."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," Telzey went on, still verbalizing it silently. "I think you'd
+really enjoy life more if you were, let's say, about halfway between
+your old nasty self and the sort of sickening-good kind you are now."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Telzey!" Halet cried out with dopey amiability. "What a
+delightful idea!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's try it," Telzey said.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence in the cabin for some twenty minutes then while she
+went painstakingly about remolding a number of Halet's character
+traits for the second time. She still felt some misgivings about it;
+but if it became necessary, she probably could always restore the old
+Halet <i>in toto</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These, she told herself, definitely were powers one should treat with
+respect! Better rattle through law school first; then, with that out
+of the way, she could start hunting around to see who in the
+Federation was qualified to instruct a genius-level novice in the
+proper handling of psionics.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Novice, by James H. Schmitz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Novice
+
+Author: James H. Schmitz
+
+Illustrator: Schoenherr
+
+Release Date: November 12, 2009 [EBook #30458]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOVICE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1962.
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+  on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+                                novice
+
+
+                         by James H. Schmitz
+
+
+     A novice is one who is inexperienced--but that doesn't mean
+     incompetent. Nor does it mean stupid!
+
+
+                      ILLUSTRATED BY SCHOENHERR
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+There was, Telzey Amberdon thought, someone besides TT and herself in
+the garden. Not, of course, Aunt Halet, who was in the house waiting
+for an early visitor to arrive, and not one of the servants. Someone
+or something else must be concealed among the thickets of
+magnificently flowering native Jontarou shrubs about Telzey.
+
+She could think of no other way to account for Tick-Tock's spooked
+behavior--nor, to be honest about it, for the manner her own nerves
+were acting up without visible cause this morning.
+
+Telzey plucked a blade of grass, slipped the end between her lips and
+chewed it gently, her face puzzled and concerned. She wasn't
+ordinarily afflicted with nervousness. Fifteen years old, genius
+level, brown as a berry and not at all bad looking in her sunbriefs,
+she was the youngest member of one of Orado's most prominent families
+and a second-year law student at one of the most exclusive schools in
+the Federation of the Hub. Her physical, mental, and emotional health,
+she'd always been informed, was excellent. Aunt Halet's frequent
+cracks about the inherent instability of the genius level could be
+ignored; Halet's own stability seemed questionable at best.
+
+But none of that made the present odd situation any less
+disagreeable....
+
+The trouble might have begun, Telzey decided, during the night, within
+an hour after they arrived from the spaceport at the guest house
+Halet had rented in Port Nichay for their vacation on Jontarou. Telzey
+had retired at once to her second-story bedroom with Tick-Tock; but
+she barely got to sleep before something awakened her again. Turning
+over, she discovered TT reared up before the window, her forepaws on
+the sill, big cat-head outlined against the star-hazed night sky,
+staring fixedly down into the garden.
+
+Telzey, only curious at that point, climbed out of bed and joined TT
+at the window. There was nothing in particular to be seen, and if the
+scents and minor night-sounds which came from the garden weren't
+exactly what they were used to, Jontarou was after all an unfamiliar
+planet. What else would one expect here?
+
+But Tick-Tock's muscular back felt tense and rigid when Telzey laid
+her arm across it, and except for an absent-minded dig with her
+forehead against Telzey's shoulder, TT refused to let her attention be
+distracted from whatever had absorbed it. Now and then, a low, ominous
+rumble came from her furry throat, a half-angry, half-questioning
+sound. Telzey began to feel a little uncomfortable. She managed
+finally to coax Tick-Tock away from the window, but neither of them
+slept well the rest of the night. At breakfast, Aunt Halet made one of
+her typical nasty-sweet remarks.
+
+"You look so fatigued, dear--as if you were under some severe mental
+strain ... which, of course, you might be," Halet added musingly. With
+her gold-blond hair piled high on her head and her peaches and cream
+complexion, Halet looked fresh as a daisy herself ... a malicious
+daisy. "Now wasn't I right in insisting to Jessamine that you needed a
+vacation away from that terribly intellectual school?" She smiled
+gently.
+
+"Absolutely," Telzey agreed, restraining the impulse to fling a
+spoonful of egg yolk at her father's younger sister. Aunt Halet often
+inspired such impulses, but Telzey had promised her mother to avoid
+actual battles on the Jontarou trip, if possible. After breakfast, she
+went out into the back garden with Tick-Tock, who immediately walked
+into a thicket, camouflaged herself and vanished from sight. It seemed
+to add up to something. But what?
+
+Telzey strolled about the garden a while, maintaining a pretense of
+nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She
+experienced the most curious little chills of alarm from time to time,
+but discovered no signs of a lurking intruder, or of TT either. Then,
+for half an hour or more, she'd just sat cross-legged in the grass,
+waiting quietly for Tick-Tock to show up of her own accord. And the
+big lunk-head hadn't obliged.
+
+Telzey scratched a tanned knee-cap, scowling at Port Nichay's park
+trees beyond the garden wall. It seemed idiotic to feel scared when
+she couldn't even tell whether there was anything to be scared about!
+And, aside from that, another unreasonable feeling kept growing
+stronger by the minute now. This was to the effect that she should be
+doing some unstated but specific thing....
+
+In fact, that Tick-Tock _wanted_ her to do some specific thing!
+
+Completely idiotic!
+
+Abruptly, Telzey closed her eyes, thought sharply, "Tick-Tock?" and
+waited--suddenly very angry at herself for having given in to her
+fancies to this extent--for whatever might happen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She had never really established that she was able to tell, by a kind
+of symbolic mind-picture method, like a short waking dream,
+approximately what TT was thinking and feeling. Five years before,
+when she'd discovered Tick-Tock--an odd-looking and odder-behaved
+stray kitten then--in the woods near the Amberdons' summer home on
+Orado, Telzey had thought so. But it might never have been more than a
+colorful play of her imagination; and after she got into law school
+and grew increasingly absorbed in her studies, she almost forgot the
+matter again.
+
+Today, perhaps because she was disturbed about Tick-Tock's behavior,
+the customary response was extraordinarily prompt. The warm glow of
+sunlight shining through her closed eyelids faded out quickly and was
+replaced by some inner darkness. In the darkness there appeared then
+an image of Tick-Tock sitting a little way off beside an open door in
+an old stone wall, green eyes fixed on Telzey. Telzey got the
+impression that TT was inviting her to go through the door, and, for
+some reason, the thought frightened her.
+
+Again, there was an immediate reaction. The scene with Tick-Tock and
+the door vanished; and Telzey felt she was standing in a pitch-black
+room, knowing that if she moved even one step forwards, something that
+was waiting there silently would reach out and grab her.
+
+Naturally, she recoiled ... and at once found herself sitting, eyes
+still closed and the sunlight bathing her lids, in the grass of the
+guest house garden.
+
+She opened her eyes, looked around. Her heart was thumping rapidly.
+The experience couldn't have lasted more than four or five seconds,
+but it had been extremely vivid, a whole, compact little nightmare.
+None of her earlier experiments at getting into mental communication
+with TT had been like that.
+
+It served her right, Telzey thought, for trying such a childish stunt
+at the moment! What she should have done at once was to make a
+methodical search for the foolish beast--TT was bound to be
+_somewhere_ nearby--locate her behind her camouflage, and hang on to
+her then until this nonsense in the garden was explained! Talented as
+Tick-Tock was at blotting herself out, it usually was possible to spot
+her if one directed one's attention to shadow patterns. Telzey began a
+surreptitious study of the flowering bushes about her.
+
+Three minutes later, off to her right, where the ground was banked
+beneath a six-foot step in the garden's terraces, Tick-Tock's outline
+suddenly caught her eye. Flat on her belly, head lifted above her
+paws, quite motionless, TT seemed like a transparent wraith stretched
+out along the terrace, barely discernible even when stared at
+directly. It was a convincing illusion; but what seemed to be rocks,
+plant leaves, and sun-splotched earth seen through the wraith-outline
+was simply the camouflage pattern TT had printed for the moment on her
+hide. She could have changed it completely in an instant to conform to
+a different background.
+
+Telzey pointed an accusing finger.
+
+"See you!" she announced, feeling a surge of relief which seemed as
+unaccountable as the rest of it.
+
+The wraith twitched one ear in acknowledgment, the head outlines
+shifting as the camouflaged face turned towards Telzey. Then the
+inwardly uncamouflaged, very substantial looking mouth opened slowly,
+showing Tick-Tock's red tongue and curved white tusks. The mouth
+stretched in a wide yawn, snapped shut with a click of meshing teeth,
+became indistinguishable again. Next, a pair of camouflaged lids drew
+back from TT's round, brilliant-green eyes. The eyes stared across the
+lawn at Telzey.
+
+Telzey said irritably, "Quit clowning around, TT!"
+
+The eyes blinked, and Tick-Tock's natural bronze-brown color suddenly
+flowed over her head, down her neck and across her body into legs and
+tail. Against the side of the terrace, as if materializing into
+solidity at that moment, appeared two hundred pounds of supple, rangy,
+long-tailed cat ... or catlike creature. TT's actual origin had never
+been established. The best guesses were that what Telzey had found
+playing around in the woods five years ago was either a bio-structural
+experiment which had got away from a private laboratory on Orado, or
+some spaceman's lost pet, brought to the capital planet from one of
+the remote colonies beyond the Hub. On top of TT's head was a large,
+fluffy pompom of white fur, which might have looked ridiculous on
+another animal, but didn't on her. Even as a fat kitten, hanging head
+down from the side of a wall by the broad sucker pads in her paws, TT
+had possessed enormous dignity.
+
+Telzey studied her, the feeling of relief fading again. Tick-Tock,
+ordinarily the most restful and composed of companions, definitely was
+still tensed up about something. That big, lazy yawn a moment ago, the
+attitude of stretched-out relaxation ... all pure sham!
+
+"What _is_ eating you?" she asked in exasperation.
+
+The green eyes stared at her, solemn, watchful, seeming for that
+fleeting instant quite alien. And why, Telzey thought, should the old
+question of what Tick-Tock really was pass through her mind just now?
+After her rather alarming rate of growth began to taper off last year,
+nobody had cared any more.
+
+For a moment, Telzey had the uncanny certainty of having had the
+answer to this situation almost in her grasp. An answer which appeared
+to involve the world of Jontarou, Tick-Tock, and of all unlikely
+factors--Aunt Halet.
+
+She shook her head, TT's impassive green eyes blinked.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jontarou? The planet lay outside Telzey's sphere of personal
+interests, but she'd read up on it on the way here from Orado. Among
+all the worlds of the Hub, Jontarou was _the_ paradise for zoologists
+and sportsmen, a gigantic animal preserve, its continents and seas
+swarming with magnificent game. Under Federation law, it was being
+retained deliberately in the primitive state in which it had been
+discovered. Port Nichay, the only city, actually the only inhabited
+point on Jontarou, was beautiful and quiet, a pattern of vast but
+elegantly slender towers, each separated from the others by four or
+five miles of rolling parkland and interconnected only by the threads
+of transparent skyways. Near the horizon, just visible from the
+garden, rose the tallest towers of all, the green and gold spires of
+the Shikaris' Club, a center of Federation affairs and of social
+activity. From the aircar which brought them across Port Nichay the
+evening before, Telzey had seen occasional strings of guest houses,
+similar to the one Halet had rented, nestling along the park slopes.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Nothing very sinister about Port Nichay or green Jontarou, surely!
+
+Halet? That blond, slinky, would-be Machiavelli? What could--?
+
+Telzey's eyes narrowed reflectively. There'd been a minor
+occurrence--at least, it had seemed minor--just before the spaceliner
+docked last night. A young woman from one of the newscasting services
+had asked for an interview with the daughter of Federation
+Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon. This happened occasionally; and
+Telzey had no objections until the newshen's gossipy persistence in
+inquiring about the "unusual pet" she was bringing to Port Nichay with
+her began to be annoying. TT might be somewhat unusual, but that was
+not a matter of general interest; and Telzey said so. Then Halet moved
+smoothly into the act and held forth on Tick-Tock's appearance,
+habits, and mysterious antecedents, in considerable detail.
+
+Telzey had assumed that Halet was simply going out of her way to be
+irritating, as usual. Looking back on the incident, however, it
+occurred to her that the chatter between her aunt and the newscast
+woman had sounded oddly stilted--almost like something the two might
+have rehearsed.
+
+Rehearsed for what purpose? Tick-Tock ... Jontarou.
+
+Telzey chewed gently on her lower lip. A vacation on Jontarou for the
+two of them and TT had been Halet's idea, and Halet had enthused about
+it so much that Telzey's mother at last talked her into accepting.
+Halet, Jessamine explained privately to Telzey, had felt they were
+intruders in the Amberdon family, had bitterly resented Jessamine's
+political honors and, more recently, Telzey's own emerging promise of
+brilliance. This invitation was Halet's way of indicating a change of
+heart. Wouldn't Telzey oblige?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So Telzey had obliged, though she took very little stock in Halet's
+change of heart. She wasn't, in fact, putting it past her aunt to have
+some involved dirty trick up her sleeve with this trip to Jontarou.
+Halet's mind worked like that.
+
+So far there had been no actual indications of purposeful mischief.
+But logic did seem to require a connection between the various
+puzzling events here.... A newscaster's rather forced looking interest
+in Tick-Tock--Halet could easily have paid for that interview. Then
+TT's disturbed behavior during their first night in Port Nichay, and
+Telzey's own formless anxieties and fancies in connection with the
+guest house garden.
+
+The last remained hard to explain. But Tick-Tock ... and Halet ...
+might know something about Jontarou that she didn't know.
+
+Her mind returned to the results of the half-serious attempt she'd
+made to find out whether there was something Tick-Tock "wanted her to
+do." An open door? A darkness where somebody waited to grab her if she
+took even one step forwards? It couldn't have had any significance. Or
+could it?
+
+So you'd like to try magic, Telzey scoffed at herself. Baby games....
+How far would you have got at law school if you'd asked TT to help
+with your problems?
+
+Then why had she been thinking about it again?
+
+She shivered, because an eerie stillness seemed to settle on the
+garden. From the side of the terrace, TT's green eyes watched her.
+
+Telzey had a feeling of sinking down slowly into a sunlit dream, into
+something very remote from law school problems.
+
+"Should I go through the door?" she whispered.
+
+The bronze cat-shape raised its head slowly. TT began to purr.
+
+Tick-Tock's name had been derived in kittenhood from the manner in
+which she purred--a measured, oscillating sound, shifting from high to
+low, as comfortable and often as continuous as the unobtrusive pulse
+of an old clock. It was the first time, Telzey realized now, that
+she'd heard the sound since their arrival on Jontarou. It went on for
+a dozen seconds or so, then stopped. Tick-Tock continued to look at
+her.
+
+It appeared to have been an expression of definite assent....
+
+The dreamlike sensation increased, hazing over Telzey's thoughts. If
+there was nothing to this mind-communication thing, what harm could
+symbols do? This time, she wouldn't let them alarm her. And if they
+did mean something....
+
+She closed her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sunglow outside faded instantly. Telzey caught a fleeting picture
+of the door in the wall, and knew in the same moment that she'd
+already passed through it.
+
+She was not in the dark room then, but poised at the edge of a
+brightness which seemed featureless and without limit, spread out
+around her with a feeling-tone like "sea" or "sky." But it was an
+unquiet place. There was a sense of unseen things on all sides
+watching her and waiting.
+
+Was this another form of the dark room--a trap set up in her mind?
+Telzey's attention did a quick shift. She was seated in the grass
+again; the sunlight beyond her closed eyelids seemed to shine in
+quietly through rose-tinted curtains. Cautiously, she let her
+awareness return to the bright area; and it was still there. She had a
+moment of excited elation. She was controlling this! And why not, she
+asked herself. These things were happening in her mind, after all!
+
+She would find out what they seemed to mean; but she would be in no
+rush to....
+
+An impression as if, behind her, Tick-Tock had thought, "Now I can
+help again!"
+
+Then a feeling of being swept swiftly, irresistibly forwards, thrust
+out and down. The brightness exploded in thundering colors around her.
+In fright, she made the effort to snap her eyes open, to be back in
+the garden; but now she couldn't make it work. The colors continued to
+roar about her, like a confusion of excited, laughing, triumphant
+voices. Telzey felt caught in the middle of it all, suspended in
+invisible spider webs. Tick-Tock seemed to be somewhere nearby,
+looking on. Faithless, treacherous TT!
+
+Telzey's mind made another wrenching effort, and there was a change.
+She hadn't got back into the garden, but the noisy, swirling colors
+were gone and she had the feeling of reading a rapidly moving
+microtape now, though she didn't actually see the tape.
+
+The tape, she realized, was another symbol for what was happening, a
+symbol easier for her to understand. There were voices, or what might
+be voices, around her; on the invisible tape she seemed to be reading
+what they said.
+
+A number of speakers, apparently involved in a fast, hot argument
+about what to do with her. Impressions flashed past....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Why waste time with her? It was clear that kitten-talk was all she was
+capable of!... Not necessarily; that was a normal first step. Give her
+a little time!... But what--exasperatedly--could such a small-bite
+_possibly_ know that would be of significant value?
+
+There was a slow, blurred, awkward-seeming interruption. Its content
+was not comprehensible to Telzey at all, but in some unmistakable
+manner it was defined as Tick-Tock's thought.
+
+A pause as the circle of speakers stopped to consider whatever TT had
+thrown into the debate.
+
+Then another impression ... one that sent a shock of fear through
+Telzey as it rose heavily into her awareness. Its sheer intensity
+momentarily displaced the tape-reading symbolism. A savage voice
+seemed to rumble:
+
+"Toss the tender small-bite to me"--malevolent crimson eyes fixed on
+Telzey from somewhere not far away--"and let's be done here!"
+
+Startled, stammering protest from Tick-Tock, accompanied by gusts of
+laughter from the circle. Great sense of humor these characters had,
+Telzey thought bitterly. That crimson-eyed thing wasn't joking at all!
+
+More laughter as the circle caught her thought. Then a kind of
+majority opinion found sudden expression:
+
+"Small-bite _is_ learning! No harm to wait--We'll find out
+quickly--Let's...."
+
+The tape ended; the voices faded; the colors went blank. In whatever
+jumbled-up form she'd been getting the impressions at that
+point--Telzey couldn't have begun to describe it--the whole thing
+suddenly stopped.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She found herself sitting in the grass, shaky, scared, eyes open.
+Tick-Tock stood beside the terrace, looking at her. An air of hazy
+unreality still hung about the garden.
+
+She might have flipped! She didn't think so; but it certainly seemed
+possible! Otherwise ... Telzey made an attempt to sort over what had
+happened.
+
+Something _had_ been in the garden! Something had been inside her
+mind. Something that was at home on Jontarou.
+
+There'd been a feeling of perhaps fifty or sixty of these ... well,
+beings. Alarming beings! Reckless, wild, hard ... and that red-eyed
+nightmare! Telzey shuddered.
+
+They'd contacted Tick-Tock first, during the night. TT understood them
+better than she could. Why? Telzey found no immediate answer.
+
+Then Tick-Tock had tricked her into letting her mind be invaded by
+these beings. There must have been a very definite reason for that.
+
+She looked over at Tick-Tock. TT looked back. Nothing stirred in
+Telzey's thoughts. Between _them_ there was still no direct
+communication.
+
+Then how had the beings been able to get through to her?
+
+Telzey wrinkled her nose. Assuming this was real, it seemed clear that
+the game of symbols she'd made up between herself and TT had provided
+the opening. Her whole experience just now had been in the form of
+symbols, translating whatever occurred into something she could
+consciously grasp.
+
+"Kitten-talk" was how the beings referred to the use of symbols; they
+seemed contemptuous of it. Never mind, Telzey told herself; they'd
+agreed she was learning.
+
+The air over the grass appeared to flicker. Again she had the
+impression of reading words off a quickly moving, not quite visible
+tape.
+
+"You're being taught and you're learning," was what she seemed to
+read. "The question was whether you were capable of partial
+understanding as your friend insisted. Since you were, everything else
+that can be done will be accomplished very quickly."
+
+A pause, then with a touch of approval, "You're a well-formed mind,
+small-bite! Odd and with incomprehensibilities, but well-formed--"
+
+One of the beings, and a fairly friendly one--at least not unfriendly.
+Telzey framed a tentative mental question. "Who are you?"
+
+"You'll know very soon." The flickering ended; she realized she and
+the question had been dismissed for the moment. She looked over at
+Tick-Tock again.
+
+"Can't _you_ talk to me now, TT?" she asked silently.
+
+A feeling of hesitation.
+
+"Kitten-talk!" was the impression that formed itself with difficulty
+then. It was awkward, searching; but it came unquestionably from TT.
+"Still learning too, Telzey!" TT seemed half anxious, half angry.
+"We--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sharp buzz-note reached Telzey's ears, wiping out the groping
+thought-impression. She jumped a little, glanced down. Her
+wrist-talker was signaling. For a moment, she seemed poised
+uncertainly between a world where unseen, dangerous-sounding beings
+referred to one as small-bite and where TT was learning to talk, and
+the familiar other world where wrist-communicators buzzed periodically
+in a matter-of-fact manner. Settling back into the more familiar
+world, she switched on the talker.
+
+"Yes?" she said. Her voice sounded husky.
+
+"Telzey, dear," Halet murmured honey-sweet from the talker, "would you
+come back into the house, please? The living room--We have a visitor
+who very much wants to meet you."
+
+Telzey hesitated, eyes narrowing. Halet's visitor wanted to meet
+_her_?
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"He has something _very_ interesting to tell you, dear." The edge of
+triumphant malice showed for an instant, vanished in murmuring
+sweetness again. "So please hurry!"
+
+"All right." Telzey stood up. "I'm coming."
+
+"Fine, dear!" The talker went dead.
+
+Telzey switched off the instrument, noticed that Tick-Tock had chosen
+to disappear meanwhile.
+
+Flipped? She wondered, starting up towards the house. It was clear
+Aunt Halet had prepared some unpleasant surprise to spring on her,
+which was hardly more than normal behavior for Halet. The other
+business? She couldn't be certain of anything there. Leaving out TT's
+strange actions--which might have a number of causes, after all--that
+entire string of events could have been created inside her head. There
+was no contradictory evidence so far.
+
+But it could do no harm to take what _seemed_ to have happened at face
+value. Some pretty grim event might be shaping up, in a very real way,
+around here....
+
+"You reason logically!" The impression now was of a voice speaking to
+her, a voice that made no audible sound. It was the same being who'd
+addressed her a minute or two ago.
+
+The two worlds between which Telzey had felt suspended seemed to glide
+slowly together and become one.
+
+"I go to Law school," she explained to the being, almost absently.
+
+Amused agreement. "So we heard."
+
+"What do you want of me?" Telzey inquired.
+
+"You'll know soon enough."
+
+"Why not tell me now?" Telzey urged. It seemed about to dismiss her
+again.
+
+Quick impatience flared at her. "Kitten-pictures! Kitten-thoughts!
+Kitten-talk! Too slow, too slow! YOUR pictures--too much YOU! Wait
+till the...."
+
+Circuits close ... channels open.... Obstructions clear? What _had_ it
+said? There'd been only the blurred image of a finicky, delicate, but
+perfectly normal technical operation of some kind.
+
+"... Minutes now!" the voice concluded. A pause, then another thought
+tossed carelessly at her. "This is more important to you, small-bite,
+than to _us_!" The voice impression ended as sharply as if a
+communicator had snapped off.
+
+Not _too_ friendly! Telzey walked on towards the house, a new fear
+growing inside her ... a fear like the awareness of a storm gathered
+nearby, still quiet--deadly quiet, but ready to break.
+
+"Kitten-pictures!" a voice seemed to jeer distantly, a whispering in
+the park trees beyond the garden wall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Halet's cheeks were lightly pinked; her blue eyes sparkled. She looked
+downright stunning, which meant to anyone who knew her that the worst
+side of Halet's nature was champing at the bit again. On uninformed
+males it had a dazzling effect, however; and Telzey wasn't surprised
+to find their visitor wearing a tranced expression when she came into
+the living room. He was a tall, outdoorsy man with a tanned, bony
+face, a neatly trained black mustache, and a scar down one cheek which
+would have seemed dashing if it hadn't been for the stupefied look.
+Beside his chair stood a large, clumsy instrument which might have
+been some kind of telecamera.
+
+Halet performed introductions. Their visitor was Dr. Droon, a
+zoologist. He had been tuned in on Telzey's newscast interview on the
+liner the night before, and wondered whether Telzey would care to
+discuss Tick-Tock with him.
+
+"Frankly, no," Telzey said.
+
+Dr. Droon came awake and gave Telzey a surprised look. Halet smiled
+easily.
+
+"My niece doesn't intend to be discourteous, doctor," she explained.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Of course not," the zoologist agreed doubtfully.
+
+"It's just," Halet went on, "that Telzey is a little, oh, sensitive
+where Tick-Tock is concerned. In her own way, she's attached to the
+animal. Aren't you, dear?"
+
+"Yes," Telzey said blandly.
+
+"Well, we hope this isn't going to disturbed you too much, dear."
+Halet glanced significantly at Dr. Droon. "Dr. Droon, you must
+understand, is simply doing ... well, there is something very
+important he must tell you now."
+
+Telzey transferred her gaze back to the zoologist. Dr. Droon cleared
+his throat. "I, ah, understand, Miss Amberdon, that you're unaware of
+what kind of creature your, ah, Tick-Tock is?"
+
+Telzey started to speak, then checked herself, frowning. She had been
+about to state that she knew exactly what kind of creature TT was ...
+but she didn't, of course!
+
+Or did she? She....
+
+She scowled absent-mindedly at Dr. Droon, biting her lip.
+
+"Telzey!" Halet prompted gently.
+
+"Huh?" Telzey said. "Oh ... please go on, doctor!"
+
+Dr. Droon steepled his fingers. "Well," he said, "she ... your pet ... is,
+ah, a young crest cat. Nearly full grown now, apparently, and--"
+
+"Why, yes!" Telzey cried.
+
+The zoologist looked at her. "You knew that--"
+
+"Well, not really," Telzey admitted. "Or sort of." She laughed, her
+cheeks flushed. "This is the most ... go ahead please! Sorry I
+interrupted." She stared at the wall beyond Dr. Droon with a rapt
+expression.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The zoologist and Halet exchanged glances. Then Dr. Droon resumed
+cautiously. The crest cats, he said, were a species native to
+Jontarou. Their existence had been known for only eight years. The
+species appeared to have had a somewhat limited range--the Baluit
+mountains on the opposite side of the huge continent on which Port
+Nichay had been built....
+
+Telzey barely heard him. A very curious thing was happening. For every
+sentence Dr. Droon uttered, a dozen other sentences appeared in her
+awareness. More accurately, it was as if an instantaneous smooth flow
+of information relevant to whatever he said arose continuously from
+what might have been almost her own memory, but wasn't. Within a
+minute or two, she knew more about the crest cats of Jontarou than Dr.
+Droon could have told her in hours ... much more than he'd ever known.
+
+She realized suddenly that he'd stopped talking, that he had asked her
+a question. "Miss Amberdon?" he repeated now, with a note of
+uncertainty.
+
+"Yar-rrr-REE!" Telzey told him softly. "I'll drink your blood!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+Telzey blinked, focused on Dr. Droon, wrenching her mind away from a
+splendid view of the misty-blue peaks of the Baluit range.
+
+"Sorry," she said briskly. "Just a joke!" She smiled. "Now what were
+you saying?"
+
+The zoologist looked at her in a rather odd manner for a moment. "I
+was inquiring," he said then, "whether you were familiar with the
+sporting rules established by the various hunting associations of the
+Hub in connection with the taking of game trophies?"
+
+Telzey shook her head. "No, I never heard of them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rules, Dr. Droon explained, laid down the type of equipment ...
+weapons, spotting and tracking instruments, number of assistants, and
+so forth ... a sportsman could legitimately use in the pursuit of any
+specific type of game. "Before the end of the first year after their
+discovery," he went on, "the Baluit crest cats had been placed in the
+ultra-equipment class."
+
+"What's ultra-equipment?" Telzey asked.
+
+"Well," Dr. Droon said thoughtfully, "it doesn't quite involve the use
+of full battle armor ... not quite! And, of course, even with that
+classification the sporting principle of mutual accessibility must be
+observed."
+
+"Mutual ... oh, I see!" Telzey paused as another wave of silent
+information rose into her awareness; went on, "So the game has to be
+able to get at the sportsman too, eh?"
+
+"That's correct. Except in the pursuit of various classes of flying
+animals, a shikari would not, for example, be permitted the use of an
+aircar other than as means of simple transportation. Under these
+conditions, it was soon established that crest cats were being
+obtained by sportsmen who went after them at a rather consistent
+one-to-one ration."
+
+Telzey's eyes widened. She'd gathered something similar from her other
+information source but hadn't quite believed it. "One hunter killed
+for each cat bagged?" she said. "That's pretty rough sport, isn't it?
+
+"Extremely rough sport!" Dr. Droon agreed dryly. "In fact, when the
+statistics were published, the sporting interest in winning a Baluit
+cat trophy appears to have suffered a sudden and sharp decline. On the
+other hand, a more scientific interest in these remarkable animals was
+coincidingly created, and many permits for their acquisition by the
+agents of museums, universities, public and private collections were
+issued. Sporting rules, of course, do not apply to that activity."
+
+Telzey nodded absently. "I see! _They_ used aircars, didn't they? A
+sort of heavy knockout gun--"
+
+"Aircars, long-range detectors and stunguns are standard equipment in
+such work," Dr. Droon acknowledged. "Gas and poison are employed, of
+course, as circumstances dictate. The collectors were relatively
+successful for a while."
+
+"And then a curious thing happened. Less than two years after their
+existence became known, the crest cats of the Baluit range were
+extinct! The inroads made on their numbers by man cannot begin to
+account for this, so it must be assumed that a sudden plague wiped
+them out. At any rate, not another living member of the species has
+been seen on Jontarou until you landed here with your pet last night."
+
+Telzey sat silent for some seconds. Not because of what he had said,
+but because the other knowledge was still flowing into her mind. On
+one very important point _that_ was at variance with what the
+zoologist had stated; and from there a coldly logical pattern was
+building up. Telzey didn't grasp the pattern in complete detail yet,
+but what she saw of it stirred her with a half incredulous dread.
+
+She asked, shaping the words carefully but with only a small part of
+her attention on what she was really saying. "Just what does all that
+have to do with Tick-Tock, Dr. Droon?"
+
+Dr. Droon glanced at Halet, and returned his gaze to Telzey. Looking
+very uncomfortable but quite determined, he told her, "Miss Amberdon,
+there is a Federation law which states that when a species is
+threatened with extinction, any available survivors must be
+transferred to the Life Banks of the University League, to insure
+their indefinite preservation. Under the circumstances, this law
+applies to, ah, Tick-Tock!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So that had been Halet's trick. She'd found out about the crest cats,
+might have put in as much as a few months arranging to make the
+discovery of TT's origin on Jontarou seem a regrettable
+mischance--something no one could have foreseen or prevented. In the
+Life Banks, from what Telzey had heard of them, TT would cease to
+exist as an individual awareness while scientists tinkered around with
+the possibilities of reconstructing her species.
+
+Telzey studied her aunt's carefully sympathizing face for an instant,
+asked Dr. Droon, "What about the other crest cats--you said were
+collected before they became extinct here? Wouldn't they be enough for
+what the Life Banks need?"
+
+He shook his head. "Two immature male specimens are know to exist, and
+they are at present in the Life Banks. The others that were taken
+alive at the time have been destroyed ... often under nearly
+disastrous circumstances. They are enormously cunning, enormously
+savage creatures, Miss Amberdon! The additional fact that they can
+conceal themselves to the point of being virtually indetectable except
+by the use of instruments makes them one of the most dangerous animals
+known. Since the young female which you raised as a pet has remained
+docile ... so far ... you may not really be able to appreciate that."
+
+"Perhaps I can," Telzey said. She nodded at the heavy-looking
+instrument standing beside his chair. "And that's--?"
+
+"It's a life detector combined with a stungun, Miss Amberdon. I have
+no intention of harming your pet, but we can't take chances with an
+animal of that type. The gun's charge will knock it unconscious for
+several minutes--just long enough to let me secure it with paralysis
+belts."
+
+"You're a collector for the Life Banks, Dr. Droon?"
+
+"That's correct."
+
+"Dr. Droon," Halet remarked, "has obtained a permit from the Planetary
+Moderator, authorizing him to claim Tick-Tock for the University
+League and remove her from the planet, dear. So you see there is
+simply nothing we can do about the matter! Your mother wouldn't like
+us to attempt to obstruct the law, would she?" Halet paused. "The
+permit should have your signature, Telzey, but I can sign in your
+stead if necessary."
+
+That was Halet's way of saying it would do no good to appeal to
+Jontarou's Planetary Moderator. She'd taken the precaution of getting
+his assent to the matter first.
+
+"So now if you'll just call Tick-Tock, dear..." Halet went on.
+
+Telzey barely heard the last words. She felt herself stiffening
+slowly, while the living room almost faded from her sight. Perhaps, in
+that instant, some additional new circuit had closed in her mind, or
+some additional new channel had opened, for TT's purpose in tricking
+her into contact with the reckless, mocking beings outside was
+suddenly and numbingly clear.
+
+And what it meant immediately was that she'd have to get out of the
+house without being spotted at it, and go some place where she could
+be undisturbed for half an hour.
+
+She realized that Halet and the zoologist were both staring at her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Are you ill, dear?"
+
+"No." Telzey stood up. It would be worse than useless to try to tell
+these two anything! Her face must be pretty white at the moment--she
+could feel it--but they assumed, of course, that the shock of losing
+TT had just now sunk in on her.
+
+"I'll have to check on that law you mentioned before I sign anything,"
+she told Dr. Droon.
+
+"Why, yes ..." He started to get out of his chair. "I'm sure that can
+be arranged, Miss Amberdon!"
+
+"Don't bother to call the Moderator's office," Telzey said. "I brought
+my law library along. I'll look it up myself." She turned to leave the
+room.
+
+"My niece," Halet explained to Dr. Droon who was beginning to look puzzled,
+"attends law school. She's always so absorbed in her studies ... Telzey?"
+
+"Yes, Halet?" Telzey paused at the door.
+
+"I'm very glad you've decided to be sensible about this, dear. But
+don't take too long, will you? We don't want to waste Dr. Droon's
+time."
+
+"It shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes," Telzey told her
+agreeably. She closed the door behind her, and went directly to her
+bedroom on the second floor. One of her two valises was still
+unpacked. She locked the door behind her, opened the unpacked valise,
+took out a pocket edition law library and sat down at the table with
+it.
+
+She clicked on the library's view-screen, tapped the clearing and
+index buttons. Behind the screen, one of the multiple rows of pinhead
+tapes shifted slightly as the index was flicked into reading position.
+Half a minute later, she was glancing over the legal section on which
+Dr. Droon had based his claim. The library confirmed what he had said.
+
+Very neat of Halet, Telzey thought, very nasty ... and pretty idiotic!
+Even a second-year law student could think immediately of two or three
+ways in which a case like that could have been dragged out in the
+Federation's courts for a couple of decades before the question of
+handing Tick-Tock over to the Life Banks became too acute.
+
+Well, Halet simply wasn't really intelligent. And the plot to shanghai
+TT was hardly even a side issue now.
+
+Telzey snapped the tiny library shut, fastened it to the belt of her
+sunsuit and went over to the open window. A two-foot ledge passed
+beneath the window, leading to the roof of a patio on the right.
+Fifty yards beyond the patio, the garden ended in a natural-stone
+wall. Behind it lay one of the big wooded park areas which formed most
+of the ground level of Port Nichay.
+
+Tick-Tock wasn't in sight. A sound of voices came from ground-floor
+windows on the left. Halet had brought her maid and chauffeur along;
+and a chef had showed up in time to make breakfast this morning, as
+part of the city's guest house service. Telzey took the empty valise
+to the window, set it on end against the left side of the frame, and
+let the window slide down until its lower edge rested on the valise.
+She went back to the house guard-screen panel beside the door, put her
+finger against the lock button, and pushed.
+
+The sound of voices from the lower floor was cut off as outer doors
+and windows slid silently shut all about the house. Telzey glanced
+back at the window. The valise had creaked a little as the guard field
+drove the frame down on it, but it was supporting the thrust. She
+returned to the window, wriggled feet foremost through the opening,
+twisted around and got a footing on the ledge.
+
+A minute later, she was scrambling quietly down a vine-covered patio
+trellis to the ground. Even after they discovered she was gone, the
+guard screen would keep everybody in the house for some little while.
+They'd either have to disengage the screen's main mechanisms and start
+poking around in them, or force open the door to her bedroom and get
+the lock unset. Either approach would involve confusion, upset
+tempers, and generally delay any organized pursuit.
+
+Telzey edged around the patio and started towards the wall, keeping
+close to the side of the house so she couldn't be seen from the
+windows. The shrubbery made minor rustling noises as she threaded her
+way through it ... and then there was a different stirring which might
+have been no more than a slow, steady current of air moving among the
+bushes behind her. She shivered involuntarily but didn't look back.
+
+She came to the wall, stood still, measuring its height, jumped and
+got an arm across it, swung up a knee and squirmed up and over. She
+came down on her feet with a small thump in the grass on the other
+side, glanced back once at the guest house, crossed a path and went on
+among the park trees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within a few hundred yards, it became apparent that she had an escort.
+She didn't look around for them, but spread out to right and left like
+a skirmish line, keeping abreast with her, occasional shadows slid
+silently through patches of open, sunlit ground, disappeared again
+under the trees. Otherwise, there was hardly anyone in sight. Port
+Nichay's human residents appeared to make almost no personal use of
+the vast parkland spread out beneath their tower apartments; and its
+traffic moved over the airways, visible from the ground only as
+rainbow-hued ribbons which bisected the sky between the upper tower
+levels. An occasional private aircar went by overhead.
+
+Wisps of thought which were not her own thoughts flicked through
+Telzey's mind from moment to moment as the silent line of shadows
+moved deeper into the park with her. She realized she was being sized
+up, judged, evaluated again. No more information was coming through;
+they had given her as much information as she needed. In the main
+perhaps, they were simply curious now. This was the first human mind
+they'd been able to make heads or tails of, and that hadn't seemed
+deaf and silent to their form of communication. They were taking time
+out to study it. They'd been assured she would have something of
+genuine importance to tell them; and there was some derision about
+that. But they were willing to wait a little, and find out. They were
+curious and they liked games. At the moment, Telzey and what she might
+try to do to change their plans was the game on which their attention
+was fixed.
+
+Twelve minutes passed before the talker on Telzey's wrist began to
+buzz. It continued to signal off and on for another few minutes, then
+stopped. Back in the guest house they couldn't be sure yet whether she
+wasn't simply locked inside her room and refusing to answer them. But
+Telzey quickened her pace.
+
+The park's trees gradually became more massive, reached higher above
+her, stood spaced more widely apart. She passed through the morning
+shadow of the residential tower nearest the guest house, and emerged
+from it presently on the shore of a small lake. On the other side of
+the lake, a number of dappled grazing animals like long-necked, tall
+horses lifted their heads to watch her. For some seconds they seemed
+only mildly interested, but then a breeze moved across the lake,
+crinkling the surface of the water, and as it touched the opposite
+shore, abrupt panic exploded among the grazers. They wheeled, went
+flashing away in effortless twenty-foot strides, and were gone among
+the trees.
+
+Telzey felt a crawling along her spine. It was the first objective
+indication she'd had of the nature of the company she had brought to
+the lake, and while it hardly came as a surprise, for a moment her
+urge was to follow the example of the grazers.
+
+"Tick-Tock?" she whispered, suddenly a little short of breath.
+
+A single up-and-down purring note replied from the bushes on her
+right. TT was still around, for whatever good that might do. Not too
+much, Telzey thought, if it came to serious trouble. But the knowledge
+was somewhat reassuring ... and this, meanwhile, appeared to be as far
+as she needed to get from the guest house. They'd be looking for her
+by aircar presently, but there was nothing to tell them in which
+direction to turn first.
+
+She climbed the bank of the lake to a point where she was screened
+both by thick, green shrubbery and the top of a single immense tree
+from the sky, sat down on some dry, mossy growth, took the law library
+from her belt, opened it and placed it in her lap. Vague stirrings
+indicated that her escort was also settling down in an irregular
+circle about her; and apprehension shivered on Telzey's skin again. It
+wasn't that their attitude was hostile; they were simply overawing.
+And no one could predict what they might do next. Without looking up,
+she asked a question in her mind.
+
+"Ready?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Sense of multiple acknowledgment, variously tinged--sardonic;
+interestingly amused; attentive; doubtful. Impatience quivered through
+it too, only tentatively held in restraint, and Telzey's forehead was
+suddenly wet. Some of them seemed on the verge of expressing
+disapproval with what was being done here--
+
+Her fingers quickly flicked in the index tape, and the stir of feeling
+about her subsided, their attention captured again for the moment. Her
+thoughts became to some degree detached, ready to dissect another
+problem in the familiar ways and present the answers to it. Not a very
+involved problem essentially, but this time it wasn't a school
+exercise. Her company waited, withdrawn, silent, aloof once more,
+while the index blurred, checked, blurred and checked. Within a minute
+and a half, she had noted a dozen reference symbols. She tapped in
+another of the pinhead tapes, glanced over a few paragraphs, licked
+salty sweat from her lip, and said in her thoughts, emphasizing the
+meaning of each detail of the sentence so that there would be no
+misunderstanding, "This is the Federation law that applies to the
+situation which existed originally on this planet...."
+
+There were no interruptions, no commenting thoughts, no intrusions of
+any kind, as she went step by step through the section, turned to
+another one, and another. In perhaps twelve minutes she came to the
+end of the last one, and stopped. Instantly, argument exploded about
+her.
+
+Telzey was not involved in the argument; in fact, she could grasp only
+scraps of it. Either they were excluding her deliberately, or the
+exchange was too swift, practiced and varied to allow her to keep up.
+But their vehemence was not encouraging. And was it reasonable to
+assume that the Federation's laws would have any meaning for minds
+like these? Telzey snapped the library shut with fingers that had
+begun to tremble, and placed it on the ground. Then she stiffened. In
+the sensations washing about her, a special excitement rose suddenly,
+a surge of almost gleeful wildness that choked away her breath.
+Awareness followed of a pair of malignant crimson eyes fastened on
+her, moving steadily closer. A kind of nightmare paralysis seized
+Telzey--they'd turned her over to that red-eyed horror! She sat still,
+feeling mouse-sized.
+
+Something came out with a crash from a thicket behind her. Her muscles
+went tight. But it was TT who rubbed a hard head against her shoulder,
+took another three stiff-legged steps forward and stopped between
+Telzey and the bushes on their right, back rigid, neck fur erect, tail
+twisting.
+
+Expectant silence closed in about them. The circle was waiting. In the
+greenery on the right something made a slow, heavy stir.
+
+TT's lips peeled back from her teeth. Her head swung towards the
+motion, ears flattening, transformed to a split, snarling demon-mask.
+A long shriek ripped from her lungs, raw with fury, blood lust and
+challenge.
+
+The sound died away. For some seconds the tension about them held;
+then came a sense of gradual relaxation mingled with a partly amused
+approval. Telzey was shaking violently. It had been, she was telling
+herself, a deliberate test ... not of herself, of course, but of TT.
+And Tick-Tock had passed with honors. That _her_ nerves had been half
+ruined in the process would seem a matter of no consequence to this
+rugged crew....
+
+She realized next that someone here was addressing her personally.
+
+It took a few moments to steady her jittering thoughts enough to gain
+a more definite impression than that. This speaker, she discovered
+then, was a member of the circle of whom she hadn't been aware before.
+The thought-impressions came hard and cold as iron--a personage who
+was very evidently in the habit of making major decisions and seeing
+them carried out. The circle, its moment of sport over, was listening
+with more than a suggestion of deference. Tick-Tock, far from
+conciliated, green eyes still blazing, nevertheless was settling down
+to listen, too.
+
+Telzey began to understand.
+
+Her suggestions, Iron Thoughts informed her, might appear without
+value to a number of foolish minds here, but _he_ intended to see they
+were given a fair trial. Did he perhaps hear, he inquired next of the
+circle, throwing in a casual but horridly vivid impression of snapping
+spines and slashed shaggy throats spouting blood, any objection to
+that?
+
+Dead stillness all around. There was, definitely, no objection.
+Tick-Tock began to grin like a pleased kitten.
+
+That point having been settled in an orderly manner now, Iron Thoughts
+went on coldly to Telzey, what specifically did she propose they
+should do?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Halet's long, pearl-gray sportscar showed up above the park trees
+twenty minutes later. Telzey, face turned down towards the open law
+library in her lap, watched the car from the corner of her eyes. She
+was in plain view, sitting beside the lake, apparently absorbed in
+legal research. Tick-Tock, camouflaged among the bushes thirty feet
+higher up the bank, had spotted the car an instant before she did and
+announced the fact with a three-second break in her purring. Neither
+of them made any other move.
+
+The car was approaching the lake but still a good distance off. Its
+canopy was down, and Telzey could just make out the heads of three
+people inside. Delquos, Halet's chauffeur, would be flying the
+vehicle, while Halet and Dr. Droon looked around for her from the
+sides. Three hundred yards away, the aircar began a turn to the right.
+Delquos didn't like his employer much; at a guess, he had just spotted
+Telzey and was trying to warn her off.
+
+Telzey closed the library and put it down, picked up a handful of
+pebbles and began flicking them idly, one at a time, into the water.
+The aircar vanished to her left.
+
+Three minutes later, she watched its shadow glide across the surface
+of the lake towards her. Her heart began to thump almost audibly, but
+she didn't look up. Tick-Tock's purring continued, on its regular,
+unhurried note. The car came to a stop almost directly overhead. After
+a couple of seconds, there was a clicking noise. The purring ended
+abruptly.
+
+Telzey climbed to her feet as Delquos brought the car down to the bank
+of the lake. The chauffeur grinned ruefully at her. A side door had
+been opened, and Halet and Dr. Droon stood behind it. Halet watched
+Telzey with a small smile while the naturalist put the heavy
+life-detector-and-stungun device carefully down on the floorboards.
+
+"If you're looking for Tick-Tock," Telzey said, "she isn't here."
+
+Halet just shook her head sorrowfully.
+
+"There's no use lying to us, dear. Dr Droon just stunned her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They found TT collapsed on her side among the shrubs, wearing her
+natural color. Her eyes were shut, her chest rose and fell in a slow
+breathing motion. Dr. Droon, looking rather apologetic, pointed out to
+Telzey that her pet was in no pain, that the stungun had simply put
+her comfortably to sleep. He also explained the use of the two sets of
+webbed paralysis belts which he fastened about TT's legs. The effect
+of the stun charge would wear off in a few minutes, and contact with
+the inner surfaces of the energized belts would then keep TT
+anesthetized and unable to move until the belts were removed. She
+would, he repeated, be suffering no pain throughout the process.
+
+Telzey didn't comment. She watched Delquos raise TT's limp body above
+the level of the bushes with a gravity hoist belonging to Dr. Droon,
+and maneuver her back to the car, the others following. Delquos
+climbed into the car first, opened the big trunk compartment in the
+rear. TT was slid inside and the trunk compartment locked.
+
+"Where are you taking her?" Telzey asked sullenly as Delquos lifted
+the car into the air.
+
+"To the spaceport, dear," Halet said. "Dr. Droon and I both felt it
+would be better to spare your feelings by not prolonging the matter
+unnecessarily."
+
+Telzey wrinkled her nose disdainfully, and walked up the aircar to
+stand behind Delquos' seat. She leaned against the back of the seat
+for an instant. Her legs felt shaky.
+
+The chauffeur gave her a sober wink from the side.
+
+"That's a dirty trick she's played on you, Miss Telzey!" he murmured.
+"I tried to warn you."
+
+"I know." Telzey took a deep breath. "Look, Delquos, in just a minute
+something's going to happen! It'll look dangerous, but it won't be.
+Don't let it get you nervous ... right?"
+
+"Huh?" Delquos appeared startled, but kept his voice low. "Just
+_what's_ going to happen?"
+
+"No time to tell you. Remember what I said."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Telzey moved back a few steps from the driver's seat, turned around,
+said unsteadily, "Halet ... Dr. Droon--"
+
+Halet had been speaking quietly to Dr. Droon; they both looked up.
+
+"If you don't move, and don't do anything stupid," Telzey said
+rapidly, "you won't get hurt. If you do ... well, I don't know! You
+see, there's another crest cat in the car...." In her mind she added,
+"Now!"
+
+It was impossible to tell in just what section of the car Iron
+Thoughts had been lurking. The carpeting near the rear passenger seats
+seemed to blur for an instant. Then he was there, camouflage dropped,
+sitting on the floorboards five feet from the naturalist and Halet.
+
+Halet's mouth opened wide; she tried to scream but fainted instead.
+Dr. Droon's right hand started out quickly towards the big stungun
+device beside his seat. Then he checked himself and sat still,
+ashen-faced.
+
+Telzey didn't blame him for changing his mind. She felt he must be a
+remarkably brave man to have moved at all. Iron Thoughts, twice as
+broad across the back as Tick-Tock, twice as massively muscled, looked
+like a devil-beast even to her. His dark-green marbled hide was
+criss-crossed with old scar patterns; half his tossing crimson crest
+appeared to have been ripped away. He reached out now in a fluid,
+silent motion, hooked a paw under the stungun and flicked upwards. The
+big instrument rose in an incredibly swift, steep arc eighty feet
+into the air, various parts flying away from it, before it started
+curving down towards the treetops below the car. Iron Thoughts lazily
+swung his head around and looked at Telzey with yellow fire-eyes.
+
+"Miss Telzey! Miss Telzey!" Delquos was muttering behind her. "You're
+_sure_ it won't...."
+
+Telzey swallowed. At the moment, she felt barely mouse-sized again.
+"Just relax!" she told Delquos in a shaky voice. "He's really quite
+t-t-t-tame."
+
+Iron Thoughts produced a harsh but not unamiable chuckle in her mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The pearl-gray sportscar, covered now by its streamlining canopy,
+drifted down presently to a parking platform outside the suite of
+offices on Jontarou's Planetary Moderator, on the fourteenth floor of
+the Shikaris' Club Tower. An attendant waved it on into a vacant slot.
+
+Inside the car, Delquos set the brakes, switched off the engine,
+asked, "Now what?"
+
+"I think," Telzey said reflectively, "we'd better lock you in the
+trunk compartment with my aunt and Dr. Droon while I talk to the
+Moderator."
+
+The chauffeur shrugged. He'd regained most of his aplomb during the
+unhurried trip across the parklands. Iron Thoughts had done nothing
+but sit in the center of the car, eyes half shut, looking like instant
+death enjoying a dignified nap and occasionally emitting a ripsawing
+noise which might have been either his style of purring or a snore.
+And Tick-Tock, when Delquos peeled the paralysis belts off her legs at
+Telzey's direction, had greeted him with her usual reserved
+affability. What the chauffeur was suffering from at the moment was
+intense curiosity, which Telzey had done nothing to relieve.
+
+"Just as you say, Miss Telzey," he agreed. "I hate to miss whatever
+you're going to be doing here, but if you _don't_ lock me up now, Miss
+Halet will figure I was helping you and fire me as soon as you let her
+out."
+
+Telzey nodded, then cocked her head in the direction of the rear
+compartment. Faint sounds coming through the door indicated that Halet
+had regained consciousness and was having hysterics.
+
+"You might tell her," Telzey suggested, "that there'll be a grown-up
+crest cat sitting outside the compartment door." This wasn't true, but
+neither Delquos nor Halet could know it. "If there's too much racket
+before I get back, it's likely to irritate him...."
+
+A minute later, she set both car doors on lock and went outside,
+wishing she were less informally clothed. Sunbriefs and sandals tended
+to make her look juvenile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The parking attendant appeared startled when she approached him with
+Tick-Tock striding alongside.
+
+"They'll never let you into the offices with that thing, miss," he
+informed her. "Why, it doesn't even have a collar!"
+
+"Don't worry about it." Telzey told him aloofly.
+
+She dropped a two-credit piece she'd taken from Halet's purse into his
+hand, and continued on towards the building entrance. The attendant
+squinted after her, trying unsuccessfully to dispel an odd impression
+that the big catlike animal with the girl was throwing a double
+shadow.
+
+The Moderator's chief receptionist also had some doubts about TT, and
+possibly about the sunbriefs, though she seemed impressed when
+Telzey's identification tag informed her she was speaking to the
+daughter of Federation Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon.
+
+"You feel you can discuss this ... emergency ... only with the
+Moderator himself, Miss Amberdon?" she repeated.
+
+"Exactly," Telzey said firmly. A buzzer sounded as she spoke. The
+receptionist excused herself and picked up an earphone. She listened a
+moment, said blandly, "Yes.... Of course.... Yes, I understand,"
+replaced the earphone and stood up, smiling at Telzey.
+
+"Would you come with me, Miss Amberdon?" she said. "I think the
+Moderator will see you immediately...."
+
+Telzey followed her, chewing thoughtfully at her lip. This was easier
+than she'd expected--in fact, too easy! Halet's work? Probably. A few
+comments to the effect of "A highly imaginative child ...
+overexcitable," while Halet was arranging to have the Moderator's
+office authorize Tick-Tock's transfer to the life Banks, along with
+the implication that Jessamine Amberdon would appreciate a discreet
+handling of any disturbance Telzey might create as a result.
+
+It was the sort of notion that would appeal to Halet--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They passed through a series of elegantly equipped offices and
+hallways, Telzey grasping TT's neck-fur in lieu of a leash, their
+appearance creating a tactfully restrained wave of surprise among
+secretaries and clerks. And if somebody here and there was troubled by
+a fleeting, uncanny impression that not one large beast but two seemed
+to be trailing the Moderator's visitor down the aisles, no mention was
+made of what could have been only a momentary visual distortion.
+Finally, a pair of sliding doors opened ahead, and the receptionist
+ushered Telzey into a large, cool balcony garden on the shaded side of
+the great building. A tall, gray-haired man stood up from the desk at
+which he was working, and bowed to Telzey. The receptionist withdrew
+again.
+
+"My pleasure, Miss Amberdon," Jontarou's Planetary Moderator said, "Be
+seated, please." He studied Tick-Tock with more than casual interest
+while Telzey was settling herself into a chair, added, "And what may I
+and my office do for you?"
+
+Telzey hesitated. She'd observed his type on Orado in her mother's
+circle of acquaintances--a senior diplomat, a man not easy to impress.
+It was a safe bet that he'd had her brought out to his balcony office
+only to keep her occupied while Halet was quietly informed where the
+Amberdon problem child was and requested to come over and take charge.
+
+What she had to tell him now would have sounded rather wild even if
+presented by a presumably responsible adult. She could provide proof,
+but until the Moderator was already nearly sold on her story, that
+would be a very unsafe thing to do. Old Iron Thoughts was backing her
+up, but if it didn't look as if her plans were likely to succeed, he
+would be willing to ride herd on his devil's pack just so long....
+
+Better start the ball rolling without any preliminaries, Telzey
+decided. The Moderator's picture of her must be that of a spoiled,
+neurotic brat in a stew about the threatened loss of a pet animal. He
+expected her to start arguing with him immediately about Tick-Tock.
+
+She said "Do you have a personal interest in keeping the Baluit crest
+cats from becoming extinct?"
+
+Surprise flickered in his eyes for an instant. Then he smiled.
+
+"I admit I do, Miss Amberdon," he said pleasantly. "I should like to
+see the species re-established. I count myself almost uniquely
+fortunate in having had the opportunity to bag two of the magnificent
+brutes before disease wiped them out on the planet."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The last seemed a less than fortunate statement just now. Telzey
+felt a sharp tingle of alarm, then sensed that in the minds which were
+drawing the meaning of the Moderator's speech from her mind there had
+been only a brief stir of interest.
+
+She cleared her throat, said, "The point is that they weren't wiped
+out by disease."
+
+He considered her quizzically, seemed to wonder what she was trying to
+lead up to. Telzey gathered her courage, plunged on, "Would you like
+to hear what did happen?"
+
+"I should be very much interested, Miss Amberdon," the Moderator said
+without change of expression. "But first, if you'll excuse me a
+moment...."
+
+There had been some signal from his desk which Telzey hadn't noticed,
+because he picked up a small communicator now and said "Yes?" After a
+few seconds, he resumed, "That's rather curious, isn't it?... Yes, I'd
+try that.... No, that shouldn't be necessary.... Yes, please do.
+Thank you." He replaced the communicator, his face very sober; then,
+his eyes flicking for an instant to TT, he drew one of the upper desk
+drawers open a few inches, and turned back to Telzey.
+
+"Now, Miss Amberdon," he said affably, "you were about to say? About
+these crest cats...."
+
+Telzey swallowed. She hadn't heard the other side of the conversation,
+but she could guess what it had been about. His office had called the
+guest house, had been told by Halet's maid that Halet, the chauffeur
+and Dr. Droon were out looking for Miss Telzey and her pet. The
+Moderator's office had then checked on the sportscar's communication
+number and attempted to call it. And, of course, there had been no
+response.
+
+To the Moderator, considering what Halet would have told him, it must
+add up to the grim possibility that the young lunatic he was talking
+to had let her three-quarters-grown crest cat slaughter her aunt and
+the two men when they caught up with her! The office would be
+notifying the police now to conduct an immediate search for the
+missing aircar.
+
+When it would occur to them to look for it on the Moderator's parking
+terrace was something Telzey couldn't know. But if Halet and Dr. Droon
+were released before the Moderator accepted her own version of what
+had occurred, and the two reported the presence of wild crest cats in
+Port Nichay, there would be almost no possibility of keeping the
+situation under control. Somebody was bound to make some idiotic move,
+and the fat would be in the fire....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two things might be in her favor. The Moderator seemed to have the
+sort of steady nerve one would expect in a man who had bagged two
+Baluit crest cats. The partly opened desk drawer beside him must have
+a gun in it; apparently he considered that a sufficient precaution
+against an attack by TT. He wasn't likely to react in a panicky
+manner. And the mere fact that he suspected Telzey of homicidal
+tendencies would make him give the closest attention to what she said.
+Whether he believed her then was another matter, of course.
+
+Slightly encouraged, Telzey began to talk. It did sound like a
+thoroughly wild story, but the Moderator listened with an appearance
+of intent interest. When she had told him as much as she felt he could
+be expected to swallow for a start, he said musingly, "So they weren't
+wiped out--they went into hiding! Do I understand you to say they did
+it to avoid being hunted?"
+
+Telzey chewed her lip frowningly before replying. "There's something
+about that part I don't quite get," she admitted. "Of course I don't
+quite get either why you'd want to go hunting ... twice ... for
+something that's just as likely to bag you instead!"
+
+"Well, those are, ah, merely the statistical odds," the Moderator
+explained. "If one has enough confidence, you see--"
+
+"I don't really. But the crest cats seem to have felt the same way--at
+first. They were getting around one hunter for every cat that got
+shot. Humans were the most exciting game they'd ever run into.
+
+"But then that ended, and the humans started knocking them out with
+stunguns from aircars where they couldn't be got at, and hauling them
+off while they were helpless. After it had gone on for a while, they
+decided to keep out of sight.
+
+"But they're still around ... thousands and thousands of them!
+Another thing nobody's known about them is that they weren't only in
+the Baluit mountains. There were crest cats scattered all through the
+big forests along the other side of the continent."
+
+"Very interesting," the Moderator commented. "Very interesting,
+indeed!" He glanced towards the communicator, then returned his gaze
+to Telzey, drumming his fingers lightly on the desk top.
+
+She could tell nothing at all from his expression now, but she guessed
+he was thinking hard. There was supposed to be no native intelligent
+life in the legal sense on Jontarou, and she had been careful to say
+nothing so far to make the Baluit cats look like more than rather
+exceptionally intelligent animals. The next--rather large--question
+should be how she'd come by such information.
+
+If the Moderator asked her that, Telzey thought, she could feel she'd
+made a beginning at getting him to buy the whole story.
+
+"Well," he said abruptly, "if the crest cats are not extinct or
+threatened with extinction, the Life Banks obviously have no claim on
+your pet." He smiled confidingly at her. "And that's the reason you're
+here, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, no," Telzey began, dismayed. "I--"
+
+"Oh, it's quite all right, Miss Amberdon! I'll simply rescind the
+permit which was issued for the purpose. You need feel no further
+concern about that." He paused. "Now, just one question ... do you
+happen to know where your aunt is at present?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Telzey had a dead, sinking feeling. So he hadn't believed a word she
+said. He'd been stalling her along until the aircar could be found.
+
+She took a deep breath. "You'd better listen to the rest of it."
+
+"Why, is there more?" the Moderator asked politely.
+
+"Yes. The important part! The kind of creatures they are, they
+wouldn't go into hiding indefinitely just because someone was after
+them."
+
+Was there a flicker of something beyond watchfulness in his
+expression. "What would they do, Miss Amberdon?" he asked quietly.
+
+"If they couldn't get at the men in the aircars and couldn't
+communicate with them"--the flicker again!--"they'd start looking for
+the place the men came from, wouldn't they? It might take them some
+years to work their way across the continent and locate us here in
+Port Nichay. But supposing they did it finally and a few thousand of
+them are sitting around in the parks down there right now? They could
+come up the side of these towers as easily as they go up the side of a
+mountain. And supposing they'd decided that the only way to handle the
+problem was to clean out the human beings in Port Nichay?"
+
+The Moderator stared at her in silence a few seconds. "You're saying,"
+he observed then, "that they're rational beings--above the Critical
+I.Q. level."
+
+"Well," Telzey said, "legally they're rational. I checked on that.
+About as rational as we are, I suppose."
+
+"Would you mind telling me now how you happen to know this?"
+
+"They told me," Telzey said.
+
+He was silent again, studying her face. "You mentioned, Miss Amberdon,
+that they have been unable to communicate with other human beings.
+This suggests then that you are a xenotelepath...."
+
+"I am?" Telzey hadn't heard the term before. "If it means that I can
+tell what the cats are thinking, and they can tell what I'm thinking,
+I guess that's the word for it." She considered him, decided she had
+him almost on the ropes, went on quickly.
+
+"I looked up the laws, and told them they could conclude a treaty with
+the Federation which would establish them as an Affiliated Species ...
+and that would settle everything the way they would want it settled,
+without trouble. Some of them believed me. They decided to wait until
+I could talk to you. If it works out, fine! If it doesn't"--she felt
+her voice falter for an instant--"they're going to cut loose fast!"
+
+The Moderator seemed undisturbed. "What am I supposed to do?"
+
+"I told them you'd contact the Council of the Federation on Orado."
+
+"Contact the Council?" he repeated coolly. "With no more proof for
+this story than your word Miss Amberdon?"
+
+Telzey felt a quick, angry stirring begin about her, felt her face
+whiten.
+
+"All right," she said "I'll give you proof! I'll have to now. But
+that'll be it. Once they've tipped their hand all the way, you'll
+have about thirty seconds left to make the right move. I hope you
+remember that!"
+
+He cleared his throat. "I--"
+
+"NOW!" Telzey said.
+
+Along the walls of the balcony garden, beside the ornamental flower
+stands, against the edges of the rock pool, the crest cats appeared.
+Perhaps thirty of them. None quite as physically impressive as Iron
+Thoughts who stood closest to the Moderator; but none very far from
+it. Motionless as rocks, frightening as gargoyles, they waited, eyes
+glowing with hellish excitement.
+
+"This is _their_ council, you see," Telzey heard herself saying.
+
+The Moderator's face had also paled. But he was, after all, an old
+shikari and a senior diplomat. He took an unhurried look around the
+circle, said quietly, "Accept my profound apologies for doubting you.
+Miss Amberdon!" and reached for the desk communicator.
+
+Iron Thoughts swung his demon head in Telzey's direction. For an
+instant, she picked up the mental impression of a fierce yellow eye
+closing in an approving wink.
+
+"... An open transmitter line to Orado," the Moderator was saying into
+the communicator. "The Council. And snap it up! Some very important
+visitors are waiting."
+
+The offices of Jontarou's Planetary Moderator became an extremely busy
+and interesting area then. Quite two hours passed before it occurred
+to anyone to ask Telzey again whether she knew where her aunt was at
+present.
+
+Telzey smote her forehead.
+
+"Forgot all about that!" she admitted, fishing the sportscar's keys
+out of the pocket of her sunbriefs. "They're out on the parking
+platform...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The preliminary treaty arrangements between the Federation of the Hub
+and the new Affiliated Species of the Planet of Jontarou were formally
+ratified two weeks later, the ceremony taking place on Jontarou, in
+the Champagne Hall of the Shikaris' Club.
+
+Telzey was able to follow the event only by news viewer in her
+ship-cabin, she and Halet being on the return trip to Orado by then.
+She wasn't too interested in the treaty's details--they conformed
+almost exactly to what she had read out to Iron Thoughts and his
+co-chiefs and companions in the park. It was the smooth bridging of
+the wide language gap between the contracting parties by a row of
+interpreting machines and a handful of human xenotelepaths which held
+her attention.
+
+As she switched off the viewer, Halet came wandering in from the
+adjoining cabin.
+
+"I was watching it, too!" Halet observed. She smiled. "I was hoping to
+see dear Tick-Tock."
+
+Telzey looked over at her. "Well, TT would hardly be likely to show up
+in Port Nichay," she said. "She's having too good a time now finding
+out what life in the Baluit range is like."
+
+"I suppose so," Halet agreed doubtfully, sitting down on a hassock.
+"But I'm glad she promised to get in touch with us again in a few
+years. I'll miss her."
+
+Telzey regarded her aunt with a reflective frown. Halet meant it quite
+sincerely, of course, she had undergone a profound change of heart
+during the past two weeks. But Telzey wasn't without some doubts about
+the actual value of a change of heart brought on by telepathic means.
+The learning process the crest cats had started in her mind appeared
+to have continued automatically several days longer than her rugged
+teachers had really intended; and Telzey had reason to believe that by
+the end of that time she'd developed associated latent abilities of
+which the crest cats had never heard. She'd barely begun to get it all
+sorted out yet, but ... as an example ... she'd found it remarkably
+easy to turn Halet's more obnoxious attitudes virtually upside down.
+It had taken her a couple of days to get the hang of her aunt's
+personal symbolism, but after that there had been no problem.
+
+She was reasonably certain she'd broken no laws so far, though the
+sections in the law library covering the use and abuse of psionic
+abilities were veiled in such intricate and downright obscuring
+phrasing--deliberately, Telzey suspected--that it was really difficult
+to say what they did mean. But even aside from that, there were a
+number of arguments in favor of exercising great caution.
+
+Jessamine, for one thing, was bound to start worrying about her
+sister-in-law's health if Halet turned up on Orado in her present
+state of mind, even though it would make for a far more agreeable
+atmosphere in the Amberdon household.
+
+"Halet," Telzey inquired mentally, "do you remember what an all-out
+stinker you used to be?"
+
+"Of course, dear," Halet said aloud. "I can hardly wait to tell dear
+Jessamine how much I regret the many times I...."
+
+"Well," Telzey went on, still verbalizing it silently. "I think you'd
+really enjoy life more if you were, let's say, about halfway between
+your old nasty self and the sort of sickening-good kind you are now."
+
+"Why, Telzey!" Halet cried out with dopey amiability. "What a
+delightful idea!"
+
+"Let's try it," Telzey said.
+
+There was silence in the cabin for some twenty minutes then while she
+went painstakingly about remolding a number of Halet's character
+traits for the second time. She still felt some misgivings about it;
+but if it became necessary, she probably could always restore the old
+Halet _in toto_.
+
+These, she told herself, definitely were powers one should treat with
+respect! Better rattle through law school first; then, with that out
+of the way, she could start hunting around to see who in the
+Federation was qualified to instruct a genius-level novice in the
+proper handling of psionics.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Novice, by James H. Schmitz
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