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the absence of additional information on the local water-dwelling life-forms, I see no harm in taking a short stroll. You have your minidrag with you, hand weapon, communicator, survival gear, and can walk for a considerable distance without traveling beyond range of my instrumentation. Why should you not enjoy your immediate surroundings? Are you not glad to be outside of myself?”
    Pursing his lips, Flinx once more studied the dunes and shallow bay. “It’s been my unfortunate experience that during my many travels my immediate surroundings have a way of jumping up and biting me on the ass. But you’re right, as usual. A walk would be nice.” He inhaled again of the fresh, pleasantly scented alien atmosphere. Above him, Pip whirled in effortless circles, scanning their surroundings.
    From beneath the
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rose the heavy, muffled sounds of machinery starting in motion. The ship would carry out the necessary mining of the sands on which it rested and was currently mimicking with a minimum of noise and disturbance. Long, tentacle-like manipulators would extend outward, away from the camouflaged vessel and beneath the surface, to collect the large volume of fossil carbon from which it would extract the other raw material it needed. Other devices would suck titanium sand into refining processors. Meanwhile, as there was nothing for him to do, and since he was already outside anyway, he decided he might as well follow the ship’s advice.
    He had no compunction about starting off into the dunes. This close to the
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it would warn him if it detected anything sizable in his immediate vicinity. Of course, it was often the case that the smaller an alien life-form, the more threatening it would turn out to be. He was not especially concerned. He had spent time on far more overtly dangerous worlds, among life-forms that made no attempt to disguise their lethality. As he climbed a low dune for a better view of his surroundings, he felt comparatively safe. No doubt this planet was home to dangerous creatures of one kind or another—but it was readily apparent from the little time he had already spent on its surface that this was, for example, no Pyrassis or Midworld.
    As he strolled, with Pip circling overhead, he tried to get a better look at the small, scurrying things that were darting about among the dunes. There was not enough light, and he had not brought one from the ship. That lack would force him to turn around soon enough, he knew. Most importantly, as he felt his talent beginning to return to strength, he could not perceive any of the kind of complex emotional resonance that would indicate he might be in the physical presence of a higher intelligence such as the dominant local species. For just an instant on first emerging from the
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he thought he might have picked up something emotive as well as alien. It had disappeared almost as soon as he had sensed it. Some mental illusion; a misperception on his part. He shook his head and smiled. No matter how increasingly proficient he grew in its use, his Talent could prove as erratic as ever.
    On a Class IVb world, he knew, it was as incumbent on him to stay out of view and not reveal himself to the locals as it was for the
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. The mere sight of an obviously otherworldly being like himself could be dangerously disruptive to the local culture.
    It was an effect, in fact, that he had had on others before.

CHAPTER
    3
    Ebbanai did not stop running until he reached home. The sight of the sturdy, domed structure standing foursquare and isolated in the first patch of tillable soil to shoulder its way between the dunes was a grateful reminder that he was not mad, and that he had not fallen into some loathsome, spirit-inspired nightmare. Beyond, barely discernible in the moonlight, other houses were just visible, spotted along the winding road that led to Metrel City.
    As he raced down the last gentle slope, a wandering perermp crossing from cover to cover got