missed
seeing a small rock. His heel turned on it. He sat down, hard.

The ankle hurt. Pid curled his Man-lips and crawled back into the
bush.

The Man-shape was too unspeakably clumsy. It was offensive to plod one
step at a time. Body held rigidly upright. Arms wobbling. There had
been a deluge of sense-impressions in the Dog-shape; there was dull,
stiff, half-alive inadequacy to the Man-shape.

Besides, it was dangerous, now that Pid thought it over, as well as
distasteful. He couldn't control it properly. It wouldn't look right.
Someone might question him. There was too much about Men he
didn't--couldn't--know. The planting of the Displacer was too
important a thing for him to fumble again. Only luck had kept him from
being seen during the sensory onslaught.

The Displacer in his body pouch pulsed and tugged, urging him to be on
his way toward the distant reactor room.

Grimly, Pid let out the last breath he had taken with his Man-lungs,
and dissolved the lungs.

What shape to take?

Again he studied the gate, the Men standing beside it, the building
beyond in which was the all-important reactor.

A small shape was needed. A fast one. An unobtrusive one.

He lay and thought.

The bush rustled above him. A small brown shape had fluttered down to
light on a twig. It hopped to another twig, twittering. Then it
fluttered off in a flash, and was gone.

That, Pid thought, was it.

* * * * *

A Sparrow that was not a Sparrow rose from the bush a few moments
later. An observer would have seen it circle the bush, diving,
hedgehopping, even looping, as if practicing all maneuvers possible to
Sparrows.

Pid tensed his shoulder muscles, inclined his wings. He slipped off to
the right, approached the bush at what seemed breakneck speed, though
he knew this was only because of his small size. At the last second he
lifted his tail. Not quite quickly enough. He swooped up and over the
top of the bush, but his legs brushed the top leaves, his beak went
down, and he stumbled in air for a few feet back-forward.

He blinked beady eyes as if at a challenge. Back toward the bush at a
fine clip, again up and over. This time cleanly.

He chose a tree. Zoomed into its network of branches, wove a web of
flight, working his way around and around the trunk, over and under
branches that flashed before him, through crotches with no more than a
feather's-breath to spare.

At last he rested on