ive
had any audible form of speech. He withdrew a step or two then pulled at
the snare, drawing the cords away from the creature's slender ankles.
Rolling the thongs into a ball, he tossed the crude net back over his
shoulder.

"Friends?" he repeated again, showing his empty hands, trying to give
that one word the proper inflection, hoping the other could read his
peaceful intent in his features if not by his speech.

In one lithe, flowing movement the alien arose. Fully erect, the
Warlockian had a frail appearance. Shann, for his breed, was not tall.
But the native was still smaller, not more than five feet, that stiff V
of head crest just topping Shann's shoulder. Whether any of those
fittings at its belt could be a weapon the Terran had no way of telling.
However, the other made no move to draw any of them.

Instead, one of the four-digit hands came up. Shann felt the feather
touch of strange finger tips on his chin, across his lips, up his cheek,
to at last press firmly on his forehead at a spot just between the
eyebrows. What followed was communication of a sort, not in words or in
any describable flow of thoughts. There was no feeling of enmity--at
least nothing strong enough to be called that. Curiosity, yes, and then
a growing doubt, not of the Terran himself, but of the other's
preconceived ideas concerning him. Shann was other than the native had
judged him, and the stranger was disturbed, that self-confidence a
little ruffled. And also Shann was right in his guess. He smiled, his
amusement growing--not aimed at his companion on this cliff top, but at
himself. For he was dealing with a woman, a very young woman, and
someone as fully feminine in her way as any human girl could be.

"Friends?" he asked for the third time.

But the other still exuded a wariness, a wariness mixed with surprise.
And the tenuous message which passed between them then astounded Shann.
To this Warlockian out of the night he was not following the proper
pattern of male behaviour at all; he should have been in awe of the
other merely because of her sex. A diffidence rather than an assumption
of equality should have colored his response, judged by her standards.
At first, he caught a flash of anger at this preposterous attitude of
his; then her curiosity won, but there was still no reply to his
question.

The finger tips no longer made contact between them. Stepping back, her
hands now reached for one of the pouches at her belt. S