us_ at a
disadvantage from the start."

"You think that they won't take us seriously because we are males?"

"Might just work out that way. I've tried to get through to them about
danger from the Throgs, telling them what it would mean to them to have
the beetle-heads settle in here for good. They just brush aside the
whole idea."

"Can't you argue that the Throgs are males, too? Or aren't they?"

The Survey officer shook his head. "That's a point no human can answer.
We've been sparring with Throgs for years and there have been libraries
of reports written about them and their behavior patterns, all of which
add up to about two paragraphs of proven facts and hundreds of surmises
beginning with the probable and skimming out into the wild fantastic.
You can claim anything about a Throg and find a lot of very intelligent
souls ready to believe you. But whether those beetle-heads squatting
over on the mainland are able to answer to 'he,' 'she,' or 'it,' your
solution is just as good as mine. We've always considered the ones we
fight to be males, but they might just as possibly be amazons. Frankly,
these Wyverns couldn't care less either; at least that's the impression
they give."

"But anyway," Shann observed, "it hasn't come to 'we're all girls
together' either."

Thorvald laughed again. "Not so you can notice. We're not the only
unwilling visitor in the vicinity."

Shann sat up. "A Throg?"

"A something. Non-Warlockian, or non-Wyvern. And perhaps trouble for
us."

"You haven't seen this other?"

Thorvald sat down cross-legged. The amber light from the window made
red-gold of his hair, added ruddiness to his less-gaunt features.

"No, I haven't. As far as I can tell, the stranger's not right here. I
caught stray thought beams twice--surprise expressed by newly arrived
Wyverns who met me and apparently expected to be fronted by something
quite physically different."

"Another Terran scout?"

"No. I imagine that to the Wyverns we must look a lot alike. Just as we
couldn't tell one of them from her sister if their body patterns didn't
differ. Discovered one thing about those patterns--the more intricate
they run, the higher the 'power,' not of the immediate wearer, but of
her ancestors. They're marked when they qualify for their disk and
presented with the rating of the greatest witch in their family line as
an inducement to live up to those deeds and surpass them if possible.
Quite a bit of logic to that.