,
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