reeable....

The trouble might have begun, Telzey decided, during the night, within
an hour after they arrived from the spaceport at the guest house
Halet had rented in Port Nichay for their vacation on Jontarou. Telzey
had retired at once to her second-story bedroom with Tick-Tock; but
she barely got to sleep before something awakened her again. Turning
over, she discovered TT reared up before the window, her forepaws on
the sill, big cat-head outlined against the star-hazed night sky,
staring fixedly down into the garden.

Telzey, only curious at that point, climbed out of bed and joined TT
at the window. There was nothing in particular to be seen, and if the
scents and minor night-sounds which came from the garden weren't
exactly what they were used to, Jontarou was after all an unfamiliar
planet. What else would one expect here?

But Tick-Tock's muscular back felt tense and rigid when Telzey laid
her arm across it, and except for an absent-minded dig with her
forehead against Telzey's shoulder, TT refused to let her attention be
distracted from whatever had absorbed it. Now and then, a low, ominous
rumble came from her furry throat, a half-angry, half-questioning
sound. Telzey began to feel a little uncomfortable. She managed
finally to coax Tick-Tock away from the window, but neither of them
slept well the rest of the night. At breakfast, Aunt Halet made one of
her typical nasty-sweet remarks.

"You look so fatigued, dear--as if you were under some severe mental
strain ... which, of course, you might be," Halet added musingly. With
her gold-blond hair piled high on her head and her peaches and cream
complexion, Halet looked fresh as a daisy herself ... a malicious
daisy. "Now wasn't I right in insisting to Jessamine that you needed a
vacation away from that terribly intellectual school?" She smiled
gently.

"Absolutely," Telzey agreed, restraining the impulse to fling a
spoonful of egg yolk at her father's younger sister. Aunt Halet often
inspired such impulses, but Telzey had promised her mother to avoid
actual battles on the Jontarou trip, if possible. After breakfast, she
went out into the back garden with Tick-Tock, who immediately walked
into a thicket, camouflaged herself and vanished from sight. It seemed
to add up to something. But what?

Telzey strolled about the garden a while, maintaining a pretense of
nonchalant interest in Jontarou's flowers and colorful bug life. She
experienced the most curio