e
guest house garden.

She opened her eyes, looked around. Her heart was thumping rapidly.
The experience couldn't have lasted more than four or five seconds,
but it had been extremely vivid, a whole, compact little nightmare.
None of her earlier experiments at getting into mental communication
with TT had been like that.

It served her right, Telzey thought, for trying such a childish stunt
at the moment! What she should have done at once was to make a
methodical search for the foolish beast--TT was bound to be
_somewhere_ nearby--locate her behind her camouflage, and hang on to
her then until this nonsense in the garden was explained! Talented as
Tick-Tock was at blotting herself out, it usually was possible to spot
her if one directed one's attention to shadow patterns. Telzey began a
surreptitious study of the flowering bushes about her.

Three minutes later, off to her right, where the ground was banked
beneath a six-foot step in the garden's terraces, Tick-Tock's outline
suddenly caught her eye. Flat on her belly, head lifted above her
paws, quite motionless, TT seemed like a transparent wraith stretched
out along the terrace, barely discernible even when stared at
directly. It was a convincing illusion; but what seemed to be rocks,
plant leaves, and sun-splotched earth seen through the wraith-outline
was simply the camouflage pattern TT had printed for the moment on her
hide. She could have changed it completely in an instant to conform to
a different background.

Telzey pointed an accusing finger.

"See you!" she announced, feeling a surge of relief which seemed as
unaccountable as the rest of it.

The wraith twitched one ear in acknowledgment, the head outlines
shifting as the camouflaged face turned towards Telzey. Then the
inwardly uncamouflaged, very substantial looking mouth opened slowly,
showing Tick-Tock's red tongue and curved white tusks. The mouth
stretched in a wide yawn, snapped shut with a click of meshing teeth,
became indistinguishable again. Next, a pair of camouflaged lids drew
back from TT's round, brilliant-green eyes. The eyes stared across the
lawn at Telzey.

Telzey said irritably, "Quit clowning around, TT!"

The eyes blinked, and Tick-Tock's natural bronze-brown color suddenly
flowed over her head, down her neck and across her body into legs and
tail. Against the side of the terrace, as if materializing into
solidity at that moment, appeared two hundred pounds of supple, rangy