rstanding. He snapped off mind
questing at that instant and huddled where he was, staring up into the
blank turquoise of the sky, waiting--for what he did not know. Unless
it was for that other mind to follow and ferret out his hiding place,
to turn him inside out and wring from him everything he ever knew or
hoped to learn.

As time passed in long breaths, and he was not so invaded, he began to
think that while he had been aware of contact, the other had not. And,
emboldened, he sent out a tracer. Unconsciously, as the tracer groped,
he pivoted his body. It lay--there!

At the second touch he withdrew in the same second, afraid of
revelation. But as he returned to probe delicately, ready to flee at
the first hint that the other suspected, his belief in temporary
safety grew. To his disappointment he could not pierce beyond the
outer wall of identity. There was a living creature of a high rate of
intelligence, a creature alien to his own thought processes, not too
far away. And though his attempts to enter into closer communication
grew bolder, he could not crack the barrier which kept them apart. He
had long known that contact with the merpeople was on a lower, a far
lower, band than they used when among themselves, and that they were
only able to "talk" with the colonists because for generations they
had exchanged thought symbols with the hoppers and other unlike
species. They had been frank in admitting that while Those Others
could be aware of their presence through telepathic means, they could
not exchange thoughts. So now, his own band, basically strange to this
planet, might well go unnoticed by the once dominant race of Astra.

They--or him--or it--were over in that direction, Dalgard was sure of
that. He faced northwest and saw for the first time, about a mile
away, the swelling of the globe. If the strange flyer reported by the
merpeople was beside it, he could not distinguish it from this
distance. Yet he was sure the mind he had located was closer to him
than that ship.

Then he saw it--a black object rising by stiff jerks into the air as
if it were being dragged upward against its inclination. It was too
small to be a flyer of any sort. Long ago the colonists had patched
together a physical description of Those Others which had assured them
that the aliens were close to them in general characteristics and
size. No, that couldn't be carrying a passenger. Then what--or why?

The object swung out in a gr