The male silth plodded forward wearily at sixty miles an hour, pausing only long enough to uproot and wolf down one of the rare scrub trees directly in its path. Its three hundred tons of massive body shook the ground as the great hind legs thumped along, and every cell of it ached with hunger. It was warm blooded, despite its vaguely reptilian appearance. Only meat could satisfy its need for energy. But the great herds lay a thousand miles to the north of this barren land.

Inside the silth, the two-pound network of converted nerve cells that was Arnek brooded darkly in self-pity and resentment against the inflexible female logic of his mate. Ptarra had won her point, as she always did; now she might at least have shown some consideration for him and his silth!

"Arnek!" The call came sharply on one of the guard frequencies of the mental spectrum. "Arnek, stop lagging and get up here!"

He could feel his nerve body tense from horn tip to tail root, but he stifled his response and quickened his pace. Ahead, the trail left by Ptarra's legs led through a gully and up a rise to the lip of a small, stony basin. The four hundred tons of Ptarra's female silth squatted below the edge and the great head was half hidden as it peered downward around a boulder.

"Quiet!" Ptarra ordered sharply. Then, as Arnek switched from a thudding run to a smooth, creeping approach, the mental impulse took on a note of triumph. "Look down there and then tell me I don't know a ship trail from a meteor!"

The bowl was bright in the glare of the orange sunlight, but at first Arnek saw nothing. Then, as his gaze swept back toward the nearer section, he blinked his great eyes, only half believing what they registered.

It was a small thing, hardly taller than Arnek's silth--maybe not even as tall. But it was too regular and obviously artificial, a pointed cylinder, to be a meteorite. Between two of the base fins there seemed to be an opening, with a miniature ramp leading down to the ground. It looked like a delicately precise model of a spaceship from the dawn of time.

It was obviously too small to be more than a message carrier. Yet, as he looked more closely, he could see motion. Two tiny creatures, not more than six feet in height, were scurrying around near the base. Bright patches of fur or decoration covered them, and they seemed to move on two of their four limbs.

Arnek shivered down the length of 

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