to hook one claw over a miniature control. Almost immediately, radio waves began forming a recurrent pattern along their nerves, coming in long and short pulses.
Half an hour later, there was another faint quiver of radio waves from space, this time completely modulated. Even Arnek could realize that it was on the same frequency, but dopplered to indicate something approaching their world. He stopped browsing for the few stunted trees and came back to join his mate.
Night was just falling. Ptarra led them back toward the rock ledge from which they had first spied the probe. There was a large fissure in the rocks into which they could just squeeze, and which would hide them from the sight of any landing craft.
A moon came up, and they could see the depression clearly in its light. Now Arnek saw the larger human slipping across the ground toward the wreck of the probe. It darted about frantically, but with an appearance of purpose. A few moments later, it was retreating, carrying a load of packages with it.
"It seems almost intelligent," he said softly.
He strained to follow the faint wash of impressions on the lower band. There was something there that struck a familiar chord in his thoughts, but he could not decode it.
"Just instinct," Ptarra dismissed it with cool logic. "A female seeking food for its injured mate."
Arnek sighed uncomfortably. "It doesn't seem female," he objected.
"Another hunch? Don't be silly, Arnek. It has to be a female. The larger, stronger and more intelligent form is always female. How else could it care for the young? It needs ability for a whole family, while the male needs only enough for himself. The laws of evolution are logical or we wouldn't have evolved at all."
There was no answer to such logic, other than the vague discontent Arnek felt. And he knew that was only because of his envy of the greater ability of the other sex. He settled back, ruminating hungrily and listening to the signal from space.
The little box from the wreck was silent now, but the other signals were stronger.
Ptarra nodded. "They're coming. After four hundred years, we have a chance. New silths to breed. A chance to reproduce ourselves and multiply. A new universe for our own." There was immense satisfaction with self in her thoughts. "Well, I earned it!"
Arnek could not deny it. It had been more than four hundred years in this galaxy. Eight thousand of them had set out, leaving behind a small, ancient universe being wrecked by the horror of an exploding supernova. They had been driven out from the planetary conquests of a billion years and had sought refuge across intergalactic space to this universe.
A hundred of the marvelously adapted silths of their universe had survived the eons of suspended animation to preserve their occupants. And 

 Prev. P 4/12 next