then had come the hunt for new silth forms, since the trip had aged the others beyond the power of reproduction, in spite of all their precautions.
Finding a silth form was never easy. There had been only three animals that had served in their entire old galaxy. Only a creature with several pounds of nerve tissues could hold the nuclear proteins of the sentient annas. And that required huge creatures, since nerve tissue was always so thinly scattered in normal flesh.
They had toured a quadrant of the new galaxy, studying planet after planet, before they found this world. Here the great beasts were barely sufficiently endowed with nerve fiber. Eight annas had survived this far. Six failed to stand the shock of entry and regrowth in the new silth forms. Now there was only the one pair--Arnek and Ptarra.
Left to himself, Arnek would have perished long ago. Their hope of retraining the clumsy forelegs of the silth forms had proved futile, and the nerve capacity was too low for them to exercise their full faculties. The converted nuclei of the cells was never quite efficient, either. And there seemed no hope of ever reproducing their own. Certainly no newly budded anna could survive the metamorphosis into these awkward bodies; that had been almost impossible for mature powers. Nor could a young anna survive long without a silth.
Four hundred years! And now--now, he thought, he was tired. It no longer mattered. His home lay in ruins eons away. Let Ptarra worry about it. He twisted his neck back to put his snout under his tail and tried to sleep, while hunger rumbled noisily in his stomach.
The sun was glaring down again when he awoke to the nudging of Ptarra's snout, and there was a roaring in the air above. Something rushed downwards, bellowing out thrust against gravity. It was another ship, landing over the wreckage of the first.
But it was no monster such as might have carried new and better silth forms. It was hardly larger than the first, though it somehow seemed to be better made. It landed smoothly and squatted on the ground, sending out signals.
"Another probe," Ptarra said. There was disappointment in her thoughts, quickly masked by cold logic. "Naturally, they'd wait to check with something like this. There will probably be several probes before they decide they have to investigate personally. All right! We'll give them something to worry about."
She was lunging to her feet, just as an opening appeared in the ship. This time something ran out, down the ramp--a tiny gadget of churning tracks and metal carapace, chuffing out shrill little motor sounds. It circled briefly and then headed across the bowl.
"Stop it," Ptarra ordered. "It may have a camera, so don't waste time. The less the builders learn about us, the better."
Arnek took off. His 

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