Lively blue eyes stared back up at him. "The more reason to be careful just who we nestle up to."

The discussion was interrupted - not by the weather or the indigenous wildlife, not by the need to continue working, but by a reverberant, insistent howl. Standing on the little knoll debating interstellar relationships while taking the measure of the alien forest, they turned as one in the direction of the wailing, sonorous bellow. It was unfamiliar to all of them.

"What the hell is that?" Alwyn had walked quickly to the edge of the knoll to gaze with even more than his usual wariness in the direction of the landing transport. Idar's recording was forgotten. Kairuna stood behind the two of them, staring over their heads in the direction of the mournful, insistent howl.

It came not from the vicinity of the landing transport but from the vehicle itself. It was Kairuna who finally recognized it.

"That's the general alert."

"General alert?" The census taker frowned back at him. "What the hell's a 'general alert'? I know all sorts of situation-specific alarms, but I've never heard of a general alert. Especially not on surface." Her expression was bemused as she stared down the hill in the direction of the camp that had sprung up around the landing field that had been cleared to allow shuttle craft a safe place to set down.

"I told you!" Alwyn was irritatingly triumphant. "You can't trust a new world, no matter how benign a face it presents."

In reference to faces, Kairuna wished the annoying service specialist would take his elsewhere. It did not matter that he might be right: The botanist was tired of listening to the other man's ranting.

"Come on," he urged them. "We'd better go and see what's happening."

"General alert." Nodding smugly, Alwyn joined them in descending from the densely forested knob and retracing their steps. "I knew it."

Surrounded by members of the Chagos's staff, Burgess was staring intently at the tridee. Magnification was visual, not schematic, so he was able to observe the craft that had just joined them in orbit in all its alien glory. It was an impressive ship, at least twice the size of the Chagos. While the prevalent configuration was similar to that of the Chagos and all other vessels equipped with the universal variant of the KK drive, its design and execution differed in a multitude of significant respects.

"Not ours," one of the techs seated nearby murmured unnecessarily.

"Not thranx, either," the first officer added. "Unless they've been hiding something from us. Could it be one of those AAnn ships the thranx are always trying to warn us about?"

Burgess looked doubtful. "I've seen the AAnn schematics the thranx have provided. This design is much too sleek. Could it be Quillp?" Burgess longed for expertise in an area his crew, through no fault of their own, did not possess.