The military attaché was present with his several associates. As trained soldiers, they easily and immediately assumed command. Ryo noticed how alert they appeared, how intense in posture and speech. That worried him as much as the presence of weapons had.

He’d observed humans in a warlike state months ago, when Bonnie and the lamented Loo had escaped from their military prison on northern Hivehom. That he could understand. Then they’d been motivated by fear. He wasn’t sure what was motivating the humans now.

With the humans on top and sides hanging on tightly, Ryo gently put the versatile harvester on lift. There was no point in trying to hug the earth now, and they didn’t have days in which to slog through the jungle. On full hover he set the craft for Paszex.

They set down into the trees at a sufficient distance to keep them off AAnn detection equipment. It took as long to negotiate the final short stretch of jungle separating them from the hive fields as it had to hover all the way from the glade.

The invaders had set down in a different orchard. As in the previous nightmare, smoke was rising from ruined ventilators and intakes. For some perverse reason the AAnn seemed to have selected Paszex as a test hive for their inimical soirees. Ryo had no idea how many small, isolated hives on Willow-wane and other colony worlds had suffered similar repeated attacks, but it was obvious that an alliance with the humans was more necessary than his own government was willing to admit.

Distant explosions sounded from the direction of the hive. “We will approach stealthily at first” Ryo was telling the military attaché, “and try to slip close to them. I found that if you threaten their shuttles’ engines they will—”

But the attaché was already making loud mouth noises which even the knowledgeable Ryo could not interpret. Then the humans fell like lice from the sides and rear of the harvester, and were running remarkably mobile zigzag patterns through the field of shoulder-high weoneon and asfi.

It’s doubtful that their numbers would have overawed the well-trained AAnn soldiery. On the other hand, the sight of several dozen alien creatures waving alien devices as they charged from supposedly empty jungle shrieking at the tops of their lungs and generally comporting themselves like dangerous mental defectives would be enough to unsettle the most self-possessed warrior of any race.

The AAnn guards fired wildly and often blindly while the humans picked their shots with surprising accuracy. Bonnie, Captain Sanchez, Dr. Bhadravati, and all those whom Ryo had come to think of as peaceful, gentle scholars were blasting away with an enthusiasm that made Ryo feel very sad for them. He was no longer frightened of the possibilities they presented. Fear had become pity.