“I assure you everything will turn out all right” He put first a truhand and then a foothand on her arm. “A society functions because its citizens choose to abide by its laws.”

“That sounds funny coming from you.”

“So I am selective.” There was no accompanying gesture of humor. Bonnie wondered if that was for the benefit of the watchful Elder.

“The matter must be discussed, Bonnie. It will take time.”

As it turned out, it did not.

An echo of the thunder they’d hidden from earlier now rose out of the south. It grew to deafening proportions as half a dozen sleek shuttlecraft passed low overhead. They commenced a wide turn that would bring them circling back toward Paszex.

Bonnie and the other humans had a bad moment until they noticed the loud and clearly celebratory reaction of the hivefolk. “Our ships,” Ryo told her in response to the unasked question.

“Late again,” muttered the Elder Kerarilzex, “but at least in force this time. I hope others caught the command ship before it could flee orbit. Words will be composed,” he added darkly. “This is the fifth time in the last seventy years. Other hives endure worse. I do not believe the people will stand for it much longer.”

“And well you shouldn’t,” Bonnie agreed in passable Low Thranx.

The Thranx commanding officer, of the fifteenth rank, had stared through his compensating viewer as his modest armada passed low over the site of Paszex. He made mental note of the two ruined AAnn warshuttles, the cluster of AAnn prisoners, the armed hivefolk, and the astonishing aliens in their midst.

There was no immediate way of ascertaining which side the horrific bipeds were on. He could not fire on them since they were mixed in with the hivefolk. It was very frustrating.

The military of both species were livid. The bureaucrats were most upset. The politicians were confused and angry. The scientists were disturbed.

Each group had dreamed of holding center stage when an intelligent, space-traversing race was contacted. Instead, the moment of glory had been usurped by some secretive researchers, a mutinous human crew, and an outcast alien agriculturalist.

There were pains and problems. The parents of the boys and girls who’d traveled to Willow-wane as part of the Project did their best to muster a feeling of betrayal. True, they had agreed to commit their children to Project control in return for a year of free room, board, and education, but to some of them the whole business still seemed like kidnaping. None had thought to inquire as to the precise location of the Project school or its distance from their homes.

The idea of lifting a group of impressionable youngsters and then plunking them down among a bunch of pale wormlike monsters grated against the public conscience. No one, of course, gave a thought to the effect the children might have had on the impressionable Thranx larvae.