It was quiet in the module then. Ryo thought how very far from home he was and how farther still he was about to go. Very far from family and clan, and from Fal.

What would she make of the cryptic message he and Wuu had concocted and sent her? Would she forget him altogether? Assume he was lost mentally? He hoped she would simply sigh deeply and return to the Nursery in hope of his reappearance. Then again, she might seek another premate.

A mental shake shattered the thoughts like little crystals. He was pursuing a dream the way an addict pursues his next fix. All that mattered now was getting safely off-planet.

His nervousness increased exponentially as they walked up the ramp to the shuttle entrance.

“What if the identification fails?” he whispered to Wuuzelansem. “What if? …”

“Everything will be fine if you’ll simply relax and look normal,” was the poet’s response. “Your antennae are so stiff they’re going to crack. Straighten your posture, incline your thorax properly, and act like you’re bored by the whole procedure, offspring.”

“Yes … sire.”

There was a pause while their names were checked against the passenger manifest A line of Thranx waited to ascend the ramp. A single official stood there, looking indifferent as the machinery monitored both manifest and personal identification.

He didn’t even look up as Ryo and Wuu passed through and announced themselves. Their ident slips were processed, checked, and efficiently spat back at them by the boarding console.

Wuu appeared slightly miffed as they continued up the boarding ramp into the shuttle. He hadn’t been recognized.

“Not a reader or listener,” he grumbled, referring to the official who’d passed them through. “Civilization is really run by unaesthetic illiterates.”

“Is there then such a thing as an aesthetic illiterate?”

They launched into a discussion so animated and intense that Ryo almost didn’t notice when the shuttle’s jets hissed and the thick-bodied craft lifted into the air.

Airborne, Ryo thought in disbelief. Actually airborne. Like a hesornic. Like a dream.

They quickly rose above the clouds. Only a dim red line marked the horizon where the sun of Willow-wane was trying to hide. Airbornel What must it have been like, he wondered, for his distant ancestors whose wings had been, for the mating season at least, functional instead of vestigial? Was intelligence such a good trade-off for the momentary power of flight?

Before long rockets took over from the-starving jets. The shuttle was now above the highest clouds, and the sky was fading from blue to purple, aging much like a Thranx. Many songs had employed the analogy. Then they were swimming through the long night and the stars were brighter than they’d ever been.

A scream rose from behind Ryo, down the central aisle. A female had tumbled from her saddle and lay on her back, kicking at the air with all four legs, pawing at it with her hands.

Two attendants rushed to her. One clamped a breathing pack over her thorax and administered air from a tank while the other injected a drug directly down her throat