“So high,” Wuu murmured. Only one rank lay above the fifteenth in Thranx military hierarchy, and that was Burrow Marshal level.

“What of the substance of these rumors, then, if not of truth?” Ryo pressed their sympathetic friend.

“The substance is the stuff of nightmare. As the smoke says, one of our ships was prowling out the Arm along the galactic plane and higher.” His whistles were short and sharp, the clicks brief and nervous. “It found something. Nobody seems to know precisely what. Many who know just the rumors are convinced it’s part of a complicated exercise to prepare us in case such a find should someday actually take place.

“It’s a hereditary fear, of course, this anticipation that some immensely powerful, malignant alien race is lying in wait for us Out There. It stems from our ancestral terror of the ancient surface world. Now all Hivehom is our burrow and other worlds as well, but the immensity of the night pit is a greater and more threatening surface than any we’ve ever faced.

“For all their boasting and tooth-gnashing, the AAnn have the same fear. Some horrible alien something awaits Out There—the terror that encircles a burrow dug by un-Thranx hands. The Throle that waited in hidden lair for our primitive ancestors.

“But if the rumors are true, that wandering ship found a horror that’s grounded in reality, not our racial subconscious …”

Ryo decided not to mention his knowledge of Brohwelporvot. Loquacious the fellow had so far been, and Ryo did not want to close down this wondrous source of information by letting the soldier know that the military secret, or rumor, or whatever, had been partially breached elsewhere.

“… and whatever they found,” he was concluding, “is rumored to be horrible beyond imagining.”

“Intelligent?” Wuu asked.

“As I say, I don’t even know that anything was actually found, only that rumor says it is some form of frightful life. Intelligent or not, I’ve no idea. There is intelligence, and then there is alien intelligence.

“The joint-shaking stuff comes not from those in a position to know about shape, which after all can only take so many forms, but from those whose specialties involve mental characteristics. Some rumors say the creatures are racially homicidal. That they have an inherent and inbred desire to kill anything and everything that comes their way, including even their own kind.”

“Cannibalistic,” Wuu muttered. “Like our ancestors.”

“It’s worse than that,” the soldier said grimly. “Our ancestors at least slew out of purpose. Apparently these things kill because of abstracts.”

“They don’t sound properly sentient to me,” the poet confessed. “Though I must say I know certain bureaucrats who might fit the same description.”

“It is not a description—only rumors. And it’s no joking matter.” He was so deadly serious that even the normally irreverent Wuu was compelled to subside.

“You simply haven’t heard the stories that have trickled down. Even among the bravest and most foolhardy of the highest ranks—those who are for mounting an attack on the AAnn home world—even they are absolutely terrified by the prospect the discovery of these creatures opens up. Which may, I remind you again, be nothing more than a clever training exercise conjured up to test the entire military caste.”