From time to time one would simply wipe accumulated clith from its face, ignoring the freezing liquid that ran down head and neck. This redoubled their alienness in Ryo’s eyes.

Yet they were not immune to cold. Onrushing night brought a further drop in the temperature. The clith had ceased falling, which was some relief. At that point the monsters did the first sensible thing since leaving the base. They located a considerable hollow beneath several fallen logs and beckoned him inside. One of them removed a tiny, thin metal tube from its clothing. Ryo did not recognize the tube, but he was familiar with the faint aroma of the particles the monster sprinkled from it.

These fell on a pile of reasonably dry wood, which immediately burst into flame. Ryo edged as close to it as he dared, not wanting his pelt to catch fire. The monsters extended their bare hands toward the warming flames. The cold was deep enough now to trouble even them.

“Listen, I don’t know what you intend to do with me,” he said softly, “but I won’t make you a very valuable hostage.”

This brief speech caused them to begin making strange mouth noises at each other. Ryo tried to see how they formed the sounds, and it did not take long to figure out that they employed air from their lungs, or at least from inside their bodies. Modulation probably came from movements of their flexible mandibles and the peculiar fleshy organ soft creatures sometimes possessed inside their mouths. They did not communicate by making word-tones with their mandibles. Soft as the creatures were, that was not surprising.

They made the sounds in their throats, not at the mandibles. He did not have that internal mouth appendage, but he thought he could approximate some of the sounds.

A first try produced a mildy surprising little bark. He was not nearly as startled by the attempt as the monsters were. The smaller one, after a brief pause, looked straight at him and repeated the noise. He tried again, forcing himself to keep his mandibles apart and utilize only moving air.

This had an interesting effect on the creatures, for they once again set to gargling furiously among themselves.

He made the sound a third time. The monster responded with a different one. When Ryo tried to imitate it, he failed completely. His initial confidence evaporated. His mouth-parts simply could not duplicate that volume and pitch.

As an alternative, he responded with a whistle and click of his own. The monsters did not make any more noises. Instead, they huddled close to each other.

Ryo gave a mental shrug and pushed himself into a corner. He lay on his left side, watching them. It was dark outside now. The monsters still cradled their energy rifles, and they watched him intently.