She had to admit, Fraq was an admirable though strange male, proud and aloof. And those eyes…

For this event the Library had leased the Verdant Void exclusively and filled its dense forests with animals, many brought especially from Earth. (Thriftily, the Library had also discreetly posted microcameras throughout, and had already sold the media rights for more than the void lease cost.) The translators, who studied Ythri culture as rendered in conversations and a few grudgingly given texts—Earthside xenoists, sundry savants—all advised not to make it easy for the Ythri. This was the central “sport” of the Ythri life, as well as their food source. They’d risen to civilization not through agriculture but through managing vast populations of roaming, grazing animals, kept in the enormous forests and hunted daily—a complex herder society. All their culture focused on pursuit, stalking, attack, cooking, and feasting—the intense code of “bloodpride.” If they inferred that the prey here was being staked for easy plucking, or was tame, the aliens might well take grave offense.

Fraq sang forth again from his booming lungs, this time in Anglish, for her benefit. “No few be the winds that blow on our souls! Maychance our technics bring to bear! Stiffly upwind we go a-wing!”

More claw-clashing and hooting big-lung calls. The Ythri females added skittering grace notes, Rachel noted, flouncing their bright plumages. She guessed they were probably challenging the males to do better than they. The battle of the sexes was a galactic-scale universal. Or perhaps more like a dance.

The hooting Ythri cries now steamed with energy. Eyeing her companions, Rachel checked her own gear and wondered what it would be like to have feathers she could arch and bunch into control surfaces, the better to master the vagrant winds. The void managers had driven up the air circulation, turning the breeze into a near-gale, moist and muscular.

Into the brawling air, Fraq sheared off his perch at a steep angle. He opened to his full five-meter wingspan and floated without labor. Rachel took a breath of the thick, sweet air and leaped after him, arms opening to embrace the updraft with her wings.

The Library had set the atmospheric pressure higher to give Rachel a bit of help keeping aloft. The rich green canopy had breaks and corridors that funneled winds, creating turbulence and even vortexes, driven by the updrafts that rimmed the void and the descending currents that dove down at the center. A side effect—unavoidable, the Prefect Masoul had assured her with lofty tones—was increased vapor density, which meant… clouds. A gray puffball glided up from the distant floor, getting darker as it rose and droplets condensed.

Lunar rain! And Rachel was swooping into it, following Fraq. He was already hundreds of meters ahead, swooping in a V search pattern with other Ythris. She was playing catch-up in every turn they made, surveying the canopy. Some Ythri dove down in long swoops to peer under the broad, stretching branches of the tall trees. There was maneuver space for them because, under Lunar grav, the Earthly trees had shot up, many of them a hundred meters tall. Give life opportunities and it seizes them.