Something seized her, then—a vortex. She tumbled, turned her ankle flaps, got back in line to cut across the turbulence. A Ythri female nearby, making a return swoop, looked at her oddly, mouth wide, and she saw that the tongue and palate were purple. A hunting sign?

Here came the gray cloud. She angled in, rising, and suddenly droplets washed over her. Fat droplets! Within moments, flying blind in the gray mist, she could feel herself gain weight as rivulets ran along her back. When she popped out into the shafts of light, she was above the canopy and Ythri were angling below the treetops. She coasted, watching, and when a clearing came she made herself dive lower, scooting under the dense branches.

Faster than she liked…

Still fifty meters above the ground, she watched the Ythri throng down on—wild pigs! The animals snarled up at the immense birds and the Ythri fell upon them with glad cries. Claws sank deep into the boar. The slaughter brought whooping calls as the sky predators savaged a dozen pigs within minutes. She had never seen anything like it.

Fraq rose from the bloody ground, jumping into the air effortlessly. He shot up to fly parallel to her circling. “Like stump legs, these are!” he shouted, and she supposed his twisted mouth bespoke fun. “Come!”

He veered away, and she labored to follow. Soon they came out onto a grassy plain and Fraq bellowed with obvious joy: “Sugarmeat!”

He dived immediately at a group of kangaroos. She zoomed over the killing, as Fraq sprang from one to the next, expertly slicing their throats with his claws as they turned to flee. He caught each at the top of the hop. The roos fell dead, legs still kicking. Blood stained the ground.

Rachel let her left wing drag to double back to see more and—it caught on a branch. Her “Uh!” made Fraq look up as she tumbled in a slow, stupid gyre—and smacked down hard on her left shoulder.

Sitting up, she was sure Fraq was laughing, a high booming cackle no human had heard before.

Her inboards told her no bones were broken, but her shoulder sure as hell hurt. Nearly as much as her pride.

6.

The Lunavator Bolo dropped down the black sky for them.

The grappler looked like a long cable plunging straight down vertically from the starscape, jaws yawning. Its tip speed at the grab platform was exactly zero, she knew, but Rachel braced herself for the yank.

It was a heavy load to haul. The Ythris were in the craft they had flown in on from the wormhole, in its own big chamber. The entire human vehicle held Rachel, Prefect Stiles, and staff, plus the booster crew, a complete interplanetary spacecraft ready to fly. Here it came—snap, and they were aloft, zooming up into the dead-black Lunar sky.

She watched the silvery ground rush away and then saw the latest comet head slide up from the horizon. It seethed with fogs, all captured by a gossamer envelope. Kilometers across and managed by robots, it glowed under sunlight focused by silvery mirrors. Water, food, fuel—the key to mastering the inner solar system lay in dropping iceteroids down the grav gradient, sliding them into useful orbits, and sucking them dry. Luna needed about one comet head a week these days, a burgeoning world.