“You should write down everything you see and conjecture,” said Ram, “and we’ll eventually share it with every world.”

“One more need,” said the expendable. “A name for each of these worlds.”

“‘Garden’ is already taken,” said Noxon.

“I don’t think the worlds should be named for any of us,” said Wheaton.

“Never crossed my mind,” said Ram.

“Said the man with two wallfolds named for him,” said Noxon.

“I didn’t name them,” said Ram. “I’ve never been there.”

“How about Roach and Tripod?” asked Noxon.

“‘Roach’ is hardly expressive of a desire to get along with them,” said Wheaton.

“All that ‘Roach’ will mean in a generation or two will be the name of a world,” said Noxon.

“The human settlers will know from the start,” said Ram. “They may never let go of the associations. We need them to speak of the natives with respect, at least inside the shared wallfold.”

“Melody and Harmony,” said the alpha mouse.

“Just as I was thinking ‘Noise’ and ‘Nasty,’” said Noxon, “the mice suggested ‘Melody’ and ‘Harmony.’”

“As long as this is the world that’s called Melody,” said Ram. “We came here first.”

“And we have such lovely voices,” said Wheaton.

Other suggestions were made on other ships, but in the end the idea of Melody, though attractive to most, was superceded: One world was named Treble, since the Tripods had high and piping voices, while the other was named Bass, because the Scuttles made sounds that were so low that many of them could not be heard by humans. Neither species had anything that could be called a language yet.

Thirteen wallfolds on each world, with the native species each confined to the area where, in the original timestream, they had achieved full sentience. The mice were satisfied, and the natives didn’t get a vote, so everything proceeded peacefully.

Inside every wallfold that included a Noxon, he and the expendable made a jaunt into the far future, not just to see how their own colony had fared, but to check the wallfolds that contained either mice or natives, or both. The orbiters provided firm calendar dates based on stellar positioning, so that the Noxons could observe both the year when their ships arrived and the year when Earth had been invaded in the old timestream.