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didn’t mix with other types of Humans, unless in formal groupings such as war or diplomacy. He could be—a spy!
    Against us? My lips rolled back from my fangs despite common sense. With the exception of Ersh, none of us approached Skalet’s paranoia about protecting our true nature. So, this Human wasn’t a threat to Ersh or our home. Then what was he? I tilted my ears forward as the male began to speak.
    â€œâ€”nice spot, S’kal-ru. We should have used this from the first—”
    His voice might have been pleasant, but Skalet’s smooth alto made it sound like something from a machine. “This is not a secure location, Uriel. We have an access window sufficient to make the exchange, no more. You brought the grav-sled?” At his nod and gesture to the shuttle’s sideport, she snapped: “Good. Then load it up. I’ll bring the plants.”
    My plants?
    This time when my lips curled back in threat, I left them there. What was Skalet planning? She had to mean the duras seedlings and the adult versions in Ersh’s greenhouse—these were the only plants on Picco’s Moon. While a constant source of drudgery for me, they were also the only source of living mass other than the local wildlife—and Tumblers—available to us.
    That source of living mass was crucial. We could fuel and maintain our bodies by eating and metabolizing in another form. But it took a sacrifice of web-mass to energy to distort our molecular structure, to cycle and hold another form. To become anything larger meant assimilating living mass into more web-mass. To replace lost web-mass? The same. It was the fundamental hunger, the appetite we couldn’t escape.
    Skalet was robbing Ersh’s supply? She must have her own source, not to mention plant life was hardly a rare commodity—anywhere but on this world. It didn’t make sense.
    Being without Ersh no longer seemed a holiday. I was faced with making a decision I shouldn’t have had to make—whether to trust one of my own or not. I panted, knowing my emotional turmoil risked my form integrity and trying to dump excess energy as heat before I really did explode. Not as they’d teased me, but the exothermic result of changing back to web-form without control would be more than sufficient to catch the attention of the Human, in his shuttle or out.
    I needed somewhere to think this through. Or explode. Either way, it couldn’t be here. I crouched as low as possible, cursing the bright Eclipse sunlight, then eased back, paw by paw, ears and nose straining for any sign of Skalet, until it was safe to risk going to all fours.
    Then I ran.
    Â 
    What life there is on Picco’s Moon prefers to bask deep in the valleys girdling the equator. It’s hot down there, for one thing, and the lowermost walls glisten with the steamy outflow of mineral-saturated water so important to the crystalline biology of everything native. Farther up, the walls are etched with pathways, aeons old, marking the migration of species to and from the drier, cooler surface for reasons that varied from escaping predation to a need to find the best conditions for facet cleaning. The annual plunge of the tendren herds over the rim of the Assansi Valley was, Ersh had assured me, one of the most dramatic events she’d ever seen. And she’d seen most.
    I couldn’t venture an opinion. Long before I joined Ersh on her Moon, the rim of the Assansi Valley had collapsed due to erosion, doubtless hurried along by thousands of impatient, diamond-sharp toes. Life here wasn’t easy.
    It wasn’t easy for visitors either. Had I sought the depths of a valley, my Lanivarian-self wouldn’t have survived an hour. As for forms that might, including Tumbler? I couldn’t trust my ability to hold them.
    So I avoided the Tumbler track leading to the nearest valley, the Edianti, and padded morosely around Ersh’s mountain instead.
    Not