But for the moment Babe was more important. The young org was awake and eager; he drained the water Org Rider brought him, then whimpered and crooned for more food. The grubs went into his capacious maw so fast that before the boy knew it they were gone, and he and his sleeping guest—or captive?—were still unfed. No matter. Tbe humans could go hungry. A new-hatched org had to eat or die.
The stranger woke briefly, just long enough to drink some water, look around for food, find a few scraps, and return to sleep. Org Rider sat with his hatchling, singing softly to it as his mother had taught him. It pleased him immensely as it responded; but it woke again to be fed, and the scraps that were left were meager. Another thousand breaths later the boy decided he had to forage once more. At the waterfall's edge he paused uncertainly, then dived for the shelter of the vegetation.
At once he realized he was in danger. The sound of the waterfall had drowned die sound that came from the sky, the shrieks of the angry adult orgs.
He burrowed under a thick cluster of tough gray- green vines, inedible and useless to him but not, he discovered, to some tiny biting creatures that disputed possession with him. It was many hundreds of breaths before he dared venture out.
He stood beside the vines, listening. The shrieks of the orgs were far away again. But there was something else; a clattering sound, more like the sound of the stranger's slamming machine than anything else the boy could remember hearing, but not much like that, either.
Something appeared over the lip of the canyon and dropped toward him. As it hit the pebbly fringe of the pool it made the clattering racket, was followed by something else like it, and then by the huge form of Redlaw, dropping easily down toward the boy.
"Hurry!" the giant cried. "There are orgs up the slope, and a Watcher ship cruising around. Get this stuff inside!"
"But I've got to find food," the boy protested.
"You won't have a mouth to eat it with if we don't get under cover," the giant promised grimly. Org Rider could not argue with that clear wisdom. The clattering things turned out to be collections of queer metal shapes, held together by vines. He took one batch, Red- law the other, and they managed to get them inside the cave.
Then, panting hard, the giant said proudly: "I found it, boy! I found his slamming machine! Couldn't carry the whole thing, it was banged up so bad. But I took all the loose pieces and brought them back."
From the floor the stranger who called himself Ben Yale Pertin propped himself on an elbow, staring at the collection of bits and pieces. He said something in his unintelligible speech and creakingly got to his feet. Dried blood was black on his nearly naked, half-starved body. Org Rider felt compassion for him, mingled with the dread and the anger. Not much of the anger was left, since Babe had not been harmed by the man's attempt to crack the egg and eat it, but there was still a vestigial core of dread.
The man shuffled over in his curious stumbling gait and thumbed through the hardware excitedly. He fumbled out a flat black oblong with a handle and touched it in some way that Org Rider did not understand; it sprang open, revealing queer-shaped shining things that looked like tools. With them the stranger began to assault the bangles he wore on his wrist. Org Rider involuntarily stepped back, remembering how those bangles the other stranger had seemed to speak to him with a voice of their own.
"Go to it, Ben Yale Pertin," Redlaw boomed lustily. "Fix up your gadgets for us! That's what I want you to do!"
"What is?" Org Rider demanded.
"Why, I want him to repair those trinkets of his. They're powerful things, boy! Weapons. Machines. I don't understand them, but I know they're something that's never been seen in the world before, and I want them."
"For what?"
"Ah," Redlaw boomed in delight, "for the big job that's ahead of us, son! This funny-looking fellow is our chance to deal with the Watchers. Nothing in the flatworld has a chance to break their power, certainly not your people. Not even me, and I know a good deal more than anyone else you've ever met about weapons and how to use them. But this lad has weapons I mean to have."
Org Rider stared at the scarecrow figure disbelievingly. "He's only a man," he said. "Not much of a man at that. Our potter was bigger than he is, and I beat the potter in fair fight."
"You won't beat this one, boy. He's stronger than you think."
"Stronger than the Watchers?"
"His weapons are! And he'll give them to us, I promise. Or—"
"Or what?" the boy asked, as Redlaw came to a halt.
After a moment the giant finished his thought somberly. "Or we'll kill him and take the weapons away from him," he said.
NINE
When they stepped out of the tachyon-transport chamber, Jon and Zara Gentry were greeted by a female creature, human in shape, but with great angel wings.
"Welcome to Ground Station One," she chimed in a voice like sweet bells. "My name is Valkyrie, and I am pleased to see the first representatives of Planet Earth arrive on the surface of Cuckoo."
Zara looked doubtfully at her husband, then reached out a hand, which Valkyrie took politely. Clearly she had been with human beings in some other environment before coming to Cuckoo; the custom of the handshake did not disturb her at all.
Beyond the silver girl floated a glittering cloud of Boaty-Bits that changed shape like a swarm of diamond bees. Over them, partly obscured by their dazzle, a T'Worlie swam gently in the air. From it came a shrill whistle that Zara's Pmal rendered into, "I identify you, Zara Doy."
Zara looked doubtfully at her husband, who shrugged. "I am Zara Doy," she said. "Or was. This is my husband. In our custom I have taken his name and so I am called Zara Gentry now."
The T'Worlie did not respond. In the languid gravity of Cuckoo it did not need to exert itself to fly, it was enough for it to ripple its wings slowly. From it there came a sharp but not unpleasant odor like the pickle jar in a warm pantry.
Neither of the Gentrys had ever seen individual Boaty-Bits or TWorlie in the flesh before—if "flesh" was the right word for the Bootians, whose chemistry was not very like organic. They had no difficulty in recognizing them from stereostage pictures, but nothing in the stereoviews had prepared them for the sense of whirling power in the Boaty-Bits, or the acrid odor of the T'Worlie. "My identity," it rapped metallically through the Pmal translator—how quickly, Zara thought, they became accustomed to listening to that rather than the shrill pipings of the T'Worlie itself— "can be described as one Nommie. We did have mutual identification on Sun One, but I perceive you are a different version."
"And I knew you, too," sang the silver girl sweetly. "Will you look around your new home?"
It was a confusing new home. From the inside it was hard to make out a plan, but Zara Gentry had seen stereo- stage images of it: spherical shells blown out of some transparent golden-hued material, linked together and outfitted to meet the needs of its inhabitants.
They had arrived in the largest of the bubbles, which was elevated above the others. From it Zara and her husband could look out to see a distant flat plain rimmed by mountains. They were themselves on a mountain, for she could see, just outside the bubble, rocky slopes that fell away endlessly. Turning to look out the other side, she saw a shelf of woodland, and then die rest of the mountain rising incredibly toward the sky. Its top was not in sight. Once, as they approached a Sheliak, the shapeless bun exuded a stalk that formed lips and made a sound their Pmal translators rendered as: "It gives joy to encounter you once more."