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“I accept the explanation. Consider me surprised.” Ambling over to where Flinx stood, the philosoph leaned back on his four trulegs. Even in this altered, partially elevated posture, his head only came up to Flinx's chest. Antennae fluttered impatiently.

Bending at the waist, Flinx let the tips of both feathery appendages make contact with his forehead before he reached out to gently touch them with his fingertips. Informalities concluded, the thranx stepped back to scrutinize his friendly assailant.

“You have succeeded in startling me with your presence.” The chitinous valentine-shaped head inclined in Clarity's direction. “It's evident that you've also already made contact with and no doubt also surprised your charming and now fully-recovered lady. I presume it would be too much to expect that you also intend to surprise us with the knowledge that your journey was successful and you have reestablished contact with the ancient weapons platform of the Tar-Aiym?”

“It would.” Strange, Flinx thought. Despite all he had been through, everything he had experienced, and as much as he had matured, he still felt like a little kid in the daunting presence of Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex.

“You searched extensively, I imagine?” the thranx pressed him.

As always with compound eyes, it was difficult to tell precisely where they were focused. “Not as extensively as I could have, I'm afraid. I—I got distracted,” he added evasively.

A scowling Tse-Mallory was clearly not pleased. “The fate of all civilization, of the entire galaxy, is potentially at stake and you allowed yourself to be distracted?”

Clarity turned quickly protective. “Let him explain. He's under a lot of pressure.”

“No one here would deny that.” Truzenzuzex's tone was as dry as the deserts of Blasusarr. “However, the gravity of the situation is such that there is little time remaining in which to indulge personal eccentricities.” Aware that he might be sounding too harsh, he added, “What about your headaches? Have they been as debilitating as ever? As frequent?”

“They come and go,” Flinx acknowledged. “Sometimes they're incapacitating, sometimes no more than irritating. I can never tell at the beginning when one's going to be really bad and when it's just going to fade away.”

Tse-Mallory sat down gingerly on a nearby Otoidian fungus. The spongy brown and gray growth compressed beneath his weight but did not collapse. “You said you were distracted, Flinx. What distracted you?”

Sitting down on the stone path, Flinx crossed his legs and let his arms droop toward one another. Taking a seat, Clarity rested one hand possessively on his right thigh.

“At first it was just depression, a general malaise. The Teacher did its best to help me rise above it, but I found that the only solution was for me to immerse myself in civilization. In sentience. To learn some things about it, and about myself.”

“And what did you learn?” Tse-Mallory inquired thoughtfully.

A pair of silvery etelel whizzed past between young man and mentor, their brushlike wings rotating madly to keep them aloft. Though they were indigenous to the cultivated underground gardens of Nur/New Riviera, they reminded Truzenzuzex of the similarly evolved subterranean fliers of his native Hivehom.

“I learned that humankind, and humanxkind, is worth saving. That whatever its faults and immaturities, the spark of intelligence is worth fighting to preserve.” His gaze met that of the older man and locked. “Even if that intelligence is nonhumanx and hostile. I learned that sentience is essential to any kind of progressive evolution, irrespective of its origins. I learned”—he turned away from Tse-Mallory and back to Clarity—“I learned about myself.”

“And what did you learn about yourself?” Tse-Mallory asked again.

Flinx hesitated a moment. Then he smiled at Clarity and at his old friends. On his shoulder, Pip snuggled closer. “That I can be happy. Maybe. But that I have a responsibility that, much as I might like to disregard it, I can't just set aside in order