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“I beg your pardon?” Gaber’s apology was more of a reprimand.

“Their wisdom is Thek wisdom and is not readily applicable to our human conditions.”

“I never implied that it was. Or should be.” Gaber was distinctly annoyed with Kai.

“No, but wisdom should be relevant. Knowledge is something else, but not necessarily distilled from wisdom.”

“My dear Kai, they understand reality, not just the illusion of a very brief and transitory lifespan such as ours.”

The telltale, as sensitive to thermal readings as to movement of any object larger than a man’s fist, rattled, informing the two men that they were passing over living creatures, at that moment hidden from their eyes by the thick vegetation. The rattle turned into a purr as the sensitive recorder indicated that the life form had already been tagged with the telltale indelible paint with which the various scouting teams marked any beast they observed.

“Life form . . . no telltale,” exclaimed Gaber as the rattle occurred after a short interval of silence.

Kai altered his course in the direction of the cartographer’s finger. “And moving from us at a fast rate.” Gaber leaned across to the windboard to check the telltagger, nodding to Kai to indicate it was ready and set.

“Maybe it’s one of those predators Varian’s been trying to catch,” Kai said. “Herbivores go about in groups. Hang on, there’s a break in the jungle ahead of us. It can’t possibly swerve.”

“You’re directly over it,” Gaber said, his voice rough with excitement.

Both beast and airborne sled reached the small clearing simultaneously. But, as if it recognized the danger of an open space with an unknown enemy above it, the beast was a bare flash, a stretched and running, mottled body, ending in a stiffly held long tail—all the retinal afterimage Kai retained.

“Got it!” Gaber’s triumphant yell meant the creature had been telltagged. “I’ve film on it, too. The speed of the thing!”

“I think it’s one of Varian’s predators.”

“I don’t believe herbivores are capable of such bursts of speed. Why, it outdistanced this sled.” Gaber sounded amazed. “Are we following it?”

“Not today. But it’s tagged. Enter the grid coordinates, will you, Gaber? Varian’s sure to want to come look-see. That’s one of the first predators we’ve been able to telltag. Luck, sheer luck, coming over that clearing.”

Kai veered back to his original course, slightly north, toward the first body of water that Berru had sighted.

It ought to be near the inland sea which was shown on the satellite pictures. Reality, thought Kai echoing Gaber. The original satellite photos had been theoretical, in one sense, since they’d had to be shot through the ever-present cloud cover; while Kai, by flying over the depicted terrain, encountered reality, the direct experience. Kai could appreciate the essence of Gaber’s comment: what an incredible experience it would be to watch this planet evolve, to see the land masses tortured and rent by quake, shift, fault, deformation and fold. He sighed. In his mind, he speeded up the process like the quickly flipped frames of single-exposure prints. It was hard for short-lived man to comprehend the millions of years, the billions of days that it took to form continents, mountains, rivers, valleys. And clever as a geophysicist might be in predicting change, such realities as geophysics had been able to observe in its not so lengthy history always exceeded projections.

Gaber’s life instrument beeped constantly now, and with no counter-burr from the telltale they diverted again, this time to tag a large herd of tree-eaters.

“Don’t recall pics of monsters like that before,” Kai told Gaber as they circled round the creatures, now partially visible through the sparse forest cover. “I want to get a good look. Set the camera and the telltale, Gaber. I’m coming around. Hang on.”

Kai turned the air sled, braking speed as he matched the forward motion of the lumbering beasts. “Scorch it, but they’re the biggest things I’ve seen yet!”

“Keep up,” Gaber cried in nervous excitement, for Kai was skimming