excellent health a month after the search was abandoned. That was not
all. He had one of the mountain cloudcats with him, and thanks to his
Talent--so minimal the Order had not accepted him, but there--he had
managed to establish communications with her. Very rudimentary ones,
to be sure, but quite adequate to establish their intelligence.

"That was a severe blow to the colony. With the cloudcats proven to be
intelligent, Imperial law required that the colony be abandoned.
However, it is the only place that so-called 'miracle weed' can be
grown successfully. It could not be obtained by trading, because the
cloudcats have no hands and no interest in farming. Since miracle-weed
is the only source of several valuable pharmaceuticals including
rapid-heal, the Emperor sent Medart in to see if anything could be
salvaged.

"He somehow got the idea that the cloudcats originated in a warmer
climate than Ondrian's. Nobody believed it, of course; geological
studies done when it was first discovered showed Ondrian's climate had
never varied enough to produce such an evolutionary difference. And
with their lack of hands, they could not possibly have built spaceships
to bring them from another planet.

"It turned out, of course, that Medart was absolutely correct. The
cloudcats--or perhaps I should say our young explorer's friend
Starflower--had learned to understand English, and could indicate a yes
or no answer to questions. Medart talked to Starflower for several
days, and found out that they were in fact not only from a different
planet, but from a different system entirely.

"They had been transported to Ondrian more than ten thousand years ago
by beings they called simply the Others, who had discovered the
cloudcats' sun was about to go nova. The cats elected to stay in the
same stellar neighborhood, but according to them the Others were
preparing to embark on a racial expedition of their own, one of
considerable magnitude. From what Starflower told Medart, it seems
they left this galaxy entirely.

"Medart went back into the mountains with Starflower, remaining there
for two weeks. When he returned, he had somehow gotten the cloudcats
to agree to let the colonists have free run of the equatorial zone,
though they must stay out of the mountains unless they are invited. In
return, he gave the cats the right to travel on Imperial Navy ships at
any time. So the Empire got its pharmaceuticals, and the cloudcats