, and when he
went to first-meal, barefoot and wearing only shorts and a knife, he
was greeted with enthusiasm and urged, almost forced, to eat heartily.
It was the last meal in quite a few days, he was concernedly told, that
he could be sure of.

"Hey, don't worry about that!" he reassured them, chuckling. "Being
small does give me some advantages--I can go for two or three days
without eating and without getting really hungry."

That drew some exclamations of disbelief. A Traiti who fasted for even
a single day would feel severe hunger pains, and three days would leave
one seriously weakened.

"An advantage that may balance his lack of claws and his thin skin,"
Hovan pointed out. "It seems a fair exchange; otherwise he faces the
same hazards we do."

"Yeah," Tarlac said. "It's a little hard to convince an overgrown
bobcat to pull its punches."

"N'derybach are not known for their peaceful dispositions," Hovan
agreed. "But if you are done eating, we should leave. You will want as
much daylight as you can get."

"Okay, let's go. I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

Moments later, Tarlac and Hovan were climbing into one of the clan's
null-grav cars. Hovan was confident that Steve was, as he'd said,
truly as ready as possible; there was no point in a last-minute
briefing, so they made the trip to the test area in companionable
silence.

Twenty n'liu from the clanhome, slightly over fifty kilometers, Hovan
set the null-grav car down in a clearing, reached into a storage
compartment in the control panel, and handed Steve the locator beacon.

Tarlac clipped it to the waistband of his shorts. "Twenty days,
right?" he said as he climbed out of the car.

"Five or ten," Hovan said with a smile. "May Lord Sepol guard and
guide you, ruhar." Then he lifted the car and pointed it toward the
clanhome. Steve was on his own now, totally out of contact, and Hovan
found himself suddenly apprehensive. N'derybach weren't the only
dangers in Homeworld's wilderness.

Chapter V

So this was Homeworld's wilderness. Tarlac watched Hovan's car
disappear, then checked out his surroundings to see what he'd have to
work with. It was almost uncomfortably warm now, at nearly mid-morning,
but that wouldn't last. The weather was clear; come nightfall, he'd
need a way to keep warm.

The clearing was about six meters across and roughly circular, with
traces of another camp near the northern edge, shaded by the broad
silv