g before his ears could frame
the words. The actual sound followed the idea the way that thunder on
an ocean beach follows the lightning inward from far out over the
seas.

"The Fighting Room is ready. Clear to planoform, sir."

THE PLAY

Underhill was always a little exasperated the way that Lady May
experienced things before he did.

He was braced for the quick vinegar thrill of planoforming, but he
caught her report of it before his own nerves could register what
happened.

Earth had fallen so far away that he groped for several milliseconds
before he found the Sun in the upper rear right-hand corner of his
telepathic mind.

That was a good jump, he thought. This way we'll get there in four or
five skips.

A few hundred miles outside the ship, the Lady May thought back at
him, "O warm, O generous, O gigantic man! O brave, O friendly, O
tender and huge Partner! O wonderful with you, with you so good, good,
good, warm, warm, now to fight, now to go, good with you...."

He knew that she was not thinking words, that his mind took the clear
amiable babble of her cat intellect and translated it into images
which his own thinking could record and understand.

Neither one of them was absorbed in the game of mutual greetings. He
reached out far beyond her range of perception to see if there was
anything near the ship. It was funny how it was possible to do two
things at once. He could scan space with his pin-set mind and yet at
the same time catch a vagrant thought of hers, a lovely, affectionate
thought about a son who had had a golden face and a chest covered with
soft, incredibly downy white fur.

While he was still searching, he caught the warning from her.

_We jump again!_

And so they had. The ship had moved to a second planoform. The stars
were different. The Sun was immeasurably far behind. Even the nearest
stars were barely in contact. This was good Dragon country, this open,
nasty, hollow kind of space. He reached farther, faster, sensing and
looking for danger, ready to fling the Lady May at danger wherever he
found it.

Terror blazed up in his mind, so sharp, so clear, that it came through
as a physical wrench.

The little girl named West had found something--something immense,
long, black, sharp, greedy, horrific. She flung Captain Wow at it.

Underhill tried to keep his own mind clear. "Watch out!" he shouted
telepathically at the others, trying to move the Lady May around.

At on