The felisian guest house was everything the elders had promised, which was impressive considering that the cat people had absolutely no experience of entertaining human guests. Felisians fully human in appearance brought their meals to them in the lavish dining room, apologising for the lack of variety in greens and vegetables.

     The Tharians understood, knowing that the felisians were fully carnivorous and had neither the need nor the desire to eat plants. When Thomas found that the waiter could speak the Tharian common tongue he asked him where they'd gotten the potatoes and carrots which, though small, had an intense flavour that they liked.

     "They grow wild all through the city," the man replied, looking ashamed and embarrassed at the admission that he was, in effect, serving his guests weeds. "When we learned that you ate them, though, we started cultivating them, to try to understand you better. We even tried to eat them." He screwed up his face in disgust, then started in shock in case he'd offended the offworlders, but the Tharians just laughed and he returned to the kitchen in relief.

     "The city builders must have been omnivores, like us," speculated Lirenna. "Were they the ancestors of the felisians, I wonder, or did the two races live side by side?"

     "That's one of the questions Saturn's trying to answer," replied Strong. "The truth may be buried somewhere in the city he's exploring, although I doubt there's anything left after such a long time."

     "Divination spells can reveal a lot from the very slightest remains," said Thomas. "He'd do well to let Braddle loose on the problem."

     "The nome?" said Jop Sonno, the crewman Matthew had chosen to join the shore leave party. He was a cavalryman who'd served with distinction in the rak wars; the continuing struggle by the Kingdom of Belthar to eradicate the last vestiges of the old Shadowarmy, now controlled by the rak DarkThorne. "Is he really a wizard?"

     "He certainly is," agreed Lirenna, "but his speciality is the acquisition of knowledge rather than worldly power."

     "We should have brought him with us," said Thomas. "Him and Karog, to show that, in our society, humanoids of all races can live together in peace. It might reassure them that we mean them no harm."

     "They already know all about our society," pointed out Strong, glaring suspiciously at a waiter hovering in the corner in case he was needed. "They've had spies among us for years. Decades maybe. Who knows how many of them there still are on Tharia, insinuating themselves into the highest seats of power?"

     "We're much more of a threat to them than they are to us," said Thomas, though. "They're terrified of us."

     "A frightened enemy is the most dangerous," said Strong, eying him closely. "Never forget that."

     "All the more reason to do everything we can to allay their fears. We could show them the dozens of minor races inhabiting Tharia that we could, in theory, eradicate or enslave but which still live free alongside us. The lizard men. The centaurs. The various races of giants..."

     "The Fu Nangians have been using giants as slave labour for centuries," said Jop Sonno, gesturing at the wizard with a fork. "They breed them for strength and docility..."

     "For the sake of the Gods!" hissed Thomas urgently, looking over his shoulder to see if the felisian had overheard. "That's exactly what they don't need to know right now!"

     "They know already, if their spies have been in Fu Nang as well as Belthar," pointed out the cavalryman, however. "They may well know more about the Fu Nangians than we do."

     "Then they know that we have nothing to do with them and revile their whole way of life," said Thomas. "Ask yourself this. If you were a felisian, would you be afraid of us?"

     "Quite frankly, yes," replied Jop Sonno soberly. "I don't believe Belthar would treat these people dishonourably, but what would happen if people from all the lands of Tharia and all walks of life could come and go freely between our two worlds? Just think of the kind of people you see in a typical alehouse."

     "That's never going to happen," said Thomas, however. "You can't teleport between different planes of existence, and you can't walk the planes from our world to this one because of the spatial distance between them. Our ship and those possessed by the felisians are the only way of getting here. There's not going to be any mass invasion by ordinary people."

     "Thank the Gods," agreed Lirenna. "All they have to worry about is the University and the Beltharan government."

     She glanced across at Thomas and their eyes met for a moment before she looked away again. Yes, thought Thomas. She probably understands the felisians better than any of us. Her homeland, the valley of Haven, was in very much the same situation, facing the constant threat of an invasion by outsiders.

     The plight of the felisians was worse, of course, because they had already suffered the horrors of an occupation and their enemies had shown a complete disregard for the lives of their slaves. Their minds must have been permanently warped with fear and mistrust. A trauma that was afflicting the entire race. How terrified they must be to have the Tharian ship orbiting overhead!

     Lirenna glanced across at the waiter and her eyes suddenly glowed with such sorrow and compassion that Thomas felt his love for her rising to heights they'd never reached before. All she wanted right now, he saw, was to hold them in her arms and promise them everything was going to be all right. But was it? What if their fears were well founded and the Beltharans had an agenda they hadn't yet revealed?

     After dinner the felisians showed them to their rooms. Thomas and Lirenna were delighted to find that they'd been given a double room, with a luxurious double bed of a size and softness they hadn't enjoyed since leaving Haven. They were tempted to try it out right away, but first they decided to see something of the city. This was, after all, their first chance to explore the homeland of the people they'd been speculating about ever since the sabotage incidents had begun.

     The felisians were surprised to see them leaving, and for one anxious moment Thomas feared they might try to stop them, but the doorman merely suggested they take a couple of bodyguards with them, in case they came upon any of the wild animals that occasionally entered the city. Thomas suspected he was really afraid that some of the felisians they would meet might react aggressively to seeing them, perhaps thinking that they could drive these new invaders away with a sufficient show of force. He played along with the doorman, though, not wanting to cause an incident, and assured him that they could easily defend themselves against any 'wild animals' they might meet. The doorman nodded. He held the door for them as they passed through, and the two wizards stepped out into the streets of Place-of-Toil.

     As they walked, Thomas told Lirenna of his first visit with Saturn and their examination of the Master's ship, and they glanced at the silver torpedo shape as they passed it. The holes in the side had been covered with plates of metal and there was no sign of anyone working on it.

     "They're trying to pretend it's fully operational," said Lirenna, making sure there were no felisians close enough to hear her.

     Thomas nodded. "More proof that they have very few ships," he said. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if they recall their entire fleet to stand station around the Jules Verne, to try to make out they've got whole armadas of them. They don't understand yet how completely Seskip and Saturn read the minds of the two they captured."

     "They will, though," replied Lirenna. "As soon as Haskar and the other one are allowed to go home. Haskar may already have told them, when he was speaking to the Captain of the silver ship."

     "Well, if he did, he did. We'll all know everything about each other before long, so it doesn't really matter."

     "Funny that they haven't asked for him back yet," said the demi shae, frowning. "Haskar and the female still back on Tharia. You'd have thought the elders would have demanded their release right away."

     "They probably will before long," replied Thomas, "but they're scared to stir things up just yet. They're still scared that Strong'll demand the extradition of every felisian involved in the sabotage incidents, and that'll involve all the elders, as well as all the full metamorphs. Incidentally, did you notice that every felisian in the guest house was a full metamorph? Not a tail or a whisker to be seen anywhere."

     "And both the waiter and the doorman spoke flawless common," agreed Lirenna. "They've staffed the guest house with their elite. To impress us? Or to deceive us?"

     Thomas nodded. "Make us think there's more of them than there really are. You know, that doorman looked a little familiar. I'm pretty sure I saw him wandering around the valley dressed as a leatherworker. If so, he would have been one of the saboteurs."

     "Makes sense," said Lirenna. "They probably sent every full metamorph they had to Tharia. Remember they even sent a young boy to infiltrate our house in the guise of a pet cat! You wouldn't risk the life of a child unless you were desperately short of manpower."

     "Yes, and I've still got a score to settle with that kid," glowered Thomas. "The way he took shameless advantage. The things he did..." He glanced sideways at his wife, but she just smiled in amusement.

     They could see that the city had once been impressive, with needle-like towers reaching high into the sky and great blocks of buildings covering dozens of acres. It had been built to a heroic scale, as if the Gods Themselves had come to earth and built dwellings for themselves. Now, though, every building showed some sign of damage and some had been completely destroyed, as if by powers and forces far beyond anything possessed by mere humanity.

     One area of the city a hundred yards across had been completely leveled, with a crater in the centre. Thomas had seen such craters before. Tharia was covered with them, each one marking the spot where a particularly large shooting star had survived its passage through the atmosphere to strike the ground more or less intact. This crater had a different look to it, though. A strange feel to it, that somehow told the two wizards that it had been caused by a weapon of unparalleled power. They shivered as they contemplated it, and Lirenna moved close to her husband, who put an arm around her.

     "Such power," said the demi shae, more to herself than to Thomas, "such strength, and they used it to make war on each other. Is this what happens without the guiding force of the Gods?"

     Thomas had no answer to that and they walked on in silence.

     They saw felisians here and there, but nothing like the crowd Thomas and Saturn had seen on their first visit. Maybe they always went home at this time of day, or maybe they were hiding in fear from the intruders from another world. The ones they saw regarded them strangely before hurrying past, as if they thought the wizards might cast spells at them just for the hell of it. Lirenna tried to speak to one of them, a strangely beautiful woman with a furry face, pointed ears and a long, sinuous tail who walked with the natural grace and poise of a shae girl, but her bright green eyes widened with fear as the demi shae approached and she hurried into the nearest building, slamming the door behind her.

     "Don't take it personally," said Thomas, seeing the hurt look on his wife's face. "Remember what they've been through, how previous visitors have treated them."

     Lirenna nodded, but the hurt look remained and she made no further attempt to talk to the natives.

     Suddenly, though, she froze, listening intently, and Thomas froze beside her, bringing the words of his spells to the forefront of his mind. "What is it?" he hissed, looking around for whatever had alarmed her.

     "I heard something," she whispered back. "Behind us. I think we're being followed."

     Thomas allowed himself to relax a little, although he remained alert in case the danger was real. "It's probably just our bodyguard," he said. "They want to make quite sure nothing happens to us at this delicate stage, so they probably sent someone to follow us. He's there to look after us, not harm us."

     "Or make sure we don't see anything we're not supposed to," suggested the demi shae. She tried to pretend she hadn't heard anything by walking on, her husband falling into step behind her, and they both listened intently for any sound of stealthy pursuit.

     "I really don't think they have anything else to hide," said Thomas under his breath, low enough for only Lirenna to hear. "They were really desperate to stop the Rossem Project, and I mean really desperate. If they had any other resources than what we've seen already, they would have used it."

     Lirenna nodded and she allowed herself to relax as well.

     In a way, thought Thomas, it was a little reassuring to know they were being tailed. After all, no matter how safe they thought they were, there was always the chance that something would happen to them, something they couldn't handle, and it was nice to know that help was nearby if they needed it.

     "Maybe it was a mistake to come out here," Lirenna suggested. "Maybe we ought to go back."

     Thomas nodded, and besides it was beginning to grow dark. That wouldn't bother Lirenna, of course, whose infravision allowed her to see by radiated heat even in total darkness, but Thomas would much rather have gone exploring in the full light of day. Maybe tomorrow, if Strong gave them the go ahead.

     "Let's go around the block, go back from another direction" he said. "Might as well see something new on the way back."

     Lirenna nodded and they set off down a wide side street.

     At first the street was much the same as the others they'd traversed so far. Weedy, but the weeds kept down by the constant trampling of felisian feet. As they followed it, though, they found themselves entering a less frequented neighbourhood in which the road narrowed to a thin passage between tangled stretches of thick undergrowth. The two wizards found themselves having to keep pulling their robes free from the thorns that tugged at them, and once Thomas heard the sickening sound of tearing fabric as he pulled his sleeve away from a towering bramble that reached its arching branches high across the street, covering the sky like the roof of a tunnel. They glanced at each other, and by unspoken consent turned back the way they'd come to look for an easier way back to the guest house.

     It was getting quite dark now, so Thomas cast a light spell on a wand he kept in a pocket of his robes for just such occasions. It wasn't a proper magic wand as such as it contained no permanent magics of its own, but its quality of workmanship, especially of the small marble globe that tipped it, was such that it would hold a spell cast on it quite nicely, and since most people knew that some wizards used wands as weapons he might possibly be able to bluff his way out of a tight spot with it one day.

     The small globe of marble flared into light, illuminating a circle of ground around their feet, and with its help they soon found their way back to the well populated area where they felt quite a bit safer. They followed the route they'd come by and soon they were passing the large crater again. This time they were approaching it from a different direction, though, and they saw something they'd missed the first time.

     Lirenna tugged at Thomas's arm, pointing. "Look!" she cried. "There's an opening! It looks like a cave!"

     Thomas looked, and saw it as well. At some point since the crater's formation, part of the side had collapsed under the action of wind and rain, exposing a portion of the underlying soil and rock. It did look like a cave, but Thomas thought it was more probably the basement of the building towering above it; a hexagonal column of a building that had been reduced to a jagged stump by the calamity that had befallen the city.

     Now that he looked, he saw that there was a path through the scrubby undergrowth lining the crater leading to the opening, indicating that people went there on occasion. Probably children looking for a place to play. They would have taken anything interesting and no doubt left piles of rubbish and litter on every floor. He was about to dismiss it from his thoughts, therefore, when he saw something that made him freeze and stare in excitement.

     The foundations of the hexagonal building were made of the blue-green material of the planet's original inhabitants, just like the building in the central square that Saturn had stopped to examine on their way to inspect the silver ship. That meant that the basement would be an original City Builder basement, not a Masters basement. Maybe it was worth a look after all.

     He took his wife's hand, and together they picked their way through the tangled undergrowth, looking for a path towards it.