The Galtalista was achingly similar to the Hummingbird, and looking at the iridescent sails bulging with the wind he could almost imagine that they were back over the forests of Tas Lannea or the unexplored expanses of Trefallia. It was strange to think that he'd been back in time to the Agglemonian Empire since then, and helped to explore all the planets of Tharia's solar system. All of those exciting events were suddenly telescoping together in his memories so that it seemed as though only a day or two had passed since the battered Hummingbird had returned in triumph to the forests of Lourell and been handed back to the shae folk who had created it.

     Thinking back on those times, lost in deep thought, he failed to hear the stealthy approach of someone creeping up behind him until a pair of cool, slender hands slipped across his eyes. "Surprise!" cried the voice he knew so well and he spun around in delight to find Lirenna grinning up at him, her hands remaining in place to link around his neck.

     "Lenny! I didn't know you were aboard!"

     "Wanted to surprise you," she grinned, pulling his head down to peck his lips. "I've been hiding in the orb room. You should have seen your face!"

     "I thought you were just looking after the big orb, aboard the Jules Verne. I didn't know you knew how to operate the little orbs as well."

     "They're exactly the same, just smaller, and I'm as good as anyone now. Sune says I'm a fast learner."

     "That you are," agreed Thomas and they kissed again, ignoring the leers and cheers of the other crewmembers until Matthew shut them up with a few fast words. He came over to the embracing couple and cleared his throat until they broke apart to look at him.

     "Er," began the embarrassed Flight Leader, "do you think you could do that out of sight somewhere? You're affecting the men's concentration."

     The husband and wife looked around at the other crewmen as if seeing them for the first time, and hurriedly broke apart. "Sorry," Thomas apologised with an embarrassed grin, "but this is the first chance we've had to be together since we left Tharia."

     "We'll try to curb our passions while we're on duty," promised Lirenna solemnly, and Matthew nodded his acceptance, still smiling as he moved away to give them some privacy.

     "He's right," said Thomas, more soberly. "A lot of the men have been away from their wives and families for months. Even a couple of years in some cases. Seeing us together must be making some of them jealous. We'll have to watch ourselves. While we're on duty, we're just two officers doing our duty."

     Lirenna nodded. "I keep forgetting that Matt's married now. When was the last time he got to go home to her? Not since he came to the valley, that's for certain. He must be terribly homesick by now, but he never says anything. We have to be more responsible in our behaviour."

     They looked out over the railing at the dense forest passing by below. "It looks just like Tharia," said Lirenna. "I suppose all trees look much the same from up above."

     "It's not just the trees," said Thomas. "Wizards have been walking the planes for thousands of years and many of the worlds they visit have animals and plants just like those back home. Horses, pigs, sheep, and people. Men and women. Different races, different cultures and skin colours, but people nonetheless. Just like us." He turned to face his wife. "Just like humans, I should say. Trogs and the shae folk seem to be unique to our world."

     "You told me that all the humanoid races are thought to share a common ancestry," Lirenna replied. "Maybe humans came first, and the other races are descended from them, but only on Tharia. On other worlds, evolution took a different course."

     "But there are humans all over the place," said Thomas. "Here, on this world, there are creatures capable of looking like humans. Why, when you consider all the different forms that life forms can take?"

     "Some wizards say that the Gods simply created them that way. They like the basic human form, and cats, sheep and fish, and so use them again and again."

     "Yeah, that answer doesn't really work. Not when every universe has its own Gods."

     "Some people believe in a Creator of All who created all the universes," his wife said.

     "So who created him?" Thomas replied. "No, there has to be something else going on. Some people think that there's some fundamental principle that ensures that creatures occupying similar environments grow to resemble each other. That's the opinion of Boswell of Bluevale, but..."

     "But it's not what you think," said Lirenna with a smile."

     "I think there was a time when humans only lived on one world," said Thomas, searching his wife's face to see what she thought of the idea. "Some ancestral birth world. Far away in space, far back in time. They colonised other worlds by walking the planes, or in Ships of Space like the Jules Verne. Some mighty ancestral civilisation that seeded all these worlds with the life forms of their ancient homeworld, perhaps replacing the bizarre, alien creatures that lived their before. You remember the legend of the demigods? That legend they had back in Tak’s day? People living in cities of glass towers with huge servants of living metal. I think they were the first human settlers on Tharia. People who had just disembarked from their mighty Ships of Space and were building a civilisation like the one they'd left behind back home."

     "So what happened to them?" asked Lirenna. "What happened to their civilisation?"

     They were jolted out of their conversation when the lookout gave a cry, pointing forward, and they looked to see the tallest towers of Place-of-Toil peeping above the forest. Matthew ordered two men to ready the ballista, just in case the felisians were less defeated than they were letting on, and Thomas called the words of his spells to the forefront of his mind, ready to cast. He felt no sense of apprehension at approaching the stronghold of the saboteurs, though. All during their campaign against the University, the felisians had been careful not to hurt anyone. The one fatality, Schoena Scull, had been a tragic accident that they bitterly regretted.

     The gossip that was circulating around the ship had it that the ancestors of the felisians had been decimated by war and that, although they hunted prey animals as part of their lifestyle, they had resolved never again to take the life of another sapient being. Thomas was naturally wary of gossip, but even if it was true the felisians might still try to capture them. That would be dangerous, of course, with the Jules Verne in space above them, ready to rain magical destruction down on their heads. No, Thomas was as convinced as he could be that the felisians were sincere in their desire for peace, now that they had failed to halt the Rossem Project, and that they would offer their visitors every comfort and hospitality.

     The Galtalista passed over the last trees to find that the felisians had cleared an area beside the partially dismantled Masters' ship for them to land on, and Matthew began co-ordinating the crew's efforts to bring the ship safely down in the confined space. It was a tricky and delicate procedure that involved lowering the land anchor, a heavy lump of iron with sharp prongs that dug into the hard soil as it dragged across the ground. It slowed the ship only slightly, but it was enough to allow it to tack across the wind as the crew took in the sails on the starboard side.

     The first time they missed their landing site, and they had to haul the anchor up again before it smashed into the surrounding buildings. They lifted high up into the sky in search of a wind that would blow them back for another attempt, all of them hoping to avoid too many humiliating failures, but their second attempt was more successful. The orbmaster lowered them to a height of twenty feet as the anchor dug another furrow across the ground, and crewmen lowered themselves to the ground on ropes as they passed directly over their landing site.

     Reaching the ground, they then pulled on the ropes to bring the ship back to precisely the right spot like some kind of giant balloon. Several felisians joined in to help. The adults to show how friendly and hospitable they were, but several younger folk joined the effort just for the fun of it and children laughed and screamed as they added to the joint effort. When they were precisely over the right spot Tana Antallan lowered the ship the rest of the way, bringing it to a gentle landing on the bare earth, and the ropes were tied off to large, wooden mooring pegs hammered into the ground.

     "Ship secure, Sir," said Ihvon when the task was completed, and Matthew nodded as he watched the crowd gathering around them. Hundreds of felisians were staring in fascination, mixed with nervous apprehension as they waited to see what kind of people the new arrivals would be. Would they be friends, or did the felisians stand on the brink of another invasion, even worse than any of the others they'd endured?

     "Look at that variety!" cried Matthew in amazement. "Black, white, yellow. All the races of man, and all with different cat parts."

     Thomas nodded, but what struck him most was the absence of the more obviously cat-like individuals. The tiger with the human head was absent, for instance, and almost every individual had human faces with bare skin and round pupils. They've transformed themselves, the wizard realised. Used their power to make themselves more human looking. They want to make us see them as humans, like us. None of the felisians looked completely human, though. There were still some hairy faces, slitted eyes and pointed ears to be seen, but far fewer than during his first visit with Saturn. Haskar was telling the truth, he realised. None of them have the ability to change from fully cat to fully human. Such individuals must be very rare.

     Matthew went below to tell the Captain that they were safely landed,
and a moment later Strong came up on deck, the first time he'd emerged from the chart room since leaving the Jules Verne. He stood stiffly by the railing, his hands behind his back, looking out over the crowd with distracted interest while he waited for their leaders to show themselves. Giving the impression he was just passing an idle moment before going on to something far more important.

     The ship had been on the ground for several minutes before the crowd parted to make way for a delegation from one of the larger buildings, and Strong straightened, preparing himself for the meeting. The delegation consisted of three elderly individuals, presumably the elders Haskar had spoken of. All three of them were completely human in appearance. They were flanked by half a dozen burly bodyguards, four of whom were female, which surprised Thomas until he remembered that, among many species of big cats, it was the females that did most of the hunting. Bringing home food for the cubs, while the males just loafed around, eating whatever they could scrounge.

     The bodyguards, all large, muscular individuals with huge fangs in their jaws and terrible claws at the ends of their fingers, stopped fifty yards from the ship, leaving the elders to continue on alone, which made Strong nod his head in admiration. "Nice touch," he muttered to himself. "A show of strength and a show of trust, all in a single gesture."

     Two of the elders were female, and they stood on either side of a bent, grey haired male who leaned on a cane as he limped through the crowd. Strong ordered the gate in the railing at the rear of the ship to be opened and the rope ladder to be lowered.

     "Gown, you're with me," he ordered. "The rest of you, guard the ship. Allow no-one on board and do not disembark for any reason."

     Thomas shared a glance with Matthew as he joined the Captain by the dangling rope ladder. "Be prepared for anything," Strong said in a low voice. "I don't think they'll try anything, but have your spells ready just in case."

     Thomas nodded, and then Matthew climbed down the ladder so he could stand guard on the ground as the Captain followed him, Thomas waiting until last so that he could cover them with his spells from above. He only joined the first two men when he was sure that no violence was going to break out. Then, when he was on the ground, Matthew climbed back up the ladder, leaving the Captain and the wizard on the ground alone.