All the same, it was a welcome break when, just before dinner the evening of his tenth day on Homeworld, Hovan informed him that school was over and invited him to join one of the fighters' discussion groups after eating. Tarlac pushed himself away from the study unit and stood, stretching luxuriously. "That sounds good, and I could sure use the change. Have you decided when I'm supposed to go out?" "Tomorrow, or if you prefer, the next day." "Okay. Tomorrow, then. I still don't care to waste time." "I thought you would not. I arranged for a null-grav car for midmorning; I will take you to the test area myself." He smiled a little. "Before we leave, you will have to make a decision. Now that you know all the dangers, you must choose whether to remain in the test area for the full two ten-days, or attempt to walk out. The Ordeal requires that you survive, nothing more." "Mmm." Tarlac frowned. "Staying put's safer, but if I'm lucky, walking out should only take five or ten days. That's ten, maybe fifteen days saved--I'll take the chance. And I'll bet you expected that, too." Hovan's smile widened. "I did. It means you will carry a locator beacon as well as your knife, timed to go off in twenty days. If you are not back here by then, we will come for you." "Yeah, okay. You know me pretty well, don't you? Let's eat." He slept that night as if he had nothing hanging over him, 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.