He strained to follow the faint wash of impressions on the lower band. There was something there that struck a familiar chord in his thoughts, but he could not decode it. "Just instinct," Ptarra dismissed it with cool logic. "A female seeking food for its injured mate." Arnek sighed uncomfortably. "It doesn't seem female," he objected. "Another hunch? Don't be silly, Arnek. It has to be a female. The larger, stronger and more intelligent form is always female. How else could it care for the young? It needs ability for a whole family, while the male needs only enough for himself. The laws of evolution are logical or we wouldn't have evolved at all." There was no answer to such logic, other than the vague discontent Arnek felt. And he knew that was only because of his envy of the greater ability of the other sex. He settled back, ruminating hungrily and listening to the signal from space. The little box from the wreck was silent now, but the other signals were stronger. Ptarra nodded. "They're coming. After four hundred years, we have a chance. New silths to breed. A chance to reproduce ourselves and multiply. A new universe for our own." There was immense satisfaction with self in her thoughts. "Well, I earned it!" * * * * * Arnek could not deny it. It had been more than four hundred years in this galaxy. Eight thousand of them had set out, leaving behind a small, ancient universe being wrecked by the horror of an exploding supernova. They had been driven out from the planetary conquests of a billion years and had sought refuge across intergalactic space to this universe. A hundred of the marvelously adapted silths of their universe had survived the eons of suspended animation to preserve their occupants. And then had come the hunt for new silth forms, since the trip had aged the others beyond the power of reproduction, in spite of all their precautions. Finding a silth form was never easy. There had been only three animals that had served in their entire old galaxy. Only a creature with several pounds of nerve tissues could hold the nuclear proteins of the sentient annas. And that required huge creatures, since nerve tissue was always so thinly scattered in normal flesh. They had toured a quadrant of the new galaxy, studying planet after planet, before they found this world. Here the great beasts were barely sufficiently endowed with nerve fiber. Eight annas had survived this far. Six failed to stand the shock of entry and regrowth in the new silth forms. Now there was only the one pair--Arnek and Ptarra.