Gently he persisted: "I know you well, Alla Narova. You sometimes thought you might be a Daughter of the Wolf, but never really believed it because you knew you loved your husband--and thought Wolves did not love. You loved Rainclouds, too. It was when you stood at Beachy Head and saw a great cumulus that you went into Meditation--" And on and on, many times, coaxingly. Even so, it was not easy; but at last he began to reach her. Slowly she began to surface. Thoughts faintly sounded in his mind, like echoes at first, his own thoughts bouncing back at him, a sort of mental nod of agreement: "Yes, that is so." Then--terror. With a shaking fear, a hysterical rush, Citizeness Alla Narova came violently up to full consciousness and to panic. She was soundlessly screaming. The whole eight-branched figure quivered and twisted in its nutrient bath. The terrible storm raged in Tropile's own mind as fully as in hers--but he had the advantage of knowing what it was. He helped her. He fought it for the two of them ... soothing, explaining, calming. At last her branch of the snowflake-body retreated, sobbing for a spell. The storm was over. He talked to her in his mind and she "listened." She was incredulous, but there was no choice for her; she _had_ to believe. Exhausted and passive, she asked finally: "What can we do? I wish I were dead!" He told her: "You were never a coward before. Remember, Alla Narova, I _know_ you as nobody has ever known another human being before. That's the way you will know me. As for what we can do--we must begin by waking the others, if we can." "If not?" "If not," Tropile replied grimly, "then we will think of something else." She was of tough stuff, he thought admiringly. When she had rested and absorbed things, her spirit was almost that of a Wolf; she had very nearly been right about herself. Together they explored their twinned members. They found through them exactly what task was theirs to do. They found how the electrostatic harvesting scythe of the Pyramids was controlled, by and through them. They found what limitations there were and what freedoms they owned. They reached into the other petals of the snowflake, reached past the linked Components into the whole complex of electrostatic field generators and propulsion machinery, reached even past that into-- Into the great single function of the Pyramids that lay beyond. XI Haendl was on the ragged edge of breakdown, which was something new in his life. It was full hot summer and the hidden colony of Wolves in Princeton should have been full of energy and life. The crops were growing on all the fields nearby; the drained storehouses were being replenished. The aircraft that had been so painfully rebuilt and fitted for the assault on Mount Everest were standing by, ready to be manned and to take off. And nothing, absolutely nothing, was going right.