Behind me a clicking sounded. I turned, saw the many-colored sphere force itself through the banyan-trunks. Instinctively my hand went to my gun. But a thought from Lhar halted me.
"It will not harm you. It is my servant." She hesitated, groping for a word. "A machine. A robot. It will not harm you."
I said, "Is it intelligent?"
"Yes. But it is not alive. Our people made it. We have many such machines."
The robot swayed toward me, the rim of cilia flashing and twisting. Lhar said, "It speaks thus, without words or thought...." She paused, watching the sphere, and I sensed dejection in her manner.
The robot turned to me. The cilia twisted lightly about my arm, tugging me toward Lhar. I said, "What does it want?"
"It knows that I am dying," Lhar said.
That shocked me. "Dying? No!"
"It is true. Here in this alien world I do not have my usual food. So I will die. To survive I need the blood of mammals. But there are none here save those seven the Other has taken. And I cannot use them for they are now spoiled."
I didn't ask Lhar what sort of mammals she had in her own world. "That's what the robot wanted when it tried to stop me before, isn't it?"