Heritage of Flight by Susan Shwartz

faint mist rose from the river and began to thicken about them. Painfully she worked one hand free of Rafe and fumbled her sidearm free of its holster, then balanced it on her knee, carefully so it might not touch the man who had found his way back to her.
    What would become of him now? What would become of all of them? When she cared—or claimed to care—only for flying, her life had been simpler. But she had been lying, and now her punishment was upon her: to wait here while the mist wreathed about her, hiding possible enemies. For the moment, however, she could not fight. Having no other choice while Rafe slept, Pauli sat and contemplated a bleak future until Borodin came to collect them.
    The river mists had blown away, and both moons shone, blurred by the shadows of a few clouds. Captain Borodin stood by the fire, his hand on his sidearm, waiting, as Rafe knelt by the computer, painstakingly working out the questions they had to have answers for. Several hundred of them, in fact. And, in return, he had to be prepared for whatever questions the Cynthians would ask of them.
    Behind them, between the fire and the safety of the domes, waited most of the settlers and those children too restive or too stubborn to let themselves be convinced to rest and let their elders handle things. Their eyes gleamed too brightly, with that preternatural alertness that had made Rafe shudder the first time he met them. Only the knowledge that ‘Cilla would not lose her foot had prevented general hysteria. If they were not to revert to protective savagery, they especially needed answers.
    The night wore on. Though several of their elders yawned and shook themselves reluctantly awake, the children waited, crouching by the fire, occasionally glancing at one another or whispering things that they refused to tell their guardians. Finally, moonlight picked out the familiar whorls and stars of the Cynthians’ wings. Uriel and Ariel hovered above the settlement for a long time before they descended a safe distance from the dying fire.
    "They sense something,” Rafe muttered to Pauli, then bent to call up one of the new symbols he had created: small, segmented, and long fanged.
    Two of the younger Cynthians mantled, then subsided. One actually displayed the poisoned horns that were their chief weapon. Antennae quivered; simultaneously the agitated Cynthians withdrew, and. Rafe's instruments registered transmissions so rapid that they could not decipher them. He flung out his hands reassuringly, gesturing at Borodin to lay aside his weapons. Gradually the rate of transmission slowed, and the blur on his screens coalesced and gradually resolved into identifiable symbols.
    Rafe turned to the captain. “There's a lot of static about this concept. If these creatures were human, I'd say that it's got strong emotional connotations for them. It makes translation difficult. The closest equivalent I can get is ‘those who eat’ ... eaters. I don't think, sir, that I can finetune the resolution any further."
    "Ought to blast them all,” grumbled David ben Yehuda. He had an arm about his daughter; her twin sat on her other side. Both the father and the son kept flamethrowers close at hand. It had taken a direct order—"You're ordering me? I'm not under your command!"—to keep ben Yehuda and his cub from starting out that very night to hunt down creatures such as Rafe's party had blundered into.
    "Rafe, ask what the Cynthians know about these eaters."
    Pauli shook her head at the captain. “They think in analogies, sir. You've got to break your questions down into that form. It may take some time."
    Enemies, Rafe thought. Symbols formed under his fingers: Cynthians/mountain caves; eaters/rocks on the plain. That was the basic situation. Now for possible conflict: a broken-winged Cynthian/on the plain; eaters! devouring Cynthians along with plant life.
    Immediately the screen blurred and filled again with symbols. Cynthians/caves; humans/caves;