(Sweet Cosmic Mother, Peter T...you have the voice of a clarion archangel betimes!)

The giant hull of the Mudcat Enterprise drifted at the outer edges of the Neezian asteroid belt, glinting and mottled in the intermittent sunlight from the far star, patched with the shadows of the huge asteroids leaping and turning in tortured orbits only a little further into the uncharted depths of Crab Bottom. She was at rest, relatively, in physical space; but around her in mind-clouds of turmoil and war, a battle of royal scale unwound and flowed and clashed and broke, coming and going in the many corners of mind-space centered on the great vessel. The tortured dreams of the Green Man's seas and their haunted people collided here with the towering concerns of the Terran's hopes; there, foothills of psychic flame rolled from the noble minds of the Entrprise crew, laced with the green harmonies of the Mandolan's gentle, nourishing consciousness. Thin white lances of apprehension shot through like mirror-flung signals from the observation post, deep within the asteroid belt, of Cornucopia, amplified by the joining harmonies of those he represented on the far, hidden planet of Tern; throughout, other traceries of golden mesh and fire-speckle entered and left the battle field as the far intentions of those not present reached out to resonate with those who were joined in the dream-conflicts. Dark striations of boiling purple acid showed the dreaming evil of the song-snatchers hidden in the mindless storage sectors of the ships lower deck, and keen silver sweeps, courage in the hearts of warrior made manifest, like spotlights in a night sky, wandered toward and away as they sought answers, identities, resolution. Herem too, was the rancid yellow tide of the lords of Disney, groping low like clouds of ground-hugging acid fumes; and the grasping scarlet tendrils of unknown forces of starvation, seeking to suck the songlife from those who had hearts still, to feed those who had none.

Thus the smooth rest of the vessel was deceptive as she lay, hove to, beyond the danger zone; for she was swept up, a central piece, in a war of hopes and of enemies beyond her dimensions in normal spacetime.

On the far flanks of Tern, beyond the lovely grace of the wood-bright towers of the city, high in the rolling hills that lead back from the sea, there are groves of ancient trees, so wide and tall that they seem to master all space that can be seen, so ancient that they seem to own all known time. Long before the Terrans came to these lands, they were strong, and long of life, and deep of reflection. By their thousands, they had spent centuries, building their deep taproots and their wideflung interconnections beneath the soil, welcoming and using the Neezian light and the moist breezes to build their families, nourish their saplings and teach them the mind of the Ternian forest. Deep in this grove, which rolls for a hundred miles by a hundred miles along the Ternian lowland hills, there is a place held sacred since the first of the Terrans came in humble exploration to drink the beauty of these ancient treed lands.

It is a place where the ancient tree-giants themselves have formed a sheltered dappled center, warm, surrounded by the endless heights of the deep red giants, who have curved to either side of several gigantic rock formations which emerge there from the deep mulched ground. It is as if the very planet bowed to form a welcoming place for sentient life forms to reflect in harmony, hymned by the quiet tones of tree-thought to focus on the sacred and the long, the wise and the patient energies of this place and all it represented in the world.

The Ternian elders call this sheltered grove the Altar of the Voice. It is here that they return when times of grave decision are upon their shoulders. And it is here that the First Elder stood, the latest messages from Cornucopia fresh in his mind, in need of deep wisdom for his planet, his people, and their sacred mission of song.