Elves quietly fret about the poor slave children (which is going to get - no don't think about that) and whether the Alteri can be persuaded that Melkor is bad news. Not that here's the only place that will be attempted.

The Alteri in charge of Haneo are not actually sure whether she's done anything that they'd benefit from disincentivizing, so they send her to her room and decline to clarify whether this is meant to be a punishment. She cheerfully tells the other psyons in range that she met a GIANT DOG and it was very nice and also it wanted everyone to believe that it was a god. The other psyons want to know what a dog is.

Several hours away, in the high council chambers on Savaek Nas, the Alteri reluctantly vote not to blast the lightleaper out of the sky. This has very little to do with the giant telepathic dog or the supposedly peaceful contact made on Maela, and a lot to do with the fact that it would both make the technology harder to recover and make it much more difficult for the Alteri to gain the sort of intelligence needed to mount an invasion on the Singers' homeworld over the course of the next several decades. It's important to think about the big picture when dealing with interstellar politics.

The Alteri ask the Singers how long they were planning on staying in the Savaek system for.

Well, since the military situation has apparently just dramatically changed they should probably actually be returning right away.

Oh. That's understandable, then. The Alteri were wondering if they could send some people back with them to visit the Singer homeworld; some of Savaek's scientists are pretty sure they're not going to get to work on things as relevant to their interests for the rest of their lifetimes if they stay in this system.

They'd be delighted!

Oh good! 

There are twelve scientists who declare that they have no particular ties to the system and nothing better to do with their lives. They figure that it's probably worth it to bring a psyon, since the psyon probably can't offer much military intelligence to the Singers if she successfully defects, and can offer a lot of intelligence to the Alteri if she doesn't. They would normally not have clearance to bring either Sanae or Haneo, but the high council has determined that the psyons of Savaek Kan must remain there for the rest of their lives, in order to prevent the Savaek Nas psyon network from hearing about the whole thing. They are now worth sufficiently little that nobody really cares enough not to grant the request, and at least the two of them have been generally cooperative.

The Elves, for people who were very distressed by the slaves, do not seem very delighted about this. They inquire as to how the Alteri want to handle life support systems - are they going to be following in their own ship?

The Alteri suppose they could do this, but are pretty sure they can also just transport a couple smaller ships inside the bigger ship and then wear biosuits whenever they're not in the shuttles. They can paint them or something if the Singers think the shuttles are ugly.

They will totally not do any mutilating children in Singer space if that bothers them. The Alteri insist that they are totally capable of following other people's customs when necessary.

Oh, excellent! In that case this should work great. 

Much happier Elves do a lot of singing. And off they go.

The Alteri are like 85% sure they can do the following-other-people's-customs thing for the sake of the scientific advancement of their species, much as it pains them, and they are determinedly not thinking about the other fifteen percent. They want to discuss several fields in more depth than they were previously able to. Someone named Kava Zanmari wants to know if they happen to have received a list of one hundred and twenty-six questions at some point.

Haneo wanders around the shuttles in gradually widening circles, cautiously testing whether anyone is going to take issue with her talking to Elves. Sanae mostly sits on the ground just outside the shuttles and stares blindly into the space in front of her.

Elves would be really really happy about the psyons talking with them but restrain themselves to thinking about this a lot and not making the first move, they don't want to get the kids in trouble. Huan is available for lots of petting. Scientists are accommodated with lots of science. They did get the questions! They discussed answers, here are their answers.

They travel for a week and then from the perspective of any Alteri sensors trailing them, they vanish. 

Sanae doesn't talk to anyone for the entire week; it's not obvious that Sanae is actually capable of talking. Haneo takes a few days to approach anyone but Huan, but after that she starts talking to people with Confederate One hand signs - she's curious about their music and their ship and the animals on their homeworld, and she wants to tell them about the foods that Sanae probably needs because Sanae doesn't always eat very well. The Alteri metaphorically sigh about this, but decide it would be fairly futile to attempt to prevent Haneo from interacting with anyone on a years-long journey. 

Two days after that - "all right, that's Endorë approaching on the left there. Accommodations and habitable conditions have been prepared for all of you in the city of Mount Rerir; a shuttle planetside will meet you in two hours."

" - you are capable of faster than light travel between arbitrary coordinates," the Alteri want to confirm. They have a hard time talking about anything else for the next long while, but they are otherwise fairly cooperative.

Haneo goes to cuddle Huan for a bit.

The Elves will cheerfully agree that they are capable of this. They're sorry for not mentioning it earlier but, well. There's a saying that you learn more from how people treat their inferiors than how they treat their superiors. So the meeting would have been much less informative if this had gotten mentioned! 

They absolutely still intend to ally with the Alteri against Melkor if they can, he's every bit as bad as described - as they'll soon have the chance to verify themselves - and the Alteri could make themselves useful.

The Alteri are not really sure that faster-than-light travel over arbitrary coordinates makes the Singers their superiors, it's just a particularly significant technology that they haven't run into yet, that's all. It also effectively settles the question of whether the Singers are an independent alien race or a trick by the Defilers or other Alteri; they are pretty sure neither group has this sort of tech. But the Alteri can totally, say, blow up planets, do the Singers need any planets blown up?

They might. That might be the best thing to do with Endorë. It'd be nice to evacuate everyone first, and currently the Enemy, while he can't catch small shuttles coming and going, is well-positioned to prevent such an evacuation, but they might end up deciding that destroying the planet is worth it anyway. "Since there are other species at risk, mostly. He won't directly confront the other Valar, our planets are safe, but he'd be delighted to wipe out all the other peoples of the universe, and that raises the stakes."

The Alteri note that it would be a shame to destroy an entire planet to contain a great evil, but they are unfortunately familiar with situations where this is the best option, and will be keeping it in mind.

Haneo asks a different Elf if she's going to have to keep living with the Alteri. She's sort of confused about what's happening but she doesn't really want to stay with them if they're not allowed to hurt her if she leaves. She wants to know if she can maybe stay with the giant dog, the giant dog is really nice.

"I think we will find you some adoptive parents and you will live with them very far away from any Alteri."

"OK! But I need to visit Sanae sometimes, and Sanae hasn't decided what she wants yet," signs Haneo.

"I think she should also live with some adoptive parents far away from any Alteri. If she doesn't like it after a month she can go back to them if she wants but I think she should give it a try."

Haneo frowns and thinks for a bit. "Sanae isn't sure whether she should live with the Alteri, but she doesn't think she'd be any good at having parents, either. And she's not sure you understand some things about the Alteri and maybe that's going to be a problem."

"I don't think we understand everything about the Alteri we need to. That's why we were supposed to bring some of them back with us. And - and it might be helpful to have Sanae helping, but she... knows what being helpful to powerful people who are just using her is like, and she doesn't know what having parents is like, so it seems like she might not have all the information to decide which one she wants."

Haneo very solemnly considers this.

"I don’t think people do things they want, mostly,” she signs. “Especially not when they’re halfway broken. Once you’re halfway broken you have to stay focused, so that you don’t stop working and end up all the way broken. So - Sanae wants to want to stay because she has a responsibility to keep the Alteri from hurting more people, but she mostly wants to stay because if she goes then maybe there won’t be any focus and she’ll break.”

This Elf is trying not to just loudly think THESE POOR CHILDREN. STUPID EVIL BUGS MAYBE THEY'RE ALL EVIL LIKE ORCS AND WE'LL JUST HAVE TO KILL THEM ALL. This Elf is failing to not think that. 

" - and that would be okay with us. We wouldn't be mad or anything."