Bruno stifled a gasp and took a step back as the snarling kzin took flight toward them.
"Wait," Carol breathed, her hand on his arm. She had not moved, other than to tense into a soldier's slight crouch of readiness.
The kzin hit the force-wall at the top of his leap—and bounced backwards into a confused orange heap.
"Impressive," observed Carol. "But not very smart."
He muttered, "I can't get used to this sort of thing." There was some kind of force-shield around their "zoo" enclosure; why shouldn't there be force-shield windows between cages containing different captive beasts? There was a bitter taste of helplessness in his mouth.
Bruno watched Carol put fists on hips and turn toward the other window, where the three-legged aliens that waited with apparent patience.
"What do you want me to say?" she said. A finger stabbed at the orange-and-black-furred form slowly rising to its feet. "That's what a ratcat is all about. That's why we have to fight them."
"Still," sang the creature called Diplomat, "it is necessary to involve both of your factions in the solution to this . . . ah, difficulty, Captain Faulk. It is of concern to both of your species, after all."
The window displaying the obviously enraged kzin faded, changed into the same false view of distance as the rest of their enclosure.
"How so?" injected Bruno. He scratched the interface plug on his neck. Maybe if he had been "repaired," it occurred to him, he could Link once again.
Not now.
The larger of the two aliens bugled. The smaller one cocked a head in listening posture. After a moment, it sang back an answer. The musical conversation continued for some time; John Philip Sousa versus Vivaldi.
"My colleague," continued the smaller of the aliens, turning back to Bruno and Carol, "concurs that I should attempt to be straightforward with both of you."
"Meaning?" rapped Carol.
Bruno had seen this before. Carol did not like feeling helpless; she was far too action-oriented. And they couldn't get more helpless: stranded without an interstellar spacecraft, Finagle knew how far from home, in the hands of multiple factions of aliens.
The alien called Diplomat was still speaking. "The pointless battle between your species and the kzin—"
"Wait a second," interrupted Bruno. "They attacked us, enslaved our people. I would not call our self-defense pointless."
Carol had nipped his ear between her fingers.
"Tacky, darling," she whispered sweetly. "Let the nice alien finish, would you? We can defend our actions later."
Diplomat had craned heads at Bruno and Carol, watching them both at the same time, with the loose-lipped idiot stare that so clearly was misleading.
"Thank you, Captain Faulk," Diplomat continued. "As I was singing . . . ah, saying . . . the altercation in deep space between your warring solar systems has disturbed a rather traditional faction of our hosts."
Carol pulled at her lip again in thought. "We—the kzin there and ourselves—tread on their territory, perhaps?"
"Excellent simile," replied the little alien. "It is more accurate to say that this Traditionalist faction holds the spaces between stars rather sacred."
Bruno began to understand. "So this is a religious issue in deep space?" It was a bit amusing, and he stifled a chuckle.
Both heads swiveled at once to face Bruno. "Mr. Takagama, if that choking sound you are emitting is actually a vocalization of humor, I can assure that this is a grave situation. The Zealots' so-called religious concerns are based on actual events, from the early era of this universe."
"We have violated their temple?" persisted Carol.
"More like we have stirred up a hornets' nest," added Bruno. He took Carol's hand in his, running his thumb back and forth against her palm.
Diplomat cocked a head at Bruno. "I do not understand."
Bruno held back impatience. "Stinging insects that live in group nests on our worlds, Diplomat. If the nest is disturbed, they attack the disturber as a group."
"Excellent, Mr. Takagama. You grasp the point with both mouths." Again the twin necks shot up, the heads eye to eye for an instant.
"So we leave their temple alone," Bruno said. "We didn't know. Now we do."
"It is not so simple, Mr. Takagama," sang Diplomat. "The Zealots now see you—and your whole species—as an irritant to be removed. Our hosts wish to change this potentially destructive point of view."
"Wait a minute," asked Carol slowly. "Why are we—or the kzin, or you—important to this faction of Outsiders?"
"They are called Dissonants," added Diplomat. "They oppose the ancient strictures of the Zealots, and wish to forge their own destiny, sometimes in association with life-forms like ourselves."
"Whatever. I am glad that we were rescued, but where are we being taken—and why?"
The three-legged alien's hooves beat a complex pattern. It turned and sang to the larger alien, which blared music back.
"Carol—" Bruno started to ask, but she squeezed his arm to signal for silence.
Diplomat turned to face them again. "My Guardian has argued for becoming yet more direct." The heads wobbled a bit. "Let me take the points quickly, as time remains short. There are many things like your species in the galaxy, as you know full well, considering your cargo."
"How do you know about that?" asked Bruno. How could they know about the Tree-of-Life virus still in the hold of Dolittle? They might have found it, of course, but how would they know what it could do?
The puppeteer waved a head in a slow figure eight as if dismissing his comment. "The point is that the Dissonants have worked with your various species many times in the past. Your own . . . more undomesticated, feral species appeals to them . . . well, aesthetically."
"We'll table that for the moment," Carol said.
"As you wish," replied Diplomat. "The Dissonants wish to preserve your species—as well as my own, and the kzin. We are interesting to them, a source of information."
Bruno broke in, sensing another long speech on the alien horizon. "So where are we now, and where are we going?"
The hemisphere above Carol and Bruno suddenly stopped looking like a sky with fleecy white clouds. It was a bowl filled with a mottled opal radiance that hurt the eyes. Geometrical shapes swam in curdled colors that Bruno could not name. The "sky" twisted and bent, distorted and distorting.
It was like nothing Bruno had ever seen before.
"We are presently," sang Diplomat quietly in his human-sounding voice, "just over one hundred light-years from human space. And moving at three hundred times the speed of light, in another dimension."
"Another dimension?"
"Certainly. It is the only way to travel faster than light, is it not?"
"Hyperspace," breathed Bruno and Carol at the same time.
"Indeed. We are leading the Zealot spacecraft far away from human and kzinti space."
"And . . ." Bruno prompted, still in awe of the eye-straining vision above them. A shape seemed to form, shifting and rotating, moving in a stately procession across the false sky. It grew somehow larger and smaller, then faded into the milky clotted strangeness.
"We hope to engage the Zealot ship here, away from normal space, and destroy it."
"But how?" It seemed to Bruno that he and Carol were far out of their elements, pawn to unreadable forces and minds.
"With your help of course, Mr. Takagama." A head wobbled for emphasis. "But don't feel alone. Guardian and the kzin will go with you."