THE CHANUR SAGA C.J. CHERRYH Table of Contents THE PRIDE OF CHANUR Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 CHANUR'S VENTURE Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 THE KIF STRIKE BACK Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Appendix THE PRIDE OF CHANUR Chapter 1 There had been something loose about the station dock all morning, skulking in amongst the gantries and the lines and the canisters which were waiting to be moved, lurking wherever shadows fell among the rampway accesses of the many ships at dock at Meetpoint. It was pale, naked, starved-looking in what fleeting glimpse anyone on The Pride of Chanur had had of it. Evidently no one had reported it to station authorities, nor did The Pride. Involving oneself in others' concerns at Meetpoint Station, where several species came to trade and provision, was ill-advised—at least until one was personally bothered. Whatever it was, it was bipedal, brachiate, and quick at making itself unseen. It had surely gotten away from someone, and likeliest were the kif, who had a thieving finger in everything, and who were not above kidnapping. Or it might be some large, bizarre animal: the mahendo'sat were inclined to the keeping and trade of strange pets, and Station had been displeased with them in that respect on more than one occasion. So far it had done nothing. Stolen nothing. No one wanted to get involved in question and answer between original owners and station authorities; and so far no official statement had come down from those station authorities and no notice of its loss had been posted by any ship, which itself argued that a wise person should not ask questions. The crew reported it only to the captain and chased it, twice, from The Pride's loading area. Then the crew got to work on necessary duties, having settled the annoyance to their satisfaction. It was the last matter on the mind of the noble, the distinguished captain Pyanfar Chanur, who was setting out down her own rampway for the docks. She was hani, this captain, splendidly maned and bearded in red-gold, which reached in silken curls to the middle of her bare, sleek-pelted chest, and she was dressed as befitted a hani of captain's rank, blousing scarlet breeches tucked up at her waist with a broad gold belt, with silk cords of every shade of red and orange wrapping that about, each knotted cord with a pendant jewel on its dangling end. Gold finished the breeches at her knees. Gold filigree was her armlet. And a row of fine gold rings and a large pendant pearl decorated the tufted sweep of her left ear. She strode down her own rampway in the security of ownership, still high-blooded from a quarrel with her niece—and yelled and bared claws as the intruder came bearing down on her. She landed one raking, startled blow which would have held a hani in the encounter, but the hairless skin tore and it hurtled past her, taller than she was. It skidded round the bending of the curved ramp tube and bounded right into the ship, trailing blood all the way and leaving a bloody handprint on the rampway's white plastic wall. Pyanfar gaped in outrage and pelted after, claws scrabbling for traction on the flooring plates. "Hilfy!" she shouted ahead; her niece had been in the lower corridor. Pyanfar made it into the airlock, hit the bar of the com panel there and punched all-ship. "Alert! Hilfy! Call the crew in! Something's gotten aboard. Seal yourself into the nearest compartment and call the crew." She flung open the locker next the com unit, grubbed a pistol and scrambled in pursuit of the intruder. No trouble at all tracking it, with the dotted red trail on the white decking. The track led left at the first cross-corridor, which was deserted—the intruder must have gone left again, starting to box the square round the lift shafts. Pyanfar ran, heard a shout from that intersecting corridor and scrambled for it: Hilfy! She rounded the corner at a slide and came up short on a tableau, the intruder's hairless, red-running back and young Hilfy Chanur holding the corridor beyond with nothing but bared claws and adolescent bluster. "Idiot!" Pyanfar spat at Hilfy, and the intruder turned on her of a sudden, much closer. It brought up short in a staggered crouch, seeing the gun aimed two-handed at itself. It might have sense not to rush a weapon; might . . . but that would turn it right back at Hilfy, who stood unarmed behind. Pyanfar braced to fire on the least movement. It stood rigidly still in its crouch, panting from its running and its wound. "Get out of there," Pyanfar said to Hilfy. "Get back." The intruder knew about hani claws now; and guns; but it might do anything, and Hilfy, an indistinction in her vision which was tunneled wholly on the intruder, stayed stubbornly still. "Move!" Pyanfar shouted. The intruder shouted too, a snarl which almost got it shot; and drew itself upright and gestured to the center of its chest, twice, defiant. Go on and shoot, it seemed to invite her. That intrigued Pyanfar. The intruder was not attractive. It had a bedraggled gold mane and beard, and its chest fur, almost invisible, narrowed in a line down its heaving belly to vanish into what was, legitimately, clothing, a rag almost nonexistent in its tatters and obscured by the dirt which matched the rest of its hairless hide. Its smell was rank. But a straight carriage and a wild-eyed invitation to its enemies . . . that deserved a second thought. It knew guns; it wore at least a token of clothing; it drew its line and meant to hold its territory. Male, maybe. It had that over-the-brink look in its eyes. "Who are you?" Pyanfar asked slowly, in several languages one after the other, including kif. The intruder gave no sign of understanding any of them. "Who?" she repeated. It crouched slowly, with a sullen scowl, all the way to the deck, and extended a blunt-nailed finger and wrote in its own blood which was liberally puddled about its bare feet. It made a precise row of symbols, ten of them, and a second row which began with the first symbol prefaced by the second, second with second, second with third . . . patiently, with increasing concentration despite the growing tremors of its hand, dipping its finger and writing, mad fixation on its task. "What's it doing?" asked Hilfy, who could not see from her side. "A writing system, probably numerical notation. It's no animal, niece." The intruder looked up at the exchange—stood up, an abrupt move which proved injudicious after its loss of blood. A glassy, desperate look came into its eyes, and it sprawled in the puddle and the writing, slipping in its own blood in trying to get up again. "Call the crew," Pyanfar said levelly, and this time Hilfy scurried off in great haste. Pyanfar stood where she was, pistol in hand, until Hilfy was out of sight down another corridor, then, assured that there was no one to see her lapse of dignity, she squatted down with the gun in both hands and loosely between her knees. The intruder still struggled, propped itself up with its bloody back against the wall, elbow pressed against that deeper starting-point of the scratches on its side, which was the source of most of the blood. Its pale blue eyes, for all their glassiness, seemed to have sense in them. It looked back at her warily, with seeming mad cynicism. "You speak kif?" Pyanfar asked again. A flicker of those eyes, which might mean anything. Not a word from it. It started shivering, which was shock setting in. Sweat had broken out on its naked skin. It never ceased to look at her. Running broke into the corridors. Pyanfar stood up quickly, not to be caught thus engaged with the creature. Hilfy came hurrying back from her direction, the crew arriving from the other, and Pyanfar stepped aside as they arrived and the intruder tried to scramble off in retreat. The crew laid hands on it and jerked it skidding along the bloody puddle. It cried out and tried to grapple with them, but they had it on its belly in the first rush and a blow dazed it. "Gently!" Pyanfar yelled at them, but they had it then, got its arms lashed at its back with one of their belts, tied its ankles together and got off it, their fur as bloody as the intruder, who continued a feeble movement. "Do it no more damage," Pyanfar said. "I'll have it clean, thank you, watered, fed, and healthy, but keep it restrained. Prepare me explanations how it got face to face with me in the rampway, and if one of you bleats a word of this outside the ship I'll sell you to the kif." "Captain," they murmured, down-eared in deference. They were second and third cousins of hers, two sets of sisters, one set large and one small, and equally chagrined. "Out," she said. They snatched the intruder up by the binding of its arms and prepared to drag it. "Careful!" Pyanfar hissed, reminding them, and they were gentler in pulling it along. "You," Pyanfar said then to Hilfy, her brother's daughter, who lowered her ears and turned her face aside—short-maned, with an adolescent's beginning beard, Hilfy Chanur presently and with a air of martyrdom. I'll send you back shaved if you disobey another order. Understand me?" Hilfy made a bow facing her, duly contrite. "Aunt," she said, and straightened, contriving to make it all thoughtfully graceful; looked her straight in the eyes with offended worship. "Huh," Pyanfar said. Hilfy bowed a second time and padded past as softly as possible. In common blue breeches like the crew, was Hilfy, but the swagger was all Chanur, and not quite ludicrous on so young a woman. Pyanfar snorted, fingered the silk of her beard into order, looked down in sober thought at the wallowed smear where the Outsider had fallen, obliterating all the writing from the eyes of the crew. So, so, so. Pyanfar postponed her trip to station offices, walked back to the lower-deck operations center, sat down at the com board amid all the telltales of cargo status and lines and grapples and the routine operations The Pride carried on automatically. She keyed in the current messages, sorted through those and found nothing, then delved into The Pride's recording of all messages received since docking, and all which had flowed through station communications aimed at others. She searched first for anything kif-sent, a rapid flicker of lines on the screen in front of her, all operational chatter in transcription—a very great deal of it. Then she queried for notice of anything lost, and after that, for anything escaped. Mahendo'sat? she queried then, staying constantly to her own ship's records of incoming messages, of the sort which flowed constantly in a busy station, and in no wise sending any inquiry into the station's comp system. She recycled the whole record last of all, ran it past at eye-blurring speed, looking for any key word about escapes or warnings of alien presence at Meetpoint. So indeed. No one was going to say a word on the topic. The owners still did not want to acknowledge publicly that they had lost this item. The Chanur were not lack-witted, to announce publicly that they had found it. Or to trust that the kif or whoever had lost it were not at this moment turning the station inside out with a surreptitious search. Pyanfar turned off the machine, flicked her ears so that the rings on the left one jangled soothingly. She got up and paced the center, thrust her hands into her belt and thought about alternatives, and possible gains. It would be a dark day indeed when a Chanur went to the kif to hand back an acquisition. She could justifiably make a claim on it regarding legal liabilities and the invasion of a hani ship. Public hazard, it was called. But there were no outside witnesses to the intrusion, and the kif, almost certainly to blame, would not yield without a wrangle; which meant court;, and prolonged proximity to kif, whose gray, wrinkle-hided persons she loathed; whose naturally dolorous faces she loathed; whose jeremiad of miseries and wrongs done them was constant and unendurable. A Chanur, in station court with a howling mob of kif . . . and it would go to that extreme if kif came claiming this intruder. The whole business was unpalatable, in all its ramifications. Whatever it was and wherever it came from, the creature was educated. That hinted in turn at other things, at cogent reasons why the kif might indeed be upset at the loss of this item and why they wished so little publicity in the search. She punched in intraship. "Hilfy." "Aunt?" Hilfy responded after a moment. "Find out the intruder's condition." "I'm watching them treat it now. Aunt, I think it's he, if there's any analogy of form and—" "Never mind zoology. How badly is it hurt?" "It's in shock, but it seems stronger than it was a moment ago. It—he—got quiet when we managed to get an anesthetic on the scratches. I think he figured then we were trying to help, and he quit fighting. We thought the drug had got him. But he's breathing better now." "It's probably just waiting its chance. When you get it safely locked up, you take your turn at dockwork, since you were so eager to have a look outside. The others will show you what to do. Tell Haral to get herself to lowerdeck op. Now." "Yes, aunt." Hilfy had no sulking in her tone. The last reprimand must not have worn off. Pyanfar shut down the contact and listened to station chatter in the interim, wishing in vain for something to clarify the matter. Haral showed up on the run, soaking wet, blood-spattered and breathless. She bowed shortly in the doorway, straightened. She was oldest of the crew, was Haral, tall, with a dark scar across her broad nose and another across the belly, but those were from her rash youth. "Clean up," Pyanfar said. "Take cash and go marketing, cousin. Shop the second-hand markets as if you were on your own. The item I want may be difficult to locate, but not impossible, I think, in such a place as Meetpoint. Some books, if you will—a mahendo'sat lexicon; a mahendo'sat version of their holy writings. The philosopher Kohboranua or another of that ilk, I'm completely indifferent. And a mahendo'sat symbol translator, its modules and manuals, from elementary up, as many levels as you can find . . . above all that item. The rest is all cover. If questioned—a client's taken a religious interest." Haral's, eyes flickered, but she bowed in acceptance of the order and asked nothing. Pyanfar put her hand deep into her pocket and came up with a motley assortment of large-denomination coinage, a whole stack of it. "And four gold rings," Pyanfar added. "Captain?" "To remind you all that The Pride minds its own business. Say so when you give them. It'll salve your feelings, I hope, if we have to miss taking a liberty here, as well we may. But talk and rouse suspicion about those items, Haral Araun, and you won't have an ear to wear it on." Haral grinned and bowed a third time. "Go," said Pyanfar, and Haral darted out in zealous application. So. It was a risk, but a minor one. Pyanfar considered matters for a moment, finally walked outside the op room and down the corridor, took the lift up to central level, where her own quarters were, out of the stench and the reek of disinfectant which filled the lower deck. She closed the door behind her with a sigh, went to the bath and washed her hands, seeing that there remained no shred of flesh in the undercurve of her claws—checked over her fine silk breeches to be sure no spatter of blood had gotten on them. She applied a dash of cologne to clear the memory from her nostrils. Stupidity. She was getting dull as the stsho, to have missed a grip on the intruder in the first place: old was not a word she preferred to think about. Slow of mind, woolgathering, that she struck like a youngster on her first forage. Lazy. That was more like it. She patted her flat belly and decided that the year-old complacent outletting of her belt had to be taken in again. She was losing her edge. Her brother Kohan was still fit enough, planet-bound as he was and not gifted with the time-stretch of jump: he managed. Inter-male bickering and a couple of sons to throw out of the domicile kept his blood circulating, and there was usually a trio of mates in the house at any one time, with offspring to chastise. About time, she thought, that she put The Pride into home dock at Anuurn for a thorough refitting, and spend a layover with her own mate Khym, high in the Kahin hills, in the Mahn estates. Get the smell of the homeworld wind in her nostrils for a few months. Do a little hunting, run off that extra notch on the belt. Check on her daughter Tahy and see whether that son of hers was still roving about or whether someone had finally broken his neck for him. Surely the lad would have had the common courtesy to send a message through Khym or Kohan if he had settled somewhere; and above all to her daughter, who was, gods knew, grown and getting soft hanging about her father's house, among a dozen other daughters, mostly brotherless. Son Kara should settle himself with some unpropertied wife and give his sister some gainful employment making him rich—above all, settle and take himself out of his father's and his uncle's way. Ambitious, that was Kara. Let the young rake try to move in on his uncle Kohan and that would be the last of him. Pyanfar flexed claws at the thought and recalled why all her shoreleaves were short ones. But this now, this business with this bit of live contraband which had strayed aboard, which might be kif-owned . . . the honorable lord Kohan Chanur her brother was going to have a word to say about his ship's carelessness in letting such an incident reach their deck. And there was going to be a major rearrangement in the household if Hilfy got hurt—brotherless Hilfy, who had gotten to be too much Chanur to go following after a brother if ever her mother gave her one. Hilfy Chanur par Faha, who wanted the stars more than she wanted anything; and who clung to her father as the one who could give them to her. It was Hilfy's lifelong waited chance, this voyage, this apprenticeship on The Pride. It had torn Kohan's doting soul to part from his favorite; that was clear in the letter which had come with Hilfy. Pyanfar shook her head and fretted. Depriving those four rag-eared crew of hers of a shoreleave in the pursuit of this matter was one thing, but taking Hilfy home to Anuurn while she sorted out a major quarrel with the kif was another. It was expensive, curtailing their homeward routing. More, Hilfy's pride would die a death, if she were the cause of that rerouting, if she were made to face her sisters in her sudden return to the household; and Pyanfar confessed herself attached to the imp, who wanted what she had wanted at such an age, who most likely would come to command a Chanur ship someday, perhaps even—gods postpone the hour— The Pride itself. Pyanfar thought of such a legacy . . . someday, someday that Kohan passed his prime and she did. Others in the house of Chanur were jealous of Hilfy, waiting for some chance to use their jealousy. But Hilfy was the best. The brightest and best, like herself and like Kohan, and no one so far could prove otherwise. Whatever young male one day won the Chanur holding from Kohan in his decline had best walk warily and please Hilfy, or Hilfy might take herself a mate who would tear the ears off the interloper. That was the kind Hilfy was, loyal to her father and to the house. And ruining that spirit or risking her life over that draggled Outsider was not worth it. Maybe, Pyanfar thought, she should swallow the bitter mouthful and go dump the creature on the nearest kif ship. She seriously considered it. Choosing the wrong kif ship might afford some lively amusement: there would be riot among the kif and consternation on the station. But yielding was still, at bottom, distasteful. Gods! so that was how she proposed teaching young Hilfy to handle difficulties. That was the example she set. . . yielding up what she had, because she thought it might be dangerous to hold it. She was getting soft. She patted her belly again, decided against shoreleave at voyage's end, another lying-up and another Mahn offspring to muddle things up. Decided against retreat. She drew in a great breath and put on a grim smile. Age came and the young grew old, but not too old, the gods grant. This voyage, young Hilfy Chanur was going to learn to justify that swagger she cut through the corridors of the ship; so, indeed she was. There was no leaving the ship with matters aboard still in flux. Pyanfar went to the small central galley, up the starboard curve from her quarters and the bridge, stirred about to take a cup of gfi from the dispenser and sat down at the counter by the oven to enjoy it at leisure, waiting until her crew should have had ample time to have dealt with the Outsider. She gave them a bit more, finally tossed the empty cup in the sterilizer and got up and wandered belowdecks again, where the corridors stank strongly of antiseptic and Tirun was lounging about, leaning against the wall by the lowerdeck washroom door. "Well?" Pyanfar asked. "We put it in there, captain. Easiest to clean, by your leave. Haral left. Chur and Geran and ker Hilfy are out doing the loading. Thought someone ought to stay awhile by the door and listen, to be sure the creature's all right." Pyanfar laid her hand on the switch, looked back at Tirun—Haral's sister and as broad and solid, with the scars of youth well-weathered, the gold of successful voyages winking from her left ear. The two of them together could handle the Outsider, she reckoned, in any condition. "Does it show any sign of coming out of its shock?" "It's quiet; shallow breathing, staring somewhere else—but aware what's going on. Scared us a moment; we thought it'd gone into shock with the medicine, but I think it just quieted down when the pain stopped. We tried with the way we handled it, to make it understand we didn't want to hurt it. Maybe it has that figured. We carried it in here and it settled down and lay still . . . moved when made to move, but not surly, more like it's stopped thinking, like it's stopped doing anything it doesn't have to do. Worn out, I'd say." "Huh." Pyanfar pressed the bar. The dark interior of the washroom smelled of antiseptic too, the strongest they had. The lights were dimmed. The air was stiflingly warm and carried an odd scent under the antiseptic reek. Her eyes missed the creature a moment, searched anxiously and located it in the corner, a heap of blankets between the shower stall and the laundry . . . asleep or awake she could not tell with its head tucked down in its forearms. A large container of water and a plastic dish with a few meat chips and crumbs left rested beside it on the tiles. Well, again. It was then carnivorous and not so delicate after all, to have an appetite left. So much for its collapse. "Is it restrained?" "It has chain enough to get to the head if it understands what it's for." Pyanfar stepped back outside and closed the door on it again. "Very likely it understands. Tirun, it is sapient or I'm blind. Don't assume it can't manipulate switches. No one is to go in there alone and no one's to carry firearms near it. Pass that order to the others personally, Hilfy too. Especially Hilfy." "Yes, captain." Tirun's broad face was innocent of opinions. Gods knew what they were going to do with the creature if they kept it. Tirun did not ask. Pyanfar strolled off, meditating on the scene behind the washroom door, the heap of deceptive blankets, the food so healthily consumed, the avowed collapse . . . no lackwit, this creature who had twice tried her ship's security and on the third attempt, succeeded in getting through. Why The Pride? she wondered. Why her ship, out of all the others at dock? Because they were last in the section, before the bulkhead of the dock seal might force the creature to have left cover somewhat, and it was the last available choice? Or was there some other reason? She walked the corridor to the airlock and the rampway, and out its curving ribbed length into the chill air of the docks. She looked left as she came out, and there was Hilfy, canister-loading with Chur and Geran, rolling the big cargo containers off the stationside dolly and onto the moving belt which would take the goods into The Pride's holds, paid freight on its way to Urtur and Kura and Touin and Anuurn itself, stsho cargo, commodities and textiles and medicines, ordinary stuff. Hilfy paused at the sight of her, panting with her efforts and already looking close to collapse—stood up straight with her hands at her sides and her ears back, belly heaving. It was hard work, shifting those cans about, especially for the unskilled and unaccustomed. Chur and Geran worked on, small of stature and wiry, knowing the points of balance to an exactitude. Pyanfar affected not to notice her niece and walked on with wide steps and nonchalant, smiling to herself the while. Hilfy had been mightily indignant, barred from rushing out to station market, to roam about unescorted, sightseeing on this her first call at Meetpoint, where species docked which never called at homeworld . . . sights she had missed at Urtur and Kura, likewise pent aboard ship or held close to The Pride's berth. The imp had too much enthusiasm for her own good. So she got the look at Meetpoint's famous docks she had argued to have, now, this very day—but not the sightseeing tour of her young imaginings. Next station-call, Pyanfar thought, next station-call her niece might have learned enough to let loose unescorted, when the wild-eyed eagerness had worn off, when she had learned from this incident that there were hazards on dockside and that a little caution was in order when prowling the friendliest of ports. Herself, she took the direct route, not without watching her surroundings. Chapter 2 A call on Meetpoint Station officials was usually a leisurely and pleasant affair. The stsho, placid and graceful, ran the station offices and bureaus on this side of the station, where oxygen breathers docked. Methodical to a fault, the stsho, tedious and full of endless subtle meanings in their pastel ornament and the tattooings on their pearly hides. They were another hairless species—stalk-thin, tri-sexed and hanilike only by the wildest stretch of the imagination, if eyes, nose, and mouth in biologically convenient order was similarity. Their manners were bizarre among themselves. But stsho had learned to suit their methodical plodding and their ceremoniousness to hani taste, which was to have a soft chair, a ready cup of herbal tea, a plate of exotic edibles and an individual as pleasant as possible about the forms and the statistics, who could make it all like a social chat. This stsho was unfamiliar. Stsho changed officials more readily than they changed ornament. Either a different individual had come into control of Meetpoint Station, Pyanfar reckoned, or a stsho she had once known had entered a New Phase. New doings? Pyanfar wondered, at the nudge of a small and prickly instinct—new doings? Loose Outsiders and stsho power shuffles? All changes were suspect when something was out of pocket. If it was the same as the previous stationmaster, it had changed the pattern of all the elaborate silver filigree and plumes—azure and lime now, not azure and mint; and if it were the case, it was not at all polite to recognize the refurbished person, even if a hani suspected identity. The stsho proffered delicacies and tea, bowed, folded up gtst stalklike limbs—he, she, or even it, hardly applied with stsho—and seated gtst-self in gtst bowlchair, a cushioned indentation in the office floor. The necessary table rose on a pedestal before it. Pyanfar occupied the facing depression, lounged on an elbow to reach for the smoked fish the stsho's lesser-status servant had placed on a similar table at her left. The servant, ornamentless and no one, sat against the wall, knees tucked higher than gtst head, arms about bony ankles, waiting usefulness. The stsho official likewise took a sample of the fish, poured tea, graceful gestures of stsho elegance and hospitality. Plumed and cosmetically augmented brows nodded delicately over moonstone eyes as gtst looked up—white brows shading to lilac and azure; azure tracings on the domed brow shaded to lime over the hairless skull. Another stsho, of course, might read the patterns with exactitude, the station in life, the chosen Mood for this Phase of gtst existence, the affiliations and modes and thereby, gtst approachability. Non-stsho were forgiven their trespasses; and stsho in Retiring mode were not likely filling public offices. Pyanfar made one attempt on the Outsider topic, delicately: "Things have been quiet hereabouts?" "Oh, assuredly." The stsho beamed, smiled with narrow mouth and narrow eyes, a carnivore habit, though the stsho were not aggressive. "Assuredly." "Also on my world," Pyanfar said, and sipped her tea, an aroma of spices which delighted all her sinuses. "Herbal. But what?" The stsho smiled with still more breadth. "Ah. Imported from my world. We introduce it here, in our offices. Duty free. New cultivation techniques make it available for export. The first time, you understand. The very first shipment offered. Very rare, a taste of my very distant world." "Cost?" They discussed it. It was outrageous. But the stsho came down, predictably, particularly when tempted with a case of hani delicacies promised to be carted up from dockside to the offices. Pyanfar left the necessary interview in high spirits. Barter was as good to her as breathing. She took the lift down to dock level, straight down, without going the several corridors over in lateral which she could have taken. She walked the long way back toward The Pride's berth, strolled casually along the dockside which horizoned upward before and behind, unfurling as she moved, offices and businesses on the one hand and the tall mobile gantries on the other, towers which aimed their tops toward the distant axis of Meetpoint, so that the most distant appeared insanely atilt on the curving horizon. Display boards at periodic intervals gave information of arrivals, departures, and ships in dock, from what port and bearing what sort of cargo, and she scanned them as she walked. A car shot past her on the dock, from behind: globular and sealed, it wove along avoiding canisters and passers-by and lines with greater speed than an automated vehicle would use. That was a methane-breather, more than likely, some official from beyond the dividing line which separated the incompatible realities of Meetpoint. Tc'a ran that side of the station, sinuous beings and leathery gold, utterly alien in their multipartite brains—they traded with the knnn and the chi, kept generally to themselves and had little to say or to do with hani or even with the stsho, with whom they shared the building and operation of Meetpoint. Tc'a had nothing in common with this side of the line, not even ambitions; and the knnn and the chi were stranger still, even less participant within the worlds and governments and territories of the Compact. Pyanfar watched the vehicle kite along, up the horizon of Meetpoint's docks, and the section seal curtained it from view as it jittered along in zigzag haste which itself argued a tc'a mind at the controls. There was no trouble from them . . . no way that they could have dealt with the Outsider: their brains were as unlike as their breathing apparatus. She paused, stared up at the nearby registry boards with a wrinkling of her nose and a stroking of her beard, sorting through the improbable and untranslatable methane-breather names for more familiar registrations—for potential trouble, and for possible allies of use in a crisis. There was scant picking among the latter at this apogee of The Pride's rambling course. There was one other hani ship in dock, Handur's Voyager. She knew a few of the Handur family, remotely. They were from Anuurn's other hemisphere, neither rivals nor close allies, since they shared nothing on Anuurn's surface. There were a lot of stsho ships, which was to be expected on this verge of stsho space. A lot of mahendo'sat, through whose territory The Pride had lately come. And on the side of trouble, there were four kif, one of which she knew: Kut, captained by one Ikkkukkt, an aging scoundrel whose style was more to allow another ship's canisters to edge up against and among his on dockside; and to bluff down any easily confused owners who might protest. He was only small trouble, alone. Kif in groups could be different, and she did not know about the others. "Hai," she called, passing a mahendo'sat docking area, at a ship called Mahijiru, where some of that tall, dark-furred kind were minding their own business, cursing and scratching their heads over some difficulty with a connection collar, a lock-ring disassembled in order all over the deck among their waiting canisters. "You fare well this trip, mahe?" "Ah, captain." The centermost scrambled up and others did the same as this one stepped toward her, treading carefully among the pieces of the collar. Any well-dressed hani was captain to a mahendo'sat, who had rather err by compliment than otherwise. But this one by his gilt teeth was likely the captain of his own freighter. "You trade?" "Trade what?" "What got?" "Hai, mahe, what need?" The mahendo'sat grinned, a brilliant golden flash, sharp-edged. No one of course began trade by admitting to necessity. "Need a few less kif onstation." Pyanfar answered her own question, and the mahendo'sat whistled laughter and bobbed agreement. "True, true," Goldtooth said somewhere between humor and outrage, as if he had a personal tale to tell. "Whining kif we wish you end of dock, good captain, honest captain. Kut no good. Hukan more no good; and Lukkur same. But Hinukku make new kind deal no good. Wait at station, wait no get same you course with Hinukku, good captain." "What, armed?" "Like hani, maybe." Goldtooth grinned when he said it, and Pyanfar laughed, pretended it a fine joke. "When do hani ever have weapons?" she asked. The mahe thought that a fine joke too. "Trade you two hundredweight silk," Pyanfar offered. "Station duty take all my profit." "Ah. Too bad. Hard work, that." She scuffed a foot toward the ailing collar. "I can lend you very good hani tools, fine steel, two very good hani welders, Faha House make." "I lend you good quality artwork." "Artwork!" "Maybe someday great mahen artist, captain." "Then come to me; I'll keep my silk." "Ah, ah, I make you favor with artwork, captain, but no, I ask you take no chance. I have instead small number very fine pearl like you wear." "Ah." "Make you security for lend tools and welders. My man he come by you soon borrow tools. Show you pearl same time." "Five pearls." "We see tools you see two pearls." "You bring four." "Fine. You pick best three." "All four if they're not of the best, my good, my great mahe captain." "You see," he vowed. "Absolute best. Three." "Good." She grinned cheerfully, touched hand to hand with the thick-nailed mahe and strolled off, grinning still for all passersby to see; but the grin faded when she was past the ring of their canisters and crossing the next berth. So. Kif trouble had docked. There were kif and kif, and in that hierarchy of thieves, there were a few ship captains who tended to serve as ringleaders for highstakes mischief; and some elect who were very great trouble indeed. Mahendo'sat translation always had its difficulties, but it sounded uncomfortably like one of the latter. Stay in dock, the mahendo'sat had advised; don't chance putting out till it leaves. That was mahendo'sat strategy. It did not always work. She could keep The Pride at dock and run up a monstrous bill, and still have no guarantee of a safe course out; or she could pull out early and hope that the kif would not suspect what they had aboard—hope that the kif, at minimum, were waiting for something easier to chew than a mouthful of hani. Hilfy. That worry rode her mind. Ten quiet voyages, ten voyages of aching, bone-weary tranquility . . . and now this one. The docks looked all quiet ahead, up where The Pride had docked, her people working out by the loading belt as they should be doing, taking aboard the mail and the freight. Haral was back, working among them; she was relieved to see that. That was Tirun outside now, and Hilfy must have gone in: the other two were Geran and Chur, slight figures next to Haral and Tirun. She found no cause to hurry. Hilfy had probably had enough by now, retreated inside to guard duty over the Outsider, gods grant that she stayed outside the door and refrained from meddling. But the crew caught sight of her as she came, and of a sudden expressions took on desperate relief and ears pricked up, so that her heart clenched with foreknowledge of something direly wrong. "Hilfy," she asked first, as Haral came walking out to meet her: the other three stayed at their loading, all too busy for those looks of anxiety, playing the part of workers thoroughly occupied. "Ker Hilfy's safe inside," Haral said quickly. "Captain, I got the things you ordered, put them in lowerdeck op, all of it; but there were kif everywhere I went, captain, when I was off in the market. They were prowling about the aisles, staring at everyone, buying nothing. I finished my business and walked on back and they were still prowling about. So I ordered ker Hilfy to go on in and send Tirun out here. There are kif nosing about here of a sudden." "Doing what?" "Look beyond my shoulder, captain." Pyanfar took a quick look, a shift of her eyes. "Nothing," she said. But canisters were piled there at the section seal, twenty, thirty of them, each as tall as a hani and double-stacked, cover enough. She set her hand on Haral's shoulder, walked her companionably back to the others. "Haral, there's going to be a small stsho delivery and a mahendo'sat with a three-pearl deal; both are true . . . watch them both. But no others. There's one other hani ship docked far around the rim, next the methane docks. I've not spoken with them. It's Handur's Voyager." "Small ship." "And vulnerable. We're going to take The Pride out, with all decent haste. I think it can only get worse here. Tirun: a small task; get to Voyager. I don't want to discuss the situation with them over com. Warn them that there's a ship in dock named Hinukku and the word is out among the mahendo'sat that this one is uncommonly bad trouble. And then get yourself back here fast—No, wait. A good tool kit and two good welders—drop them with the crew of the Mahijiru and take the pearls in a hurry if you can get them. Seventh berth down. They'll deserve that and more if I've put the kif onto them by asking questions there. Go." "Yes, captain," Tirun breathed, and scurried off, ears back, up the service ramp beside the cargo belt. Pyanfar cast a second look at the double-stacked canisters in turning. No kif in sight. Haste, she wished Tirun, hurry it. It was a quick trip inside to pull the trade items from the automated delivery. Tirun came back with the boxes under one arm and set out directly in the kind of reasonable haste she might use on her captain's order. "Huh." Pyanfar turned again and looked toward the shadow. There. By the canisters after all. A kif stood there, tall and black-robed, with a long prominent snout and hunched stature. Pyanfar stared at it directly—waved to it with energetic and sarcastic camaraderie as she started toward it. It stepped at once back into the shelter of the canisters and the shadows. Pyanfar drew a great breath, flexed her claws and kept walking, round the curve of the canister stacks and softly—face to face with the towering kif. The kif looked down on her with its red-rimmed dark eyes and longnosed face and its dusty black robes like the robes of all other kif, of one tone with the gray skin . . . a bit of shadow come to life. "Be off," she told it. "I'll have no canister-mixing. I'm onto your tricks." "Something of ours has been stolen." She laughed, helped by sheer surprise. "Something of yours stolen, master thief? That's a wonder to tell at home." "Best it find its way back to us. Best it should, captain." She laid back her ears and grinned, which was not friendliness. "Where is your crewwoman going with those boxes?" the kif asked. She said nothing. Extruded claws. "It would not be, Captain, that you've somehow found that lost item." "What, lost, now?" "Lost and found again, I think." "What ship are you, kif?" "If you were as clever as you imagine you are, captain, you would know." "I like to know who I'm talking to. Even among kif. I'll reckon you know my name, skulking about out here. What's yours?" "Akukkakk is mine, Chanur captain. Pyanfar Chanur. Yes, we know you. Know you well, captain. We have become interested in you . . . thief." "Oh. Akukkakk of what ship?" Her vision sharpened on the kif, whose robes were marginally finer than usual, whose bearing had precious little kifish stoop in dealing with shorter species, that hunch of shoulders and thrusting forward of the head. This one looked at her the long way, from all its height. "I'd like to know you as well, kif." "You will, hani. No. A last chance. We will redeem this prize you've found. I will make you that offer." Her mustache-hairs drew down, as at some offensive aroma. "Interesting if I had this item. Is it round or flat, this strayed object? Or did one of your own crew rob you, kif captain?" "You know its shape, since you have it. Give it up, and be paid. Or don't—and be paid, hani, be paid then too." "Describe this item to me." "For its safe return—gold, ten bars of gold, fine. Contrive your own descriptions." "I shall bear it in mind, kif, should I find something unusual and kif-smelling. But so far nothing." "Dangerous, hani." "What ship, kif?" "Hinukku." "I'll remember your offer. Indeed I will, master thief." The kif said nothing more. Towered erect and silent. She aimed a dry spitting toward its feet and walked off, slow swagger. Hinukku, indeed. A whole new kind of trouble, the mahendo'sat had said, and this surly kif or another might have seen . . . or talked to those who had seen. Gold, they offered. Kif . . . offered ransom; and no common kif, either, not that one. She walked with a prickling between her shoulder blades and a multiplying apprehension for Tirun, who was now a small figure walking off along the upcurving docks. No hope that the station authorities would do anything to prevent a murder . . . not one between kif and hani. The stsho's neutrality consisted in retreat, and their law in arbitrating after the fact. Stsho ships were the most common victims of marauding kif, and still kif docked unchecked at Meetpoint. Madness. A bristling ran up her back and her ears flicked, jingling the rings. Hani might deal with the kif and teach them a lesson, but there was no profit in it, not until moments like this one. Divert every hani ship from profitable trade to kif-hunting? Madness too . . . until it was The Pride in question. "Pack it up out here," she told her remaining crew when she reached them. "Get those last cans on and shut it down. Get everything ready to break dock. I'm going to call Tirun back here. It's worse than I thought." "I'll go after her," Haral said. "Do as I say, cousin—and keep Hilfy out of it." Haral fell back. Pyanfar started off down the dock—old habit, not to run; a reserve of pride, of caution, of some instinct either good or ill. Still she did not run in front of witnesses. She widened her strides until some bystanders—stsho—did notice, and stared. She gained on Tirun. Almost, almost within convenient shouting distance of Tirun, and still a far, naked distance up the dock's upcurving course to reach Handur's Voyager. Hinukku sat at dock for Tirun to pass before she should come to the hani ship. But the mahendo'sat vessel Mahijiru was docked before that, if only Tirun handled that extraneous errand on the way, the logical thing to do with a heavy load under one arm. Surely it was the logical thing, even considering the urgency of the other message. Ah. Tirun did stop at the mahendo'sat berth. Pyanfar breathed a gasp of relief, broke her own rule at the last moment and sprinted behind some canisters, strode right into the gathering which had begun to close about Tirun. She clapped a startled mahendo'sat spectator on the arm, pulled it about and thrust her way through to Tirun, grabbed her arm without ceremony. "Trouble. Let's go, cousin." "Captain," Goldtooth exclaimed from her right. "You come back make new bigger deal?" "Never mind. The tools are a gift. Come on, Tirun." "Captain," Tirun began, bewildered, being dragged back through the gathering of mahendo'sat. Mahendo'sat gave way before them, their captain still following them with confused chatter about welders and pearls. Kif. A black-clad half ring of them appeared suddenly on the outskirts of the swirl of dark-furred mahendo'sat. Pyanfar had Tirun's wrist and pulled her forward. "Look out!" Tirun cried suddenly: one of the kif had pulled a gun from beneath its robe. "Go!" Pyanfar yelled, and they dived back among cursing and screaming mahendo'sat, out again through a melee of kif who had circled behind the canisters. Fire popped after them. Pyanfar bowled over a kif in their path with a strike that should snap vertebrae and did not break stride to find out. Tirun ran beside her; they sprinted with fire popping smoke curls off the deck plates ahead of them. Suddenly a shot came from the right hand. Tirun yelped and stumbled, limping wildly. More kif along the dockfront offices, one very tall and familiar. Akukkakk, with friends. "Earless bastard!" Pyanfar shouted, grabbed Tirun afresh and kept going, dragged her behind the canisters of another mahendo'sat ship in a hail of laser pops and the reek of burned plastic. Tirun sagged in shock—a curse and a jerk on the arm got her running again, desperately: the burn ruptured and bled. They darted an open space, having no choice: shrill harooing rang out behind and on the right, kif on the hunt. A second shout roared out from before them, another flash from guns, multicolor, at The Pride's berth: The Pride's crew was returning fire, high for their sakes but meaning business. Station alarms started going off, bass-tone whooping. Red lights flashed on the walls and up the curve till the ceiling vanished. Higher up the curve of the dock, station folk scrambled in panic, hunting shelter. If there were kif among them, they would come charging down from that direction too, at the crew's backs. And Hilfy was out there at that access, fourth in that line of their own guns—laying down a berserk pattern of fire. Pyanfar dragged Tirun through that line of four by the scruff of the neck. Tirun twisted and fell on the plates and Pyanfar helped her up again, not without a wild look back, at a dockside where enemies fired from cover at her crew who had precious little. "Board!" she yelled at the others with the last of her wind, and herself skidded on the decking in turning for the rampway. Haral retreated and grabbed Tirun's flailing arm from the other side and Hilfy suddenly took Pyanfar's. Pyanfar looked back again, willing to turn and fight. Geran and Chur were falling back in orderly retreat behind them, still facing the direction of the kif and firing—the kif had been pinned back from advance into better vantage. Hilfy pulled at her arm and Pyanfar shook free as they reached the rampway's first door. "Come on," she shouted at Geran and Chur; and the moment they retreated within, still firing, she hit the door seal. The massive steel clanged and thumped shut and the pair stumbled back out of the way; Hilfy darted in from across the door and rammed the lock-lever down. Pyanfar looked round then at Tirun, who was on her feet though sagging in Haral's arms, and holding her upper right leg. Her blue breeches were dark with blood from there to the fur of her calf and threading down to her foot in a puddle, and she was muttering a steady stream of curses. "Move," Pyanfar said. Haral took Tirun up in her arms and outright carried her, no small load. They withdrew up the rampway curve into their own lock, sealed that door and felt somewhat safer. "Captain," Chur said, businesslike. "All lines are loose and cargo ramp is disengaged. In case." "Well done," Pyanfar said, vastly relieved to hear it. They walked through the airlock and round the bend into the main lower corridor. "Secure the Outsider; sedate it all the way. You—" she looked aside at Tirun, who was trying to walk again with an arm across her sister's shoulders. "Get a wrap on that leg fast. No time for anything more. We're getting loose. I don't imagine Hinukku will stand still for this and I don't want kif passing my tail while we're nose-to-station. Everyone rig for maneuvers." "I can wrap my own leg," Tirun said. "Just drop me in sickbay." "Hilfy," Pyanfar said, collected her niece as she headed for the lift. "Disobedient," Pyanfar muttered when they were close. "Forgive," said Hilfy. They entered the lift together; the door shut. Pyanfar fetched the youngster a cuff which rocked her against the lift wall, and pushed the mainlevel button. Hilfy righted herself and disdained even to clap a hand to her ear, but her eyes were watering, her ears flattened and nostrils wide as if she were facing into some powerful wind. "Forgiven," said Pyanfar. The lift let them out, and Hilfy started to run up the corridor toward the bridge, but Pyanfar stalked along at a more deliberate pace and Hilfy paused and matched her stride, walked with her through the archway into the curved-deck main operations center. Pyanfar sat down in her cushion in the center of a bank of vid screens and started turning on systems. Station was squalling stsho language protests, objections, outrage. "Get on that," Pyanfar said to her niece without missing a beat in switch-flicking. "Tell station we're cutting loose and they'll have to cope with it." A delay. Hilfy relayed the message in limping stsho, ignoring the mechanical translator in her haste. "They complain you killed someone." "Good." The grapples clanged loose and a telltale said they had retracted all the way. "Tell them we rejoice to have eliminated a kif who started firing without provocation, endangering bystanders and property on the dock." She fired the undocking repulse and they were loose, sudden loss of g and reacquisition in another direction . . . fired the secondaries which sent The Pride out of plane with station, a redirection of up and down. Ship's g started up, a slow tug against the thrust aft. "Station is mightily upset," Hilfy reported. "They demand to talk to you, aunt; they threaten not to let us dock at stsho—" "Never mind the stsho." Pyanfar flicked from image to image on scan. She spotted another ship loose, in about the right location for Hinukku. Abruptly the scan acquired all kinds of flitter on it, chaff more than likely, as Hinukku screened itself to do something. "Gods rot them." She reached madly for controls and got The Pride reoriented gently enough to save the bones of those aboard who might not yet be secured for maneuvers . . . warning enough for those below to dive for security. "If they fire on us they'll take out half the station. Gods!" She hit general com. "Brace; we're backing hard." This time things came loose. A notebook sailed across the section and landed somewhere forward, missing controls. Hilfy spat and curses came back from com. The Pride was not made for such moves. Nor for the next, which hammered against that backward momentum and, nose dipped, shot them nadir of station (the notebook flew back to its origins) and braked, another career of fluttering pages. "Motherless bastards," Pyanfar said. She punched controls, linked turret to scan. It would swivel to any sighting, anything massive. "Now let them put their nose down here." Her joints were sore. Alarms were ringing and lights were flashing on the maintenance board, cargo having broken loose. She ran her tongue over the points of her teeth and wrinkled her nose for breath, worrying what quadrant of the scan to watch. She put The Pride into a slow axis rotation, gambling that the kif would not come underside of station in so obvious a place as the one in line with last-known-position. "Watch scan," she warned Hilfy, diverting herself to monitor the op board half a heartbeat, to see all the telltales what they ought to be. "Haral, get up here." "Aunt!" Hilfy said. Pyanfar swung her head about again. A little dust had appeared on the screen, some of the chaff spinning their way from above. She had the scanlinked fire control set looser than that and the armament did not react. The lift back down the corridor crashed and hummed in operation. Haral had not acknowledged, but she was coming. "We fire on anything that shows solid," Pyanfar said. "Keep watching that chaff cloud, niece. And mind, it could be outright diversion. I don't trust anything." "Yes," Hilfy said calmly enough. And then: "Look out!" "Chaff," Pyanfar identified the flutter, her heart frozen by the yell. "Be specific to quadrant: number's enough." Running feet in the corridor. Haral was with them. Hilfy started to yield her place at scan; Haral slid into the third seat, adjusted the restraints. "Didn't plan to do so much moving," Pyanfar said, never taking the focus of her eyes from scan. "Anyone hurt?" "No," said Haral. "Everything's secure." "They're thinking it over up there," Pyanfar said. "Aunt! 4/2!" Turret was swiveling. Eye tracked to the number four screen. Energy washed over station's rim: more chaff followed, larger debris. "Captain, they hit station." Haral's voice was incredulous. "They fired." "Handur's Voyager." Pyanfar had the origin mapped on the station torus and made the connection. "O gods." She hit repulse and sent them hurtling to station core shadow, tilted their nose with a second burst and cut in main thrust, shooting them nadir of station, nose for infinity. Pyanfar reached and uncapped a red switch, hit it, and The Pride rocked with explosion. "What was that?" Hilfy's voice. "Are we hit?" "I just dumped our holds." Pyanfar sucked air, an expansion of her nostrils. Her claws flexed out and in on the togglegrip. G was hauling at them badly. The Pride of Chanur was in full rout, having just altered their mass/drive ratio, stripped for running. "Haral, get us a course." "Working," Haral said. Numbers started coming up on the comp screen at Pyanfar's left. "Going to have to find us a quiet spot." "Urtur's just within singlejump range," Haral said, "stripped as we are. Maybe." "Has to be." Beyond Meetpoint in the other direction was stsho space, with a great scarcity of jump points to help them along, those masses by which The Pride or any other jumpship steered; and on other sides were kif regions; and knnn; and unexplored regions, uncharted, without jump coordinates. Jump blind into those and they would never come back again . . . anywhere known. She livened another board, bringing up jump-graphs. Urtur. That was the way they had come in, two jumps and loaded—a very large system where mahendo'sat did a little mining, a little manufacture, and licensed others. They might make that distance in one jump now; kif were not following . . . yet. Did not have to follow. They could figure possible destinations by dumped mass and the logic of the situation. O my brother, she thought, wondering how she would face Kohan. He would be affected by this disgrace, this outrage of lost cargo, of flight while a hani ship perished stationbound and helpless. Kohan Chanur might be broken by it; it might tempt young males to challenge him. And if there were enough challenges, and often enough. . . . No. Not that kind of end for Chanur. There was no going home with that kind of news. Not until kif paid, until The Pride got things to rights again. "Mark fifteen to jump point," Haral said. "Captain, they'll trace us, no question." "No question," she said. Beyond Haral's scarred face she caught sight of Hilfy's, unmarred and scant-bearded—frightened and trying not to show it. Pyanfar opened allship: "Rig for jump." The alarm started, a slow wailing through the ship. The Pride leapt forward by her generation pulses, borrowed velocity at the interface, several wrenching flickers, whipped into the between. Pyanfar dug her claws in, decades accustomed to this, did that mental wrench which told lies to the inner ears, and kept her balance. Come on, she willed the ship, as if intent alone could take it that critical distance farther. Chapter 3 The Pride came in, sluggish, nightmare arrival, pulsed out and in again, a flickering of jump-distorted instruments which showed them far out on the Urtur range, not close enough to pick up more than an indication of a stellar mass. Near miss. They had stretched it as far as it could be stretched. Pyanfar struggled to move in her cushion, fighting to aim the fingers of her hand, to shut down all scan, running lights, the weak locational and ID transmission, every emission from the ship, forgetting nothing in the mental confusion which went with emergence. Then she started the sequence to bleed off their velocity, an uncomfortable ride, even as nightmare-slow as they were moving on their emergence. She kept her mind focused, trying not to let her thoughts stray to the horror at the back of it, how fine they had cut it. Hilfy threw up, not an uncommon reaction to the shift. It did not help Pyanfar's own stomach. "We're dumping down to systemic drift velocity," Pyanfar said on allship. "Possibly the kif stayed to sort through what we jettisoned, but they'll be here in short order. Or they're already here . . . with likely more kif here to help them. I'll be very surprised otherwise. We've shut down all transmission, all scan output. No use of the main engines either. Everyone still all right down there?" There was prolonged delay in response. "Looks to be," Tirun's voice came back from lowerdeck op, which had lost most of what it was primarily designed to monitor when the holds blew. "Chur and Geran are starting a check by remote, but it looks like it was a clean separation when we blew it out. All working systems are clean." The velocity dump went on. Hilfy moved about, cleaning up in shame. Haral stayed her post. Pyanfar occupied herself with feverish calculations and sorted and calculated on that one arrival image they had gotten before scan shut down, and on what they had on passive recept. She did a delicate attitude adjustment, trimmed up relative to the flow they were trying to enter, to present the least surface and the least delicate portion of them to hazard—put The Pride into synch with the general rotation of the system, one with the debris and the rock and gas which made Urtur, spread out over the orbits of ten planets and fifty-seven major moons and uncounted planetoids and smaller hazards, one of the more difficult systems for the rapid passage of any ship into its central plane. The Pride was picking up decayed signal from a mahendo'sat installation farther in . . . at least that station should be the origin of it, chatter meaningless not only in the distance but in elapsed time since its sending. Some might be scatter from ships operating in the system, traders, countless miners in ships of all sizes from the great orecarriers down to singleseat skimmers. In due course they themselves ought to announce presence and identity, but she had no intention of doing so. There was an excellent chance that their arrival had been far beyond the capacity of the longest scan from outsystem relay, and she saw no profit in bringing the mahendo'sat of Urtur in on a private quarrel with the kif. The kif could have arrived days ago, bypassing them in the between, which could happen with a more powerful ship—system chatter might reveal that. She kept listening to it with one ear, finished up the dump, pulling them finally into trim, counting to herself and hoping her position was what she thought it was. The Pride drifted then, still maintaining rotation for g, but nothing else of movement. She kept counting. Debris suddenly rang off the unshielded hull, distant battering, a few crashes and squeals of larger objects. Target dead on: she had it, a mob of rocks a little off their velocity, cold mass swarming about them, a screen between them and the kif's possible arrival. She feathered directional jets and trimmed up again. The battering diminished to an occasional patter of dust. Hilfy, standing by the com console counter, looked about her as if she could expect to see the impacts with all their sensor eyes dark; met Pyanfar's face and looked then at Haral, who grimly sat her post and kept trying to plot their position; and Hilfy composed her own face, managed not to flinch when another rock shrilled down the forward-thrusting bow. Pyanfar heaved her aching body out of the cushion, staggered in walking around the dividing console to put her hand on the back of Haral's cushion. "Put the pagers in link," she told Haral. "Keep it channel one and see that someone's always on it. Tie into lowerdeck op: they'll be working down there a while yet. The kif will show, never doubt it. So we lie still, rest up. We receive signal; we don't send; we don't maneuver. We don't do anything now but drift." "Aye." Haral started making the links, shunting over some of com function, an operation which Hilfy should have done. Her broad, scarred face was without disturbance at this insanity. Haral knew the game; they had done it a time or two, this prolonged dark silence, waiting out a kif or an unknown—but not in Urtur's debris-cluttered field, not where other ships were likely and collision was possible. Haral knew. It was Hilfy for whom she offered instructions. Pyanfar took her own pager from the wall by the exit and went back to give one to Hilfy, who was leaning against the counter, nostrils slitted and ears laid back. Pyanfar clapped her on the shoulder and thrust the pager into her hand. "Out. Go. Everything's about to go under automatic here, and there's nothing you can do." She passed by Hilfy and headed out her own way down the corridor outside, with a foul headache, a worry in her gut, and an obsessive desire for a bath. Her quarters, left unsecured, were not as bad as they might have been. The spring covers had held on the round bed, and the only casualty was a pile of charts now randomized. She gritted her teeth against the throbbing in her skull and picked them up, straightened the edges and slapped the unsorted pile back onto the desk, then stripped off her bloody clothes, brushed dried blood from her fur and a cloud of shed fur, too. She always shed in jump . . . sheer fright. Her muscles were tight. She flexed her cramped shoulders and an arm strained from fighting g, a stitch all the way into her rib muscles; and she picked up the pager again and took it with her into the bath, listening to it, which had nothing but static—set it on the bathroom counter before getting into the shower cabinet. The shower was pure delight, warm and soothing. She lifted her face to it, lowered ears, shut nostrils and squinched her eyes shut, letting the stream from the jet comb her mane and beard into order, stepped back and wiped her eyes clear, turned her back and let the spray massage the pain out of her tired shoulders. The pager went off, emergency beep. She spat a curse and flung the shower door open, skidded on the floor and ran out of the bath and out of her quarters naked and dripping as she was. She met Haral and Hilfy on their separate ways back and beat them to the central console. A ship was out there all right, some ways distant, where no ship had been previously—an arrival out of jump. Pyanfar leaned over the board, wiped a bit of water off the screen and wiped it down her chest, holding her beard and trying to avoid dripping. The newcomer was closer to Urtur than they, a good distance inward and zenith—had actually arrived a while ago: passive recept picked it up from its inherent noise. "Better part of an hour backtime," Haral calculated. "I can fine it down." "Do that." They watched it a while, while Pyanfar dripped a cold puddle on the decking and the counter. "Going inward," she pronounced finally on the figures Hilfy passed her, checked against current reception. "If that's the kif, they overjumped us and now they've got a bit of hunting to do. We have a wave just getting to them, but it's got nothing for them, nothing they're going to know from all the rest of the junk out here. Good." She recalled her condition and straightened from bending over the board. "Mop that," she said to Hilfy, who was juniormost. She strode off, pricklish in her dignity. "Captain," Haral's voice came over the pager, and Pyanfar crossed the cabin in two strides to reach the com by her bedside . . . punched it with a forefinger, comb clenched in the same hand. "Receiving you." "Got some chatter that doesn't sound good," Haral said. "I think there are kif here, all right. What came into the system a while ago isn't certain, but it could be mahendo'sat; and I'm getting kif voices and kif signal out of system center. "Doesn't surprise me. Pity the mahe who dropped into this pond, if that's what's happened. But it might cover any noise we made in entry, if that's what it is." "Might do," Haral said. "Gods, captain, no telling how many kif there may have been at Urtur to start with. They're going to swarm all over the mahendo'sat." "Gods know how much kif trouble they've already had here. That bunch from Meetpoint could have gotten as much as five, six days' jump on us. Forget it. Let it rest. Our business is our own business." "Aye," Haral said reluctantly. "Shut it down, Haral. Until they come after us, we're snug." "Aye, captain." The contact broke off. Pyanfar drew a long breath and let it go, stood in front of the unit and after a moment punched in the image they could get, from the telescope in the observation dome. Urtur was a glorious sight . . . at a distance, a saucer of milky light. A shadow passed the image, a bit of rock, doubtless, part of the swarm with which they traveled. She shut it down again. They rolled along blind, getting a tap on the hull now and again from debris, muted this far into The Pride's core, as they played their part as a mote in Urtur's vast lens. This silence was an old trick. It worked . . . sometimes. She continued her combing, and finally, pelt dried, mane and beard combed and silky again in their ringlets, changed to her third-best trousers, of black silk, with green and gold cuffing and belt, a round-the-hips dangle of real gold chains. She changed her pearl earring for an emerald, inspected her claws and trimmed a roughness. A tip had broken. Hard-skinned, the kif. But she had got him, that bastard on the dock. That was at least some consolation for the lost cargo and Tirun's misery. For hani lives—that was yet to collect. She strolled out again, into controls, where Hilfy was standing lone watch. They had far more room when they were under rotation, with the ship's g making the crew's private quarters and a great deal of storage accessible, as well as that large forward ell of the control area itself which was out of reach during dock. Some of the crew ought to be offshift now, eating, sleeping: they arranged such details among themselves when things were tight, knowing best when they needed rest and balancing the ship's needs against their own. Hilfy had a bruised look when she turned to face Pyanfar as she came up behind her in the semishadow of the bridge, amid dead screens and virtually lightless panels. She stood there as if there was something she could hope to do, ears pricked up and eyes wide-irised with her general distress. "Haral left you on watch, imp?" "Haral said she was going below." "I thought I dismissed you." "I thought it wouldn't hurt to be here. I can't rest." "Can't rest is a cheat on the ship. Can't rest is something you learn to remedy, imp. It's going to be too long a wait to wear ourselves to rags up here. Nothing we can do." "Com keeps coming in. It's them—it's the same kif. They're asking the mahendo'sat ships where we are and they're making threats. They call us thieves." Pyanfar spat dryly and chuckled. "What tender honor. What are the mahendo'sat doing about it?" "Nothing. It is a mahendo'sat station, after all; there are other ships . . . all over the place—there's help for them, isn't there? I'd think they'd do something, not just let the kif do what they please." "There may be a lot of kif, too." Pyanfar leaned forward and checked the boards herself, the little data the computer got off passive recept. A rock hit them, a slow scream down the metal; a screen flickered to static and corrected itself, an impact on one of the antennae. "I won't tell you, imp, just how close we came to losing our referents in that jump. If that kif ship did get here ahead of us, it's considerably more powerful than we are. All power and precious little cargo room. That tell you anything?" "It's not a freighter." "Kif runner. Got a few false tanks strapped on, all shell and no mass to speak of, masking what she is. You understand? Ships like that do the kill; the carrioneaters come after, real freighters, that suck up the cargoes and do the dockside trading when they do get to some port. That's what we're likely up against. A runner. A hunter ship. They overestimated our capacity . . . overjumped us, more than likely, and incoming traffic may have been good enough to confuse the issue further. If that's the case we've just used up all the luck we're entitled to." "Are we just going to sit here?" Hilfy asked. "Ship after ship is going to come into this system not knowing what they're running into . . . all those ships from Meetpoint that don't go the stsho route—" "Imp, we're blind at the moment. We've dumped velocity . . . and maybe some of those hunting us haven't; and maybe some are yet to come. You know what kind of situation that puts us in. Sitting target." "If they all stay to centerward," Hilfy suggested cautiously, "we could just jump out again . . . be gone before they could catch us, take the pressure off these mahe before someone else gets hurt. Maybe we could get away with it again at the next jumppoint, get to Kirdu . . . after Urtur, couldn't we maybe make Kirdu in two jumps? Get out of here. After this place, there are other choices. Aren't there?" Pyanfar stared at her. "Been doing some research, have you?" "I looked." "Huh." It was a sensible idea, and one she had had even before the jump; but there were loose pieces in this business. Moves not yet calculated. It remained to measure how upset the kif were. And why. "Possible." She jabbed a finger at Hilfy. "First we take account of ourselves. We go down, shall we, and see what we have left of cargo." "I thought we dumped it all." "Oh, not what the kif want, not that, niece." She leaned over the console, checked the pager link. "I think we can leave it a while. Come along. It's all being recorded, all the com and scan up here. We'll check it. Can't live up here." She set her hand on Hilfy's shoulder. "We go ask some questions, that's what." Their uninvited passenger had settled after jump—cocooned in blankets and sedated for the trip, now let go again, to huddle in that heap of blankets in the corner of the washroom. It had curled up in a knot and thrown one of the blankets over its head, showing nothing but the motions of its breathing to prove it was under there. "The ankle restraint is back on it," Chur said as they watched it from the doorway. "It's been docile all along . . . but let me call Geran and we'll be sure of it." Chur was smallest of the crew, smaller than Geran her sister, who was herself of no great stature—with a thin beard and mane and a yellowish tint to her fur: delicate, one might say, who did not know Chur. "There are three of us," Pyanfar said, "already. Let's see how it reacts." She walked into the washroom and came near that heap of breathing blankets. Coughed. There was movement in the blankets, the lifting of a corner, a furtive look of a pale eye from beneath them. Pyanfar beckoned. It stopped moving. "It quite well understands me," she said. "I think, Chur, you're going to have to get Geran. We may have to fetch it out and I don't want to hurt it." Chur left. Hilfy remained. The blankets stirred again, and the creature made a faltering effort to get its back into the angle of the corner made by the shower stall and the laundry. "It's just too weak," Hilfy said. "Aunt, it's just too weak to fight." "I'll stand here," Pyanfar proposed. "There's a mahendo'sat symbol translator and some manuals and modules—Haral said she put it in the lowerdeck op; I want the elementary book. Here. Gods forbid someone put it into cargo." Hilfy hesitated, cast a look at the Outsider, then scurried off in haste. "So," Pyanfar said. She dropped to her haunches as she had before, put out a forefinger and traced numbers from one to eight on the flooring. Looked up from time to time and looked at the creature, who watched her. It reached out of its nest of blankets and made tentative movements of writing on the floor, drew back the arm and watched what she was doing until she stopped at sixteen. It tucked the blankets more closely about itself and stared, from bleak, blue eyes. Washed, it looked better. The mane and beard were even beautiful, silken, pollen-gold. But the naked arm outthrust from the blankets bore ugly bruises of fingered grips. There had been a lot of bruises under the dirt, she reckoned. It had a reason for its attitude. It was not docile now, just weak. It had drawn another line, staked out its corner. The blue eyes held a peculiar expression, analysis, perhaps, some thought proceeding at length. She stood up, hearing Chur and Geran coming, their voices in the corridor—turned and motioned them to wait a moment when they arrived. She watched the Outsider's pale eyes take account of the reinforcements. And Hilfy came back with the manual. "It was in the—" Hilfy broke off, in the general stillness of the place. "Give it here," Pyanfar said, holding out her hand without looking away from the Outsider. Hilfy gave it. Pyanfar opened the book, turned the pages toward the Outsider, whose eyes flickered with bewilderment. She bent, discarding her dignity a moment in the seriousness of the matter, and pushed the manual across the tiles to the area the creature could reach. It ignored the open book. Another ploy failed. Pyanfar sat still a moment, arms on her knees, then stood up and brushed her silk breeches into order. "I trust the symbol translator made it intact." "It's fine," Hilfy said. "So let's try that. Can you set it up?" "I learned on one." "Do it," Pyanfar said; and motioned to Geran and Chur. "Get it on its feet. Be gentle with it." Hilfy hurried off. Geran and Chur moved in carefully and Pyanfar stepped out of the way, thinking it might turn violent, but it did not. It stood up docilely as they patted it and assisted it to its feet. It was naked, and he was a reasonable guess, Pyanfar concluded, watching it make a snatch after the blankets about its feet, while Chur carefully unlocked the chain they had padded about its ankle, Geran holding onto its right arm. Pyanfar frowned, disturbed to be having a male on the ship, with all the thoughts that stirred up. Chur and Geran were being uncommonly courteous with it, and that was already a hazard. "Look sharp," Pyanfar said. "Take it to the op room and mind what you're doing." She stooped and gathered up the symbol book herself as they led it out toward the door. The Outsider balked of a sudden in the doorway, and Chur and Geran patted its hairless shoulders and let it think about it a long moment, which seemed the right tack to take. It stood a very long moment, looked either way down the corridor, seemed frozen, but then at a new urging—"Come on," Geran said in the softest possible voice and tugged very slightly—the Outsider decided to cooperate and let itself be led into the hall and on toward operations. Pyanfar followed with the book under her arm, scowling for the cost the Outsider had already been to them, and with the despondent feeling that she might yet be wrong in every assumption she had made. They had paid far too much for that. And then what? Give it back to the kif after all, and shrug and pretend it had been nothing? The Outsider balked more than once in being moved, looked about it at such intervals as if things were moving too fast for it and it had to get its bearings. Chur and Geran let it stop when it would, never hurrying it, then coaxed it gently. It walked for them—perhaps, Pyanfar thought sourly, biding its time, testing their reflexes, memorizing the corridors, if it had the wit to do so. They brought it into the op room, in front of all the boards and the glowing lights, and it balked again, hard-breathing, looking about. Now, Pyanfar thought, they might have trouble; but no, it let itself be moved again and let itself be put into one of the cushions at the dead cargo-monitor console, near the counter where Hilfy worked over the translator, running a series of figures over the screen. The Outsider slumped when seated, dazed-looking and sweating profusely, tucked in its blanket which it clutched about itself. Pyanfar walked up to the arm of the cushion; its head came up instantly at her presence and the wariness came back into its eyes. More than wariness. Fear. It remembered who had hurt it. It knew them as individuals, past a clothing change. That at least. "Hai," Pyanfar said in her best friend-to-outsiders manner, patted its hairless, sweating shoulder, swept Hilfy aside in her approach to the translator, a cheap, replaceable stickered keyboard unit linked by cable into one of their none so cheap scanners. She pushed wipe, clearing Hilfy's figures, then the Bipedal Sentient button, with a stick figure of a long-limbed being spread-eagled on it. The same figure appeared on the screen. She pushed the next which showed a hani in photographic image, and indicated herself. It understood. Its eyes were bright with anxiety. It clutched its blanket tighter and made a faltering attempt to get its feet back on the floor and to stand, reaching toward the machine. "Let it loose," Pyanfar said, and Chur helped it up. It ignored them all, leaned on the counter and poised a trembling hand over the keyboard. The whole arm shook. It punched a button. Ship. It looked up, its eyes seeking understanding. Pyanfar carefully took its alien hand, oh, so carefully, but it allowed the touch. She extended its forefinger and guided it to the wipe button, back to the ship button again. It freed its hand and searched, the hand shaking violently as it passed above the keys. Figure Running, it keyed. Ship. Figure Running. Ship again. Hani. Wipe. It looked about at her. "Yes," she said, recognizing the statement. Motioned for it to do more. It turned again, made another search of the keys. Figure Supine, it stated. It found the pictorial for kif. That long-snouted gray face lit the screen beside the Figure Supine. "Kif," Pyanfar said. It understood. That was very clear. "Kif," it echoed. It had a voice full of vibrant sounds, like purring. It was strange to hear it articulate a familiar word . . . hard to pick that word out when the tongue managed neither the kif click nor the hani cough. And the look in its eyes now was more than apprehensive. Wild. Pyanfar put her claws out and demonstratively rested her hand over the image. Pushed wipe. She put the hani symbol back on, punched in voice-record; hani, the audio proclaimed, in hani mode. She picked Up the cheap mike and spoke for the machine's study-tape, with the machine recording her voice. "Hani." She called up another image. "Stand." A third. "Walk." It took a little repetition, but the Outsider began to involve itself in the process and not in its trembling hysteria over the kif image. It started with the first button . . . worked at the system, despite its physical weakness, recorded its own identification for all the simple symbols on the first row, soberly, with no joy in its discovery, but not sluggishly either. It began to go faster and faster, jabbed keys, spoke, one after the other, madly rapid, as if it were proving something. There were seventy-six keys on that unit and it ran through the lot, although toward the end its hand was hardly controllable. Then it stopped and turned that same sullen look on them and reached for the seat it had left. It barely made it, sank down in the cushion and wrapped its blanket up about its shoulders, pale and sweating. "It's gone its limit," Pyanfar said. "Get it some water." Chur brought it from the dispenser. The Outsider accepted it one-handed, sniffed the paper cup, then drained it. It gave the empty cup back, pointed at itself, at the machine on the counter, looked at Pyanfar, correctly assessing who was in charge. It wanted, Pyanfar read the gestures, to continue. "Hilfy," Pyanfar said, "the manual, on the counter. Give it here." Hilfy handed it over. Pyanfar searched through the opening pages for the precise symbols of the module in the machine at present. "How many of those modules do we have?" "Ten. Two manuals." "That ought to carry us into abstracts. Good for Haral." She set the opened book into the Outsider's lap and pointed at the symbols it had just done, showed it how far the section went. Now it made the connection. It gathered the book against itself with both arms, intent on keeping it. "Yes.' Pyanfar said, and nodded confirmation. Maybe nodding was a gesture they shared; it nodded in return, never looking happy, but there was less distress in its look. It clutched its book the tighter. Pyanfar looked at Hilfy, at Geran and Chur, whose expressions were guarded. They well knew now what level of sentient they had aboard. How much they guessed of their difficulties with the kif was another matter: a lot, she reckoned—they picked up things out of the air, assembled them themselves without having to ask. "A passenger compartment," she said. "I think it might like clothes. Food and drink. Its book. Clean bedding and a bed to sleep in. Civilized facilities. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful with it. Let's move it, shall we, and let it rest." It looked from Chur to Geran as the two closed in, grew distressed when Chur took its arm to get it on its feet. It pointed back at the machine . . . wanted that, its chance to communicate. Perhaps there was more it planned to say, in the symbols. Surely it expected to go back to the washroom corner. Pyanfar reached and touched its shoulder from the other side, touched the book it held and pressed its hand the tighter against it, indicating it should keep the book, the best promise she could think of that might tell it they were not done with talking. It calmed itself, at least, let itself be drawn to its feet and, once steadied, led out. Pyanfar looked at the machine on the counter, walked over and turned it off. Hilfy was still standing there. "Move the whole rig," Pyanfar said. "We'll risk the equipment." She unplugged the keyboard module, which was no burden at all, but awkward. "Bring the screen." "Aunt," said Hilfy, "what are we going to do with him?" "That depends on what the kif had in mind to do with him. But we can hardly ask them, can we?" She followed after the Outsider and Chur and Geran, down the side corridor to one of the three rooms they kept for The Pride's occasional paying passengers, up the curve into the area of the crew's private quarters. They were nicely appointed cabins. The one Chur and Geran had selected was in fresh greens with woven grass for the walls and with the bed and chairs in pale lime complement. Pyanfar counted the damage possible and winced, but they had suffered far worse in the cause than torn upholstery. And the Outsider seemed to recognize a major change in its fortunes. It stood in the center of the room clutching its book and its blanket and staring about with a less sullen expression than before . . . seemed rather dazed by it all, if its narrow features were at all readable. "Better show it the sanitary facilities first," Pyanfar said. "I hope it understands." Chur took it by the arm and drew it into the bath, carefully. Hilfy brought the screen in and Pyanfar added the module as she set it on the counter and plugged it into the auxiliary com/ comp receptacle. From the bath there came briefly the sound of the shower working, then the toilet cycling. Chur brought the Outsider back into the main room, both looking embarrassed. Then the Outsider saw the translator hookup sitting on the counter, and its eyes flickered with interest. Not joy. There was never that. It said something. Two distinct words. For a moment it sounded as if it were speaking its own language. And then it sounded vaguely kif. Pyanfar's ears pricked up ad she drew in a breath. "Say again," she urged it in kif, and made an encouraging motion toward her ear, standard dockside handsign. "Kif . . . companion?" "No." She drew a deeper breath. "Bastard! You do understand." And again in kif: "Who are you? What kind are you?" It shook its head, seeming helpless. Evidently who was not part of its repertoire. Pyanfar considered the anxious Outsider thoughtfully, reached and set her hand on Chur's convenient shoulder. "This is Chur," she said in kif. And in hani: "You do me a great favor, cousin: you sit with this Outsider on your watch. You keep him going on those identifications, change modules the minute you've got one fully identified, the audio track filled. Keep him at it while he will but don't force him. You know how to work it?" "Yes," Chur said. "You be careful. No knowing what it's thinking, what it's been through, and I don't put deviousness beyond its reach either. I want it communicative; don't be rough with it, don't frighten it. But don't put yourself in danger either. Geran, you stay outside, do your operations monitor by pager so long as Chur's inside, hear?" Geran's ears—the right one was notched, marring what was otherwise a considerable beauty—flicked in distress, a winking of gold rings on the left. "Clearly understood," she said. "Hilfy." Pyanfar motioned to her niece and started out the door. The Outsider started toward them, but Chur's outflung arm prevented it and it stopped, not willing to quarrel. Chur spoke to it quickly, gingerly touched its bare shoulder. It looked frightened, for the first time outright frightened. "I think it wants you, aunt," Hilfy observed. Pyanfar laid her ears back, abhorring the thought of fending off a grab at her person, walked out with Hilfy unhurried all the same. She looked back from the doorway. "Be careful of it," she told Chur and Geran again. "Ten times it may be gentle and agreeable . . . and go for your throat on the eleventh." She walked off, the skin of her shoulders twitching with distaste. Hilfy trailed her, but Pyanfar jammed her hands into the back of her waistband and took no notice of her niece until they had gotten to the lift. Hilfy pressed the button to open the door and they got in. Pressed central; it brought them up and still without a word Pyanfar walked out into the bridgeward corridor. "Aunt," Hilfy said. Pyanfar looked back. "What shall we do with it?" "I'm sure I don't know," Pyanfar said tartly. Her ears were still back. She purposely put on a better face. "Not your fault, niece. This one is my own making." "I'd take some of the slack; I'd help, if I knew what to do. With the cargo gone—" Pyanfar frowned and the ears went down again. You want to relieve me of worry? she thought. Then don't do anything stupid. But there was that face, young and proud and wanting to do well. Most that Hilfy knew how to do on the ship had gone when cargo blew and scan shut down. "Youngster, I've gotten into a larger game than I planned, and there's no going home until we've gotten it straightened out. How we do that is another question, because the kif know our name. Have you got an idea you've been sitting on?" "No, aunt—being ignorant about too much." Pyanfar nodded. "So with myself, niece. Let it be a lesson to you. My situation precisely, when I took the Outsider in, instead of handing it right back to the kif." "We couldn't have given him to them." "No," Pyanfar agreed heavily. "But it would certainly have been more convenient." She shook her head. "Go rest whelp, and this time I mean it. You were sick during jump; you'll be lagging when I do need you. And need you I will." She walked on, into the bridge, past the archway. Hilfy did not follow. Pyanfar sat down at her place, among all the dead instruments, listened to the sometime whisper of larger dust over the hull, called up all the record which had flowed in while she was gone, listening to that with one ear and the current comflow with the other. Bad news. A second arrival in the system . . . more than one ship. It might be kif, might be someone else from the disaster at Meetpoint. In either case it was bad. The ones already here were on the hunt beyond question—kif were upset enough to have dumped cargo to get here from Meetpoint: no other ships had cause to hunt The Pride, or to call them thief. They were the same kif, beyond doubt, upset enough to have banded together in a hunt. Bad news all the way. Urtur Station was into the comflow now . . . bluster, warning the kif of severe penalties and fines. That was very old chatter, from the beginning of the trouble, a wavefront just now reaching them. Threats from the kif—those were more current. The mahendo'sat ship . . . harassed, made its way stationward. The kif turned their attention to the new arrivals, to other things. They would begin to figure soon that the freighters last arrived had jumped behind The Pride. That The Pride had to have tricked them and gone elsewhere into stsho territories, or had to be here . . . doing precisely what they were doing; and very probably a nervous kif would play the surmise he had already staked his reputation on. They would start hunting shadows once they reached that conclusion, having questioned a few frightened mahe. They would fan out, prowl the system, stop miner ships, ask close questions, probably commit small piracy at the same time, not to waste an opportunity. The station could do nothing—a larger one might, but not Urtur, which was mostly manufacturing and scarcely defended. No mahendo'sat ship would be willing to be stopped—but there was no hope for them of outrunning that hyped kif ship, no chance at least which an ordinary mahendo'sat captain was equipped to take. And there was no chance that one of those ships incoming from Meetpoint would turn out to be hani, and relieve them all of that weight of guilt. Handur's Voyager was gone, beyond hope and help. Not even proximity to Meetpoint was likely to have saved anyone in that attack. The kif were nothing if not thorough: they practiced bloodfeud themselves, and left no survivors. Kif—had somehow missed killing one another off in their rise off their homeworld and into space. They had done it, hani had always suspected, in mutual distrust; in outright hatred. They had contested themselves into space, and hunted each other through it until they found easier pickings. Not The Pride, she swore, and not Pyanfar Chanur. That kif who was in command out there—she was certain beyond question that it was Akukkakk of Hinukku, who had come ahead to stake out Urtur to be waiting for them—once that kif knew they had gotten through, he would be checking all his backtime records, sniffing through everything hoping to catch some missed trace of The Pride's arrival. They had left very little of a wavefront ghost to detect; but there might be something, some small missed flicker. Running—now—had its hazards. As long as some of the kif shuttled the system at relatively high velocity, those ships could run down on them while they were trying to build theirs back from virtual dead stop. Their chances of breaking cover and running depended on the position of the kif ships, whether they had that critical time they might need to get their referent and to come up to position to jump. Blind as they had made themselves, the only way to find out where those ships were was to try something; and the only way to find out how many there were, was to keep an ear to the kif chatter and see if they could pick out individual ships. This Akukkakk would not likely be so careless. It was certain enough they were not outputting ID signal, which itself brought protests from the station; no ID signal and no locational signal from any of them. Only from miners and legitimate residents—if those signals were what they ought to be. So, so, so. They were in a bottle, and it was too much to hope that the kif would not ultimately coerce mahendo'sat help in the hunt for them. Station and miners could be intimidated as the kif put the pressure on. What was more, hani ships came and went at Urtur, and those ships would be vulnerable to the kif, unsuspecting of atrocity such as the kif had committed at Meetpoint. They would come into confrontation with the kif having no idea of the stakes involved here. The kif might act against them without warning, to draw The Pride out. Such tactics were not hani practice; but she had been many years off Anuurn and among outsiders, and she knew well enough how to think like a kif, even if the process turned her stomach and bristled the hairs on her nape. And then what do I do? she wondered to herself. Do I come out meekly to die? Or let others? Her crew had no more or less right to life than the crew of any other hani ship which came straying into the trap. There were their lives involved. There was Hilfy's. And thereby—all of Chanur. Next time home, she vowed, I get that other gun battery moduled in, whatever it costs. Next time home. She frowned, cut off the recording, which had come to the point at which she had come in. The present transmissions were few and terse. Someone should be up here directly and constantly monitoring the comflow and the rest: Hilfy was right on that score. But they were not a fighting ship and they had no personnel to spare for such. Six of them, with ordinary duties and a prisoner to watch: there was course to plot, there were checks to be run after their jump under stress, systems they had to be sure of; and there was the chance that they might have to move, defend themselves and run at any moment, which meant three crewmembers had to be mentally and physically fit to take action at any instant, whatever the hour. The automations which ran The Pride in her normal workaday business had nothing to do with their situation now, systems overstressed from a jump the ship was never designed to make, makeshift security on an alien and possibly lunatic passenger. Gods. She double-checked the pager operation, which was transmission activated, advised the crew on watch that she was taking over monitor for a while, to give them rest from the responsibility. "He's all right," Geran reported on the Outsider. "Resting awhile." It was good, she thought, that someone could. She went finally to the galley, up the curve; the reason of that large ell in the control section—no appetite in particular, but her limbs were weak from hunger. She heated up a meal from the freezer, forced it down against her stomach's earnest complaints, and tossed the dish into the sterilizer. Then she walked back to her private quarters to try to rest. She fretted too much for sleep, paced the floor pointlessly, sorted the stack of charts into order and sat down and plotted and replotted possible alternatives, which she guessed, against odds she already knew. At last she shoved all that work aside and used the console by her bed to link on the Outsider's terminal, via main comp and access codes. It was active again: she heard the Outsider's voice as well as saw the symbols called up by the translator keys. He was using them one after the other, and when she keyed in on com as well, she could pick up Chur's voice in the room, quiet assistance—sounds which might go with pantomime. Occasionally there was a pairing of symbols the machine did not do Chur's interference, perhaps, trying to get a point across. Pyanfar cut off com and the translator reception, stared at the dead screen. The chatter from Urtur system continued from the pager at her belt, subdued and depressing in content. Mahendo'sat ships were being advised by their own station not to run, to submit to search if singled out by the kif, to hug station if they were already there and hope for safety. A hani voice objected a question. Hani! Pyanfar sprang from the bedside, the walls of her cabin immaterial before her vision of that station with a hani ship at dock; with kif able to move on it at will. The hani spoke . . . had spoken long ago, in the timelag. Whatever would happen . . . had long since taken place. Time as well as space lay between The Pride and that hani ship and the kif, and there was nothing she could do, blind, from a dead drift, to help it. "Gods!" she spat, and hurled the desk chair forward on its track with a crash. It was a Faha vessel in port; Faha's Starchaser, and that was a house and a company allied to Chanur. Her brother Kohan's first wife was Huran Faha. Hilfy's mother, for the gods' sakes! There were bonds, compacts, agreements of alliance . . . . And Hilfy. The mahendo'sat at Urtur Station urged the hani ship to keep calm. The mahe had, they avowed, no intention of becoming involved in a kif quarrel, and they were not going to let a rash hani involve them. The hani demanded information; kif hunted a Chanur ship: the Faha had been listening and fretting under restraint this long, and wanted answers—knew this was going out over com, as the station knew what the Faha were doing, making vocal trouble, making sure information got out into the dark where Chanur ears might pick it up. O gods, o gods. There was an ally, doing the best for them that could be done at the moment . . . and they were both helpless to come at the enemy. Pyanfar pulled the chair out again, sat down, lost in listening for a while. There was no further information. They had gotten that spurt on the station's longrange or on Starchaser's . . . information like a beacon fired off into outsystem, deliberately. If they had it figured The Pride was here . . . then so did the kif. There were echoes, repetitions of the message: com was sorting them out, transmissions of differing degrees of clarity, and the hair prickled on Pyanfar's neck, sudden, grateful realization: ships all over the system had begun relaying that message, letting it off like multiple ripples in still water, massive defiance of the kif—and the kif had not ordered silence . . . on this timeline. They could not enforce such a demand, at the present limits of their aggression at Urtur: but those limits could change. The information was going out like a multiplied shout . . . had gone out, long ago, and was still traveling. She found Hilfy for once where she was supposed to be, in her own quarters, asleep. She hesitated when the sleepy voice answered the doorcom hail, no more than hesitated. "Up," she said into the com. "I've somewhat to tell you." Hilfy was quick to the door. It whipped opened and Hilfy hung there, disheveled from bed and grimacing in the full light of the corridor. She had not paused for clothes. Pyanfar walked in past her, waited while Hilfy brightened the interior lighting, and held up a restraining hand, that the brightening need not be permanent or full. It was a room Hilfy had made her own, a great deal of Chanur style in this cabin, more than in her own quarters, mementoes affixed to the walls, pictures of homeworld's mountains and the broad plains of the Chanur holdings . . . the Holding itself, gold stone, shaded with vines. Pyanfar looked about her, and looked at Hilfy. "Briefly," Pyanfar said, "I have to tell you a thing; and there's nothing can be done about it, I'll tell you that first. We've picked up signal from a Faha ship docked at station. They're in the middle of the kif, and they fired a message off for station that I think they meant we should hear: noisy chatter. I think they know we're out here and in what kind of trouble. But there's the kif between us, and there's no way we can do much for each other. You understand?" Hilfy's eyes had stopped flinching at the light. She stared, amber-rimed about the black, and her ears flattened and pricked up again with effort. For a young woman and roused naked out of sleep, she acquired a quiet dignity in getting her wits collected. "Do you know which ship, aunt?" "Starchaser. That's Lihan Faha in command." Hilfy nodded. The ears flinched, ringless. Her face stayed composed. "They'll be in danger. Like Voyager. And they won't know it. No one would expect that kind of attack." "Lihan's no tyro, imp, believe it. We don't play their hand; they don't interfere in ours. Can't. Nothing we can do out here." "We could throw them a warning and run." "I don't take that as an option at the moment. We send it from distance and the kif will have it before Starchaser has a chance. And public defiance, involving Starchaser in our leaving—the kif would be obliged to react. Revenge is part of their mindset. You have to calculate that into it. No. Starchaser's riding her own luck. I don't plan to push it for her. So go back to bed, hear?" Hilfy stood a moment without moving. Nodded after a moment, her dignity still about her. "Good," Pyanfar said tightly, and walked out. She heard the door close after her, and walked the upcurving corridor which led from Hilfy's quarters to her own, across the main topside corridor and down a short distance. So she might have cost Hilfy her sound sleep, and the meal she had eaten lay like lead at her own stomach; but Faha involvement in the hazard was not something for Hilfy to find out later, like a child, spared adult unpleasantnesses. Hilfy's face stayed before her; the pager unit at her hip kept up its static babble, dying echoes of the message, occasional-spurts of closer transmission, but rarer and rarer. A stsho ship had come into the system. The kif disdained to harass it; it begged instructions of Urtur Station, anxious to scud in before the storm. A lot of mahe in the system might have the same idea, miners who had already reckoned it time to head for port, getting themselves out of the way of the kif's hunt. It was a vast system out there. Most of the ships in it were incapable of jump, insystem operators only. So far, everyone was keeping remarkably calm, even the hani at the eye of that storm. Gods grant a great many ships pulled inward . . . and afforded the kif a harder target if they wanted to raid Station in search of one hani ship. That was one hope. Lihan Faha of Starchaser was too old, too wary to rush out to mismatched battle. Lihan would not expect stupidity of The Pride. The Faha would expect them to fend for themselves and above all not touch anything off prematurely. The Faha needed time: there was a chance that they could offload cargo and strip that ship down for speed, given time, shed mass without the need to lose a cargo. They would not expect help more than that. That was logic speaking. But it hurt. Chapter 4 She sat and listened a time in her cabin, finally contacted Geran belowdecks and turned over the monitoring to her. "Faha," was Geran's only comment. "Hilfy knows," Pyanfar said. "So," Geran murmured. And then: "I'm on. I've got it." Pyanfar signed off and sighed heavily, sitting on the edge of her bed, arms on her knees—finally took a mild sedative and undressed and curled up in the bowlshaped bed for a precious while of oblivion, trying not to think of emergencies and contingencies and the horde of kif prowling about the system. That did not work, but the sedative did. She went under like a stone into a pond and came out again startled by the alarm—but it was only the timer going off, and she lay in the bedclothes with her heart slowly stepping back down to normal. "Any developments?" she asked lowerdeck op by com from her bedside, not even having crawled from beneath the sheets, but thrusting an arm out to push the bottom on the console. "Anything happened while I was off?" "No, captain." Haral's voice answered her. A shift change had occurred in her off time. "The situation seems to be temporary stalemate. Station is broadcasting only operational chatter now. We aren't getting much from the kif. Nothing alarming. We'd have waked you if there was news." So their orders ran. Interpretations of emergency varied; but Haral was the wisest head in the crew, the canniest. Pyanfar lay there staring at the ceiling a moment and finally decided she might take her time. There was nowhere to rush. The rib muscles she had strained in g force had stiffened. "What about systems check? Has anyone had time to get to that?" "We're still running the board, captain, but it looks good all the way. The blowout was absolutely clean and the recalibration was right almost to the hair." "Better luck than we deserve. What's the Outsider up to?" "Back at work at the keyboard. Chur and Geran are off now, and Tirun's on, but I didn't feel, by your leave, captain, that Tirun belonged in there with him in her condition, and I've had all I can do with visual checks on the separation readouts—again by your leave." "You were right." "He's slept a bit. He hasn't made any trouble . . . gods, he worked till he nearly dropped over, Chur said; and he's back at it again this shift, shaky as he is. We fed him right away when he woke up, and he ate it all and went back to his drills, polite as you please. I've got his roomcom and his comp monitored from the op station, so we've at least got an ear toward him." "Huh." Pyanfar ran a hand through her mane and scowled up at the brightening room light. The alarm had started the day cycle in the room. "Let the Outsider work; if it falls over, then let it rest. How's Tirun making it?" "Limping, sore, and working with the leg propped up. She's still white around the nose." "I'm all right," Tirun's voice cut in, usurping the same mike. "You go off," Pyanfar said, "anytime you feel you ought to. We're dead drifting, and someone else can take up the slack if those first checks are run. You see to it, Haral. Anything else I should know?" "That's the sum of it," Haral said. "We're all right so far." "Huh," she said again, got out of the spring-held sheets and cut the com off, pulled on her black trousers and put on her belt, her bracelet, and her several earrings—shook the ear to settle them and gave her mane and beard a quick comb into order. Vanity be hanged. She left the cabin and paid a short visit to the galley, ate a solitary breakfast, feeling somewhat better. She turned the pager to the monitor channel in the meanwhile, listened to the chatter which was reaching them and found it much what Haral had said, a lull in events which in itself contained worrisome possibilities. By now the kif had surely figured out what had happened, and by now they would be hunting in stealth—hence the quiet. The Pride had undergone a great deal of lateral drift from their entry point, but if she were that kif captain, trying to reckon the arrival point of a cargoless fugitive on a jump almost too much for the ship . . . she would calculate a fringe area jump on a straight string from Meetpoint's mass to that of Urtur. And that would fine the hunting zone down considerably, from the vast tracts of Urtur's lenslike system—to a specific zone on the fringe, and the direction of systemic drift, and certain places where a ship seeking cover might move. Time was the other factor; time defined the segment of space in which they might logically be drifting, two points-within-which, which then might be fined down tighter and tighter. Time, time, and time. They were running out of it. She shut off the pager, went back to her cabin, spread out the charts of the last effort and picked up a comp link of her own, started as precise calculations as she could make on the options they had left. From the hani ship—she interrupted herself to query Haral and Tirun on the point—there had been nothing during the past watch. No transmission at all. Starchaser would be feverishly busy at her own business, stripping down, not provoking anything at this juncture. Waiting. All incoming transmission indicated that ships of all kinds were moving toward Urtur Station with all possible haste, a journey of days for some ships, and of weeks for others of the insystem operators . . . but even the gesture spoke to the kif, that the mahe would defend Urtur Station itself, abandoning other points to whatever the kif wished to do. The incoming jumpships had long since made it in, snugged close: armed ships, those . . . but one at least was stsho, and its arms were minor and its will to fight was virtually nonexistent. Again, she reckoned, if she were that kif in command, those insystem ships would not go in unchallenged. For all those incoming from the suspect vector where a hani ship lay hidden, there would be closer scrutiny—to make sure a clever hani did not drift in disguised with the rest of the inbound traffic. ID transmission would be checked, identifications run through comp; ships might be boarded . . . all manner of unpleasantness. Most of them would pass visual inspection: there was precious little resemblance between a gut-blown jump freighter with its huge vanes, and a lumpy miner-processor whose propulsion was all insystem and hardly enough to move it along with its tow full. Only the miners who might have had the bad luck to come in from the farthest edge of The Pride's possible location . . . they might be stopped, have their records scanned, their comp stripped—their persons subjected to gross discomforts until they would volunteer information, if the kif were true to nature. "Someone's jumped, captain." Tirun's voice, out of the com unit. Pyanfar dumped a complex calculation from her mind and reached for the reply bar, twisting in her chair. "Who? Where?" "Just got the characteristic ghost, that's all. I don't know. It was farside of system and long ago. No further data; but it fits within our timeline. That close." "Give me the image." Tirun passed it onto the screen. Nadir range and badly muddled pickup: there was too much debris in the way. "Right," she said to Tirun. "No knowing." "Out?" Tirun asked. "Out," Pyanfar confirmed her, and keyed out the image as well, stared morosely at the charts and the figures which, no matter how twisted, kept coming up the same: that there was no way to singlejump beyond Urtur, however reduced in mass they were now. That jump-ghost which had just arrived might have been someone successfully running for it. More ships than that one might have jumped from here, lost in the gas and debris of Urtur's environs. But quite, quite likely that ship was kif, a surplus ship moving on to arrange ambush at the most logical jump point that they might use. Rot Akukkakk. She recalled the flat black eyes, red-rimmed, the long gray face, the voice very different from the whining tone of lesser kif. A bitter taste came into her mouth. How many of them? she wondered, and pulled the scattered charts toward her on the desk and again thought like a kif, wondering just where he might station his ships remaining at Urtur, having figured now, as he must have figured, what they were up to. That inward flight which was making the station safer—was also giving this Akukkakk a free field in which to operate. There were a finite number of opacities in the quadrant where the sweep of debris might be concealing The Pride. A diminishing number of other fugitives to confuse him . . . just them and him, finally, along with whatever other kif ships he had called in. Four kif ships had been at Meetpoint. Some or all might have come with him. There might have been as many more at Urtur when Hinukku came in. Eight ships, say. Not beyond possibility. She made her calculations again, flexed an ache from her shoulders, and pushed back from the desk, combed her beard with her fingers and flicked her ears for the soothing sound of the rings. Huh. So. She at least knew their options—or the lack of them. It was a thoroughly bad game to have gotten into. She levered her aching body out of the chair it had occupied too many hours, stretched again, calculating that they must be about due for Chur and Geran to come on again. And Hilfy: there had not been a word out of her. Possibly the imp had been late getting to sleep after the news which had broken in on her rest. If she had been sleeping, so much the better. Pyanfar walked out into the corridor and down it, into the dim zone of the bridge, beyond the archway, where most of the lights were out and the dead screens made areas dark which should have been busy with lights. There was one unexpected bright spot, a counter alight in that ell nook of the bridge around the main comp bank. Someone had come back and left it on, she thought, walking up on it to turn it out; and came on Hilfy there, seated with her attention fixed on the translator, left hand propping her forehead and her right hand poised over the translator keyboard. The screen in front of her was alive with mahendo'sat symbols. Audio brought in a pathetic Outsider-voiced attempt at speech. Pyanfar frowned, walked closer, and Hilfy saw the movement and half turned, turned back in haste to close off the audio from the bridge. Pyanfar leaned on the back of her chair to observe the strings of symbols on the screen, and Hilfy got up in haste. Go, the Outsider was trying to say. That was the symbol on the screen at the moment. I go. "I thought you were supposed to be resting," Pyanfar said. "I got tired of resting." Pyanfar nodded toward the screen, where the Figure Walking was displayed. "How's it doing?" "He." "It, he, how's it doing?" "Not so good on pronunciation." "You've been cutting in on his lessons? Talking to him?" "He doesn't know me from the machine." Hilfy had her hands locked behind her, ears flat, wary of reprimands. "You can't work the second manual without help: it's sentences. He has to have prompts. I've got more vocabulary filled in with him. We're well into abstracts and I've been able to figure something about the way his own sentences are built from what he keeps doing wrong with ours." "Huh. And have you perchance gotten a name out of him amid these mistakes? His species? An indication what he comes from? A location?" "No." "Well. I didn't expect. But well done, all the same. I'll check it out." "A hundred fifty-three words. He ran the whole first manual. Chur demonstrated changing the keyboard and the cassette and he ran it all, just like that; and got into the second book, trying to do sentences. But he can't pronounce, aunt; it just comes out like that." "Mouth shape is different. Can't say we can ever do much with his language either; like trying to talk to the tc'a or the knnn . . . maybe even a different hearing range, certainly not the same equipment to speak with—gods, no guaranteeing the same logic, but the latter I think we may have. Some things he does make half sense." She lowered herself into the vacated chair, reached and livened a second screen. "Go talk Tirun out of her work down in op, imp; she's been on duty and she shouldn't be. I'm going to try to run a translator tape on your seven hundred fifty-three words." "I did that." "Oh, did you?" "While I was sitting here." Hilfy untucked her hands from behind her and hastily reached for the counter, indicated the cassette in the slot of the translator input. "I pulled the basic pattern and sorted the words in. Sentence logic too. It's finished." "Does it work?" "I don't know, aunt. He hasn't given me a sentence in his own language. Just words. There's no one for him to talk his own to." "Ah, well, so." Pyanfar was impressed. She ran some of the audio of the tape past, cut it, looked up at Hilfy, who looked uncommonly proud of herself. "You're sure of the tape." "The master program seemed clear. I—learned the translator principles pretty thoroughly; father didn't connect that so much with spacing. I got to start that study from the first; but I knew what I wanted it for. Like comp. I'm good at that." "Huh. Why don't we try it, then?" Hilfy nodded, more and more self-pleased. Pyanfar rose and searched through the com board cabinets, pulled out the box of sanitary wrapped audio plugs and dropped a handful of those into Hilfy's palm, then located a spare pager from the same source. She sat down at main com and ran the double channels of the translator through bands two and three of the pagers. She took her own plug and inserted it in her ear, tested it out linked to the Outsider's room com for a moment, and got nothing back but bursts of white sound, which were mangled hani words that part of the schizoid translator mind refused to recognize as words. "We're two, he's three," she said to Hilfy, shutting the audio down for the moment. "Bring him up here." "Here, aunt?" "You and Haral. This Outsider who tries to impress us with his seven hundred fifty-three words . . . we find out once for all how his public manners are. Take no chances, imp. If the translator fails, don't; if he doesn't act stable, don't. Go." "Yes, aunt." Hilfy stuffed the audio units and the other pager into her pockets, hastened out the archway in a paroxysm of importance. "Huh," Pyanfar said after her, stood staring in that direction. Her ears flicked nervously, a jangling of rings. The Outsider might do anything. It had chosen their ship to invade, out of a number of more convenient choices. It. He. Hilfy and the crew seemed unshakeably convinced of the he, on analogy to hani structure; but that was still no guarantee. There were, after all, the stsho. Possibly it made the creature more tragic in their eyes. Gods. Naked-hided, blunt-toothed and blunt-fingered . . . . It had had little chance in hand-to-hand argument with a clutch of kif. It should be grateful for its present situation. No, she concluded. It should not. Everyone who got hands on it would have plans for this creature, of one kind and another, and perhaps it sensed that: hence its perpetually sullen and doleful look. She had her own plans, to be sure. He, Hilfy insisted at every opportunity. Her first voyage, a tragic (and safely unavailable) alien prince. Adolescence. Gods. From the main section of the com board, outside transmission buzzed, whined, lapsed into a long convolute series of wails and spine-ruffling pipings. She jumped in spite of herself, sat down, keyed in the translator on com. Knnn, the screen informed her, which she already knew. Song. No recognizable identity. No numerical content. Range: insufficient input. That kind frequented Urtur too, miners who worked without lifesupport in the methane hell of the moon Uroji and found it home. Odd folk in all senses, many-legged nests of hair, black and hating the light. They came to a station to dump ores and oddments, and to snatch furtively at whatever trade was in reach before scuttling back into the darknesses of their ships. Tc'a might understand them . . . and the chi, who were less rational . . . but no one had ever gotten a clear enough translation out of a tc'a to determine whether the tc'a in turn made any sense of the knnn. The knnn sang, irrationally, pleased with themselves; or lovelorn; or speaking a language. No one knew (but possibly the tc'a, and the tc'a never discussed any topic without wending off into a thousand other tangents before answering the central questions, proceeding in their thoughts as snake-fashioned as they did in their physical movements). No one had gotten the knnn to observe proper navigation: everyone else dodged them, having no other alternative. Generally they did give off numerical messages, which the mechanical translators had the capability to handle—but they were a code for specific situations . . . trade, or coming in, a blink code. There was nothing unusual in knnn presence here, a creature straying where it would, oblivious to oxygen-breather quarrels. There still came the occasional ping or clang of dust and rock against The Pride's hull, the constant rumbling of the rotational core, the whisper of air in the ducts. The deadness of the instruments depressed her spirits. Screens stared back in the shadow of the bridge like so many blinded eyes. And they were out here drifting with kif and rocks and a knnn who had no idea of the matters at issue. "Captain," Tirun's voice broke in. "Hearing you." "Got a knnn out there." "Hearing that too. What are Hilfy and Haral doing about the Outsider?" "They've gone after him; I'm picking that up. He's not making any trouble." "Understood. They're on their way up here. Keep your ear to the outside comflow; going to be busy up here." "Yes, captain." The link broke off. Pyanfar dialed the pager to pick up the translator channel, received the white-sound of hani words. Everything seemed quiet. Eventually she heard the lift in operation, and heard steps in the corridor leading to the bridge. He came like an apparition against the brighter corridor light beyond, tall and angular, with two hani shapes close behind him. He walked hesitantly into the dimness of the bridge itself, clear now to the eyes . . . startlingly pale mane and beard, pale skin mottled with bruises and the raking streaks of his wound, sealed with gel but angry red. Someone's blue work breeches, drawstring waisted and loose-kneed, accommodated his tall stature. He walked with his head a little bowed, under the bridge's lower overhead—not that he had to, but that the overhead might feel a little lower than he was accustomed to—he stopped, with Hilfy and Haral behind him on either side. "Come ahead," Pyanfar urged him farther, and rose from her place to sit braced against the comp console, arms folded. The Outsider still had a sickly look, wobbly on his feet, but she reached back to key the lock on comp, which could only be coded free again, then looked back again at the Outsider . . . who was looking not at her, but about him at the bridge with an expression of longing, of—what feeling someone might have who had lately lost the freedom of such places. He came from a ship, then, she thought. He must have. Hilfy stood behind him. Haral moved to the other aisle, blocking retreat in that direction should he conceive some sudden impulse. They had him that way in a protective triangle, her, Hilfy, Haral; but he leaned unsteadily against the number-two cushion which was nearest him and showed no disposition to bolt. He wore the pager at his waist, had gotten the audio plug into his ear, however uncomfortable it might be for him. Pyanfar reached up and tightened her own, dialed the pager to receive, looked back at him from her perch against the counter. "All right?" she asked him, and his face turned toward her. "You do understand," she said. "That translator works both ways. You worked very hard on it. You knew well enough what you were doing, I'll reckon. So you've got what you worked to have. You understand us. You can speak and make us understand you. Do you want to sit down? Please do." He felt after the bend of the cushion and sank down on the arm of it. "Better," Pyanfar said. "What's your name, Outsider?" Lips tautened. No answer. "Listen to me," Pyanfar said evenly. "Since you came onto my ship, I've lost my cargo and hani have died—killed by the kif. Does that come through to you? I want to know who you are, where you came from, and why you ran to my ship when you could have gone to any other ship on the dock. So you tell me. Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you have to do with the kif and why my ship, Outsider?" "You're not friends to the kif." Loud and clear. Pyanfar drew in a breath, thrust her hands into her waistband before her and regarded the Outsider with a pursed-lip smile. "So. Well. No, we've said so; I'm not working for the kif and I'm no friend of theirs. Negative. Does the word stowaway come through? Illegal passenger? People who go on ships and don't pay?" He thought that over, as much of it as did come through, but he had no answer for it. He breathed in deep breaths as if he were tired . . . jumped as a burst of knnn transmission came through the open com. He looked anxiously toward that bank, hands clenched on the cushion back. "Just one of the neighbors," Pyanfar said. "I want an answer, Outsider. Why did you come to us and not to another ship?" She had gotten his attention back. He looked at her with a thoughtful gnawing of a lip, a movement finally which might be a shrug. "You sit far from the kif ship. And you laugh." "Laugh?" He made a vague gesture back toward Hilfy and Haral. "Your crew work outside the ship, they laugh. They tell me no, go #### no weapons toward me. ### I come back ###." "Into the rampway, you mean." Pyanfar frowned. "So. What did you plan to do in my ship? To steal? To take weapons? Is that what you wanted?" "##### no ####" "Slower. Speak slower for the translator. What did you want on the ship?" He drew a deep breath, shut his eyes briefly as if trying to collect words or thoughts. Opened them again. "I don't ask weapons. I see the rampway . . . here with hani, small afraid." "Less afraid of us, were you?" She was hardly flattered. "What's your name? Name, Outsider." "Tully," he said. She heard it, like the occasional com sputter, from the other ear . . . a name like the natural flow of his language, which was purrs and moans combined with stranger sounds. "Tully," she repeated back; he nodded, evidently recognizing the effort. She touched her own chest. Pyanfar Chanur is my name. The translator can't do names for you. Py-an-far. Cha-nur." He tried. Pyanfar was recognizable . . . at least that he purred the rhythm into his own tongue. "Good enough," she said. She sat more loosely, linked her hands in her lap. "Civilized. Civilized beings should deal with names. Tully. Are you from a ship, Tully, or did the kif take you off some world?" He thought about that. "Ship," he admitted finally. "Did you shoot at them first? Did you shoot at the kif first, Tully?" "No. No weapons. My ship have no weapons." "Gods, that's no way to travel. What should I do with you? Take you back to what world, Tully?" His hands tightened on the back of the cushion. He stared at her bleakly past it. "You want same they want. I don't say." "You come onto my ship and you won't tell me. Hani are dead because of you, and you won't tell me." "Dead." "Kif hit a hani ship. They wanted you, Tully. They wanted you. Don't you think I should ask questions? This is my ship. You came to it. Don't you think you owe me some answers?" He said nothing. Meant to say nothing, that was clear. His lips were clamped. Sweat had broken out on his face, glistening in the dim light. "Gods rot this translator," Pyanfar said after a moment. "All right, so somebody treated you badly too. Is it better on this ship? Do we give you the right food? Have you enough clothes?" He brushed at the trousers. Nodded unenthusiastically. "You don't have to agree. Is there anything you want?" "Want my door #." "What, open?" "Open." "Huh." His shoulders sagged. He had not expected agreement on that, it was evident. He made a vague motion of his hand about their surroundings. "Where are we? The sound . . . ." The dust brushing past the hull. It had been background noise, a maddening whisper they lived with. Down in lower-deck, he would have heard a lot of it. "We're drifting," she said. "Rocks and dust out there." "We sit at a jump point?" "Star system." She reached and cut on the telescope in the observation bubble, bringing the image onto the main screen. The scope tracked to Urtur itself, the inferno of energy in the center of the dusty lens-shaped system, a ringed star which flung out tendrils the movement of which took centuries, ropy filaments dark against the blaze of the center. The image cast light on the Outsider's face, a moment of wonder: Urtur deserved that. She saw his face and rose to her feet, moved to the side of this shaggy-maned Outsider—a calculated move, because it was her art, to trade, to know the moment when a guard was down. "I tell you," she said, catching him by the arm—and he shivered, but he made no protest at being drawn to his feet. He towered above her as she pointed to the center of the image. "Telescope image, you see. A big system, a horde of planets and moons—The dark rings there, that's where the planets sweep the dust and rocks clear. There's a station in that widest band, orbiting a gas giant. The system is uninhabited except for mahendo'sat miners and a few knnn and tc'a who think the place is pleasant. Methane breathers. But a lot of miners, a lot of people of all kinds are in danger right now, in there, in that center. Urtur is the name of the star. And the kif are in there somewhere. They followed us when we jumped to this place, and now a lot of people are in danger because of you. Kif are there, you understand?" "Authority." His skin was cold under her fingerpads, his muscles hard and shivering, whether from the relative coolness of the bridge's open spaces or from some other cause. "Authority of this system. Hani?" "Mahendo'sat station. They don't like the kif much either. No one does, but it's not possible to get rid of them. Mahendo'sat, kif, hani, tc'a, stsho, knnn, chi . . . all trade here. We don't all like each other, but we keep our business to ourselves." He listened, silent, for whatever he could understand of what she said. Com sputtered again, the whistles and wailing of the knnn. "Some of them," Pyanfar said, "are stranger than you. But you don't know the names, do you? This whole region of space is strange to you." "Far from my world," he said. "Is it?" That got a misgiving look from him. He pulled away from her hand, looked at her and at the others. "Wherever it is," Pyanfar said in nonchalance. She looked back at Haral and Hilfy. "I think that's about enough. Our passenger's tired. He can go back to his quarters." "I want talk you," Tully said. He took hold of the cushion nearest, resisting any attempt to move him. "I want talk." "Do you?" Pyanfar asked. He reached toward her. She stood still with difficulty—but he did not touch. He drew the hand back. "What is it you want to talk about?" He leaned, standing, against the cushion with both hands. His pale eyes were intent and wild, and whatever the precise emotion his face registered, it was distraught. "You #### me. Work, understand. I stay this ship and I work same crew. All you want. Where you go. # give me ####." "Ah," she said. "You're offering to work for your passage." "Work on this ship, yes." "Huh." She thrust her hands within her waistband and would have looked down her nose at him, but it was a matter of looking up. "You make a deal, do you? You work for me, Outsider? You do what I say? All right. You rest now. You go back to your cabin and you learn your words and you think how to tell me what the kif want with you—because the kif still want this ship, you understand. They want you, and they'll come after this ship." He thought about that a moment. Almost he looked as if he might speak. His lips shaped a word and took it back again, and clamped shut. And something sealed in behind his eyes when he did that, a bleakness worse than had ever been there. It sent a prickle down her spine. This creature is thinking of dying, she thought. It was the look from against the wall, from the corner in the washroom, but colder still. "Hai," she said, in her best dockside manner, and set her hand on his bowed shoulder, roughly but careful with the claws. Shook at him. "Tully. You aren't strong enough yet to work. Enough that you rest. You're safe. You understand me? Hani don't trade with kif." There was a glimmering then, a sudden break in that seal. He reached out quite unexpectedly and seized her other hand, his blunt fingers both holding and exploring it, the furred web he lacked, the pads of the tips. Pressure hit the center of her hand and the claws came out, only slightly: she was careful, though her ears flattened in warning. To her further distress he set his other hand on her shoulder, then let go both holds and looked about at Haral and Hilfy, then back at her again. Crazy, she judged him; and then she thought about kif, and reckoned that he had license for a little strangeness. "I'll tell you something," she said, "for free. Kif followed you across the Meetpoint dock to my ship; they followed my ship here to Urtur, and right now we're sitting here, just trying to be quiet so the kif don't find us. Trying to decide how best to get out of here. There's one kif in particular, in command of a ship named Hinukka. Akukkakk . . . ." "Akukkakk," he echoed, suddenly rigid. The sound came as names must, from the other ear, his own voice. His eyes were dilated. "Ah. You do know." "He want take me his ship. Big one. Authority." "Very big. They have a word for his kind, do you know it? Hakkikt. That means he hunts and others pick up the scraps he leaves. I lost something at Meetpoint: a hani ship and my cargo. So did this great hakkikt, this great, this powerful kif. You escaped him. You ran from him. So it's more than profit that he wants out of this. He wants you, Tully, to settle accounts. It's his pride at stake, his reputation. For a kif, that's life itself. He's not going to give up. Do you know, he I tried to buy you from me. He offered me gold, a lot of gold. He might even have kept the deal straight and not delayed for piracy afterward. He's that desperate." Tully's eyes drifted from her to the others and back again. You deal with him?" "No. I want something for dead hani and lost cargo. I want this great hakkikt. You hear me, Tully?" "Yes," Tully said suddenly, "I want same." "Aunt," Hilfy protested in a faint voice. "You want to work," Pyanfar said, ignoring her niece's disquiet. "There'll be the chance for that. But you wait, Tully. You rest. At shift change, I'll call you again. You come eat with us. Meal, understand? But you get some rest first, hear? You work on my ship, you take orders first. Follow instructions. Right?" "Yes," he said. "Go, then. Haral and Hilfy will take you back down. Go." He nodded, delivered himself over to Haral and Hilfy together: not a backward look from either of them as they took him out. Or from him. She watched them go, found herself rubbing the hand that he had touched. The knnn song wailed out again. Neighbors to the kif, the knnn. That bore remembering. That one was uncommonly talkative. No one was ever sure what knnn senses were, or what motivated their migrations from star to star. She turned to the com bank, pushed Record, and sent the song again to the translator. It gave her no more information than the last time. The song ceased, and there remained only the whisper of the dust. Urtur system everywhere had grown very still. The translator still carried white sound, Haral's voice or Hilfy's. The Outsider was saying nothing in being taken back to his quarters. She was marginally uneasy about having him out of sight. Perhaps he was mad after all. Perhaps he would suicide and leave them with nothing to show for the encounter but a feud with the kif. Up to a point she could not prevent him killing himself, except by taking measures which would not encourage his good will. But revenge was something of purpose, something to make life worthwhile. She had offered him that. She thought of his face close at hand, lively, crazed eyes, a hand as cold as something an hour dead—a creature, she reminded herself, who had been fighting alone an enemy which would have turned a stsho to jelly. She grinned somewhat, a drawing back of the lips and wrinkling of the nose, and stared thoughtfully toward the telescope image. No disengagement possible. Not with this kif prince, this hakkikt Akukkakk, whose personal survival rode on this Outsider business. His own sycophants would turn on him if he lost face in this matter. He had lost this Outsider personally . . . likely by some small carelessness, the old kif game of tormenting victims with promises and threats and shreddings of the will. An old game . . . one which hani understood; irresistible to a kif who thrived on fear in his victims. Akukkakk had to make up that embarrassment at Meet-point. He would have been obliged to revenge if it were so much as a bauble stolen from him at dockside. But this Outsider Tully was far more than that. A communicative, spacefaring species, hitherto unknown, in a position to have come into kif hands without passing through more civilized regions. The kif had new neighbors. Possible danger to them. Possible expansion of kif hunting grounds . . . in directions which had nothing to do with hani and mahendo'sat. Those were high stakes, impossibly high stakes to be riding on one poor fugitive. Urtur would swarm with kif, before all was said and done. She delved into the com storage and started hunting components for a transmitter of some power, roused out Chur and sent her hunting through the darker areas of The Pride's circumference for other supplies. Chapter 5 It was a monster, like Tully, this thing that they constructed in the spotlit, chill bowels of The Pride's far rim. It had started out hani-shaped, a patched and hazardous EVA-pod which they had stripped for parts and never succeeded in foisting off on another hani ship. Its limbs had just grown longer, sectioned off and spliced with tubing, and it was rigged with a wheezing lifesupport system. "Get Tully," Pyanfar said applying herself to the last of the welding which should get the system in order. "Rouse him out." And Chur went, bedraggled as herself with the dust and the grime of The Pride's salvage storage. Pyanfar worked, spliced and cursed when the system blew in another frustrating curl of smoke, unhitched that component and rummaged for a new one, sealed that in and congratulated herself when it worked, a vibration and a flicker of green lights on the belt and inside the helmet. She grinned, wiped her hands on the blue work breeches she had put on for this grimy task . . . a long time since she had practiced such things, a long time since she had worn blue roughspun and gotten blisters on her hands. In her youth, under another of The Pride's captains, she had done such things, but only Haral and Tirun could recall those days. She licked a burn on her finger and squatted on the deck, content with the operation of the unit. Let it run a while, she decided: see if it would go on working. The suit stared back, stiff and gangling on its huge feet, reflecting her in distant miniature off its curved faceplate. It stood like some mahendo'sat demon, two limbs shy of that description, but ghastly enough in its exposed hoses and its malproportioned height, against the dark of the surrounding machine-shop. A reek of blood mingled with the singed smell of the welding. A bucket on the deck caught the occasional drip from the skinned carcass which hung beyond it under the light. It was a little more than hani-sized, chained up to the hoist-track above, long-faced head adroop on a longish neck, to thaw and drain. It had begun to reek under the lights. The long limbs were coming untucked, and the belly gaped. Uruus. Sweet meat and a fat one: the best steaks had already headed galleyward, in this raid on their private larder. It had wounds this carcass, but that only lengthened the limbs, letting the haunches drop. The door unsealed and sealed in the dark distance; steps whispered along the metal flooring. Pyanfar adjusted her translator and got nothing, but she could see the lights go on in the far dark expanse, illusionlike and high because of the upward curve of the deck in the vast storage chamber, picking out two figures, one gangling tall and pale. She sat and waited as the lights turned themselves on and off in sequence along the walkway, bringing the two nearer and nearer where she sat. Tully and Chur, of course. The Outsider came willingly enough, but he stopped dead when he came close, and the light went out on him, leaving him and Chur in the dark outside the area where Pyanfar sat. She stood up, making him out clearly enough in the shadow. "Tully, it's safe. Come on. it's all right, Tully." He did come, slowly, alien shadow in the rest of the strangeness, and Chur had hold of his arm in case. He looked at the vacant suit, and at the hanging carcass, and kept staring at it. "Animal," Pyanfar said. "Tully. I want you to see what we're doing. I want you to understand. Hear?" He turned toward her, eyes deep in their shadowed sockets, the angled light glancing off a pale mane and planes of feature decidedly un-hani. "You put me in this?" "Put that in the suit," Pyanfar said cheerfully. "Transmitter sending signal hard as it can. We tell the kif that we're throwing you out and we give them that, you understand, Outsider. Make them chase that. And we run." It began to get through to him. His eyes flickered over the business again, the vacant suit, the frozen carcass "Their instruments see in it," he said. "Their instruments will scan it, yes; and that's what they'll get." He gestured toward the carcass. "This? This?" "Food," she said. "Not a person, Tully. Animal. Food." Of a sudden his face took on an alarming grin. His body heaved with a choking sound she realized finally for laughter. He clapped Chur on the shoulder, turned that convulsed face toward her with moisture streaming from his eyes and still with that mahendo'sat grin. "You # the kif." "Put that inside," she told him, motioning toward the carcass. "Bring it. You help, Tully." He did, with Chur, his rangy body straining against the half-frozen weight, an occasional grimace of what might be disgust at the look or the feel of it. Pyanfar shut down the pod's lifesupport, opened up their work of art, and wrinkled her nose as the Outsider and Chur brought the reeking carcass over. There was trim work to do. She abandoned fastidiousness and did it herself, having some notion how it might fit. The head could be gotten into the helmet, a bit of the neck to stuff the vacant body cavity of the carcass, and a little scoring and breaking of the rib cage, a sectioning and straightening of stiff limbs. "Going to smell good if that drifts a while with the heater on," Chur observed. Tully laughed his own choking laugh and wiped his face, smearing his mustache with the muck which coated his arms to the elbow. Pyanfar grinned, suddenly struck with the incongruity of things, squatting here in the dark with a crazed alien and a suit full of uruus carcass, the three of them in insane conspiracy. "Hold it," she ordered Chur, trying to get the belly seam fastened. Chur held the sides together at the bottom and Tully helped at the top, and there it was, sealed and Tully-shaped. "Come," Pyanfar said, taking the feet, and Tully and Chur energetically got purchase on its shoulders, lumbering along with it as the lights recognized their presence and began to go on and off as they traveled. "Cargo dump?" Chur asked. "Airlock," Pyanfar said. "Should passengers leave a ship by any other route?" It was no light weight. They staggered along the walk with the body of the pod dragging at this and that point, got it onto a cargo carrier at the next section and breathed sighs of relief as it lay corpsewise on the carrier, mirrored faceplate staring up at the overhead. Tully was white and trembling from the exertion: sweat stood on his skin and he held onto the carrier's endrail, panting, but bright eyed. "You're Pyanfar, right?" he asked between breaths. "Pyanfar?" "Yes," she owned, wiped an itch on her nose with a dirty hand, reckoning she could get no dirtier, nodded at Chur and gave him Chur's name again. "I #," he said, nodding affirmative. He pushed enthusiastically when they pushed, and they got the thing moving easily down the aisle through interior storage, past the hulking shadows of the tanks and the circulating machinery, out again into the normal lighted sections of belowdecks, under a lower ceiling, and through ordinary corridors to the lock. "# he go #?" Tully asked, staggered as he helped them offload the pod, looked anxiously leftward as the lock's inner hatch opened. "Go quick out?" "Ah, no," Pyanfar said. She carried the feet through and braced them as Chur and Tully got the upper body through and upright. "There, against the outer hatch. We blow that, and he'll go right nicely." She set the feet down and added her weight as they heaved and braced it, stood back and surveyed her handiwork with a grin and a thought of the kif. She powered up the lifesupport with a touch of the buttons on the belt, and it stood a little stiffer, on minimum maintenance. She shut it down again, not to waste a good cylinder. And for the moment Tully stood staring at it too, panting and sweating, arms at his sides and a haggard look suddenly in place of the laughter, an expression which held something of a shudder, as if after all he had begun to think about that thing and his situation, and to reckon questions he had not asked. "Out," Pyanfar said, motioning Chur from the lock, including Tully with that sweep of her arm. He hesitated. She moved to take his arm in his seeming daze, and he suddenly hung his hand on her shoulder, one and then the other, and bowed his head against her cheek, brief gesture, quickly dropped, hands withdrawn as swiftly as her ears flattened. She caught herself short of a hiss, deliberately patted his hairless shoulder and brought him on through the lock into the corridor. Thank you, that act seemed to signify. So. It had subtler understandings, this Tully. She flicked her ears, a look which got a quickly turned shoulder from Chur, and shoved the Outsider leftward in Chur's direction. "Go clean up," she said. "Get showered, hear? Wash." Chur took him, indicated to him that he should help her with the carrier, and they went trundling it past and down the corridor to put that back where it belonged. Pyanfar blew a short breath and closed the interior lock, then headed for the common washroom where she had left her better clothes—did a small shudder of the skin where the Outsider's hand had rested on her shoulder. But it had understood what they were doing, very well understood what they were up to with the decoy, and that in fact it was not all a matter of humor. Gods rot the kif. And then she thought of the uruus' solemn long face, so benignly stupid, and of the deadly pride of the great hakkikt of the kif, and her nose wrinkled in laughter which had nothing to do with humor. Supper was on; a delicious aroma from the galley topside, Hilfy and Geran having stirred about for some time in that quarter and in the larger facilities below. It was a real meal this time, one of the delightsome concoctions Geran was skilled at, the penultimate contribution of the uruus to their comfort, prepared with all the care they lavished on food on more ordinary voyages, when food was an obsession, a precious variance in routine, an art they practiced to delight their occasional passengers and to amaze themselves. Now dinner came with as great a welcome, aromatic courage wafting the airflow from that corridor, and Pyanfar set her com links to the bridge and did what wanted doing there to secure the place, at the last with her hands all but trembling from hunger, and with an aching great hollow in the middle of her. There had been nothing dire so far, only nuisance coming over com, no indication of trouble more than they already had; and the suited uruus waited in the lock, melting and still. . . she checked the airlock vid . . . on its somewhat altered feet against the outer hatch. She cut that image and checked the galley/commonroom link again, picked up Hilfy's voice and shunted the flow the other way, vowed a great curse on any kif who might interrupt such an hour as they had earned. But the link was there if needed and the unit in the commonroom would carry any business it had to. She got the word from Geran and passed it over allship, finally left the bridge and walked on round to dinner, clean again and full of anticipation. She grinned inside and out at the sight, the table lengthened so that it hardly gave them room to edge around it, the center spread with fantastical culinary artistry, platters of meat, by the gods, no stale freeze-dried chips and jerky and suchlike; gravies and sauces in which tidbits floated, garnished with herbs and crackling bits of fat. The sterile white commonroom was transformed, and Hilfy and Geran hastened about to lay cushions with bright patterns, Chanur heraldry, red and gold and blue. "Wondrous," Pyanfar pronounced it, inhaling. Places for seven. She heard the lift and looked toward the corridor. In short order came Haral and Chur with Tully in tow, and Tirun limped along behind them, using her pipe-cane. "Sit, sit," Pyanfar bade them and Tully, and they sorted themselves and edged along as they had to in the narrow confines, took then-places shoulder to shoulder. Pyanfar held the endmost seat bridgeward, Haral the endmost galleyward, and Tirun and Chur sandwiched Tully between them, while Hilfy and Geran took the other side. It presented a bizarre sight, this whitegold mane between two ruddy gold ones, hairless shoulders next to redbrown coated ones, and Tully hunching slightly to try to keep his gangling limbs out of his seatmates' way . . . Pyanfar chuckled in good humor and made the health wish, which got the response of the others and startled Tully by its loudness. Then she poured gfi from her own flask by her cup; the whole company reached for theirs and did the same, Tully imitating them belatedly, and for a moment there was nothing but the clatter of knives and cups and plates as Geran's and Hilfy's monuments underwent swift demolition. Tully took snatches of this and that as the dishes rotated past him on the table's rotating center, small helpings at first, as if he were not sure what he had a right to, and larger ones as he darted furtive glances at what others took, and ladled on sauces and laid by small puddles of this and that in the evident case it might not come round a second time. No questions from him. "Uruus," Chur said wickedly, crooking a claw onto his arm to catch his attention, gestured at the steaks. "Same thing, this, the animal we give the kif." Tully looked momentarily uncertain, poked at the steak with his knife and looked up again at Chur's grin. "Same, this?" "Same," Chur confirmed. Tully took on an odd look, then started eating, laughed to himself after a moment in a crazed fashion, shoulders bowed and attention turned wholly to the food, darting only occasional glances to their hands, trying to handle the utensils hani-style. "Good?" Pyanfar broke the general silence. Tully looked up at once, darted looks at them in general, helpless to know who had spoken. The translator speaking into his ear had no personality. "I, Pyanfar. All right, Tully? This food's all right for you?" "Yes," he said. "I'm hungry." Hungry, the translator said into her ear, dispassionately; but the look on his face for a moment put a great deal more into it. The bruises showed starkly clear in the commonroom's white light; the angularity of bones reached the surface on his shoulders and about his ribs. "Says he's cold most of the time," Chur said. "He doesn't have our natural covering, after all. I tried a jacket on him, but he's too big. He still wants it, asks to cut it. Maybe better to start with something of Haral's in the first place." "Still too small for those arms," Haral judged. "But I'll see what I can find." "Cold," Tully said, in his limited understanding of the discussion. "We're trying, Tully," Chur said. "I ask Haral, understand. Maybe find you something." Tully nodded. "#" he said forlornly, and then with a bright expression and a gesture at the meal: "Good. Good." "Not complaining, are you?" Pyanfar commented. "Don't—Gods." The com broke in, a knnn-song, and Tully jumped. Everyone looked up reflexively toward the speaker, and Pyanfar drew a deep breath when knnn was all it turned out to be. Tully alone kept staring that way. "That's nothing," Pyanfar said. "Knnn again. It'll shut up in a moment." She looked soberly at the others, now that business was on her mind. "Got ourselves a course laid, in case. It's in the comp when we need it. And we will. Got ourselves a decoy rigged too, Chur and Tully and I—a gift for the kif that's going to cost them critical speed if they want to pick it up; got it fixed so it'll look good to their sensors." There was a moment's silence. "All right to talk?" Hilfy asked. Pyanfar nodded without comment. "Where?" Hilfy asked. "If we're running—where? Meet-point again?" "No. I considered that, to be sure, throwing the kif off by that. But figuring it and refiguring—we came close enough not making it when we came in with all Urtur's mass to fix on; and there's not a prayer of doing it in reverse with only Meetpoint's little mass to bring us up. I've worked possible courses over and over again, and there's nothing for it—twojump, to Kirdu. It's a big station; and there's help possible there." "The kif," said Geran, "will have it figured too. They'll intercept us at Kita." "So we string the jumps," Pyanfar said, taking a sip of gfi. "No other way, Geran, absolutely no other." "Gods," Chur muttered undiplomatically. Hilfy's expression was troubled, quick darts of the eyes toward the others, who were more experienced. Tully had stopped eating again and looked up too, catching something of the conversation. "Consecutive jump," Pyanfar said to Hilfy. "No delay for recovery time, no velocity dump in the interval and gods know, a hazard where we're going: we're bound to boost some of this debris through with us. But the risk is still better than sitting here while the kif population increases. There's one jump point we have to make: Kita. Past Kita Point, the kif have to take three guesses where we went—Kura, Kirdu, Maing Tol. They might guess right after all, but they still might disperse some ships to cover other possibilities." "We're going home," Hilfy surmised. "Who said going home? We're going to sort this out, that's what. We're going to shake a few of them. Get ourselves a place where we can find some allies. That's what we're doing." "Then the Faha—we could warn them." "What, spill where we're bound? They'll figure too . . . the best hope's Kirdu. They'll likely go there." "We could warn them. Here. Give them a chance to get out." "They can take care of themselves." "After we brought the trouble here—" "My decision," Pyanfar said. "I'm not saying that; I'm saying—" "We can't help them by springing in their direction. Or how do you plan to get word to them? We'll make it worse for them, we can only make it worse. You hear me?" "I hear." The ears went back, pricked up with a little effort. There was a silence at table, except for the knnn, who wailed on alone, rapt in whatever impulse moved knnn to sing. And stopped. "Gods," Haral muttered irritably, shot a worried look the length of the table. Pyanfar returned it, past Hilfy, past the Outsider. "Pyanfar." Tully spoke, sat holding his cup as if he had forgotten it, something obviously welling up in him which wanted saying, with a look close to panic. "I talk?" he asked. And when Pyanfar nodded: "What move make this ship?" "Going closer to home territory, to hani space. We're going where kif won't follow us so easily, and where there's too much hani and mahendo'sat traffic to make it easy for them to move against us. Better place, you understand. Safer." He set down the cup, made a vague gesture of a flat nailed long-fingered hand. "Two jump." "Yes." "#. Need #, captain. #." He was sorely, urgently upset. Pyanfar drew in a breath, made a calming gesture. "Again, Tully. Say again. New way." "Sleep. Need sleep in jump." "Ah. Like the stsho. They have to, yes. I understand; you'll have your drugs, then, make you sleep, never fear." He had started shaking. Of a sudden moisture broke from his eyes. He bowed his head and wiped at it, and was quiet for the moment. Everyone was, recognizing a profound distress. Perhaps he realized: he stirred in the silence and clumsily picked up his knife and jabbed at a bit of meat in his plate, carried it to his mouth and chewed, all without looking up. "You need drugs to sleep," Pyanfar said, "and the kif took you through jump without them. That's what they did, was it?" He looked up at her. "Were you alone when you started, Tully? Were there others with you?" "Dead," he said around the mouthful, and swallowed it with difficulty. "Dead." "You know for sure." "I'm sure." "Did you talk to the kif? Did you tell them what they asked you?" A shake of his head. "No?" "No," Tully said, looked down again and up under his pale brows. "We give wrong # to their translator." "What, the wrong words?" He still had the knife in his hand. It stayed there with its next morsel, the food forgotten. "He fouled their translator," Tirun exclaimed in delight. "Gods!" "And not ours?" Pyanfar observed. Tully's eyes sought toward her. "I thought you ran that board too quickly," Pyanfar said. "Clever Outsider. We, you said. Then there were more of you in the kif s hands at the start." "The kif take four of us. They take us through jump with no medicine, awake, you understand; they give us no good food, not much water, make us work this translator keyboard same you have. We know what they want from us. We make slow work, make we don't understand the keyboard, don't understand the symbols, work all slow. They stand small time. They hit us, bad, push us, bad—make us work this machine, make quick. We work this machine all wrong, make many wrong words, this word for that word, long, long tape—some right, most wrong. One day, two, three—all wrong." His face contorted. "They work the tape and we make mistake more. They understand what we do, they take one of us, kill her. Hit us all, much. They give us again same work, make a tape they want. We make number two tape wrong, different mistake. The kif kill second one my friends. I—man name Dick James—we two on the ship come to station. They make us know this Akukkakk; he come aboard ship see us. He—" Again a contortion of the face, a gesture. "He—take my friend arm, break it, break many time two arms, leg—I make fight him, do no good; he hit me—walk outside. And my friend—he ask—I kill him, you understand. I do it; I kill my friend, # kif no more hurt him." The silence about the table was mortal. Pyanfar cleared her throat. Others' ears were back, eyes dilated. "They come," Tully went on quietly. "Find my friend dead. They # angry, hit me, bring me out toward this second ship. Outside. Docks. I run. Run—long time. I come to your ship." He ducked his head, looked up again with a wan, mahendo'sat smile. "I make the keyboard right for you." "That kif wants killing," Haral said. "Tully," Pyanfar said. "I understand why you're careful about questions about where you come from. But I'll lay odds your space is near the kif—you just listen to me. I think your ship got among kif, and now they know there's a spacefaring species near their territories, either one they can take from—or one they're desperately afraid is a danger to them. I don't know which you are. But that's what the kif wanted with you, I'm betting—to know more about you. And you know that. And you're reluctant to talk to us either." Tully sat unmoving for a moment. "My species is human." She caught the word from his own speech. "Human." "Yes, they try ask me. I don't say; make don't understand." "Your ship—had no weapons. You don't carry them?" No answer, "You didn't know there was danger?" "Don't know this space, no. Jump long. Two jump. # we hear transmission." "Kif?" He shook his head, his manner of no. "I hear—" He pointed to the com, which remained silent. "That. Make that sound." "Knnn, for the gods' sake." He touched his ear. "Say again. Don't understand." "Knnn. A name. A species. Methane breather. You were in knnn territory. Worse and worse news, my friend. Knnn space is between stsho and kif." "Captain," said Geran, "I'd lay bets with a chi the stsho had a finger in this too. Their station, after all . . . where the kif felt free to move him about the dock in public . . . I daresay the kif didn't get any questions at all from the stsho." Pyanfar nodded thoughtfully, recalling the stsho official, the change in that office or that officer. A smiling welcome, impassive moonstone eyes and delicate lavender brows. A certain cold went up her back. "Stsho'd turn a blind eye to anything that looked like trouble, that's sure—Imp," she said, seeing Hilfy's laidback ears and dilated eyes, "pay attention: this is the way of our friends and allies out here. Gods rot them. Eat your dinner." Tully stirred his plate about, turned his attention back to that, and Pyanfar chewed another bite, thoughtful. Knnn, kif, stsho . . . gods, the whole pot had been stirred when this Outsider, this human, dropped into the middle of it. An uncomfortable feeling persisted at the back of her neck, like a cold wind of belated reason. The whole dock at Meetpoint, zealously trying not to hear or see anything amiss, with a fugitive on the loose and the kif on the hunt . . . . There was no particular evil in the stsho—except the desire to avoid trouble. That had always been the way of them. But they were different. No hani read past the patterns. No hani understood them. And, gods, if the knnn were stirred up—along with the kif . . . . She swallowed the dry mouthful and washed it down with a draught of gfi, poured herself another cupful. Tully ate with what looked like appetite. Food disappeared all round the table, and the plates rotated for second helpings. "I'm going to put Tully on limited assignment," she said. "He can't read, sure enough. But some things he can do." He had looked up. "Niece," she said, "you're no longer junior-most on The Pride, this run. Ought to make you happy." Hilfy's brown study evaporated into disquiet. "He's junior-most?" "A willing worker," Pyanfar said, with a wrinking of her nose. "Your responsibility in part, now." "Aunt, I—" "I told you how it was, niece. Hear? You know what we're dealing with, and what stakes are involved?" "I hear," Hilfy said in a faint voice. "No, I don't know. But I'm figuring it out." "Kif," Geran spat. "They're different, when the odds go against them." "Once—" Haral said, and winced. The knnn song was back again, shriller. "Rot that." "Close," Pyanfar judged. It was exceedingly clear reception. She met Haral's eyes facing her down the length of the table, more and more uneasy. The song continued for a moment, too loud to talk above it, then wailed away, gibbering to itself into lower tones. "Too rotted close," Haral said. "Captain—" Pyanfar started to push herself back from table, surrendering to anxiety. "Chanur Captain," com said far more faintly, a clicking voice speaking the hani tongue. "Chanur Captain—don't trouble to acknowledge. Only listen . . . ." Pyanfar stiffened, looked toward com with a bristling at her nape and a lowering of her ears. Everyone was frozen in place. "The bargain you refused at Meetpoint . . . is no longer available. Now I offer other terms, equal to the situation. A new bargain. A safe departure from this system, for yourself and for the Faha ship now at dock. I guarantee things which properly interest you, in return for one which doesn't. Jettison the remnant of your cargo, hani thief. You know our ways. If you do the wise thing, we will not pursue you further. You know that we are the rightful owners of that merchandise. You know that we know your name and the names of your allies. We remember wrongs against us. All kif. . . remember crimes committed against us. But purge your name, Pyanfar Chanur. More, save lives which were not originally involved in your act of piracy. Give us only our property, Pyanfar Chanur, and we will take no further action against the Faha and yourself. That is my best offer. And you know now by experience that I make no empty threat. Is this matter worth your sure destruction and that of the Faha? Or if you think to run away again, deserting your ally, will you hope to run forever? That will not improve your trade, or make you welcome at stations who will learn the hazard of your company. Give it up, thief. It's small gain against your loss, this thing you've stolen." "Akukkakk," Pyanfar said in a low voice when it had done. "So." "Aunt," Hilfy said, carefully restrained. "They're going to go after Starchaser. First." "Undoubtedly they are." The message began to repeat. Pyanfar thrust herself to her feet. "Gods rot that thing. Down it." Chur was nearest. She sprang from her seat and turned down the volume of the wall unit. Others had started working themselves out of their places, Tully among them. Sweat had broken out on his skin, a fine, visible dew. "Seal the galley," Pyanfar said. "Secure for jump. We're moving." Hilfy turned a last, pleading look on her. Pyanfar glowered back. And with Geran urging him to move on, Tully delayed, putting out a hand to touch Pyanfar's shoulder. "Sleep," Tully pleaded, reminding her, panic large in his eyes. "For the gods' sake put him out," Pyanfar snarled, turned and thrust her own plate and some of the nearer dishes into the disposal, shoved others into the hands of Haral and Tirun and Chur, who were throwing things in as fast as they could snatch them. Hilfy started to help. "Out," Pyanfar said to Chur. "That business in the airlock . . . get its lifesupport going. Move it!" Chur scrambled over the top of the table and ran for the doorway in a scrabbling of claws. Pyanfar turned with fine economy and stalked out in her wake, toward controls. Tirun limped after her, but Pyanfar had no disposition to wait. Anxiety prickled up and down her gut, disturbing the meal she had just eaten, sudden distrust of all the choices she had made up till now, including the one that had a slightly crazed Outsider loose on the ship in a crisis; and knnn near them; and their eyes blinded and their ears deaf to the outside . . . . She walked into the darkened bridge, slid into the well worn cushion which knew her body's dimensions, settled in and belted in, heard the stir of others about her, Tirun, Hilfy, Haral. The kif voice continued over com. Elsewhere she heard Tully pleading with Geran over something, trying to get something through the translator which he could only half say. She started running perfunctory clear checks, all internal, threw a look toward her companions. Haral and Tirun were settled and running personal checks on their posts, rough and solid and intent on business. Hilfy had her ears back, her hands visibly shaking in getting her boards ready. So. It was one thing, to ride through kif fire at Meetpoint . . . quite another to face it after thinking about it. "Please," a mahendo'sat voice came through, relayed suddenly from Hilfy's board to hers. "Stand off from station. We appeal to all sides for calm. We suggest arbitration . . . ." They had thrown that out on longrange, plea to all the system, to all their unruly guests, this station full of innocents, where all who could in the system had taken refuge. And among them, Starchaser. "That had to antedate the other message," Pyanfar said morosely. "It's all old history at station." That for Hilfy, to get her mind straight. Tully was still talking: she took the translator plug from her ear, shutting down all communication from that quarter, trusting Geran's not inconsiderable right arm if all else failed. "Captain." That was Chur on allship. "Lifesupport's on and the lock's sealed again." "Understood, Chur," she muttered, plying the keyboard and calling up her course plottings. "Take station in lower-deck op." She would rather Chur on the bridge; but there was Tully loose; there was a kif loose, and time running on them—it was getting late to risk someone moving about in the corridors. She spun half about, indecisive. Hilfy, the weak link, sat at com, scan backup. "What's the kif doing? Any pickup?" "Negative," Hilfy said calmly enough. "Repeat of message. I'm getting a garble out of ships insystem, no sign yet of any disruption. The knnn . . . ." That sound moaned through main com again, a transmission increasingly clear and distinct. Closer to them in this maelstrom of dust and debris. Pyanfar sucked in a breath. "Stand by to transmit, full sensors, all systems; I want a look out there, cousins." She started throwing switches. The Pride's nervous system came alive again in flares of color and light, busy ripplings across the boards as systems recalibrated themselves. She hit propulsion and reoriented, reached for the main comp. "Gods," Tirun muttered, throwing to her number-one screen the scan image which was coming in, a dusty soup pocked with rocks. "Ship," Haral said suddenly, number-one scan, and overrode with that sectorized image. Panic hit Pyanfar's gut. That was close to them, and moving. "Resolution," she demanded. The Pride was accelerating, without her shields as yet. The whisper of dust over the hull became a shriek, a scream: they hit a rock and it shrilled along the hull; hit another and a screen erupted with static. "Gods, this muck!" "Shields," Haral said. "Not yet." "No resolution," Tirun said. "Too much debris out there. We're still blind." "Gods rot it." She hit the airlock control, blew it. "We lost something," Tirun said; "Beeper output," Hilfy said at once. "Loud and clear. Aunt, is that our decoy?" Pyanfar ignored the questions, harried. "Longrange com to my board. Now." It came through unquestioned, a light on her panel. She put the mike in. "This is Pyanfar Chanur, Hinukku. We've just put a pod out the lock. Call it enough, hakkikt. Leave off." And breaking that contact, to Hilfy: "Get that on repeat, imp, twice over; and then cut all signal output and ID transmission and output the signal on translator channel five." Half a second of paralysis: Hilfy reached for the board, froze and then punched something else over, static-ridden snarl, a hani voice. "Chanur! Go! We're moving!" It repeated, a rising shriek of urgency like that of the debris against the hull. "It's not our timeline," Pyanfar snapped at Hilfy, but Hilfy was already moving again, outputting one transmission, then clearing, reaching with ears back and a panicked look after what recording she had been ordered, however insane. "Prime course laid," Haral pronounced imperturbably. "Referent bracketed." "Stand by." Their acceleration continued: the dust screamed over the hull. Another screen broke up and recovered. "Aunt," Hilfy exclaimed, "we're outputting knnn signal." "Right we are," Pyanfar said through her teeth. She angled The Pride for system zenith, where no outgoing ship belonged. A prickle of sweat chilled her nose, sickly cold, and the wail over the hull continued. "Readout behind us," Geran said, "confirmed knnn, that ship back there." Gods rot it, nothing was ever easy. Differential com was suddenly getting another signal in the sputter of dust. "Chanur! Go . . . ." And a kif voice: "Regrettable decision, Faha Captain." Pyanfar spat and gulped air against the drag of g, vision tunneled with the stress and with anger. Hour old signal, that from the Faha; at least an hour old, maybe more than that."Second ship," Tirun said. "3/4 by 32 our referent." "Get me Starchaser's course," Pyanfar said. "Been trying," Haral said. "Bearing NSR station, best guess uncertain." Figures leaped to the number two screen, a schematic covering a quarter of Urtur's dust-barriered system, below them, system referent. "Knnn ship," Hilfy said, "moving on the beeper. Aunt, they're going to intercept it." Pyanfar hesitated half a beat in turning, a glance at scan which flashed intercept probable on that ship trailing them. Knnn, by the gods, knnn were moving on the decoy, and they were not known for rescues. Something clenched on her heart, instinctive loathing, and in the next beat she flung her attention back toward the system schematic. No way to help the Faha. None. Starchaser was on her own. Knnn had the decoy; kif were not going to like that. If there ever had been knnn. More than The Pride could play that dangerous game. The scream on the hull rose in pitch— "Screens," she snapped at Haral. She reached for drive control, uncapped switches. "Stand by. Going to throw our navigation all to blazes; I'll keep Alijuun off our nose when we cycle back." She pulsed the jump drive, once, twice, three times, microsecond darings of the vanes. Her stomach lurched, pulse quickened until the blood congested in her nose and behind her eyes, narrowing vision to a hazed pinpoint. They were blind a third time, instruments robbed of regained referents, velocity boosted in major increments. Dead, if Haral failed them now. But they were old hands at Urtur, knew the system, had a sense where they were even blinded, from a known start. Down the throat of the kif's search pattern, from zenith . . . she pulsed the vanes again, another increment, swallowed hard against the dinner which was trying to come up again. Differential com got them a kif howl, and a mahendo'sat yammering distress. That, for whatever they had done against Starchaser, skin their backsides for them, a streaking search for a target. "Ai!" Haral yelped, and instruments flared, near collision. "Chanur!" she heard: the name would be infamy here as at Meetpoint. There were surges and flares all over the board. She pulsed out and in again and the instruments went manic. "Gods," Haral moaned, "I almost had it." "Now, Haral! for the gods' sake find it!" Instruments flickered and screens static-mad sorted themselves, manifoldly offended. An alien scream erupted from their own com. Tully, Pyanfar reckoned suddenly: his drugs were not quick enough. They had betrayed him like the kif. Image appeared on her number one screen: Alijuun. The star was sighted and bracketed and the ID was positive. "Hail" she yelled, purest relief, and hit the jump pulse for the long one. Her voice wound in and out in a dozen colors, coiled and recoiled through the lattices which opened for them, and the stomach-wrenching sensation of jump swallowed them down . . . . Chapter 6 . . . and spat them up again, a dizzying percept of elsewhere. A shimmer before her eyes, that was the screen, and the automated instruments were searching. Keep conscious, don't go out, not now, keep the hand on controls . . . . "Working," Haral's low voice drifted to her out of infinity. "O gods." That was someone else. Hilfy? A star came into brackets on the screen and wobbled out again. "Check referent," Pyanfar said. Her blurring eyes sought instruments. A red light was on. "Got a problem," Haral said, sending cold chills along her back. "No positive ID on referent." "Brace." She started aborting the proposed second jump, dumping speed sufficient for the scanning sensors to make their fix. There was a moan near her when the shift slammed in. Her hand shook like palsy over the controls, hovering over the button. "Gods, we've missed," Haral moaned; and then Tirun: "Abort! we're vectored massward!" Dark mass was ahead of them, the mass which had pulled them in from jump, coming up in their faces. Sensors realized it: alarms went off, dinning through the ship. Pyanfar dumped again, hard, flinched as screens went static and one went dead. Something had given way. "Turning," she warned the crew. The Pride veered in her next skip, and blood started in Pyanfar's nose, internal organs and joints and flesh hauled in independent motion. She spat and struggled with the muscles of her eyes to keep focused, fought a strained muscle to keep her hand at the controls. Scan showed hairbreadth miss now and she trimmed ship and let it ride, hurtling for a virtual skim of the obstacle. A kif voice came in over com. "Identify: urgent." Someone was waiting in this place, stationed to guard, another of Akukkakk's long arms. "Aunt," Hilfy's voice came weakly, bubbling liquid. "Kif . . ." "Got it." Pyanfar sniffed blood or sweat, licked salt from her mouth, staring at the screens which showed the dark mass hoving up at them . . . tight skim, incredibly tight. Their own output was still knnn-song, wailing up and down the scale, tickings and whines . . . that had to put the kif off. Haral and Tirun talked frantically to each other, searching with the sensors for their way out. "Got it!" Haral exclaimed suddenly; a star showed up in the bracket. "Can't do it," Pyanfar said: the mass was too close. They had no choice now but to skim past and hope. "Identify," the kif voice insisted. Instruments flared of a sudden, screens going static. "That was fire," Pyanfar said to Hilfy, "onto our former vector, thank the gods." A second flaring: The Pride had returned a shot, automatic response. Of a sudden the alarms went again, crescendo of mechanical panic. "Mass proximity," Pyanfar said into allship, for those riding it out below. "We're going to miss it." The solidity was there, a sudden jump in every mass/drive instrument on the bridge, lights flaring red, a static washout on the number four screen: Kita Point mass, a chunk of rock, a cinder radiating only the dimmest warmth into the dark, light-less, lonely, and far, far too big for The Pride to drag with her into jump . . . . Vid picked up flares of light, massive spots like the glow of a sun in that dark, illumining the surface of Kita mass. Rock boosted in their field out of Urtur had not changed vector. It hit the dark mass at near c, pyrotechnics which flowered the dark. They passed in that flare of impact, slingshotted with a wrench which brought a new flood of blood to Pyanfar's throat . . . grayout . . . . . . back again. "Haral!" A frantic moment. "There!" Then- referent was back in bracket. A kif voice clicked and chattered out of phase with what they should be getting: that was then a second ship, lying off Kita zenith. Fire hit them. Pyanfar slammed the drive back in, with the howl of the kif in her ears, the static spit of instruments trained on the chaos in their wake. She tried with all her wits to keep oriented, a .slow reach of a sore arm while matter came undone about them, while they were naked to the between and time played games with the senses. No way that the kif could have followed. They had run the gauntlet. They were through the worst. After Kita it was one of three destinations and after the next, one of two more; and the choices multiplied, and the kif had harder and harder shift to bring numbers to bear against them . . . . "We're fading," Haral said, words which stretched through infinity, emotion-dulled, nowhere: this was the way it went when ships lost themselves, when they jumped and failed to come out again . . . perhaps some mathematical limbo . . . or straight into mahendo'sat hell, where four-armed demons invented horrors . . . Pyanfar dragged her wits together, watched for another such wobble. Damage they had taken under fire could have done something to the vanes, robbed them of capacity, might lose them permanently . . . . . . . second arrival, a blurring downdrop of the senses into here and when again. Pyanfar reached for the panel and ordered scan search. Differential com was already getting signal: it was the marker of Kirdu System, wondrous, beautiful mahendo'sat voice, the buoy of the jump range. "We're in!" Hilfy cried. "We're in." "Clear and in the range," Pyanfar said, smug. She hit the jump pulse to throw off velocity and the smugness evaporated somewhat: the pulse was queasy, less powerful than it ought to be. "Captain?" Haral's voice. "I feel it." "Maintain knnn output?" Hilfy asked. "Yes." Pyanfar kept her eyes on the readout, hit the pulse again. "Plot entry vector," she ordered Tirun. "We might have trailed some debris with us." "Reckon we dumped most of the rocks on Kita," Tirun muttered. She started sending the schematic over, fired off a comp-signal warning for what good it would do a slow ship in the path of their debris-attended entry. The dump went on, sickly pulses which finally began to count. "That's better," Pyanfar said, swallowing against the stress. "Hilfy, got a lag estimate?" "Approximate," Hilfy said in a thin voice. "Thirty-minute roundtrip to station, estimate." Close, by the gods, too close. Pyanfar kept the dump pulses going at the closest possible intervals, kept her eyes nowhere but the center screen now, the relayed scan from the station buoy which plotted the location of ships and planets and large objects in the system. Automation had added in the warning The Pride had sent out, a hazard zone in a cone headed transzenith of system. "Getting refinement on course," Haral said as a schematic came up on number two screen. It took only a little bending: check velocity, the warning kept flashing. Pyanfar coaxed another dump out of The Pride and made the slight correction, her senses swimming now with the prolonged strain of high-velocity reckonings, with stringing her mind along those distances and speeds which the ship's own comp handled in special conflict-dumping mode. "Down the slot!" Tirun cried as the lines matched. They were dead on at last, free and safe and headed down the approach path station had preassigned the next incomer in that area of the range. Pyanfar afforded herself a lighter breath, still with her eyes fixed on the scan, trying to figure how much more they could dump and how fast. Let one miner be where he ought not to be, let one skimmer have gone off for some private reason without advising station in advance, some idiot crossing the entry lanes, some mad knnn or chi, with whom there was never any reasoning, navigation hazards wherever they operated . . . . Sweat ran, or blood. She sniffed and wiped at her nose, eyes still fixed and hand on the button. They rode the odds; they came in like a shot, counting on statistics and blind luck and traffic being exactly where it ought: one could do that a few times in a lifetime and not run out of luck. "Acquiring station signal," Hilfy said. "That's tc'a talking now, I think. It's this knnn signal of ours . . . ." "Cut the signal. Give station our proper ID. Relay pirate attack; damage and emergency, and probable accompanying debris." "Got it," Hilfy said. Pyanfar hit the dump again, forced them a little more toward a sane speed, and a board redlighted. She cycled in a backup. Haral unbelted and leaned into the pit beside her console, frantic readjustments. There might be kif in dock at Kirdu . . . gods, would be kif here, by all the odds, and just possibly one of them had come through from Urtur. But this was Kirdu: mahendo'sat here, in their own territory, had teeth, and took no arguments from visitors. They would demand explanations for such an entry. Gods grant whatever remaining debris they had boosted through with them from Urtur found no mahendo'sat targets, or there would be more than an explanation due. "Something's left station," Tirun said. The image showed up on the number two screen. Ships were outbound, four of them, one after the other, moving on intercept, dopplering into their path. "Hilfy," Pyanfar said, "signal general alert, all hani ships insystem." "Done," Hilfy said, moving to do it. Haral slid back into place, set to work in haste at the comp. The number one screen started acquiring estimates, locational shifts on the oncomers and everything else in the system. That was station guard which had just put out, more than likely: The Pride had broken regulations from entry to this moment, heaps and piles of regulations. Some mangy mahe station official was likely elbow deep in the rule books this moment hunting penalties, Pyanfar's nose wrinkled at the thought of the fines, the levies, the arguments. "Getting signal on the ships outcoming," Hilfy said. "They're mahendo'sat, all right." "Huh." Pyanfar blew a sigh of relief. Worse had been possible, worse indeed. "Geran," she said over allship. "Chur. Are you getting this down there? We're all right; station's ending us an escort." "Coming in clear, captain." "Is everything secure down there? How's Tully? Have you got a monitor on him?" "He's here in op with us," Geran said. "Drugs are wearing off. He's muzzy but following what's going on." "No more risks, rot you; who cleared that? Take scan on number four for approach; give us some relief up here; and get him secure." "I friend." Tully's voice came back to her, hani words. And others, his own tongue, a flood of words. "Shut him down," Pyanfar hissed; and there was silence. "Working," Chur's voice reported, and Tirun paused in her frantic pace, dropped her head into hands and wiped them back over her mane. She took the chance for a drink, from a plastic bottle from under-counter, passed it to Hilfy and then to Tirun and then to Haral and Haral to Pyanfar. The remnant went down, a welcome cooling draught. Pyanfar took the chance to call up comp to locate the damage, gnawed her upper lip as the information came through incomplete. She looked right, at the others, at Hilfy, who was listening to something, with a bruised, exhausted look on her face. "Shunt that below when they get the Outsider settled," Pyanfar said to her, and looked at Haral, who was still doing updates. "Damage indeterminate," she said to Haral privately. "I don't feel any lag in the insystem responses, at least. It should be a normal dock, but we're going to have to get a hurryup on that repair and I don't know how to the gods we're going to finance the bribe." "Aunt," Hilfy said, "station is on, wants to talk to you personally. I told them—" "Captain." Lowerdeck overrode, sent up an image on scan. Ship in the jump range, incoming, on their tail. "Gods," Pyanfar hissed. "Gods rot all kif—Hilfy: ID, fast." Hilfy hesitated half a breath: Tirun was already overreaching a long arm onto her territory. Wailing came through, and Pyanfar grimaced at the high-pitched squeal. "Knnn," Tirun said. "Captain, it's that rotted knnn." "We don't know it's that knnn," Pyanfar spat back, snatching the mike—waved an angry gesture with it at Hilfy. "Station. Station, and get your wits working, niece." The ready light came on. "Go," Hilfy said, distraught and J wild-eyed, and subdued the knnn pickup. "This is Kirdu Station," the machine-translated voice came through. "We make urgent severe protest this entry. Go slow, hani captain incoming." "This is The Pride of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur speaking. We're incoming with an unidentified on our tail and with damage, but we have maneuverability. The ship behind us may pose a threat to station; I suggest your escort direct its attention to what's following us." Com stayed dead, longer than lagtime dictated. "Escort is passing turnover point," Geran's quiet voice came from the other op center. "Captain, they're going to pass us, going to go out and look that bastard over." Pyanfar looked, saw, returned her attention to comp, where new estimate was coming up on the position of the incoming ship. It was close, moving hard, no dump of speed. "Got a hani contact," said Hilfy. "Tahar." "Gods and thunders." This was not a friendly house to Chanur. Pyanfar picked up the contact on her board. "Tahar ship, this is Pyanfar Chanur. Stand ready for trouble. Don't be caught at dock." "Chanur, this is Dur Tahar. Is this your trouble?" "It has no patent, Tahar, not so far. Stand out from station, I warn you. In case." "Chanur," the translated voice of station broke in on them. "Tahar Captain. Against regulation, this. "Use station channel. And this station order stay. No moving out." "We're coming in, station. We advise you ships are destroyed and lives lost. If that ship back there is knnn, well; but if it isn't, Kirdu has trouble." Another voice, clicking and harsh. Kif. "That's from a docked ship," Hilfy said quickly. "Got it on station directional." "Captain." That from Tirun. "Incomer's just begun dump; they're checking speed." Pyanfar blinked, the suspicion of good news hitting dully on a dazed brain. She drew a whole breath. "Gods grant it is knnn," she muttered. "Station, you should be getting that now: we'll make a full explanation as soon as we get in and get our mechanical problems in order. We strongly urge you take full precautions and get a positive visual on that so-named knnn arrival. We have serious charges to lodge." Silence from station. They were not, most likely, overjoyed. Pyanfar broke the contact. "Bastards." She wiped her mouth, straightened her beard with her fingers. "Cowards." The escort passed and headed out to the incoming ship behind them. She settled back in her cushion and listened to the reports. "Aunt," Hilfy said finally, "mahendo'sat report visual confirmation: it is a knnn ship." "Thank the gods," Pyanfar muttered, and threw open the restraint on her cushion, leaned forward more comfortably. Station was coming up. A flurry of docking instructions was arriving on the number three screen. Not kif behind them, only a vastly confused knnn. She gave a wry pursing of the mouth, imagining the chagrin of the odd creatures, who had arrived to far more commotion than knnn were wont to stir under any circumstances. Coincidence, perhaps; ships came and went from everywhere—gods, rare to have two ships come into a jump range that close, but not that rare. Kirdu had a great deal more traffic than that generated by The Pride. This was civilization, here at Kirdu, civilization, after all. She drew a series of quieter breaths. Watched the schematic which showed them the way toward docking. Tired. Indeed she was tired. She ached in her bones. It took a moral effort to settle in for docking maneuvers, to do it by manual because she wanted the feel of it, not to be surprised by some further malfunction under automatic. She was already mentally sorting through possible arguments with the Tahar, a loan, anything to get The Pride's repairs made and paid, to get out of this place: they needed no more damages than they had, and most of all they did not need prolonged residence here. If they were very, very fortunate, the kif were sorting matters out with a certain knnn who had picked up a bit of salvage at Urtur; and that knnn might not be amused by a hani joke. The great hakkikt Akukkakk would be even less amused . . . but he would have a hard time negotiating with the knnn for a look at its prize; and a harder time with his fellow kif .. indeed he would. She felt, in all, satisfied. But a knnn had happened through jump with them; had happened to crowd them. Gods . . . did they have apparatus which made tracking possible? Its voice was back, distant and eerie, like that which she had duplicated at Urtur, to use a knnn voice as shield and disguise. Gods knew what message they had been transmitting to knnn hearing: follow me? Help me? Something far less friendly? Tc'a might know; but there was no querying that side of Kirdu Station. They came up on dock, moving in next the Tahar ship: Kirdu wanted its hani problems collected, apparently, giving them berths next each other. In some part that was good, because it gave them private access to talk without witnesses; and in another part it was not, because it made them one single target. "Where are the kif?" she asked station bluntly, stalling on the approach. "I'm not putting my nose into station until I know what berths they have." "Number twenty and twenty-one," station informed her. "Mahe and stsho in the between numbers, no trouble, no trouble, hani captain. You make easy dock, please." She wrinkled her nose and committed them, not without contrary thoughts. Chapter 7 The Pride's nose went gently into dock, the grapples clanged to and accesses thumped open, and Pyanfar thrust back from the panel with a sudden watery feeling about the joints. Station chattered at them, requests for routine cooperations. "Shut down," she said curtly, waved a weary signal at Haral and pushed the cushion round the slight bit it could go. "Hilfy: tell station offices. Tell them we've got some shakeup. I'll talk with them when we get internal business settled." "Aye," Hilfy murmured, and relayed the message, with much flicking of the ears in talking with the official and a final flattening of them. Pyanfar shortened her focus, on Tirun, who was running her last few checks. Her hands made small uncertain movements; her ears were drooping. "Tirun," Pyanfar said, and Tirun's face when she looked around showed the strain. "Out," Pyanfar said. "Now." Tirun stared at her half a moment, and ordinarily Tirun would have mustered argument. She looked only numb, and pushed back from her place and tried, a faltering effort which got her to her feet, and a reach which got her to the next console. They all scrambled for her, but Hilfy was quickest, flung an arm about her. "She goes to quarters," Pyanfar said. "Aye," Haral said, and took charge from Hilfy, replacing Tirun's support on that side. Hilfy stood a moment. Pyanfar looked on her back, on the backs of Tirun and Haral as Tirun limped away trying not to limp; and Hilfy straightened her shoulders and looked back. "I'll stay on the com," Hilfy offered. "Leave it. Let station wonder. Clean up." Hilfy nodded stiffly, turned and walked out, quite, quite without swagger, with a hand to steady her against the curvature-feeling of the deck when they were docked. It occurred to Pyanfar then that Hilfy had not been sick, not this time. Pyanfar drew a deep breath, let it go, turned and leaned over the com. "Lowerdeck, who's at station?" "Geran," the voice came back. "All stable below." "Clean up. Above all get Tully straightened up and presentable." "Understood." Pyanfar broke the connection. There was another call coming over com. "Chanur, this is Tahar's Moon Rising. Private conference." "Tahar, this is Pyanfar Chanur: we have a medical situation in progress. Stand by that conference." "Do you require assistance, Pride of Chanur?" There was, infinitesimal in the tone,, satisfaction in that possibility. Pyanfar sweetened her voice with prodigious effort. "Hardly, Moon Rising. I'll return the call at the earliest possible. Chanur's respects, Tahar. Out." She broke off with abruptness, pushed back and strode off, without swagger in her stride either. All her joints seemed rearranged, her head sitting precariously throbbing on a body which complained of abuses. Her nape bristled, not at kif presence, but at an enemy who sat much closer to home. Gods. Beg of the Tahar? Of a house which had presented formidable threat to Chanur during Kohan's holding? The satisfaction in the Tahar whelp's voice hardly surprised her. It was a spectacle, The Pride with her gut missing and her tail singed. There would be hissing laughter in Tahar, the vid image carried home for the edification of Kahi Tahar and his mates and daughters. And from Tahar it would go out over Anuurn, so that it would be sure to come to Kohan. There would be challenges over this, beyond doubt there would be challenges. Some Tahar whelp would get his neck broken before the dust settled, indeed he would: young males were always optimists, always ready to set off at the smell of advantage, the least edge it might afford them. They would try. So. They had done that before. That was what Dur Tahar had wind of. "She's well enough," Haral reported at the door of the crew's quarters on the lower deck. Pyanfar looked beyond and saw Tirun snugged down in bed and oblivious to it all. "Leg swelled a bit under the stress, but no worry." Pyanfar frowned. "Good medical facilities here onstation. But it might be we'd have to pull out abruptly; I don't want to risk leaving any of us behind for a layover, not . . . under the circumstances." "No," Haral agreed. "No need for that. But we're wearing thin, captain." "I know," she said. "You too, begging your leave." "Huh." She laid her hand on Haral's shoulders. Walked away to the lift, paused there and listened in the direction of Chur and Geran's post. She walked back that way and leaned in at the door of op, where Geran sat watch, washed and in clean blue trousers, but looking on the world with the dull look someone ought to have who had gone from one on-shift to the next without sleep. "Right," Pyanfar said simply, recalling that she had given them orders they were following, and leaned an arm against the doorframe. "Tully made it all right down here, did he?" "No trouble from him." "I'm going to have to take him up on that work offer. You and Chur trade off with him, one on and one off. Tirun's ailing." "Bad?" "G stress didn't favor that leg. We'll rest here as much as we can. I'm going to see what charity I can get out of Tahar. Need to find out what damage we've got, first off." "Got a remote on it," Geran said, turned about and called it up on the nearest screen. Pyanfar came into the room, looked at the exterior camera image, which was from the observation blister, and suffered a physical pang at the sight. Number one vane had a mooring line snaking loose, drifting about under station's rotation, and there were panels missing, dark spots on the long silver bar. "That was our fade," Pyanfar said with a belated chill. "Gods. Could have lost it all coming in with that loose. Going to take a skimmer crew to get that linked back up, no way the six of us can do it." "Money," Geran said dismally. "Might have to sell one of us to the kif after all." "Bad joke," Pyanfar said, and walked out. Tully, she had thought, with an impulse of which she was heartily ashamed. But she kept thinking of it, all the way up to her own quarters. She stripped and showered, shed a mass of fur into the drain; dried and combed and arranged her mane and beard. It was the red silk breeches this time, the gold armlet, the pendant pearl. She surveyed herself with some satisfaction, a lift in her spirits. Appearances meant something, after all. The mahendo'sat were sensitive to the matter, quite as much as the stsho. Offended prosperity, that was the tack to take with them. They knew The Pride. As long as it seemed that Chanur's fortunes were intact and that Chanur was still a power to reckon with among hani, that long they might hold some hope of mahendo'sat eagerness to serve. And there was, she reckoned, smiling coldly at the splendid hani captain in the mirror, there was deadly earnest in this haste. There was Akukkakk. Gods rot it all. Possibly she had embarrassed him enough that his own would turn on him. That would take time to know. A long time out from homeport, keeping her ear alert for rumor. Get rid of the Outsider Tully . . . would that the disentanglement were that easy. She stared into her own eyes, ears flat, and meditated the villainy that any trader seeing the Outsider would think on naturally as breathing; and after a little thinking her lips pursed in a grimly smug smile. So, so, so, Pyanfar Chanur. There was a way to settle more than one problem. Likely Tully would not like it, but an Outsider who came begging passage could take what he could get, and it was not in her mind to beg from Tahar. She checked com, found the expected clutter of messages waiting attention. "Nothing really urgent," Geran said. "Station's still upset, that's the sum of them." "Chur's got Tully, has she, cleaning him up?" "A little problem there." "Don't tell me problem. I've got problems. What problem?" "He has his own ideas, our Tully does. He wants to be shaved." "Gods and thunders. Washroom?" "Here, now." "I'm coming down there." She started for the door, went back and picked up the audio plug for the translator and headed down in haste. Shaved. Her ears flattened, pricked again in a forced reckoning that customs were customs. But appearances, by the gods . . . . She arrived in op in deliberate haste, found the trio there, Geran, Chur, Tully, all cleanly and haggard and drowning their miseries in a round of gfi. They looked up, Tully most anxious of all, still possessed, thank the gods, of all his mane and beard and decent-looking in a fresh pair of trousers. "Pyanfar," he said, rising. "Captain," she corrected him sternly. "You want what, Tully? What problem?" "Wants the clippers," Chur said. "I trimmed him up a bit." She had. It was a good job. "He wants the beard off." "Huh. No, Tully. Wrong." Tully sank down again, the cup of gfi in his two hands, looked chagrined. "Wrong." Pyanfar heaved a sigh. "That's reasonable. You do what I say, Tully. You have to look right for the mahendo'sat. You look good. Fine." "Same # hani." "Like hani, yes." "Mahendo'sat. Here." "You're safe. It's all right. Friendly folk." Tully's mouth tightened thoughtfully. He nodded peaceably enough. Then he reached a hand behind his head and knotted the pale mane back in his fingers. "Right, that?" "No," Pyanfar said. The hand .dropped. "I do all you say." Pyanfar flicked her ears, thrust her hands into her waistband. "Do all?" She felt pricklish in the area of her honor, and the Outsider's pale eyes gazed up at her with disturbing confidence. "It might frighten you, what I want. I might ask too much." Some of that got through. The confidence visibly diminished. "I make you afraid, Tully?" She gestured wide, toward the bow. "There's a station out there, Kirdu Station. Mahendo'sat species is the authority in this place. There's a hani ship docked next to us. Stsho species too, down the dock." "Kif?" "Two kif ships, not the same ones. Not Akukkakk's, not likely. Traders. They're trouble if we linger here too long, but they won't make any sudden move. I want you to go outside, Tully. I want you to come with me, out in the open, on station dock, and meet the mahendo'sat." He did understand. A muscle jerked in his jaw. "I'm crew of this ship," he said. It seemed a question. "Yes. I won't leave you here. You stay with me." "I come," he said. That simply. She stared at him a moment, deliberately held out her hand toward the cup in his. He looked perplexed for a moment, then surrendered it to her. She drank, subduing a certain shudder, handed it back to him, He drank as well, glanced at her, measuring her reaction by that look, finished the cup. No prejudices. No squeamishness about other species. She nodded approval. "Go with you, captain," Chur offered. "Come on, then," Pyanfar said. "Geran, you stay; can't leave the ship with no one watching things, and the others are off. We're going just to station offices and back, and it shouldn't be trouble. I don't expect it, at least." "Right," Geran said, not without a worried look. Pyanfar put a hand on Tully's shoulder, realized the chill of his skin, the perpetually hunched posture when he was sitting. He stood up, shivered a bit. "Tully. The translator won't work outside the ship, understand. Once out the rampway, we can't understand each other. So I tell you here: you stay with me; you don't leave me; you do all that I say." "Go to the offices." "Offices, right." She laid one sharpclawed fingertip amid his chest. "I'll try to get it through to you, my friend. If we go about with you aboard in secret, if we leave mahendo'sat territory with you and go on to Anuurn, to our own world—that could be trouble. Mahendo'sat might think we kept something they should have known about. So we make you public, let them all have a look at you, mahendo'sat, stsho, yes, even the kif. You wear clothes, you talk some hani words, you get yourself registered, proper papers, all the things a good civilized being needs to be a legal entity in the Compact. I'll get it all arranged for you. There's no way after you have those papers that anyone can claim you're not a sapient. I'll register you as part of my crew. I'll give you a paper and where I tell you, you put your name on it. And you don't give me any trouble. Does enough of that get through? It's the last thing I can tell you." "Don't understand all. You ask. I do it." She wrinkled her nose, threw an impatient wave of her hand at Chur. "Come on." Chur came. Tully did, blindly trusting, at which she scowled and walked along in front of them both to the lock, hands thrust into the back of her waistband, wondering whether station offices had detectors and whether they could get away with a concealed weapon, going where they were going. She decided against it, whatever the other risks. A watcher stood by the rampway outside, a mahe dock-worker who scampered off quickly enough when they showed outside, and who probably made a call to his superiors . . . the mahendo'sat were discreetly perturbed, polite in their surveillance. But they were there. Pyanfar saw it, and Chur did; and Tully turned a frightened look toward the sudden movement. He talked at them, but the translator was helpless now, outside the range of the inship pickup, and Pyanfar laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder and kept him moving. "Just a precaution," she said, a quiet tone, and looked beyond to the rampway access of Moon Rising, where a far more hazardous watcher stood, a hani crewwoman. "Better take care of that business," Pyanfar said to Chur, and diverted heir course diagonally among the canister-carriers toward Moon Rising. Another hani showed up outside, on the run: second crewwoman, doubled reflection of the other, same wide stance and steady stare. At a certain distance Pyanfar stopped, and waited, and made a subtle sign to Chur, who strode forward to meet the others. There was an exchange too quiet for her ears . . . no friendliness in the postures, but no overt unpleasantness. Chur came back, not in haste, not delaying any either, ears flat. "Their captain's asleep," Chur reported. "She proposes to come aboard The Pride when her nap's done. Answer, captain?" "Why should I? I wasn't advised. But I may let her come. It suits me." She turned without a glance at the others, put a hand on Tully's hairless back and steered him away with them. And if the Tahar captain was in fact sleeping, she would not be by the time those two rag-ears got back inside, to report the Chanur captain had a companion of unknown species, headed for station offices. The Tahar had gotten caught in their own arrogance, and Chanur failed to rise to the insult, simply walked off. Pyanfar threw a little swagger into the departure, for the Tahar and for the gaping mahe dockworkers, some of whom fled in haste to report to superiors or to gather comrades, a dark-furred and scantly clad crowd. "They noticed," Chur said. "That they have." Pyanfar locked her hands behind her and they strolled along in company, one tall hani captain in scarlet, one smallish hani crewwoman in roughspun blue, and improbably between them, a towering wide-shouldered Outsider with naked skin and a beautiful golden mane, excruciatingly conspicuous. Pyanfar suffered an irrepressible rush of the blood, a tightening of the lips as a crowd began to gather, far more people than those who worked the docks. Mahendo'sat, dockers and merchanters and miners and gods knew what else; and a scatter of stsho, pale and pastel among the crowd, their whitish eyes round as moons, holding each others' hands and chattering together in shock. Of the kif . . . no sign as yet, but the rumor would draw them, she was well sure of that, and wished in that regard that she had that gun she had thought of taking. They reached the lift, pushed the button, mahe giving way about them and crowding back again at every opportunity, a roar of crowd-noise about them. "Captain," someone asked, one of the mahendo'sat. "What is this being?" She turned about with a grin which lacked all patience, and mahendo'sat who knew hani backed up, but there was humor in it too, satisfaction at the turmoil. The lift arrived, and a half dozen startled mahe decided to vacate it, whether or not they had planned on getting out on this level. They edged out the door in haste and Pyanfar seized Tully by the arm and put him inside. Chur delayed while she stepped in, and came last, lacing the crowd. The door delayed, time enough for anyone else who thought they wanted to ride up with them, but no one entered. The door closed, and the lift shot upward. Pyanfar let go of Tully's arm and put her hand on his back, ready to indicate to him to move out. He was sweating despite the chill in the air. On the other side of him Chur patted his arm. The lift stopped once. Those waiting decided against entering, eyes wide; and the lift went on up. "Friend," Tully said nervously, out of his scant hani repertoire. "Mahendo'sat and stsho," Pyanfar said. "Friend. Yes." The car stopped a second time, a quieter corridor in the office complex. Tully walked with them, out and down the hall, startling other mahe workers. And stopped, abruptly. A kif came from the offices ahead, stopped and stared, anonymous in gray robes and doleful kifish face. Pyanfar seized Tully's arm, pulled the claws in when he winced, but the sting got him moving. They passed the kif and the kif turned; Pyanfar did not react to it, but Chur, crew and unburdened with captaincy, faced about with ears flat and a snarl on her face. Likely the kif kept staring. Pyanfar whisked Tully through the welcome office doors ahead and only then turned to cast a look back; but the kif was on its way, robes aswirl in its haste, and Chur, ears still flat, joined them inside the registry office. Tully smelled of sweat. Veins stood out in his arms. Pyanfar patted his shoulder and looked round the gaudy colored room at a frozen officeful of mahendo'sat, most standing. "I'm Pyanfar Chanur. You requested an interview." There was a general flutter, the foremost of the officials dithering about letting them through the general registry area to the more secluded complex behind the doors, with a dozen looks at Tully in the process. "Come along," Pyanfar urged him softly, keeping a hand on his elbow, and now she sweated, reckoning the shocks Tully had endured thus far, a kif in the hall, close spaces . . . one irrational moment and he could bolt; or strike at someone—"Friend," she said, and he stayed by her. The official let them through into a luxurious waiting area, thick carpet and pillowlike couches in bright colors, hastened about providing them refreshment as they settled on a facing group of couches. "Sit, sit," Pyanfar said, providing Tully the example, legs tucked and ankles crossed, and Chur waited until Tully had settled nervously on the facing couch. Chur sank down in relief. The official set the welcoming tray on a portable table in their midst. His dark mahe eyes were alive with curiosity. "Beg understanding, hani captain . . . this is—passenger?" "Crew," Pyanfar said with a prim pursing of the lips. She accepted the glass the squatting mahe filled, two-handed mahe style in her holding of it; and saw to her satisfaction that the mahe had in fact provided three glasses. He filled the second and gave it to Chur, whose manners were impeccable, and with some diffidence, offered to Tully. Tully took his after the same fashion, keen mimic. Pyanfar smiled to herself and smothered the smile in a sip of mahendo'sat liquor. The official pattered out with effusive and anxious bows, leaving them alone; and whatever Tully thought of the liquor he had the self-possession not to flinch from it. "Friend," Tully said again, looking worried. Chur, beside him, put a hand on his knee and he seemed to take reassurance from that. Panic, not quite, but his skin glistened with sweat, his muscles were taut. Steps sounded just outside the door at the side of the room and he would have looked around, but Chur patted his knee and he refrained. The door opened. A handful of mahendo'sat, important with elaborate bright kilts and collars, came in on them, one of them attended by a small brown and white fluff which scurried about the floor at its feet and bristled at the scent of hani. It hissed and had to be scooped up in the official's arms; and Pyanfar kept a wary eye on it all the same, rising in respect to the visitors. Chur and Tully followed her lead, and she bowed and suffered the mahendo'sat's frankly appraising stare at Tully. They chattered among themselves, no little disturbed, and some of that she caught, exclamations of curiosity: the fluff growled, and its owner—an elderly mahe whose dark fur was graying and whose flat face had all the other attributes of age—looked toward her with a lowering of the ears. "Chanur captain?" "The same. Have I the honor to know you?" "Ahe Stasteburana-to, I." The stationmaster in person. She made another bow, and the stationmaster did the same, keeping the equilibrium of the pampered creature in his arms, soothing its growls unsuccessfully as he straightened again. And with apparent distraction Stasteburana strolled off, while another of the company made a stiffer bow and launched into them. "You pay, Chanur captain, fines for reckless approach. Fines for bring debris boosted through, danger to all innocent. Fines for reckless haste near station. For bring hazardous situation." "I spit at your charges. I dumped the debris at Kita and warned you only in the remote chance there was still some with me, dumped it, I might add, and sustained damage protecting your worthless station from injury. As for fines, you're brigands, bloodsuckers, to prey off a friendly ship with a long-standing account at this station, when for the preservation of our lives and the protection of the Compact we had to come in for shelter against piracy. A hani, a hani, mind, asks shelter, and when have we ever done such a thing? Are you blind and deaf as well as greedy?" "We have outrage. We have knnn act crazy out there. We have report—" The Personage Stasteburana held up his aged and manicured hand. His Voice silenced herself and broke off with a bow, while Stasteburana strolled back, stroking his ball of fluff, which had never ceased to growl. "You make large commotion, honorable Chanur, great hani captain, yes, we know you—long time absent; maybe trade our rival Ajir, but we know you. Good friend, we. Maybe make deal on fines. But serious matter. Where come from?" "Meetpoint and Urtur via Kita, wise mahe." "With this?" An ears-flat look at Tully. "An unfortunate. A being of great sensitivity, wise and gentle mahe. His ship was wrecked, his companions gone . . . he cast himself on my charity and proves of considerable value." "Value, hani, captain?" "He needs papers, wise mahe, and my ship needs repairs." Again Stasteburana walked away, aloof from the Voice. "Your ship got no cargo," the Voice spat. "You come empty hand, make big trouble here. You near ask credit, hani captain; what credit? We make you fines, you send Anuurn get cargo, maybe two, three hani ship pay off damages. You got us knnn. You got us kif. We know this. You go talk hani at next berth, ask she pay your fines." "Trivial. I have cargo, better than Moon Rising. I make you a deal, indeed I shall, in spite of your uncivilized behavior. I make a deal all mahendo'sat will want." The Voice looked at Tully, and the Personage turned about, moved in with a leisurely grace, handed the small noisy animal to the Voice, and frowned. Stasteburana made a further sign to his other three companions, and one of them called to someone in the hall. It was not easy to make distinctions of mahendo'sat of the same age and sex and build; but about the large and relatively plain fellow who answered that summons . . . there was an instant and queasy familiarity—particularly when he flashed a broad gilt-edged smile. Pyanfar sucked in her breath and tucked her hands behind her, pulling the claws back in. "Captain Ana Ismehanan-min of the freighter Mahijiru," Stasteburana said softly. "Acquaintance to you, yes." "Indeed," Pyanfar said, and bowed, which gesture Gold-tooth returned with a flourish. ' "This kif business," said Stasteburana, folding his wrinkled hands at his middle. "Explain, hani Captain." "Who am I to know what a kif thinks? They let this unfortunate being slip their fingers and expected me to sell him back, plainly illegal. Then they attacked a hani ship which was completely ignorant of the matter. A Handur ship was completely destroyed unless the captain of Mahijiru has better news." "No good news," Goldtooth agreed sadly. "All lost, hani captain. All. I get away quick, come here tell story my port." The Personage turned and tapped Goldtooth on the shoulder, spoke to him in one of those obscure mahen languages outside her reckoning. Goldtooth bowed profoundly and backed aside, and Pyanfar looked warily at the Personage. "You know," she said, to recover the initiative, "what the kif wanted; and you know that there's no chance of hiding such a prize, not here, not on Anuurn either. No good hiding it at all." "I make you—" There was a beep from someone's pager. A voice followed, and one of the attendants came forward in consternation, offered the instrument to the hand of the Personage Stasteburana. There was talk of knnn: that much past the local dialect; and the Personage's dark eyes grew wider. "Where is it?" Pyanfar caught that much of the conversation, and saw distress among the others. "You come," said Stasteburana himself, not using his Voice for instruction, and swept a gesture to the doorway from which the mahendo'sat had come into the room. "Come," Pyanfar echoed to Chur and Tully, and walked along amid the mahe, the attendants and the Voice and the captain of Mahijiru, all in the wake of the Personage, who was-hastening with some evident alarm. The corridor debouched on an operations center. Technicians in the aisles melted aside for the Personage and his entourage. The Voice hissed orders, and the fluff hissed too, in general menace. On the air a tc'a spoke, a sound like static bursts and clicking. "Screen," Stasteburana ordered in his own tongue. The main screen livened in front of them, meters wide and showing a dimly lit dockside. Blues and violets, a horrid light, like nightmare, and a scuttling shape like a snarl of hair possessed of an indefinite number of thin black legs. It darted this I way and that, dragging with it, clutched in jaws—appendages under the hair?—something which glittered with metal and had the look of a long-limbed hani body. With a sinking feeling Pyanfar recognized it. It was a good bet that Chur and Tully did, who had conspired in its construction. "That's a knnn," Pyanfar said to Tully. He said something back, short and unhappy. On the screen the creature scurried I this way and that with its burden, eluding the attempts of writhing shapes in the shadows which tried to deal with it: those were tc'a. Something stiltlike joined the commotion, darted at the flitting knnn and tugged at the prize, skittered off again. Chi, by the gods: those manic beggars; the limbs glowed phosphorescent yellow, left confusing trails on the screen in its haste. Of a sudden a pair of tc'a writhed into the knnn's way, physically dispossessed the knnn of its burden; and the knnn darted about the harder, wailing with rage or distress or simply trying to communicate. The scene was complete chaos; and suddenly more knnn poured in. The solitary chi fled, a blur of yellow-glowing sticks; and in the mahendo'sat control center, technicians who had been seated stood up to watch what had become riot. Hisses and clicks and wails came from the audio. The knnn began to give ground, a phalanx of hairy snarled masses. Suddenly one darted forward, seized one of the leathery, serpent-shaped tc'a and dragged it off into their retreating line. There was a frantic hissing and clicking from the mass of tc'a; but apart from a milling about, a writhing and twining of dozens of serpentine bodies like so many fingers lacing and unlacing in distress . . . nothing Not the least attempt at counterattack or rescue. Pyanfar watched the kidnapping with her ears laid back. So the knnn had traded, after its fashion, darted onto station and laid down its offered goods—made off with something it took for fair; and now another species had descended to trading in sapients. "What is it?" a mahe asked distressedly, and fell silent. The main body of the tc'a managed to drag the knnn's trade goods along, a grotesque flailing of suited arms and legs. A communication came through, and a technician approached the Personage Stasteburana. "Hani-make eva-pod," that one said, and Stasteburana turned a disturbed glance on Pyanfar, who lifted her ears and assumed her most careless expression. "I shouldn't want to disturb you," Pyanfar said. "All you'll find in that suit, wise mahe, is a very spoiled lot of meat from our locker; I'd advise you take decontamination precautions before taking that pod helmet off." "What you do?" Stasteburana spoke in anger without his Voice, and waved his Voice off when she attempted to intervene. "What you do, Chanur captain?" "The knnn seems to have intercepted a gift of mine meant for the kif. It's confused, I'm sure. Probably it'll return the tc'a. It was, at the time, a matter of necessity, revered mahe." "Necessity!" "Only spoiled food, I assure you. Nothing more. We were on the point of discussing repairs to my ship . . . which are urgent. You'll not want me sitting at your dock any longer than you have to. Ask the honest captain of Mahijiru." "Outrage!" the Voice proclaimed. "Extortion!" "Shall we discuss the matter?" The fluffball suffered another transfer, to the nearest of the dignitaries, and the Voice looked to be preparing for verbal combat; but the Personage lifted a placid and silencing hand, motioned the group back down the corridor, delaying to give an instruction regarding the tc'a. Then the Personage led the way back into the comfortable room down the corridor. "Profit," Pyanfar said quickly and soothingly when the elder mahe and his entourage turned to face her and hers. "Trouble first with kif and now with knnn and with tc'a. Deceptions and hazards to this station." "A new species, revered mahe. That's the prize that has the kif disturbed. They see the hope of profit the like of which they've not known before; and I have the sole surviving member of his company, a spacefaring people, communicative, civilized, wise mahe, and fit to tilt the balance of the Compact. This was the prize at Meetpoint. This was the reason of the loss of the Handur ship, and this was the part of my cargo I refused to jettison. Surely we agree, revered mahe, what the kif meant to do if they had gotten this information first. Shall I tell you more of my suspicions . . . that the stsho knew something about what was going on? That kif meant to annex a large portion of adjacent space . . . having intimidated the stsho? That having done so, they would then be in a position to expand their operations and rearrange the map of the Compact to suit themselves—an acquisition from which the other members of the Compact would be positionally excluded; only the stsho . . . who would lick the kif's feet. And what future for the Compact then? What of this Compact which holds all of our very profitable trade together? What of the balance of things? But I shall tell you what I have: a tape, a tape, my good, my great and farsighted mahe elder, for a symbol translator . . . . a tape which the kif spent sapient lives to obtain and failed to get. We aren't selfish; I make this tape available to mahendo'sat as freely as hani, in the interests of spreading this knowledge as far as possible among likeminded people. But I want my ship repaired, the fines forgotten, the assurance that Chanur will continue in the friendship of this great and powerful station." The Personage laid his ears back, his eyes dilated. He turned away, leaving his Voice to face the matter. "Where come this creature? How we know sapient? How we know friendly?" "Tully," Pyanfar said, and put a hand on his arm and drew him forward. "Tully, this is the Voice of the stationmaster . . . friend, Tully." For a terrible moment that arm was tense, as if Tully might bolt. "Friend," he said then obediently. The Voice frowned, peered this way and that at Tully's face . . . on a level with the mahe's own. "Speak hani?" the Voice asked. "I go on Pyanfar ship. Friend." Gods. A sentence. Pyanfar squeezed the arm and put him protectively behind her. The Voice frowned; and behind the Voice the Personage had turned back with interest. "You bring this trouble to us," Stasteburana said. "And knnn . . . why knnn?" "A resident of Urtur. I claim no understanding of knnn. It's become disturbed . . . but not of my doing, noble mahe. The safest thing for Kirdu Station in all events is to have me safely on my way . . . and to have that, I fear, there's a matter of certain essential repairs—" The elder flared his nostrils and puffed breaths back and forth. He consulted with his Voice, who spoke to him rapidly involving kif and knnn. The Personage turned back yet again. "This tape deal—" "—key to another species, revered mahe. Mahendo'sat will have access to this development; meet ships of this kind—assured peaceful meeting, full communication. And mind, you deal with no stranger, no one who will cheat you and be gone. Chanur expects to be back at Kirdu in the future, expects—may I speak to you in confidence—to develop this new find." Stasteburana cast a nervous glance at Tully. "And what you find, a? Find trouble. Make trouble." "Are you willing to have the kif do the moving and the growing and the getting? They assuredly will, good mahe, if we don't." The Personage made nervous moves of his hands, walked to the one of his companions who held the angry ball of fluff and took it back, stroking it and talking to it softly. He looked up. "Repairs begin," Stasteburana said, and walked near Tully, who stood his ground despite the growling creature in the mahe's arms. The growling grew louder. The mahe stood and stared a long moment, gave a visible twitch of the skin of his shoulders and lifted a hand from his pet to sign to his Voice. "Make papers this sapient being. Make repairs. All hani go. Go away." He looked suddenly at Pyanfar. "But you give tape. We say nothing to kif." "Wise mahe," Pyanfar said with all her grace, and bowed. The Personage waggled fingers and dismissed them in the company of the Voice, and the fluff growled at their backs. So, Pyanfar thought, as they delayed at the desks outside, as nervous mahendo'sat officials went through the mechanics of identifications with Tully. So they had promises. She kept her ears up, her expression pleasant, and smiled with extraordinary goodwill at the deskdwellers. Chur kept her hand hovering near Tully's arm, at his back, constantly reassuring him at this and that step, answering for him, keeping him calm when they wanted his picture, urging him to sign where appropriate. Pyanfar craned forward, got a glimpse of a signature of intricate regularity which could not be an illiterate's mark in anyone's eyes. "Good," she said, patted Tully on the shoulder as the document went back into the hands of mahendo'sat officials—looked about again, nose wrinkling to a scent of perfume, for two stsho had just come into the offices. They stood there with their jeweled pallor looking out of place in mahendo'sat massive architecture, the huge blocky desks and the garish colors. Moonstone eyes stared unabashedly at Tully and at them. Capacious stsho brains stored up a wealth of detail for gossip, which stsho traded like other commodities. Pyanfar bared her teeth at them and they wisely came no closer. The papers came back, plasticized and permanent, with Tully's face staring back from them, species handwritten, classification general spacer semiskilled, sex male, and most of the other circles unfilled. The official gave the folder to Pyanfar. She gave it to Tully, clapped him on the shoulder, faced him about and headed him for the door, past the gawking stsho. Elsewhere, she trusted, orders were being passed which would get a repair skimmer prioritied for The Pride. The mahendo'sat's prime concern had become getting rid of them at utmost speed: she did not doubt it. There would be a mahe official demanding that tape before all was done: that was beyond doubt too. There would be some little quibble which came first, repairs or tape; repairs, she was determined. The mahe had little choice. They walked the corridor to the right from the office doorway, toward the lift, the three of them, past occasional mahendo'sat office workers and business folk who either found reason to duck back into their doorways or anxiously tried to ignore them. But the three who waited before them at the lift . . . Pyanfar stopped half a step, made it a wider one. "You," she said, striding forward, and the foremost mahe stood out from his two companions, gilt teeth hidden in a black scowl. "Bring trouble, you," said the captain of Mahijiru. "How you live, mahe? A? Sell information every port you touch?" "My port, Kirdu. You make trouble." "Huh. Trouble found me. Got crew shot getting you your rotted welders to keep our deal. Do I say anything about pearls you owe me? No. I give you a gift, brave mahe. I ask no return." Goldtooth frowned the more, looked at Chur and walked closer to Tully, tilted his round chin and looked Tully up and down, but kept his hands off him. Then he threw a glance at Pyanfar. "This you pick up on the dock." "You ask questions for the Personage? Same you gather information at Meetpoint?" For the first time the mahe flashed that sharpedged gold grin. "You clever, hani captain." "You know this Akukkakk." The grin died, leaving deadly seriousness. "Maybe." "You really merchant, mahe captain?" "Long time, honest hani. Mahijiru longtime merchant ship, me, my crew, longtime merchanter, sons and daughters merchanters. But we know this Hinukku, yes. Longtime bad trouble." Pyanfar looked into that broad dark face and wrinkled her nose. "Swear to you, mahe captain—I didn't think to bring trouble down on you. I give you the trade goods, make no claim for return. You saved our hides, put us onto that kif bastard. Owe you plenty for that." The mahe frowned. "Deal, hani. They make you repair, you get quick leave . . . danger. Tell you that free." "Mahijiru took no damage getting out of Meetpoint?" "Small damage. You take advice, hani." "I take it." She pressed the lift button, took a second look, to remember the face of this mahe beyond doubt. "Come," she said as the lift arrived empty. She shepherded Chur and Tully through the door and turned once inside. Goldtooth/Ismehanan and his companions showed no inclination to go with them. The door closed between and the lift started down. She looked back, at Tully and at Chur, and gathered Tully by the elbow as the car, unstopped this time by other passengers, made the whole trip down and let them out on the docks. The crowd had dispersed somewhat, thank the gods; but not enough. It gathered quickly enough as they crossed the dock, and Pyanfar watched on all sides, flicking quick glances this way and that, reckoning that by now, trouble had time to have organized itself. And it was there. Kif—by the gantries, watching. That presence did not at all surprise her. Tully failed to spot them, seeming dazed in the swirl of bodies, none of which pressed too closely on them, but stayed about them. The rampway access gaped ahead. A group of mahendo'sat law enforcement stood there, sticks in hand, and the crowd went no farther. Pyanfar thrust her companions through that line, with her own legs trembling under her—want of sleep, gods, want of rest. Chur was in the same condition, surely, and Tully was hardly steady on his feet, unfit mentally and physically for this kind of turmoil. She sighted on the rampway and went, hard-breathing. But among the gantries beside them . . . hani shadows. Moon Rising's folk, none of her own, had spilled over from the next berth, behind the security line. "Come on," she said to Chur and Tully. "Ignore them." She headed into the rampway's ribbed and lighted gullet, had led the two of them up the curving course almost to the security of their own airlock when she heard someone coming behind. "In," she said to her companions, and turned to bar the intruder who appeared around the curve. Her ears were flat; she reached instinctively for the weapon she had left behind—but the figure was hani, silk-breeched and jeweled, striding boldly right up the rampway. "Tahar," she spat, waved a dismissing hand. "Gods, do we need complications?" "I've done napping." The Tahar captain stopped just short of her, took her stance, hands at her waist, a large figure, with a torn left ear beringed with prosperity. Broadfaced . . . a black scar crossed her mustache, making it scant on the left side, and giving Dur Tahar no pleasant expression. Her beard was crisply rippled and so was her mane, characteristic of the southerners, dark bronze. Two of her crew showed up behind her, like a set of clones. "We've managed," Pyanfar said, "without troubling your rest." Dur Tahar ignored her, looked beyond her shoulder—at what sight, Pyanfar had no trouble guessing. "What's that thing, Chanur? What creature is that?" "That's a problem we've got settled, thank you." "By the gods, settled! We've just been ordered off the station, and it's all over the dock about this passenger of yours. About hani involved with the kif. About a deal you've made—by the gods, I'll reckon you've settled things.—What are you, trading in live bodies now? You've found yourself something special, haven't you? That fracas that sent you kiting in here with your tail singed—involved with that?" "That's enough." Her claws came out. She was tired, gods, shaking on her feet, and she stared at Dur Tahar with a dark tunnel closing about her vision. "If you want to talk about this, you ask me by com. Not now." "Ah. You don't need our help. Are you planning to stay here in dock with your tail hanging . . . or did you and the mahendo'sat come up with a deal? What kind of game are you proposing, Chanur?" "I'll make it clear enough. Later. Get clear of my airlock." "What species is it? Where from? The rumor flying the docks says kif space. Or knnn. Says there's a knnn ship here that dropped a hani body." "I'll tell it to you once, Tahar: we got this item at Meetpoint and the kif took out Handur's Voyager for spite, no survivors. Caught them sitting at dock, and they and we hadn't even been in communication. We dumped cargo and ran for Urtur, and the kif who followed us struck at Faha's Starchaser with no better reason. Whether Starchaser got away or not I don't know, but they At least had a run at it. The kif want this fellow badly. And it's gotten beyond simple profit and loss with them. There's a hakkikt involved, and there's no stopping this thing till we've got him. Maybe we did, at Urtur. He looked bad, and that may settle it. But if you want to make yourself useful, you're welcome to run our course." "Suppose you make yourself generous. Give this thing into my hands. I'll see it gets safe to Anuurn." "No, thanks." "I'll bet not. You can deal with the mahendo'sat, after all, but not with a rival. Well, Chanur's not going to sit on this one, I'll promise you that, Pyanfar Chanur. And if this turns out to be the fiasco it promises to be, I'll be on your heels. That brother of yours is getting soft. Back home, they know it. This should do it, shouldn't it?" "Out!" "Give me the information you traded the mahendo'sat. And we may view things in a better light." "If you were mahe I'd trust you more. Look him over, Dur Tahar. But anything else you want to know . . . I'll decide on when I've got this straightened out. Never fear; you'll get the same data I gave the mahendo'sat. But if you leave this in our laps, then by the gods, we'll settle it our way without your help." Dur Tahar laid her ears back and started to go, lingered for one poisonous look beyond, toward the airlock, and a focus snapped back on center. "I'll ask you at Anuurn, then. And you'll have answers, gods rot you. You'll come up with them." "Nothing personal, Tahar. You always did lack vision." "When you beg my help—I might give it." "Out." Dur Tahar had made her offer. Perhaps she expected a different answer. She flinched, managed a lazy indifference, smoothed her rippled beard, turned and looked back toward the airlock a last time, slowly, before she stalked out, gathering her two crewwomen as she went. "Gods," Pyanfar muttered through her teeth, put a hand wearily to the rampway wall and turned about to the airlock, feeling suddenly older. That was muffed. She should have been quicker on her mental feet, slower of temper. The Tahar might have been talked into it. Maybe wanted to be talked into it. If a Tahar could be trusted at their backs. She hated the whole of it, mahe, Tahar, Outsider, all of it—winced under Chur's stare. Not a word from Chur the whole way back, regarding the business she had conducted, this tape—selling, trust-selling. And Tully's face . . . of a sudden he jerked away from Chur's grip and went into the airlock, Chur hastening to stop him. Pyanfar broke into a run into the hatchway, but Chur had got him. Tully had stopped against the inside wall, his back against it, his eyes full of anger. "Captain," Chur said, "the translator was working." Pyanfar reached into her pocket and thrust her audio plug into her ear, faced Tully, who looked steadily toward her. "Tully. That was not a friend. What did you hear? What?" "You're same like kif. Want the same maybe. What deal with the mahendo'sat?" "I saved your miserable hide. What do you think? That you can travel through Compact territory without everyone who sees you having the same thoughts? You didn't want to deal with the kif—good sense; but by the gods, you haven't got a choice but us or the kif, my friend Tully. All right. I traded them the tape you made—but not that I couldn't have gotten the ship repair without that: they're anxious to get rid of us; they'd have come round tape or no tape, you can bet they would. But now everyone's going to know about your kind; gods, let the mahendo'sat make copies of it; let them sell it in the standard kit. It's the best deal you can get. I'm not selling you, you rag-eared bastard; can I make you understand that? And maybe if your ships meet our ships . . . there'll be a tape in the translators that may keep us from shooting at each other. We meet and trade. Understand? Better deal than the kif give you." A tremor passed over his face, expressions she could not read. The eyes spilled water, and he made a move of his arm, jerked at Chur's grip on it and Chur cautiously let him go. "You understand me?" Pyanfar asked. "Do I make myself understood?" No response. "You're free," Pyanfar said. "Those papers let you go anywhere. You want to walk out the rampway, onto the dock? You want to go back to station offices and stay with the mahe?" He shook his head. "That's no." "No. Pyanfar. I #." "Say again." He reached to his waist and drew out the papers, offered them to her. "Your papers," Pyanfar said. "All in order. Go anywhere you like." He might have understood. He pointed toward the door. "This hani—want me go with him." "Her. Dur Tahar. No friend of mine. Or to this ship. Nothing that concerns you." He stood a moment, seeming to think it over. Finally he pointed back toward the inner hatch. "I go sit down," he said, shoulders slumping. "I go sit. Right?" "Go," she said. "It's all right, Tully. You're all right." "Friend," he said, and touched her arm in leaving, walked out with his head down and exhaustion in his posture. "Follow him?" Chur asked. "Not conspicuously. Docking's got his quarters out of commission. Get a proper cot for the washroom." "We could take him into crew quarters." "No. I don't want that. There's nothing wrong with the washroom, for the gods' sake. Just get him a sedative. I think he's had enough." "He's scared, captain. I don't much blame him." "He's got sense. Go. Tell Geran if she doesn't hear something about that repair crew within half an hour, come get me." "Aye," Chur murmured, and hastened off in Tully's wake. So. Done, for good or ill. Pyanfar leaned against the wall, aching in all her bones, her vision fuzzing. After a moment she walked out, down the vacant corridor toward the lifts, hoping to all the gods Geran could find no incident to put between her and bed. No one stopped her. She rode the lift up, walked a sleep-drunken course down the central corridor to her own door. "Aunt," Hilfy's voice pursued her. She stopped with her hand against the lockplate and looked about with a sour and forbidding stare. "Repair crew's on its way," Hilfy said ever so quietly. "I thought you'd want to know. Message just came." "You've been sitting watch topside?" "Got a little rest. I thought—" "If Geran's on, it's waste to duplicate effort. Get yourself back to quarters and stay there. Sleep, gods rot you; am I supposed to coddle you later? Take something if you can't. Don't come complaining to me later." "Captain," Hilfy murmured, ears back, and bowed. Pyanfar hit the bar and opened the door, walked in and punched it closed before the automatic could function. Belatedly the look on Hilfy's face occurred to her; and the long duty Hilfy had spent at com through transit, and that she had intended to say something approving of that, and had not. Gods rot it. She sat down on the side of the bed and dropped her head into her hands. Gods, that she had staggered through the requisite interview with the mahendo'sat, bargained with them, offended the Tahar—and Tully . . . she had traded off what three of his shipmates had died to keep to themselves. In such a condition she gambled, with Chanur and Tully's whole species on the board. She dropped her hands between her knees, finally reached for the bedside drawer where she kept a boxful of pills. She shook one into her hand and put it into her mouth—spat it out in sudden revulsion and flung the open boxful across the cabin. Pills rattled and circled and lay still. She lay down on the bed as she was, drew the coverlet over herself, tucked her ;arms about her head and shut her eyes, flinging herself into an extended calculation about their routing out of here and refusing to let her mind off that technical problem. She built the numbers in front of her eyes and fended off the recollection of Tully's face or Hilfy's, or the scuttling figure of the knnn with its prize, or the kif which skulked and whispered together out on the docks. Chapter 8 "Aunt." It was not com; it was Hilfy in person, leaning over her bed, shaking at her. "Aunt." Pyanfar came out of sleep with a wild reach to get her elbow under her, shook herself, stared into Hilfy's dilated eyes. "It's Starchaser," Hilfy said. "They've come through. They're in trouble. They can't get dumped. The word just came in—" "O gods." Pyanfar kicked the coverlet off, scrambled out dressed as she was and seized Hilfy by the arm on her way out of the room. "Talk, imp: has anyone scrambled?" "Station's called miners in the path . . . some mention of an outbound freighter being able to change course . . . ." Hilfy let herself be pulled through the doorway into the corridor and loped along keeping up with her on the way to the bridge. "They're twenty minutes lag out, crossing Lijahan track zenith." "Twenty now?" "About." Haral was on the bridge, standing by scan, with the area-light on her face, and her expression was grim when she looked around at their arrival. "They've got to get to the pod," Haral said. "No way anyone can get to her in time. No way any rescue can haul that mass down, even if she's stripped." "What's our status?" "We can't get there," Hilfy objected, plain logic. "Not for rescue," Pyanfar said quietly. "Repairs underway," Haral said. "Vane's unsecured. If they're running ahead of company—we're in trouble." Tirun came limping in, loping haste, and there was a query from lowerdeck. "You're getting all we've got," Haral relayed to Geran and Chur below. "Can't tell anything yet." "Come on," Pyanfar muttered to the blip on systemic image. "Do it, Faha. Get out of there." She sank down into the com cushion, an eye still toward the screen, and punched through the station op code. "This is The Pride of Chanur. Urgent relay the stationmaster, Pyanfar Chanur speaking: warn you of possible hostile pursuit on tail of incoming emergency. Repeat: warn you of possible hostile pursuit of incoming emergency." "This message receive clear, Pride of Chanur. Mahen ships answer emergency. Please stand by." She watched scan, rested a knuckle against her teeth and hissed a breath. Ships showed in the schematic, traffic at dead standstill compared to the incoming streak that was Starchaser, motion slowed enough to see only because of systemwide scale. Everything was history, the images on the scope, the voices from the zone of emergency. Unable to dump velocity, Starchaser would streak helplessly across the system and lose herself on an unaimed voyage to infinity. It was a long way to die. "Lost the transmission," Haral said. Hilfy edged in, looking desperate, tried the switches herself past Haral's side. Pyanfar gnawed the underside of a claw and shook her head. The business of getting a jump-mazed crew on their feet and headed to the escape pod—in Starchaser's type, high up on the frame—and get it away, all this within the minutes they had left . . . Then they could only hope, if they could make it that far, that the pod's engines could hammer down the velocity, give some jumpship the chance to match velocities and lock onto the pod's small, manageable mass, so that they could be dumped down. That freighter out there was the best chance the crew had, if only they could get loose. "Pod's away!" Haral exclaimed, and Tirun and Hilfy were pounding each other on the back. Pyanfar clenched her two hands together in front of her mouth and stared flateared at the scan, where a new schematic indicated the probable course of the pod which had now parted company with doomed Starchaser. Both dots advanced along the track, but a gap developed, the pod's deceleration far from sufficient to rid itself of a jumpship's velocity before it gave out, but doing what it could. The crew would likely black out in the stress: that was a mercy. Now it was a race to see if the freighter could overhaul the pod or whether the pod would leave the system. "Mahe freighter?" Pyanfar asked. Haral nodded. The Pride was on station-fed transmission; and station had to be using the feed from ships farther out, the Lijahan mines, whatever was in a position to have data, and relative time was hard to calculate now. The freighter came up by major increments while the minutes passed, boosting itself on its jump field. The gap still narrowed with agonizing sluggishness, as scan shifted, keeping up with events which were now long decided. Com sputtered, a wailing transmission. Knnn. "Gods," Tirun said. "A knnn's out there in it." Station command responded, a tc'a voice. There were other transmissions, knnn voices, more than one, a dissonance of wails. "Chanur," said a hani voice, clear and close at hand. "Is this also your doing?" Pyanfar reached for it, punched in the contact, retracted the claw with a moral effort. "Tahar, is that a question or a complaint?" "This is Dur Tahar. It's a question, Chanur. What do you know about this?" "I told you. Let's keep it off com, Tahar." Silence. The Tahar were no allies of the Faha crew. It was a Chanur partisan in trouble, but if any ship at station could have moved in time, Moon Rising would have tried: she did not doubt it. It was a painful thing to watch, what was happening on scan. Close to her, Tirun had settled, and Hilfy, simply watching the screen while her Faha kinswomen and the wreckage that had been a Faha ship hurtled closer and closer to the boundaries of the pickup. After such a point insystem scan could not follow them. Station was getting transmission now from a different source, from the merchanter Hasatso, the freighter tracking Starchaser, the only ship in range. The blip that was Starchaser itself finally went off the screen. "Chanur ship," station sent. "Tahar ship. Advise you merchanter Hasatso have make cargo dump; do all possible." "Chanur and Faha will compensate," Pyanfar replied, and hard upon that Moon Rising sent thanks to Hasatso via station. "Gods look on them," Haral muttered—a cargo dumped, to close the gap, to close on an emergency not of their species. Knnn wailed. Elsewhere there was silence. For a long while there seemed only one rhythm of breaths on The Pride, above and below. "They're nearly on it," Hilfy breathed. "They've got them," said Tirun. "No way they can miss now." It went slowly. The transmissions from Hasatso became more and more encouraging; and at long last they reported capture. "Hani signal," Hasatso told Kirdu Station, "in pod. Live." Pyanfar breathed out the breath she had been holding. Grinned, reached and squeezed Hilfy's arm. Hilfy looked drained. "Tahar," Pyanfar sent then, "did you receive that report?" "Received," Tahar said curtly. Pyanfar broke it off, sat a moment with hands clasped on the board in front of her. A ship lost; a tradition; that deserved its own mourning. Home and life to the Faha crew, and that was gone. "Station," she sent after a moment, "advise the Faha crew that Chanur sends its profound sorrow, and that ker Hilfy Chanur par Faha will offer the resources of The Pride of Chanur, such as they are." "Advise them," another voice sent directly, "that Dur Tahar of Tahar's Moon Rising also offers her assistance." That was courtesy. Pyanfar leaned back in the cushion, finally turned and rose with a stretch of her shoulders. "What can be done's done. Go fetch something to drink, Hilfy; if I'm roused out, someone owes me that. Drink for all that want it. Breakfast. I'll hear reports less urgent during. Haral, who's supposed to be on duty?" "I am." "So. Then close down lowerdeck. Tirun, back you go." "Aye" Tirun muttered, and levered herself up stiffly and limped off in Hilfy's wake. Pyanfar settled against the com post counter and looked at Haral, seated at the number two spot. "That knnn's fallen into pattern about Lijahan," Haral said, paying attention to the screens. "Still making commotion. A wonder they don't try for the cargo salvage out there." "Huh. Only grant they all stay put." "Skimmer's still working out there at our tail. They've got a crew outside working the connectors. The cable's ready to secure. But fourteen panels were missing and six loose, and they estimate another twenty hours working shift on shift to get the new ones hooked up." "Gods." Pyanfar ran a hand over her brow and into her mane, thinking of kif—of attack which had chewed Starchaser to scrap. There were others besides the knnn who might be expected to rush to that salvage out there; there were the onstation kif . . . who showed no sign of moving. That was unnatural. No one was moving, except maybe a few miners out there with ambition. No one from station. Word was out; rumor . . . had a wind up everyone's back. "The Tahar," Haral said further, after a moment, "appealed that order to put out with an appeal to finish cargo operations. It was allowed." "Helpful. At least they're here." "Helpful as the Tahar in general. Begging your pardon." "I'll talk to them." "You think Tahar'd move to guard our tail?" "No," she said. "I don't. Not unless they see profit in it. What are they doing? Not taking cargo." "Offloading. Stripping to run. Canisters pouring out like maggots." Pyanfar nodded. "Station wants that cargo safe then; and Tahar's going to dump that out fast down to the bit she uses to stall with. The Personage has backed down, that's what; got a few of his onstation companies wailing about losses, and Tahar'll stay here as long as she likes. That'll give me time." "Gods, the bill on this." "Expensive, our Outsider. In all senses." She looked about as Hilfy came through the archway with a large tray, two cups and two breakfasts. "Thanks," Pyanfar said, taking plate and cup . . . paused to look at Hilfy, who had stopped to look at the situation on the screen. They were still getting transmission relayed from Hasatso, with occasional breakup which indicated velocity dump. "Going to be a while," Pyanfar said. "Unless they've got a medical emergency I doubt they'll boost up again after turnover, just ride it slow in. Hours from now. Go on back to quarters. I mean it." A few ports ago Hilfy might have argued, might have laid her ears back and sulked. She nodded now and went. Pyanfar slid a glance at Haral, who stared after the retreating youngster and then nodded once, thoughtfully. "Huh," Pyanfar said, digging into the breakfast, and for some little time she and Haral sat and watched the scan and ate. "Tell you, cousin," Pyanfar said finally, "you go off-watch and I'll take it." "Not needful, captain." "Don't be noble. I've got some things to do. One thing you can do for me. When you go down, look in on Tully. Make sure he's all right." "Right," Haral said. She stood up and gathered the dishes onto the tray. "But he's all right, captain. Chur's bedded down to keep an eye on him." Pyanfar had been finishing her last sip of gfi, to surrender the cup. She banged it down on the tray. "Gods blast—Did I or did I not order him separate?" Haral's ears dropped in dismay. "Chur said he was upset, captain; made herself a pallet in the washroom so's he wouldn't wake up by himself. She said—your pardon, captain—sedated, he looked so bad—You were in bed, captain. It was my discretion." Pyanfar exhaled shortly. "So. Well. Depressed, Chur Says." Haral nodded. "We'd take him," Haral said. "Chur said." "Um." Haral figured that train of things of a sudden and her mustache-hairs drew down. "Sorry, captain." "Him, for the gods' sake." "Not as if he was hani, captain." "Not as if," Pyanfar said after a moment. "All right. Put him where you want; that's crew business, none of mine. Work him. He claims to be a scan tech. Let him sit watch. Who's on next?" "Ker Hilfy." "With someone of the experienced crew. Someone who's made their mistakes." Haral grinned and rubbed the black scar which crossed her nose. "Aye. One of us will sort him out." "Off with you." Haral went. Pyanfar slid down off the counter and transferred the activity to her own board, sat down in her own deeply padded cushion and ran the incoming messages of hours past. There was nothing there but what Haral had said, Tahar's argument about staying and the beginnings of Starchaser's crisis. Sporadic information still came in: Hasatso sent word of four survivors . . . . Four. A cold depression settled over her. Four out of seven crew on that ship. It was more than the physical body of Starchaser lost out there, more even than a life or two in a crew kin-close. Four out of seven was too heavy casualties for a group to recover itself—not the way it had once been. Gods, to start over, having lost that heavily— "Station," she sent, "this is Pyanfar Chanur: confirm that transmission from Hasatso. Names of survivors." "Pride of Chanur," station sent back to her, "Hasatso transmit four survivors good condition. No more information. We relay query." She thanked station absently, sat staring at the screen a moment. There was lagtime to contend with on that request, nothing to do but wait. She bestirred herself to run checks with the ships at repair on their own damages, to contact station market and to arrange a few purchases and deliveries via dockside courier services. There was delay on the communications: everyone at station seemed muddle-witted in the confusion, down to the jobbers in commodities. "Station, what's keeping that answer?" she sent main op. "Crew refuse reply," the answer came back. Communication failure there too. Nerves. Possibly shaken-up hani and mahe rescuers were at odds. Ship lost, cargoes lost, lives lost. An ugly business. And one of the knnn had put out from station, putting out wailing transmission and wallowing uncertainly about station's peripheries like a globe of marshfire, touching off ticking objections/accusations/ pleas? from the tc'a control. Gods. The oxygen-breather command went silent for the moment. Tc'a chattered and hissed. Pyanfar reached for translation output, but it failed: tc'a translated best when it was simple docking instruction or operations which were common to all ships. This was something else, gods rot them. There was silence finally, even from the tc'a. The knnn moved out farther and stayed there. Hasatso continued its slow inward progress. At last the mahendo'sat side of station came on again, quiet operational directions for the incoming freighter, nothing informational. Pyanfar sent them no questions. No one did. The news came when Hasatso entered final approach: four survivors, a fifth dead in the stress of the pod eject, of wounds, and allowed to go with the pod when Hasatso released it, not a hani choice, but mahe honor. Two went with Starchaser, dead in the attack or unable to get to the pod—the information was not clear. There was a name: first officer Hilan Faha, survivor; and another: Lihan Faha—the captain, the third casualty. "Aunt," Hilfy said, when Pyanfar called her to the bridge and told her, "I'd like to go down to the dock where they are. I know it's dangerous. But I'd like to go. By your leave." Pyanfar set her hand on Hilfy's shoulder. Nodded. "I'll go with you," she said, at which Hilfy looked both relieved and pleased. "Geran," she said, turning to lean over the com board, putting it through on allship. "Geran." The acknowledgment came back. "Geran, take watch again, lowerdeck op. New word's come in. Starchaser captain is lost, and two of the crew. Hilfy and I are going to meet the rescue ship; we'll bring the Faha back aboard if they're so inclined. No sense them having to put up with mahe questions and forms." There was a moment's delay, a sorrowful acknowledgment. "Come," Pyanfar said to Hilfy then, and they walked out toward the lift. Hilfy's bearing was straight enough, her face composed . . . not good news, when she had gone to sleep thinking that things were better than they were; but they had something, at least, of the Faha crew, something saved; and that was still more than they had once hoped. Another matter to the kif account, when it came to reckonings. But if there were kif out there now—and there might be, hovering at the system's edges, the same game that they themselves had played at Urtur—then they were waiting some moment of advantage, some moment when there were not five armed mahendo'sat patrol ships cruising a pattern out there. Allship had waked more than Geran. Tirun was up, sitting in op when they came down toward the lock; and Geran, who had been assigned the duty; and Chur was standing about with Tully, who looked vaguely distressed in this disturbance he likely failed to comprehend. Haral showed up in haste from farther down the corridor. "Going with you, by your leave," Haral said, and Pyanfar nodded, not sorry of it. "Kif out there," Pyanfar said. "I'm not getting caught twice the same way." "Take care," Tirun wished them as they went, and in the airlock, while Haral opened the outer hatch, Pyanfar delayed to take the pistol from its secure place in the locker by com and to slip it into her pocket. "No detectors to pass," Pyanfar said. "Come on." The hatchway stayed open behind them; they walked out the ribbed rampway and down onto the dockside. Engines whined on their left: Moon Rising was still about her offloading, and canisters were coming off into the hands of mahendo'sat dockworkers, not hani crew. "They may have gone to meet the Faha too," Pyanfar judged, marking the total absence of a hani supervisor outside. It was a courtesy to be expected, politics aside in a hani-ship's misfortune. "Not much stirring," Haral said. That was so. Where normally the vast docks would have had a busy pedestrian traffic up and down the vast curve, there was a dearth of casual strollers, and the activity about Moon Rising was the only activity of any measure in sight. Dockworkers, service workers, mahe with specific business underway paused to stare at them and after them as they walked. Stsho huddled near their accesses and whispered together. The kif were out about, predictably, clustered together near the accessway of one of the ships, a mass of black robes, seven, eight of them, who lounged near their canisters and clicked insults after them. And at one of those insults Pyanfar's ears flicked, and she stopped the impulse in mid-twitch, trying to make believe she had not heard or understood. He knows, hani thief. How many more hani ships will you kill? "Captain—" Haral murmured, and Hilfy started to turn around. "Front, gods—" Pyanfar hissed and seized Hilfy by the arm. "What do you want to start, at what odds?" "What do we do?" Hilfy asked, walking obediently between them. "How can he know?" "Because one of those kif ships is his, imp; came in here from Kita; and now Akukkakk's enlisted other ships to help him. They'll scatter out of here like spores when we go, and gods help us, we're stuck till we get that repair done." "They as good as hit Starchaser themselves. I'd like to—" "We'd all like to, but we have better sense, Come on." "If they catch us on the dock—" "All the more reason we get the survivors aboard and get off the docks. Afraid you're not going to get that station liberty here either, imp." "Think I can do without," Hilfy muttered. They kept walking, down among the gantries, past idle crews, as far as number fifty-two berth, where a surplus of bystanders gathered, a dark crowd of mahendo'sat, sleek-furred, tall bodies which made it difficult to see anything. Medical personnel were among them; and station officials, conspicuous by their collars and kilts. And hani, to be sure. Elbowing through the gathering, Pyanfar caught sight of bronze manes and a glitter of jewels on a hani ear, and she made for that group with Haral and Hilfy behind her. . "It's high time you showed up," Dur Tahar said when she arrived. "Mind yourself," Pyanfar said. "My niece behind me is Faha." Dur Tahar slid a glance in that direction without comment. "Hasatso's due to touch any moment," she said. "We've got some kif getting together down the dock. I'd watch that if I were you." "Your problem." "A warning, that's all." "If you start something, Chanur, don't look for our help." "Gods rot you, you give me no encouragement to be civil." "I don't need your civility." "A mutual hazard, Tahar." "What, are you asking favors?" The claws twitched. "Asking sense, rot you." "I'll think on it." Hasatso touched, a crashing of locks and grapples. Gantries slid up and crews opened station ports one after another in response to the ship, connected lines, started the rampway out to meet the lock. It was an agonizingly slow process from the spectator ranks, and only the mahendo'sat found occasion to chatter. And finally a distant whine and thump announced the breaching of the freighter's hatch, first in procedure: station reciprocated, and the mahe crew escorted off four hani, exhausted hani, one with an arm bandaged and bound to her chest, all of them looking as if they were doing well to be walking at all. Necessarily the mahendo'sat officials moved in: there was signing of papers, mahe and hani; and Pyanfar took Hilfy by the shoulder, worked forward with her. Hilfy went the last on her own and offered an embrace to the refugees, an embrace wearily returned by the Faha, one after the other. "My captain," Hilfy said then, "my aunt Pyanfar Chanur; my crewmate Haral Araun par Chanur." There were embraces down the line. "Our ship is open to you," Pyanfar told the first officer, whose haggard face and dazed eyes took her in and seemed at the moment to have too much to take in, with the mahe offering medical assistance, station wanting immediate statements. Pyanfar left the Faha momentarily to Hilfy and to the Tahar who had moved up to offer their own condolences, and herself took the hands of the mahe rescue crew one after the other, and those of the apparent captain, a tall hulking fellow who looked as bruised and bewildered as the Faha, who was probably at the moment reckoning his lost cargo and the wrath of companies and what comfort all this gratitude was going to win him when the shouting died down and the bills came in. "You're captain, mahe ?" Pyanfar asked. A sign of the head. "I'm Pyanfar Chanur; Chanur has filed a report in your behalf at Kirdu; Chanur company will give you hani status at Anuurn: you come there, understand? Make runs to Anuurn. No tax." Dark mahe eyes brightened somewhat. "Good," he said, "good," and squeezed both her hands in a crushing grip, turned and chattered at his own folk—likely one of those mahe who could scarcely understand the pidgin, and good might be about half his speaking vocabulary. He seemed to make it clear to the others, who broke out in grins, and Pyanfar escaped through the crush toward Hilfy and the others, got her arm about Hilfy and got the whole hani group moving through the pressure of tall mahendo'sat bodies. The Tahar made a wedge with them, and they broke into the clear. "This way," Pyanfar said, and first officer Hilan Faha took the other elbow of her injured companion and made sure of the other two, and they started walking, escaping the officials who called after them about forms—Chanur, Faha, and Tahar in one group up the dock, toward the upcurved horizon where The Pride and Moon Rising were docked. "How far?" the Faha officer asked in a shaking voice. "Close enough," Hilfy assured her. "Take your time." The way back seemed far longer, slower with the Faha's pace; Pyanfar scanned the dark places along their route, not the only one watching, she was sure. Inevitably there were the kif ships; and the kif were there, ten of them now . . . calling out in mocking clicks their insults and their invitation to come and ship with them. "We take you to your port," they howled. "We see you get your reward, hani thieves." A wild look came into Hilan Faha's eyes. She stopped dead and turned that stare on them. "No," Pyanfar said at once. "We're here on station's tolerance. This isn't our territory. Not on the docks." The kif howled and chirred their abuse. But the Faha moved, and they made their way farther with the kif voices fading in the distance, past the stsho, who stared with large, pale eyes, up past a comforting number of mahendo'sat vessels, and virtual silence, dock crews and passers-by standing quietly and watching and respectful sympathy. "Not so much farther," Pyanfar said. The Faha had not the breath to answer, only kept walking beside them, and finally, at long last, they had reached the area of The Pride's berth. "Faha," Dur Tahar said then, "Moon Rising has no damage, and The Pride does. We offer you passage that's assuredly more direct and quicker home." "We'll accept," Hilan Faha said, to Pyanfar's consternation. "Cousin," Hilfy said in a voice carefully modulated. "Cousin, The Pride will put out quickly enough; and we need the help. We need you, cousins. You might find common cause in the company." "Tamun's had all she can stand," Hilan Faha said, with a protective move of her hand on her injured comrade's shoulder. She looked toward the Tahar. "We'll board, by your leave." "Come," Dur Tahar said, and the Tahar fell about the four and escorted them across to their own access. Hilfy took a couple of steps forward, ears flat, stood there, hands fallen to her sides, and took a good long moment before she turned about again, with her kinswomen disappearing upward into the rampway of Moon Rising. Mortification was in every line of her stance, a youngster's humiliation, that set her down as well as set her aside, and Pyanfar thrust hands into her waistband to keep them from awkwardness—no reaching out to the imp as if she were a child, no comfort to be offered. It was Hilfy's affair, to take it how she would. "They've had a shock," Hilfy said after a moment. "I'm sorry, aunt." "Come on," Pyanfar said, nodding toward their rampway. There was a red wash about her own vision, a slow seething. She was bound to take the matter as it fell for Hilfy's sake, but it rankled, all the same. She walked up first and Haral last, leaving Hilfy her silence and her dignity. Cowards, Pyanfar thought, and swallowed that thought too for Hilfy's sake. They desperately needed the added hands: that thought also gnawed at her, less worthy. They needed the Faha. But the Faha had had enough of kif. And there were kif ships out there, waiting. She was increasingly certain of it—if not actually on the fringes of Kirdu System, which they might be, at least scattered all about, waiting the moment. More and more kif ships, a gathering swarm of them, unprecedented in their cooperation with each other. She passed the airlock into the corridor, and Chur and Tirun who had turned out with the evident intention of welcoming their Faha guests—stopped in their exit from the op room, simply stopped. "Our friends changed their minds," Pyanfar said curtly. "They decided to take passage with Tahar. Something about an injury a one of them suffered, and the Tahar promised them a more direct route home." That put at least an acceptable face on matters for Hilfy's sake. They retreated as Pyanfar walked into the op room, looked at Geran and Tully who sat there, Geran having well understood and Tully looking disturbed, catching the temper in the air, no doubt, but not understanding it. "Nothing to do with you." Pyanfar said absently, settling into a chair at the far counter, looking at the system-image which Geran had been monitoring. Hilfy and Haral came in together, and there was a strained silence in the op room, all of them gathered there and Hilfy trying to keep a good face on. "Well, good luck to them," Tirun muttered. "Gods know they've seen enough." "There are kif out there on the dock," Pyanfar said, "who know too much. Getting cheeky about it. They've come in from Kita ahead of us, part of the bunch from Meetpoint or Urtur—Urtur, I'll reckon, since I checked names and they weren't the same as there. Just passing the message from one kif to the next. It's getting tight here." "There'll be more soon," Haral said. "I'll bet there's some outsystem. Captain, think we can talk the mahe to run us escort to our jumppoint? Surely we've got leverage enough for that." "That story will go from station to station," Pyanfar said bitterly. "Gods, but I don't think we've got much choice. Get them to shepherd us out of here." "When we can get our tail put together again," Tirun said glumly. There was a noise from down the hall, a footstep in the airlock. Every head turned for the doorway and Pyanfar reached for the gun in her pocket and thrust her way past Tirun getting to the op room door and the corridor, clicking the safety off the gun. It was hani—Hilan Faha, who flung up a startled hand and stopped at the sight of her. Pyanfar punched the safety back on with a clawtip and thrust the weapon back into her pocket, aware of others of her crew now behind her. "Changed your mind of a sudden?" she asked the Faha. "Need to talk to you. To my young cousin." "To your cousin, rot you; and to me. Come on inside. Neither she nor I'll talk out here like dockside peddlers." "Ker Pyanfar," the Faha murmured, manners which in no wise mollified her temper. Pyanfar waved the lot of them back into the op room—only then recalled Tully, who was trapped there in the corner, but there was nothing of secret in his presence on the ship, and no cause to send him slinking out past them all. Let the Faha talk in front of him; let her deliver her excuses under an Outsider's stare—served her right. And Hilan Faha stopped in the doorway at the sight of Tully, this naked-skinned creature hani-styled and hani-dressed sitting at the counter among the crew; and Hilan's ears went flat. "This," she said, rounding on Pyanfar, "this is that item the kif wanted—isn't it?" "His name is Tully." Hilan's mouth tightened, am ominous furrowing of the nose. "A live item. By the greater gods, where have you been, Chanur, and what's going on with this business?" "If you were traveling on this ship you might ask and I might answer. As things are, you can learn when the Tahar do." "Rot you, Starchaser died in your cause, for this—" She spat, swallowed down a surplus of words when Pyanfar stared at her sullenly. "It was the captain's decision; we off-loaded everything at Urtur and tried to run to give you a break for it. But where were you then? Where was our help?" "Blind, Hilan Faha—off in the dust and stark blind. We tried, believe that; but at the last we had to jump for it or risk collision; we hoped you could get off in what confusion we created." Hilan drew a quieter breath. "The captain's decision, not mine. I'd not have budged out of dock: know that. I'd have sat there and let you sort it out with the kif, this so-named theft of yours . . . ." "You take kif word above mine?" "If you have an explanation I'll be glad to hear it. My cousins are dead. We're broken. We'll not get another ship, not so likely. Great Chanur makes plans, but the likes of us—we'll go on other Faha ships, wherever we can get a berth. I'll reckon you know where the profit's to be found, and, gods rot your conniving hide, you've stirred up what a lot of ships are going to bleed for. What a lot of small companies are going to go under for. They gave me a message to give you, Pyanfar Chanur—the kif gave me this to tell you: that what you've done is too much to ignore and too great to let pass. That they'll come after you wherever you are in whatever numbers it takes—even to Anuurn. That they'll make it clear to all hani that this prize of yours is no profit to you. This from their hakkikt. Akukkakk. Him from Urtur. His words." "Kif threats. I'd thought you had more nerve." "No empty threats," Hilan said, eyes dilated, her nostrils flared and sweat-glistening. "Tell all hani, this Akukkakk says—desert this Pyanfar Chanur or see desolation . . . even to Anuurn space." "And where did you hear all this? From a scattering of ships and a kif who never caught us—who failed to catch you. Hilan Faha; and if we'd gotten together at Urtur—" "No. No. You don't understand. They did catch us, Chanur. Did overhaul us. Killed two of my cousins doing it. At Kita. And they let us go . . . but we broke down in the jump. They let us go to deliver that message." The Faha's shame was intense. There was a silence in the room, no one seeming to breathe. "So," said Pyanfar, "do you believe all your enemies say?" "I see this," Hilan said, gesturing at Tully. "And all of a sudden the game looks a lot larger than before. All of a sudden I see reason that the kif might gather, and why they might not stop. Chanur's ambition—has gone too far this time. Whatever you're into, I don't want part of it. My sister's alive; and two of my cousins; and we're going home. Cousin," she said, looking at Hilfy, "to you—I apologize." Hilfy said nothing, only stared with hurt in her eyes. "Hilfy can leave with you if she likes," Pyanfar said. "Without my blame. It might be a prudent thing to do . . . as you point out." "I'd be pleased to take her," Hilan said. "I stay with my ship," Hilfy said, and Pyanfar folded her arms over a stomach moiling with wishes one way and the other at once. And pride—that too. "So," Pyanfar said, "I wish you safe journey. Best we should travel together, but I'm sure that's not in the Tahar's mind now." "No. It's not." The Faha looked down, and up again, in Tully's direction, a darkening of the eyes. "If you considered your relations to others, you wouldn't have done this thing. You've taken on too much this time. And others will think so." "What I took on myself, arrived on our ship without a by your leave or my knowledge it existed. What would you do with a refugee who ran onto your ship? Hand him over to the kif at their asking? I don't sell lives." "But you don't mind losing them." "You throw away what they did," Hilfy said suddenly, "with your smallness." The Faha's ears flattened. "What are you to judge? Talk to me when you've got some years on you, cousin. This—" She came dangerously near Tully, and Chur who had been sitting on a counter slid down to plant both feet, barring the way. Tully got out of his chair and stood as far back in the bend of the counter as he could get. The Faha shrugged, a careless gesture throwing away her intent. "I've another word," the Faha said, looking straight at Pyanfar. "Whether or not you intended what you've involved yourself in—it just may be the finish. Your allies might have stood by you, but it's all gotten too tangled. It's gotten too risky. How long since you've been home?" "Some few months." Pyanfar drew in a breath and thrust her hands into her belt, with the taste of something bad coming—that ill feeling of a house at its height, in which any breath of change was trouble; and of a sudden she misliked that look on the Faha's face, that truculence which melted into something of discomfort, a decent shame. "Maybe more than that," Pyanfar said, "if you count that I didn't go downworld last call. What is it, Faha? What is it you're bursting to tell me?" "A son of yours—has taken Mahn from Khym Mann. He's neighbor to Chanur now. He has ambitions. The old Mahn is in exile, and Kohan Chanur is finding sudden need of all his allies." Hilan Faha shrugged, down-eared and white about the nose and looking altogether as if she would wish to be elsewhere at the moment, instead of bringing such news to a Chanur ship. "My captain would have backed you; but what are we now, with one of our ships gone, one out of the three Faha owns; and what do we think when you take on something like this when you already have as much as Chanur can handle? You've lost your cargo; you've gotten yourself a feud with the kif, and kif threatening to go into Anuurn zones, for the gods' sake—how can Chanur hold onto its other allies when that starts? I've lost my ship, my captain, some of my cousins—and I have to think of my family. I can't involve myself with you, not now: I can't make Faha part of this and get our ships a feud with the kif. You're about to lose everything. Others will decide the same, and Chanur won't be there even if you get back. I'm going home, Ker Pyanfar, on the Tahar ship because I have to, because I'm not tangling what's left of us in Chanur fortunes." "You're young," Pyanfar said, looking down her nose. "The young always worry. You're right, your captain would have backed me. She had the nerve for it. But go your way, Hilan Faha. I'll pay your debts because I promised; Chanur will reward the mahe who pulled you out. And when I've settled with that whelp Kara I'll be in better humor, so I may even forget this. So you won't worry how to meet me in future—don't fear too much. I'll not regard you too badly . . . the young do grow; but by the gods I'll never regard you the way I did your captain. You're not Lihan, Hilan Faha, and maybe you never will be." The Faha fairly shook with anger. "To be paid the way you paid her—" "She'd curse me to a mahe hell if she were here, but she'd not do what you've done. She'd not run out on a friend. Go on, Hilan Faha, leave my deck. A safe voyage to you and a quick one." For a moment the Faha might have struck out; but she was worn thin and hopeless and the moment and the courage went. "Her curse on you then," she said, and turned and stalked out, not so straight in the shoulders, not so high of head as she had come in. Pyanfar scowled and looked at Hilfy, and Hilfy herself was virtually shaking. "Kohan never said anything about this Mahn business in his letter," Pyanfar said. "What do you know, niece?" "I don't," Hilfy said. "I won't believe it. I think the Faha's been listening to rumors." "How much did you know about the estates when you were at home? Where was your head then, but on The Pride? Is it possible something was brewing and you didn't hear?" "There was always talk; Kara Mahn was always hanging about the district. He and Tahy. There—was some calling back and forth; I think na Khym talked to father direct." "Rot his hide, Kohan could have said something in that letter." "He sent me," Hilfy said in a small, stricken voice. "When The Pride turned up in system I asked to go, and he said he'd never permit it; and then—the next night he gave me the letter and put me in the plane and gods, I was off to the port like that. Hardly a chance to pack. Said I had to hurry or The Pride would leave port and I'd miss my chance. Like that, at night; but I thought—I thought it was because ships don't calculate day and night, and that shuttle was going up anyway." "O gods," Pyanfar groaned, and sat down against the counter, looked up at all the ring of anxious faces. "Not yet that son of mine doesn't. Gods blight the kif; we'll settle them, but we're going to take care of that small business at home; that's first." Ears pricked. "We're with you," Haral said. "Gods, yes, home. Going to shake me some scruffs when I get there." "Hai!" Geran agreed, and Tirun; and Tully visibly flinched, calmed again as Chur patted his shoulder. He settled and Hilfy sat down beside him, put her hand on his other shoulder, two disconsolate souls who shared not much at all but their misery. "We'll straighten it out," Pyanfar said to Hilfy. "We'll do it on our terms. Agreed, niece?" "He got me out of there," Hilfy said. "I could have helped and he saw it coming and he moved me out." "Huh. You're not old enough to know your father from my view, with all respect for your own. He thinks, some time before a problem comes on him—not much meditation during, gods know, but he sets things up like pieces on a board. Too rotted proud to call me downworld, ah, yes; too rotted smart to have young Hilfy Chanur at hand to get herself in a tangle with her Mahn cousins and to pitchfork that temper of Kohan's into it . . . don't get your ears down at me, imp; we're family here. The sun rises and sets on your shoulder so far as your father's concerned, and that blasted son of mine would go right for the greatest irritance he could give your father if he wanted to take on Chanur—your precious inexperienced self. No, Kohan just cleared the deck, that's all. Chances are he was wrong; he's not immune to that either. I'd sooner have had you there; I think you'd have handled young Kara right enough; and Tahy with him. But if Moon Rising's going home, it's to carry the kind of news the Tahar have gotten here; it's going to make trouble, no thanks to the Faha: and there's a time past which Kohan's going to be hard put. He's got—what mates in residence? Your mother and who?" "Akify and Lilun." "Hope your mother stands by him," Pyanfar said heavily: the Kihan and the Garas were ornaments. She walked over to the counter and stared at the scan a moment. "No matter. Whatever's going on, we'll put it in order." "Pyanfar—" Tully's strange voice. She turned about and looked at him, recalled the pager and turned it on broadcast, not bothering with the plug. "Question," Tully said, and made a vague gesture toward the door where the Faha had left. "He fight." "She," Pyanfar said impatiently. "All she." Tully bit his lip and looked confused. "It's nothing to do with you," Pyanfar said. "Nothing you'd understand." "I go." he offered, starting to slide from his place on the counter, but Chur held his shoulder. "No," Chur said. "It's all right, Tully. No one's angry at you." "You're not the cause," Pyanfar said. "Not of this." She walked to the door, looked back at the crew. "We'll settle it," she said to the crew, and turned and walked out, down the corridor and alone toward the lift. Khym overthrown. Dead, maybe. At the least in exile. The loss of her mate oppressed her to a surprising degree. Mahn in young Kara's hands would not be what it had been in Khym's. Khym's style had been easygoing and gracious and admittedly lazy: he was a comfortable sort of fellow to come back to, who liked fine things and loved to sit in the shade of his garden and listen to the tales she could spin of far "ports he would never see. Boundless curiosity, gentle curiosity. That was Khym Mahn. And the son he had indulged and pardoned had come back and taken his garden and his house and his name, while poor Khym—gods knew where he was, or in what misery. She rode the lift up to main level and entered her own quarters, shut the door and sat down at the desk . . . forbore for a long time to pull out the few mementoes she bothered to keep, keeping home more in her mind than in objects. Finally she looked at what she had, a picture, a smooth gray stone—odd how pleasant a bit of stone felt, and how alien in this steel world; stone that conjured the Kahin Hills, the look and the sound of grass in the wind, and the warmth of the sun and the slick cold of the rain on the rocks which thrust up out of the grassy hillsides. Her son . . . cast Khym out: moved in next to Chanur to threaten Kohan himself, to break apart all that she had done and built and all that Kohan held. Small wonder Kohan had wanted Hilfy out of harm's way—out of a situation in which tempers could be triggered and reason lost. Put some experience on her, Kohan had asked. And: Take care of her. She put the things away, and sat thinking, because while repairs proceeded, there was little else she could do. They sat here locked into station's embrace and hoping that the kif stayed off their vulnerable backside. Sat here while their enemies had time to do what they liked. Strike at Anuurn itself—Akukkakk could not be so rash. He had not that many ships, that he could do such a thing. It was bluster, of the sort the kif always used, hyperbole . . . of the sort they always flung out, hoping for more gains from an enemy's panic than force could win. Unless the hakkikt was mad . . . a definition which, between species, lacked precision. Unless the hakkikt commanded followers more interested in damage than in gain. No hakkikt on record had ever stirred as wide a distance, involving so many ships. No one had ever done what this one had done, attacking a stsho station, harassing and threatening an entire starsystem and all its traffic as he had done at Urtur. She sat and gnawed at her lip and reckoned that the threat might have substance to it after all. She checked scan finally, on her own terminal. Nothing showed but the expected. The knnn still hovered off from station: when she searched audio the singing came back, placid now and wavering over three discordant tones. The tc'a were silent, but one, which babbled static in tones as slow as the knnn's. The prisoner? she wondered. Lamenting its fate? Beyond those voices there was only normal station noise, and the close-in chatter of the skimmer crews who had never ceased their work on The Pride's damage. Normally some of these jump freighters would have put out: Hasatso's venture out only to meet emergency had frozen everything. Not even the miners were stirring out from their berths with the orehaulers and those were snugged into orbit about Mala or Kilaunan. She patched a call through to station services, complained about the late delivery on ordered goods: the courier service issued promises after the time-honored fashion, and she took them, reckoning on the usual carrier arriving about the time the rampway was about to close down. Stasteburana-to used sense, at least; and the patrols stayed out, shuttling the system, alert against trouble. The mahe kept faith. She expected less of the Tahar. Chapter 9 Moon Rising pulled out in the off shift, a departure without word to them, in Pyanfar's night. She ignored it, snarling an incoherency from out the bedclothes to the com at bedside when she was advised, and pulling the cover back over herself; it was not worth getting up to see, and she had no courtesies to pay the Tahar, who deserted another hani to strangers, crippled as they still sat. She was hardly surprised. Watch had their standing orders, and there was no need to wake up and deal with it. Hilfy slept: there was no need to rouse her out for what Hilfy also expected. Pyanfar burrowed into sleep again and shed the matter from her mind . . . no getting her adrenalin up to rob herself of rest, no thinking about here, or home, or anything in particular, only maybe the repairs which were still proceeding, which ought to be virtually finished by the time she waked, all the panels in place now, and mahe working out on their tail checking all the sorry little connections on which their lives relied. The dark took her back. She snugged down with a feeling of rare luxury. "Captain. Captain, hate to disturb you, but we're getting some movement out of the knnn." She thrust an arm about, felt after the time switch. An hour and a half from wakeup. She kept moving, swinging her feet out. "Captain." That was Tirun on watch. "Urgent." "I'm with you. Feed it here. What's happening?" The screen lit in the darkened cabin. Pyanfar blinked and rubbed her eyes and focused on the schematic. Ship markers were blinking in hazard warning, too close to each other for safety. "Every knnn at dock," Tirun said. "They're breaking dock and the general direction—" "After Moon Rising? Query station. What's going on with them?" "Did, captain; official no comment." "Rot their hides. Put me through." It took a moment. Pyanfar rummaged in the halflight from the screen after her breeches, pulled them on and jerked the ties. "Station's still refusing contact, captain: they insist communication by courier only." Pyanfar tied the knot and swallowed down a rush of temper. 'My regards to them. What are the kif doing?" "Sitting still. If they're talking to each other it's by runner or by line." "Just keep watching it. I'm awake." She went to the bath, turned on the lights and washed, walked out again and took a look at the situation on the screen. Ten ships out of dock now, all chasing out after Moon Rising, as if that same rotted knnn had gotten utterly muddled which hani was which and convinced all the others—ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous; but humor failed her—there had been misunderstandings in the old days, before stsho had gotten the idea of the Compact across to the tc'a, and the tc'a in turn had gotten the knnn and chi to comprehend Compact civilization . . . enough to come and go in it without trouble; to trade with it; to avoid collisions and provocations and sometimes to cooperate. The methane-breathers were dangerous when stirred. She frowned over the image, combed, cut off the com and headed out down the corridor for the lift. "No change?" she asked when she walked in on Tirun in op. "No change," Tirun said. Her injured leg was not propped, though thrust out at an angle as she leaned to tap the screen. "They're all in a string, all ten of them, all after the Tahar." "Gods," Pyanfar muttered. "A mess." "They've got ID signals—they have to know that's not us." Pyanfar shrugged helplessly. She walked back to the door. "I'm going to get the others. About time for you to go off, isn't it?" "Half an hour." "Who's up next?" "Haral." "So we start early." Pyanfar walked out and down the corridor toward the large cabin that was in-dock crew quarters, pushed the bar to open the door and inside, the one that started dawn-cycle on the lights. "Up. Got a little disturbance. Knnn have gone berserk. I don't want us abed if they come this way." There was a general stirring of blanketed bodies in the half-light, on a row of bunks under the protective netting of the overhead; bunks and cots—Tully was at the left, curtained off, but not from her vantage, a tousled head and bewildered stare from among the blankets—and Hilfy . . . Hilfy was on the other side of the room, stirring out with the rest, naked as the rest, as Tully, who was getting out of bed on his side of the curtain. Gods. Anger coursed her nerves, a distaste for this upset in order which had swept The Pride. They voyaged celibate. In her mind she could hear Tahar gossip—something else that would be told on Anuurn. And gods, she could see the look in Kohan's eyes. She scowled. "Hilfy. Breakfast on watch, half an hour. Move!" "Aunt." Hilfy stood up and jerked up her breeches with dispatch. Pyanfar stalked out, headed back to the op room, shook off her distaste in self-reproach. So Hilfy had resigned the privilege of guest quarters and snugged in with the crew; she guessed why—with the parting of ways with the Faha. And the crew had invited: that was territory in which the invitation came from inside and she did not intervene. In their eyes, then, Hilfy belonged. As they had taken Tully in. Gods. Her nape prickled. "Breakfast and relief is coming," she told Tirun as she arrived. "No change," Tirun said. "Same courses, all involved. Not a move from the kif, not a word." "Huh." Pyanfar sat down sideways on the counter. "Confused likewise. I hope." "They couldn't be in communication with them." Tirun turned a disquieted stare toward her. "I'm out of the assumption market." The rout progressed, Moon Rising proceeding outsystem with a mahe escort at great distance and a manic flood of knnn behind. "They're mad," Tirun said. Pyanfar sat and watched, glaring at the screen. Haral arrived, with Hilfy and breakfast; the others showed up hard on their heels, a procession, Geran and Chur and Tully carrying their own trays. "What's going on out there?" Haral asked. "Tahar," Tirun said, "leading every scatterwitted knnn at the station—" The screen had changed, the dots parting on the scan, that which was Tahar going on, the knnn . . . . "They're stopping," Hilfy said. "Wonderful," Pyanfar muttered, took up her cup of gfi and sipped it, watching as the gap widened. Turnover eventually, she reckoned; the knnn developed other plans. Tully spoke, a flood of alien babble, but she had left the pager in her cabin. Chur turned hers to broadcast. "Enemy ship," it rendered. "Knnn," Haral said. "Not an enemy. Neutral. But trouble. That's Moon Rising. The knnn followed them; now they've quit." "Why?" "Don't know, Tully." Moon Rising made jump, a sudden wink off station scan—knnnless. "Gods," Hilfy exclaimed, as the knnn bent a turn. "Knnn maneuver," Tirun said. "The bastards are showing out. They can jump boost and turn like that. It'd kill a hani. Any oxygen breather. Can't outmaneuver them. Gods forbid, if we should have to shoot at one—comp plotting can't hit one: not programmed for their moves." "They don't shoot at us. They aren't armed." "In the old days," Haral said, "they never caught the knnn shooting either. But ships turned up gutted. Before my time. But I heard they'd swarm a ship, jump it elsewhere—haul its mass off where they'd open it at their leisure—" "Haul it between them?" Hilfy's face mirrored disbelief. "Among them. A dozen. All synched. So I heard. Hani ships'd tear each other to junk; but knnn can synch like that." "Huh," Pyanfar said. It was an old bunk yarn, like ghost ships. Like aliens outside the Compact. She stared at Tully and thought about that. Ate her dried chips and washed it down with gfi. On com, station sent instructions to its patrol to stay out of the way of the knnn. A tc'a went on, presumably talking to the knnn. And a message light blinked on their own board, something directed at them. Revise estimate, the letters crept across the screen when Tirun keyed it. 15 hours repair additional. Regret. Make more worker this job. Two team. Repeat . . . "Gods help us." Pyanfar snatched the mike and punched in station op. "What kind of trouble this? What fifteen hours? Fifteen more hours?" Station routed the complaint, one to the next, to the almost incomprehensible mahe skimmer supervisor. "All skimmer station work," was the answer, three times repeated, in rising volume, as if loudness improved communication. "Thanks," Pyanfar muttered. "Out." She ran a hand through her mane, put the mike down, looked around at staring eyes and managed a better face. "Well," Haral said in a quiet voice, "at least they found it before they sent us out with it." "I'll go out the aft lock," Geran said, "and check them out on it." "No," Pyanfar said. "I don't doubt you'll find damage. Longshot it from the observation dome. And by the gods, if there's something new I want to know about it." She composed herself a moment. "No, gods rot them, the mahe'd gouge us on fines and charges, but if I've got the measure of that foreman she's not the type. Still. . . Do the check anyhow." "Right." Geran snatched up the tray and headed out, down the corridor for the bubble access, a cold trip to the frame. Pyanfar thought of going herself, delayed to finish her breakfast and watched the knnn, who had stopped again, hovering off in utter violation of lanes and regulations. Station operations reported a ship coming in, a mahendo'sat freighter arriving in the zenith range: they had their own problems. So did the mahen freighter, coming in to what should be a safe haven and finding traffic snugged down and knnn gone berserk. "I'm going to main," she said finally. "Go off down here. Rest. Haral, I'll take it, up there. I'll key you." "Captain—" Haral started to object, swallowed it, having a sense about such things. "Right." Pyanfar walked out, hitched up the trousers which had gotten too loose in recent days, headed for the lift. Go in person to station offices and take the place apart? It tempted. At the moment she wanted something breakable within reach. But it would hardly mend matters. Fifteen hours. It was hardly surprising; repairs for all of time and to all ends of the Compact ran behind schedule and over estimate. And then it was sixteen and seventeen and another twenty— She took the lift up, ensconced herself in her cushion on the bridge and sent rapid inquiry through all appropriate channels. Defect vane yoke, the answer came back from the station office, and hard upon that, from Geran: "Got closeup; they've swarmed in on the vane collar, but I can't tell much." The image came through, two skimmers and three workers in eva-pods grappled onto the afflicted vane where it attached to the strut, cables and vane and strut strung with red hazard lights to prevent accidents in shadow. It was a plausible repair, gods—nothing cheap; the damage that had blown the panels loose could have stressed it . . . one of those systems for which there was no bypass, through which a third of the power of the jump drive passed. "Yoke," Pyanfar sent to Geran, who was likely shivering her teeth loose in the bubble. "Come on inship; there's no more we can do." It was a fifteen hour job. A gnawing suspicion worked at her gut. The defect should have shown up on the board: there were reasons why it might not—that it had blown as they camel in . . . something had redlighted, so many things had redlighted at one instant and gone back to normal status . possibly, possibly it was real. Possibly too it was one of those demon touches, the mahendo'sat called them, that lost ships, something loose that contacted in stresses and killed. It was five to five they owed the mahendo'sat crew profound thanks; or they were being stalled, conned, set up. Check it now and ill was bound to redlight: the casing was off. She sat staring at the vid screen with her blood pressure up and a smoldering rage with nowhere to send it. "Haral," she said into com. "Captain?" "That problem you fixed as we were coming in. Was the number one yoke involved? Could you tell?" A long moment of silence. "Captain, we were losing the input; I put in a new board and we got it cleared. But that fade had stressed everything; the whole board was fouled. I couldn't say beyond doubt. It was everywhere. I thought it was the panels. I'm sorry, captain." There was misery in Haral's voice. Haral was not accustomed to be wrong. Ever. "It's one of those things," Pyanfar said, "that would redlight if the panels were overloaded; I'm not so sure you were wrong, Haral. I'm not at all sure you were wrong." "I'll go out there," Haral said. "And do what? They've got it in a mess it takes skimmers to put back. Mahen skimmers. No. We sit it out." "Supplies arriving," Chur informed her eventually via com from belowdecks. That was frozen fish off Kirdu IIs onworld ponds; and some stsho goods for Tully and some more translator tapes. She checked the time; after their originally scheduled departure. The courier service had been informed of the delay as quickly as they had been, which insolence sent her blood pressure up another several points. "Captain?" Chur asked. "Noted," Pyanfar said coldly, and Chur broke the contact. Another hour. The vid showed continual activity about the vane. Pyanfar diverted herself into board maintenance, burrowed into under-console spaces, checked and rechecked, surfaced now and again to dart a jaundiced look at the vid or to listen to some communication coming in. The station was getting back to normal; only the knnn . . . stayed out, fell into systemic drift, wailing still to each other. The lift down the corridor hummed and opened doors: Pyanfar heard that and worked her way out of a finished job, stood up and wiped her hands and straightened her mane—soft quick footfalls in the corridor. "Aunt?" She sat down on the armrest of her own cushion, scowled at her niece. Hilfy stood in the archway with a paper in her hand, came and offered it. "Just came. Couriered. Security seal." Pyanfar snatched it, hooked a claw in it, ripped it open, nose wrinkling. Stasteburana's signature. Greetings, respects, and the assurance all possible was being done. "The stationmaster's compliments," Pyanfar translated sourly. "We get escort to our jump point when we go; departure's firm for that fifteenth hour. Rot them, they knew about this, or they'd have been here asking for that tape. They want it, to be sure—before the job's sealed off. Is the courier waiting?" "No." "Rot them all." "Tully's tape, you mean." She looked up at Hilfy, whose adolescent-bearded held a hint of a frown. "Is that a comment?" "No, aunt." "I told the Outsider why." "Tully, aunt." Pyanfar sucked in a breath. "Tully, if you please. I told him why. Did I get through?" "He—talked to Chur about it." "What did he say?" "That he understood." "And the rest of you?" Hilfy tucked her hands behind under her brow. "He senses . . . much trouble's going on. Last offshift, he tried to talk to all of us, gods, how he tried. Finally—" Her ears went down, a second glance at the deck. "Finally he put his arms around Chur and then he went from one to the next of us all and did the same, not—male-female, not like that. Just like he had something to say and he' didn't have any other way to say it." Pyanfar said nothing, jaw set. "He's started another tape," Hilfy said. "The new manual." "Is he?" "We gave it to him; he sat down with it in op and he's feeding the words in as fast as he can go." Pyanfar frowned, taken aback. "He liked the stsho shirts you came up with too. Warm, says, never mind the fancywork." "Huh." Pyanfar thrust herself to her feet, poked an extended claw at Hilfy. "Nice fellow, this Tully, so understanding and grateful and all. I've been back and forth this route a few voyages, imp, and I've seen my share of con artists. In the first place, since we bring it up, I don't like the Outsider bedding down with the lot of you. I permitted it in a moment of soft-headedness, because I didn't like his moping about and I didn't want himself killing himself the way, mark you, imp, the way he admits to killing a companion of his—for friendship's sake." "It's not fair to say that. It was brave, what he did." "Granted. And maybe he's got a few more brave notions. The crew's used to alien ways and I figured they'd keep their judgment, but I don't like you down there. Gods know you've earned the right to be down there—that's where I'd rather you were, all things equal, but they aren't; there's that rotted Outsider in the company, and he makes me nervous, niece, the way things make me nervous that just may blow up without warning. I don't like you near him." Hilfy's ears were plastered flat to her skull. "Pardon, aunt. If you order me to go back to my quarters, I will." "No," Pyanfar said. "I'll do you one worse. I'll rely on your sense. I'll just tell you to think what gets blown to ruin if some triviality sets our guest off at the wrong moment. Chanur, niece. You understand that?" The ears came up. Hilfy's nose wrinkled all the same, the shot gone home. "I know I want to get back to Anuurn, aunt; but I know too that I want to be proud of one side of the family when I get there." Pyanfar raised her hand—got that far with it, and stopped the blow and turned it into a gesture of dismissal. "Out, imp. Out." Hilfy turned on her heel and went. Pyanfar slid into the cushion and crumpled the stationmaster's message with the other hand, punched claws through it. Gods rot it, to have leaned on the youngster in that matter . . . and to no point: to no point; underway, they would be back to wider spaces, to—gods knew what they would be up against. She reached and keyed through the translator channel, heard Tully's steady input, jabbed it out again. After a moment she shook her head, smoothed out the paper and filed it in fax. Punched the translator key on again and listened to Tully, a quiet, familiar voice, putting word after word into memory. Six hours; nine; twelve; thirteen. The day passed in meals-at-station, in checks and counterchecks; in enforced rest and secure-for-jump procedures and most of all in monitoring scan and com. Pyanfar reached the stage of pacing and fretting by the twelfth hour, fed and napped beyond endurance—wore off claw-tips on the flooring and disguised the anxiety when any of the crew came near on errands. But Hilfy managed not to come. Stayed below, in what frame of mind or what understanding Pyanfar could not find a way to ask. "Courier's here." Chur's voice cracked out of the silence on the bridge, com from lowerdeck. "Asking the tape, captain." "Ask the courier," Pyanfar said, "the finish time on the repair." A delay. "The courier says within the hour, captain." "Understood." Pyanfar caught her breath, looked left when she had laid the tape she had prepared, reached and pocketed the cassette and headed out for the lift, in such a fever that it was not till she had started the lift downward that she had thought again what it was she went down to trade: away from this place was all the thought; and the tape was a means to get free; and the shedding of the whole ugly necessity something she was only too glad to have done, to get The Pride free of mahendo'sat and loose and on her way. But Hilfy was down there. That recollection hit her. The lift stopped, the door opened, and she hesitated half a heartbeat in walking out, sucked up a breath she wanted all too much to spend on the mahe for the delay, and strode out quite bereft of the breath and the anger she wanted to loose. Tully. Ye gods, Tully was in op too, off the corridor where any visitor to the ship not confined to the airlock would be brought as a matter of course. She rounded the corner and found a gathering indeed—a dignified-looking mahe in a jeweled collar and kilt; a mahe attendant; Haral, Tirun, and Hilfy. She walked into the group suddenly conscious of her own informal attire, scowled and drew herself up to all her stature—none too tall in mahendo'sat reckoning. "Bad mess," the ranking mahe spat at her. "Big trouble you cause, hani. All same we fix ship." The Voice of the stationmaster, primed with accusations and bluster. The Voice looked her up and down, with grand hauteur. Jeweled and perfumed. Pyanfar flexed her claws, pointedly and with grander coolness turned her shoulder and looked toward her own. "Tully. Where's Tully? Is he still in op?" "You endanger the station," the Voice railed on her dutifully. "Big trouble with tc'a; knnn bastard kidnap and extortion. You want take with you the eva-pod the knnn bring for trade for good tc'a citizen, hah? Got your name on it, hani Pride of Chanur, clear letters." "Tully! Get your rotted self out here. Now!" "They don't come into station now, the knnn, no, make navigation hazard all this system. All disturb. Mining stop. Trade stop. All business stand dead still. You use knnn signal, a? Upset the knnn; take kif property, upset the kif; get tc'a kidnap, tc'a upset; get fight stsho station, stsho make charge; hani don't speak to you—what for we deal with you, hani, a?" Tully came out of the ops, Chur attending him. He had on his new stsho-made shirt, white silk and blue borders—looked immaculately civilized and no little upset in the shouting. "The papers, Tully," Pyanfar said. "Show them to this kind mahe." He fished in his pocket for the folder, pale eyes anxious. "I got no need cursed papers," the Voice snapped. Tully had them all the same, held them open in front of the mahe, who waved them aside. "You issued them," Pyanfar said. "Property of the kif. Property of the kif, you say. You look at this fine, this honest, this documented member of an intelligent and civilized space-faring species and you talk about him with words like property of the kif? I call down shame on you; I ask you explain to him, you, in your own words, explain this property." The Voice flattened her ears, looked aside at her attendant, who proffered a scent bottle. In elaborate indirection the Voice unstopped it and inhaled, recollecting herself in retreat. Her face when next she looked down at them was tolerably mild. "The tapes," the Voice said. "The tapes you make deal cover some damage." "All the damages. No fines. No charges. No complaints." "Starchaser rescue." "A separate matter. Chanur and Faha together will stand good for it when we reach home. As for the captain of the rescue ship, he has my guarantee, which is worth more than his losses. It's settled." The Voice considered a moment, nodded. "The tape," she said, holding out her hand. "This give, repair finish. Give you safe escort. Fair deal, Chanur." Pyanfar took it from her pocket, an uncommon warmth about her ears—looked aside at Tully. She thrust it at him. "You give it. Yours." Hilfy opened her mouth to say something, and shut it. Tully looked down at the cassette, looked up at the Voice and hesitantly handed the tape toward her. "Friend," he said in the hani tongue. "Friend to mahe." The dark-furred hand closed on the cassette. The Voice laid back her ears and pursed her mouth in thoughtful consideration. Tully still had his hand out—his own kind of gesture, who was always touching; kept it out. Slowly the mahe reached out, alien protocol being her calling, and gamely suffered Tully to clasp her hand, took it back without visible flinching . . . but with a subdued quiet unlike herself. She bowed her head that slightest degree of courtesy. "I carry your word," she said. And with a scowl and a glance at Pyanfar: "Undock one hour, firm. Kirdu Station give you all possible help. Urge you give us location of this good fellow homeworld—danger to lose you, him, all, this trip." "Beyond the kif is the location we presently suspect. Haven't had the time to learn, honorable." "Stupid," the Voice said with her professional license. "Our unfortunate friend was dragged through miserable circumstances with the kif; hurt; not stupid—too wise to talk without understanding. Now there's too little time. You help us get out of here and we'll settle the kif sooner or later." "This hakkikt . . . . Akukkakk. We know this one. Bad trouble, Chanur captain." "What do you know?" Pyanfar asked, suddenly and not for the first time suspicious of every mahe at Kirdu. "What do you know about this kif?" "You undock one hour. Skimmers go now. You make good quick voyage, Chanur captain." "What do you know about the kif?" "Good voyage," the Voice pronounced, and bowed once and generally, collected her attendant and walked for the airlock. "Hai," Pyanfar said in vexation, and with a wave of her hand sent Haral striding after the Voice and her companion. She looked about at Hilfy, whose ears were somewhat down; and at Tirun and Chur and Tully. Tully looked disquieted. "Good," Pyanfar said to him, clapping him on the arm. "Good touch, that 'friend.' You laid the burden on her, you know that? That's the Voice that speaks to and for the Personage himself, the stationmaster of Kirdu; and by the gods you did it, my clever, my mannerly Outsider, you threw that one right in the stationmaster's lap." Tully glanced down, made a small shrug, no less troubled-looking. She was not wearing the translator plug. "An hour, hear?" she said to the others, to Tirun and Hilfy and Chur—and Geran, who would be keeping watch in the op room with strangers running in and out of the ship: no way it was unattended. "An hour and we're underway, out of here. Home." "How are we doing it?" Geran called from out of the room. "Stringing the jumps like before?" "Close as we can cut it," Pyanfar said, and looked left as movement caught her eye, Haral's return from the lock, as far as the beginning of the corridor. "Seal us up, captain?" Haral shouted down the corridor. "Seal us up," Pyanfar confirmed, and stopped in mid-wave as a tall dark figure appeared in the corridor behind Haral "Ware!" Mahendo'sat. Haral had already spun about, and the lanky, dark-furred mahe walked on in as if he belonged, flashing a gilt-edged grin. "Ismehanan—" Pyanfar shouted. "—Goldtooth, gods rot you, slinking into my corridors without a by your leave—who let you in?" The grin in no wise diminished. The mahe gave a sweeping bow and straightened as she strode up to him. "Got sudden business, Chanur, maybe same you course." "Whose business?" "Maybe same you business." She swelled up with a breath and looked up at him, hands in the back of her waistband. "Maybe you talk straight, captain. Once." "Where you go?" "Maybe I should broadcast it on the dock. For the kif." "Home, maybe? Ajir route?" "Guess as you like." "Got Mahijiru weapons first rate; friend mine make port today, also got number-one rig. Wait over, Chanur." "Bastard!" He stepped back, held a hand up, blunt-nailed; hers, lifted, was not. He grinned with the fending gesture. "Necessity, time mahe shed cargo." "You egg-sucking liars. Where I'm going has nothing to do with you; hani business, you hear that? Private business. You want a quarrel with the kif you go find your own." "Go home, do you?" "Private business, I'm telling you." "Warn you," Goldtooth said. "Once. Maybe now go make deal hani port; lots trade. You talk for your good friend there, yes?" "Goldtooth, what game are you playing?" He grinned and turned on his heel, walked off toward the lock, where Haral stood in scowling indignation. "Goldtooth!" He paused to wave. "Mahijiru you escort, captain. You got number one best." "Rot your hide, I'm not playing decoy in some mahen game with the kif!" He was gone while the echoes were still ringing. Haral, lacking orders, looked back at her, and Pyanfar slung her arms to her sides, not reckoning on giving any. It was the mahe's terms and there was nothing they could do to stop him from following. "Seal that lock," she said. "Gods know what else might get in." Haral went on the run. Pyanfar looked about at the others, at Tully, and Chur and Hilfy and Tirun; and Geran, who had stepped out of op. "Mahijiru's on," Geran said. "Someone's just hooked up a shielded line and we're getting transmission. They claim they've got orders and they're asking data." "We're going home," Pyanfar said shortly. "Home, by the gods. They've cost us time. If Stasteburana's got notions of using us, rot him, two can play that game. I'll give them our course; I'll give them a leadin inside the Anuurn perimeter." "Chanur—" Tirun objected quietly. "More than Chanur's got a stake in this. Maybe Anuurn needs to see that. We've got ourselves trouble. Widespread trouble. We don't know how far it stretches. There ought to be hani here, do you mark that? Lots of hani ships coming and going here, not just Tahar. Here we are at one of the prime stops on our rivals' route . . . and no hani ships but that one. Homebound. I'll lay you odds, cousins, they've been staying home when they've come to port. That's what's vacated the track we've been on. Starchaser knew; word's been passing, at every port, every contact." "Aye," Chur murmured. "Aye. Gods. Six months they could have had at this—" "I'm going to the bridge. Bridge crew this passage—Haral; Geran; Chur. The rest of you take op station; and get Tully his sedative, now, before someone forgets." "Aunt!" Hilfy called after her. Pyanfar stopped and turned. "Captain," Hilfy said in a quieter voice. "Question?" Pyanfar asked, scowling. Hilfy's chin went up. "No, captain," Hilfy said quite steadily. Pyanfar nodded, with a small tightening of the mouth, looked satisfaction into Hilfy's clear eyes, then turned again and strode off to the lift. Down the corridor, the lock boomed shut. The Pride had begun her separation. Chapter 10 "Getting pickup on the companion," Chur said, snugged in com station. "They swear it's a secure line." "Huh." Pyanfar finished up the checks and reached for the contact flashing on her com module. "Chanur here." "Introduce you," Goldtooth's voice came back to her. "Captain Pyanfar Chanur, got link to Aja Jin. Captain Nomesteturjai." "Chanur," a voice rumbled back. "Name Jik, here." "Number one fellow, Jik," Goldtooth said. "Honest same you, Pyanfar Chanur." "Honest like stall me off; like delay me. Chanur's fighting for its life, you rag-eared bastard, does that get through your head? Challenge; and I'm not there. In your spying about, do you know what that means?" "Ah," Goldtooth said. "Know this trouble. Yes." Pyanfar said nothing, forced the claws back in. "Know where this Akukkakk too," Goldtooth said. "Interested, hani captain?" "After I've settled my own business." "Same place." "Anuurn?" "Keep you alive, hani. We make slow maybe, but you make deal we want. More big than pearls and welders, a, hani?" "You follow, rot you." She keyed through the course and the graph on comp. "There's the way." A mahen hiss came back, throaty and rueful. "You steer by luck, hani? You crazy mad, that course?" "Do it all the time, mahe. Scare you?" "Hani joke, a?" "Got two kif docked down there. We go, they'll go. You got that patrol alerted?" "Got," came that second voice. "Ha," Pyanfar muttered. "You got your data; got all you want. Enough. We're getting out of here." "A." Assent. Pyanfar flung a glance toward Haral, across the separating console, and the contact went out. Chur flicked signals to the dock crew. "Got us prioritied out," Chur reported. "No problem." The lines were coming loose. Telltales began to flash, wanting ports sealed. Haral put the seals in function, straight down the sequence. Screens in front of number one post livened, Geran routing through the station scan image. The airlock grapple clanged into unlock, and the last of the seal-ports was firm. "Moving out," Pyanfar warned over allship, and cleared The Pride's own grapples, her grip on station independent of the station's grip on her: those boomed into the housing, and undocking jets eased them clear. It was a smooth parting, an easy push clear and a nosing toward an untrafficked nadir as g started up, a whine of the rotational engines. Comp flashed them their lane, and scan showed Mahijiru and Aja Jin moving down below the station rim off portside. The Pride gathered momentum, a solid g and a half now, outbound. "Kif are breaking free," Chur said, com monitor. "Station advises." "No scan confirmation," Geran said. Pyanfar was already reaching for the shielded weapons switch, uncapped it and flicked it on: a ripple of lights advised the gunports were clearing. "Stay on that," she told Haral without taking her eyes off her own business. "No comp synch, not with the mahe in the way. Can't be taking one of them by mistake." "Hope they're as considerate," Haral muttered. "Huh." "Kif are moving out," Geran said. "Number two screen." "Where's our escort?" Pyanfar wondered glumly. "—Op deck, stay braced. Listen in and take your cues." "Escort moving," Chur said. "They're on intercept; station's got them scan-blanked." "Understood." She darted a look at station-sent scan, on which they themselves showed as an oversized wedge, massed blip of ships in synch. Geran sent another image. G continued, dragging at the gut, straining her arm back against the elbow brace. The kif were not gaining, were maintaining a sedate acceleration in their wake. Goldtooth and this stranger Jik: escort. She did not, she admitted to herself, understand the mahen order of things, no more than outsiders understood the stsho. Trading with them was one thing. Figuring out the limits of a mahe like Stasteburana was another. Goldtooth and this mahe friend of his, this ship which had come kiting into system in the hour of Tahar's exit—merchanters, maybe; but what she saw of Mahijiru and Aja Jin on vid was ominously lean, ominously trim with their cargo holds stripped off; a lot of space given to the power assembly on those two, a profligate lot of jump capacity masked by those missing holds, odd-shaped cores swelling in such fashion that they would cut into any reasonable geometry of tanks which had been strapped on. Vanes with strange dark interstices, like folding joints, vanes larger than ships of their mass ought to carry. It was a curious thing, that ships never saw each other; that they nosed up to station and stayed invisible behind station walls; that they existed as blips and dots and figures in comp, moving too fast for vid to pick up. Only now that they were in synch, a package moving at the same velocity and in sight of each other— "Runner ships," Pyanfar muttered to Haral. "Look at our escort, cousin." "Got that," Haral said quietly. "Got that, Captain." Something new among the mahendo'sat. Something which had to have been very quiet for a long time. Ships like the kif runners. Hunter ships. Her mustache-hairs drew taut as if her nose had picked up something. Gods: Mahijiru, out prowling about Meetpoint, out on the fringes of stsho space— Hunting rumors? A crew lounging on the dock, loud and visible with repair they could have done inside as well. Two sets of hunters on the docks besides the kif themselves, and they had come sniffing round each other, each so cleverly assaying the other, she and the mahe— "That goldtoothed bastard knew something," Pyanfar said. "From the very start he knew. Knew this Akukkakk; knew those kif ships; knew what was stirring out here." Haral shot her a disquieted look. "Knnn," Geran said suddenly; and vid went off and another image came in, sectorized on the mass of knnn ships, which were no longer stationary. "Gods," Chur muttered, "here we go." "Never mind the rotted knnn," Pyanfar said. "Watch the kif; op, take that sectorized image and keep us posted." It vanished from her screen; Tirun acknowledged recept below. Behind them, on the image which turned up, the kif started now to move. "Got us knnn," Goldtooth's voice cut in, transferred from Chur's board. "Nuisance," Pyanfar said. "You know more than that, mahe? What more do you know? About how you were hunting trouble at Meetpoint?" "Got no need hunt. Hani in port." "Captain." Tirun's voice. "Decreased interval." She was watching it. Flexed her claws carefully on the togglegrip. "Moving out," she told the mahe. "Going to boost up and test; clear my field, understand? No more time here." "A." She moved the control. The Pride kicked up to widen the interval between herself and the mahe. The number one screen flicked from scan to a bracketed star; the images shifted one screen over and dumped the vid entirely. On scan the kif fell farther and farther behind, chancing nothing with the patrol. And the knnn—the knnn streamed along in a manic flood, accelerating as they went, a few points off their course. "Interval achieved," Haral said. "Boosting up," Pyanfar warned the others. She hit the jump pulse, lightly, swallowed against the queasiness and saw the instruments sorting themselves out at the new velocity. "Clear," Haral said. "All stable. Coming up on jump." "Stand by the long one," Pyanfar advised the crew below. Cast a last and frantic look at scan, where Mahijiru and Aja Jin had fallen behind on estimated-position. No communication possible now: they were too much lag apart. It was the position she wanted, the mahe running at their tail: their nose they could take care of themselves. Best to flare through any ambush where they were going and not be the second or third ship in, as Starchaser had been at Kita, after the nest had been stirred and the kif wakened. Luck, she wished the mahe. In spite of other things. In spite of deceits; in spite of mahen purposes which had nothing to do with hers. Luck, she thought; and: conniving liar. The course was flashing on the screen, a jump first for Ajir System, and through it to Anuurn itself, the straightest course and the most vulnerable to ambush; but they were out of time for finesse. "Ready," she warned the crew. They reached their point. Mahijiru would be after them, gliding on their tail; and Aja Jin, that other of Goldtooth's ilk . . . . . . . all the way. A wail from com as they came up, a buoy, Ajir marker dopplered into nonsense. Mahendo'sat/hani cooperative, this station, full of traffic and hazards in the jump range for a lunatic chase to come streaking through, velocity unchecked: a second time to try the maneuver that had failed at Kita, had failed, with damage to the ship. Gods help any other incomer who chanced to be in the way. ALERTALERTALERT, The Pride wailed, capsuled transmission: mahe escort behind. Likely hostile action. Beware of kif insystem and out. Launch all system defense. Take precaution. Two ships following us are escort. Next is trouble. Casualties in previous attacks: Handur's Voyager; Faha's Starchaser. Kif attack on non-Compact unarmed ship, three alien casualties. ALERTALERTALERT . . . . Chaos would break loose at Ajir: kif at dock might take exception to it; Handur might be here to hear it; and Faha. If the kif were not waiting here, in ambush already . . . The mass that was Ajir, a yellow sun, loomed ahead: Ajir, askew from most stars of the region, wearing its belt of worlds and debris rakishly aslant—hazard, Pyanfar's memory kept warning her, distant and fogged in the muddle of postjump, of extreme velocities and instruments feeding them only the skim of reality, too fast, too fast . . . . "Where is it?" she asked of Haral—for the gods' sakes, homestar . . . a blind newborn could sense it from Ajir, could feel it, head for it however shaken in jump: their bow was toward it. "Locked on," Haral's slow voice purred through the madness, slow, when they were pushing c and the system was whipping past in unreality, moving while they drifted through movements: one dopplered star was clear for them, zeroed in the brackets, and all the rest had gone mad . . . . Home. Weeks, in the time/notime of jump . . . . They were in. Hard to think, to begin the dump sequences. The ship would take over when manual intervention failed utterly; would dump velocity and glide them to an outsystem halt, still within return range. Easier to let it slide, let the system blur past, let the machinery take over— No. They were on manual override from the last one. Machine-rules were already violated. Pyanfar lifted the arm, saw with her dazed vision Haral, who had begun the same desperate struggle, slow and sickly in the aftermath of their arrival. A warning light was blinking, not the same malfunction, but outside alert: com recept—beacon— They dumped down and went totally blind for an instant. Anuurn beacon welcomed them out of it; their own alert was still going, crying havoc where they went. She got her hand up, signaled Chur with a blinker; after an interminable moment it went out. Second dump. There was Tully's voice over the open com; and Hilfy's comforting him—Hilfy, who not so long ago had ridden sickly through the jumps, and now steadied their passenger. "Getting image," Geran said. "There are ships out here." None in their way: Geran would not be so calm. They were zenith of everything and everyone. "Getting course input," Haral said; and the screen shifted, lines blinking and calling for matchup, the lane assignment from the buoy. Third dump. Pyanfar swallowed heavily and looked at scan again as it sorted itself out. "Image aft," Geran said: it went to number two screen. Mahijiru. The wavefront was running up their backsides, where that ship and its partner were aimed if they delayed dump. "Too close, mahe," Pyanfar muttered. Final dump. They hit course, down the slot and true, on Kilan Station's guidance. "Transmit intent to dock at Gaohn," Pyanfar said: that was the innermost of the two stations of Ahr System, that about Anuurn itself. The signal went out: the acknowledgment flashed back from one of the robot buoys, automatic routing, approach as routine as any incoming merchanter. "Dump behind us," Chur said. "Second arrival; both our I friends are in." "Transmit instructions to ignore routing and stay on our tail. Give them a signal." "Station scan," Geran said, "is showing a lot of ships. A lot of ships." Pyanfar looked. Six major planets about Ahr: Gohin; Anuurn itself; Tyo; Tyar; Tyri and Anfas—with assorted moons, rings and planetoids. Anuurn alone was comfortably habitable; and Gaohn Station circled it; and there was Kilan Station which supported the little colony on Tyo. There was always traffic. Hani were not the colonists that mahendo'sat" and stsho and even knnn tended to be: but here, in home-system, there was always traffic, from little ships which plied the system to the greater ones which jumped in from other stars; there was the huge null-g shipyard of Harn Station, where all hani ships were born and where they came for refitting and repair. But there were twice the usual number, easily twice, ships in offlanes positions, waiting; ships in clusters; ships by groups of four and five. "I don't like that," Haral said. "Not all ours," Pyanfar said. And after a moment: "He's here. Goldtooth said it; the kif at Kirdu said it. Hinukku's come here. After revenge." No one said anything. The minutes crept up on the chronometer. The Pride was sending her own signal, computer talking to computer. A telltale flashed and a signal came over com. "Mahijiru," Chur said. "Aja Jin, Both moving up on our track." "Blink them a comeahead," Pyanfar said. "Tightbeam; nothing more." "Permission to move about," Tirun sent from lowerdeck. "Denied. Got a situation here. Stay put." "Understood," Tirun answered. Chur leaned down, opened the cabinet by her post and brought out a bottle, sucked a bit from it and passed it on; it went to Geran and to Haral; finally into Pyanfar's hand with an exact quarter visible through the opaque plastic. She sipped at it, her mouth like paper and tasting days stale; her hand left shed fur on the moist bottle when she dropped it into the wasteholder. The salt and the moisture helped, took some of the shakes from her limbs. There was still a misery in her back and in her joints, a tendency for her eyes to blur. Not easy on the body, double-skipping. Bodies were not designed for such abuses. She thought of docking, of having to walk about, to deal with possible trouble— To get a shuttle and to get downworld with all else hovering about them . . . . Something clenched about her gut, protesting. She looked at scan, their own, tight scan, number four screen, where a friendly blip was moving up into intercept. Another blip showed on the edge of the screen. "Got synch," Goldtooth's voice came through. "Jik come up otherside." "Got too many ships," Pyanfar said, signaling Chur to put the transmission through. "Want you where you are, mahe." A mahen chuckle. "A." "Rot your hide." She shut it down. "Got station contact," Chur said. "They don't say anything out of the way; normal approach instructions." "Three berths," Pyanfar said. "Together. Tell them to clear something if they don't have it. Talk them into it." It was a long interval. They still had lagtime from station. "Stationmaster," Chur said finally, "intervened to grant it. We've got twenty through twenty-two." "Comment?" "Nothing," Chur reported. Trouble. Pyanfar's ears flicked. If they could demand ships shunted about and get their request it was because they had a right to it; and if they had a right to it, then there was an emergency in progress. Homecoming kin had right-of-way . . . in situations of death; of challenge; of disasters. "System's quiet," Chur reported. "I'm not getting idle chatter. They're not volunteering any information, captain." "Kif," Pyanfar said. "Outsiders present." Tully said something from belowdecks. Went silent. Hilfy's voice followed, talking to him, low and urgent. "Let's not have any panic down there," Pyanfar said. "Tully. Quiet. Take orders, hear?" "Understand," Tully said. The minutes crawled past. Jik's Aja Jin came into position, so that The Pride went flanked by the mahe. "Goldtooth," Pyanfar said. "You come onstation with me; want your friend stay out of dock and watch, a?" "A," the answer came back, short and sweet; from Jik no word. He would do it, Pyanfar thought. Station was sending specific instructions: Haral was attending that, inputting it for comp. She hit the shunt which dumped the data onto Haral's screens, with a blinking warning that control of the ship came with it: Haral nodded, accepting it without missing a keystroke. Pyanfar loosed her restraints, swung her cushion about and assayed to get her feet under her. "Get to the bridge," she told those below, leaning over com. "Aye," Tirun sent back. Pyanfar walked about a bit, unsteady on her feet, bent down enough to get some of the dried food out of storage by her own console. Chips and bottles of salts. She opened them, put them in reach of Haral and Geran and Chur, chewed on a bit of dried meat and washed it down with half a bottle of the liquid. Dehydrated. The jumps took some time off bodies. She walked about trying to get the needling pains out of her joints, heard the lift in function and then steps coming down the corridors. "Captain." Knnn-song wailed out of com. "Gods and thunders!" Pyanfar spat. "Location on that." "Ahead of us," Geran said. "One of those ships moving up on station." Tirun and Hilfy and Tully had arrived, stood together in the archway which opened onto the bridge, silent in the grating sound which ran the scale. Knnn never called at Anuurn. Never, till now. "It overjumped us," Pyanfar said with—she reckoned—commendable calm. "If that's our knnn, it just overjumped us by at least an hour." "Fast bastard," Tirun muttered. "Mahijiru," Chur said, "asks if we notice." "Cut that thing off," Pyanfar said. "Tell Mahijiru yes, we did notice." She pricked up her ears with an effort, flicking the rings into order on the left. "Hilfy. Tully's channel." Hilfy turned her pager onto broadcast. "Tully—we're home now. Anuurn. Got trouble here." "Kif," Tully said. "I hear. Hani—make deal with them?" "Papers," Pyanfar said sharply, and when Tully's hand went to his left pocket: "You keep those with you. You're registered; you've got a number in the Compact. No. No way the kif can take you by law. Going to have one lot of mad kif, maybe; maybe some mad hani. But they can't take you, except by force." "Fight them." "You take my orders. My crew, my orders." "Pyanfar." Tully thrust out his hand to stop her from turning away. "I don't go from you." Pyanfar flattened her ears, staring up into Tully's pale, distraught eyes. "I don't need someone making me conditions. You do what I tell you." "Do. Yes. I go on this ship. With you. #### give ### hani I quick dead." "We've got troubles enough, Outsider. Hani troubles as well as kif. Let be." "With you. Long time voyage. With you." "I'm not your kin, rot you. You come on my ship, you make me trouble—what in a Mahen hell do I owe you?" "Dead, outside. Need you." "Huh." Male. The shout left a quiet after it. Alien male, but all the same she saw the line drawn, the edge past which there was no thinking . . . their patient, docile Outsider. She cuffed his arm, claws not quite pulled. "You listen, friend Tully; you think, rot your hide. We go off this ship; we; you; we come back, you come back with us. Hear?" "Come with you?" "I say it." He flung his arms about her; sweaty, reeking as he was, as they both were, he hugged her with abandon. She freed one arm and the other and shoved him off in indignation, which in no wise changed the look in his eyes. "Do all you say," he said. "By the gods you'll do it. You do something wrong and I'll notch your ears for you. You keep that brain of yours working or I'll rattle it like a gourd. Can you do that? Can you look at a kif and not go crazy?" That took a moment's thought. He nodded then. "Get them other time," he said confidently, waved a hand toward the wide infinite. "We go find kif other time pull their heads off." The mangled extravagance appealed to her; he did, with his clear-eyed insanity. She cuffed him harder and got a moment's shock, not temper—like Khym, like her own easygoing Khym, where Kohan would have swung and cursed at the sting. She was reassured, that he was capable of restraint, that a cuff on the ears stood a chance of getting his attention; that blunt-fingered and slender as he was, a couple of them could hold him if they had to. "If we get out of this," she promised him, "we go skin some kif. Next trip out. I take you with me." That was premature. They owned nothing to give away, least of all the disposition of the Outsider. Lose Chanur, she thought with a chill, and they could make no more promises at all; but confidence burned in Tully's eyes, a trust that he was theirs. Gods. Theirs. Theirs for managing, for using, for finding the location of his distant people before the mahendo'sat or the kif could do so, and making a wedge for Chanur trade. But it was Hilfy's kind of a look he gave her. Worship . . . not quite. Absolute belief. She looked at Hilfy to be sure and found the same. Looked disquietedly at the others, at Haral and Geran and Chur and Tirun, who had their own rights on this ship which was theirs as well as hers, who had been here longer and knew better and had to know what the odds were. It was there too—quieter, but as crazily trusting. She talked about going kif-hunting and they gave her that kind of stare. "Keep it sane in here," she said. "I'm going to clean up. Tully, for the gods' sake, bathe." She stalked out. The Pride streaked on toward station. She had no least doubt that some of those ships out there were kif, and that there was at least the remote possibility that the kif might face about and start a run at them in some berserk notion of revenge. If this Akukkakk saw no other possibility, he might. But his presence here, before her, indicated that he knew that she had to come here; and why; and that he had a chance of revenge far wider than one ship, a handful of deaths. It was Chanur he was aiming at. His information was accurate enough to have brought him here. Somewhere, hani had talked; and he knew where to put the pressure on. Faha, she thought unworthily, but the suspicion nagged at her. If not the Faha, others, who had talked too freely at some dock or—gods help them—Handur prisoners, taken alive at Meetpoint. She doubted the latter: the destruction had been thorough: and Goldtooth denied the chance of survivors. But someone, somewhere—had said enough in the wrong hearing. She put the thought away. It was too bitter. She wore the red this time, red silk breeches and the best of her rings and the pendant pearl. Appearances. She combed and brushed until her mane and her beard gleamed red gold highlights. She splashed on perfume, reckoned that some sweeter scent would hardly hurt Tully, and pocketed one of several vials in the drawer. For Hilfy she pocketed something too. She went back to the bridge then, distracted herself with current reports on their approach—Hilfy was not there, nor were Tully or Geran or Chur, but Tirun had taken the number three cushion next Haral. "No trouble," Pyanfar observed. "Routine so far," Haral said. "I'll take it. Your turn." Pyanfar slid in at her place and Haral slid out of hers, weary and staggering in the use of cramped muscles. "Getting some kif transmission," Tirun said after a moment. "Operational. They know we're here. Nothing more said." "How many of them, do you reckon?" "Station's given us an accurate count. Seven." "Gods have mercy." "Aye." Pyanfar shook her head and called up the various images available to her screens. They were coming in under automatic at present, locked on station's guidance. Vid image filled one screen, Anuurn itself, blue and marbled with cloud. Beautiful. It was always beautiful on approach, never so spectacular as Urtur, but full of life. It conjured blue skies; and grassy/plains and broad rivers and vast seas; it conjured colors; and scents; and textures; and a gut feeling which was different than all other words . . . for hani. She watched at her leisure: with The Pride under automatic there was little else to do. A sweep of their second vid camera showed their mahen escorts riding slightly aft, two sleek killers, so precise in position they might have been one single ship. "Aja Jin advises he'll drop back to guard as we go in," Tirun said. "Understood." "Still picking up signal from that knnn. Tried the translator on it. I get nothing but a docking matchup, aside from the singing." "They docked?" "Quarter hour ago. Gods know what station's going to do with them. No facilities except the emergency hookup. I don't get any outside transmission on that problem." "Huh." "Not a word from anyone else in system. Unnatural quiet." "Kif docked?" "All seven." "Thank the gods for that. You sure?" "Station's word on it." Pyanfar laid her ears back, scowled. It was too cooperative all round, kif who put into station . . . something was crooked here. Badly out of trim. It was far too late to turn about. And there was Kohan and all of Chanur below, who had no such options to turn and run. Therefore The Pride did not. "Station requests all weapons shielded." Pyanfar considered a moment, reached to the board and complied. "Done," she said, wishing otherwise. Presumably Mahijiru did the same. Aja Jin had dropped behind them now, in a defensive position at their vulnerable tails. "Got plan?" Goldtooth's voice reached her ears then, transferred from Tirun's board. "Want you with me when we go out," she said. "You understand hani station rules. Know them all?" "All," Goldtooth confirmed. "See you on the dock." Weapons, she meant to say: hani stations observed no weapons-rules. It was not a thing she wanted to discuss on com. She trusted that the mahe would turn up armed. It was certain the kif would. Chapter 11 Automation took them in to the last, trued to the cone. It was an easy dock. The grapples touched and locked on both sides. The instruction came up to access the line ports; declined, she sent back, refusing that mandated service. It was not likely, considering the circumstances, that station would quibble. No objection came back, only a pressure reading for the station itself and a recommendation to use the air shunt in the lock. "They know it's trouble," Pyanfar muttered. "Tirun, someone's got to stay aboard. You're it; you and Geran. Sorry." "Aye," Tirun muttered unhappily. No discussion. "Shall I page Geran and advise her?" "Do that." "Want both of you fit. If we can't get back, take command, your own discretion. Take the ship and get out of here, pick up crew at Kirdu—mahendo'sat or anything else; and make it count, hear me?" Tirun's ears went down. "You're not planning on it." "Gods no, I'm not planning on it. But if. If, old friend. If we lose—in any sense—neither hani nor kif sets hand to The Pride. That's firm." "That's firm," Tirun said. "Tully—our problem or yours?" "Mine," Pyanfar said. "He's walking evidence. And more problem than you need. You've got that tape; you've got an ally in the Kirdu stationmaster if it comes to that. I don't leave you any instructions. If something goes wrong, make up your own rules." "Right," Tirun said. The order split the sister-teams down the middle. If it came to that—Tirun and Geran would be a wounded half. But that was the way it went: she wanted Haral's size and strength with her, and Tirun was hardly fit for a fight. Chur was the smallest of the lot, but of the two remaining, the meanest temper. Pyanfar extended her hand in rising, pressed Tirun's shoulder. Practicalities. Tirun knew. They gathered belowdecks, all of them, clean and combed, excepting Tirun, who had never gotten her turn at washing up: Tully wore a white stsho shirt belted hiplength about him, and a better pair of blue breeches—Haral's likely, who had been sharing clothes with him. Pyanfar looked the party over; and remembering the perfume in her pocket, took it out and tossed it at Tully. "All things help," she said. Tully unstopped it and sniffed, wrinkled his nose and looked doubtful, but when she mimed putting it on, he splashed some on his hand and wiped I his beard and his throat. He coughed, and thrust the bottle into his own pocket. "Another matter," Pyanfar said, and took a fine gold ring from the depth of her lefthand pocket, offered it to Hilfy and had the satisfaction of seeing the look in Hilfy's eyes. "I won't take you anywhere ringless. If we meet some kif, or even politer company—you'd better look like where you come from, hear, imp?" "Thank you," Hilfy said, looked uncertain with it, and flustered; but Geran tugged her head over on the spot and bit a neat place for it, deftly thrust the earring through for her and fastened it. "Huh," Pyanfar said, there being her niece with her first gold shining in her ear and pride glowing in her eyes, "Come on. Let's find out what's waiting out there. —Tirun, Geran, you keep that lock sealed for everyone but us, no matter how bad it gets to sound, no matter what they offer you. Get on the com in op. Tell Goldtooth to get moving." "Aye," Tirun said. Neither Tirun nor Geran was pleased with the unship assignment—Geran was trying to be cheerful, and not well succeeding: "Take care," Geran said, patted Chur's shoulder. "Luck," Tirun said, last, and Pyanfar nodded to the others and walked with them down the corridor, leaving Tirun and Geran to get to business: she and Haral and Chur, and Hilfy; and Tully, who looked back, when none of the rest of them did, with a forlorn expression. Pyanfar went first into the airlock, waited for Tully, hand on the hardness of the pistol she had in her pocket—as all of them had but Tully; he hurried in with them and Haral closed the inner hatch. One further insane moment Pyanfar debated with herself, then made up her mind and opened the locker by the outer hatch, took out the pistol they kept there and gave it to Tully. "Pocket," she said when he looked anxious surprise at her. "Pocket. Don't touch it. Don't think about it. If I fire, you can, hear? If you see me shoot, then you shoot. But I won't. It's civilized here. Hani don't take nonsense from the kif and kif know that. If the kif get nasty they find themselves more hani than they know how to run from. Promise you. You draw that at the wrong time and I'll skin you." "Understand," Tully said fervently. He thrust the pistol into his pocket and put his hands demonstratively in his belt at his back. "I take orders. I don't make mistake." "Huh." She touched the bar. The airlock's outer seal opened for them and her ears popped with the pressure change as the cold air of dockside sucked through the access tube. Sounds outside echoed, nothing out of the ordinary. Pyanfar led the way onto the ramp way plates, around the curve and down toward the grayness of the dockside, with all its metal and machinery. The translator was out of pickup range now: Tully became effectively deaf and mute. Pyanfar looked askance at him as they walked out the arch of the farside lock, onto the dockside itself. He was sticking close to Chur and Hilfy, or they to him, while Haral brought up the rear, tall and solid and looking like business with her scars and her be-ringed left ear. Haral had instinctively planted herself back there to guard the rear and quite possibly to head off Tully if he should lose his head. The latter was not likely, Pyanfar thought with some assurance. Old hunter that she was, she had some sense which way things would dart in a crisis, and she had Tully figured for the other direction. She directed her attention sharply ahead, where dockworkers had set up cord barriers—where a station official, Llun house or one of half a dozen other Protected families which kept the station, made her body the gateway, guard enough for a hani station, where civilized folk knew what they would touch off if they harried a warder representing her family and her family's post. Llun, that guard, if the set of the ears was any true indication, a mature hani in the black breeches of officialdom immemorial. The Llun drew a paper from her belt as they approached her, and offered it, not without an ears-down look at Tully: but the Llun kept her dignity all the same. "Ker Chanur, you're requested for Gathering in the main meeting area. You're held responsible for all the others of your party; it's assumed the mahen ship is under your escort." "Accepted," Pyanfar said, taking the paper. The Llun moved aside then to let them pass, impeccable in her neutrality. A little distance away, at the next berth, a similar barrier was set up about Mahijiru's access. "Come," Pyanfar said to the others, and walked in that direction, took the chance to scan the official summons. "Charges filed," she said. "Compact violations and piracy." "Rot them," Chur muttered. "We're going to get that shelved," Pyanfar said, looked up again and let her jaw drop as Goldtooth led a good number of mahe down onto the dock, a Goldtooth resplendent in dark red collar and kilt, glittering with mahen decorations. "By the gods, look at him." "Merchanter," Haral spat. "And I'm kif." "Come on," Pyanfar said to her company. Goldtooth offered his papers to the hani on guard, but the guard waved him through unquestioned; the mahe and his crew walked out to join her in the walk toward the main dockside entry, a towering dark crowd of mahendo'sat. Sidearms, openly carried, businesslike heavy pistols strapped to the right leg. Decorations, worn by more than one of the group. "Where we go?" Goldtooth asked. "Gathering. Ihi. Place where we sort things out. Hani law here, mahe. Civilized." "Got kif here," Goldtooth muttered. "Got Jik watch our tail." They entered the corridor. It stretched ahead, polished, clean, uncommonly vacant. No young ones about, precious few of anyone except officials in uniform, a very few hani dressed like spacers, who watched in silence and stepped well aside. "Too few," one of the mahe observed. Goldtooth made a low sound, uninformative. "Too rotted few," Pyanfar said. She turned a necessary corner, saw the doors of the meeting hall ahead, double-guarded. She took no more thought of her companions then, of mahe or Outsider or kinswomen, flicked her ears to settle the rings in place and waved a grand gesture to the black-trousered hani who stood there. "Chanur," one said. The doors whisked open, and a milling, noisy crowd of hani were gathered beyond—a crowd which retreated in growing quiet as they swept into the room. Pyanfar stopped in the midst, hands in her belt, looked toward the Cardinal point of the room, at the station authorities who gathered there, at Llun and Khai and Nuurun, Sahan and Maura and Quna, evident by their position and by the posted Colors in front of which they stood. And kif, to their right, a cluster of black robes. A pair of stsho. Pyanfar's nose wrinkled and her ears flattened, but she lifted them again as she faced the Llun, who stood centermost and prominent among the station families. She held up the paper and proffered it for a page who retrieved it and took it to the Llun senior. "Chanur requests transport downworld," Pyanfar said quietly. "Our claim has precedence over any litigation." The Llun senior—Kifas Llun herself, broad and solid and unmistakable in her gold and her dignity, unhurriedly took the paper, thrust it into her belt, and looked again at Pyanfar. "A complaint of piracy has been filed by Compact law; by treaty, this station has obligations which have precedence." "The rights of a family when questioned bear on treaty law and define the han. Our place is in question." The Llun hesitated, mouth taut. "Challenge hasn't yet been issued." "Yet. But it will be now—won't it, ker Kifas? You know it; and I know it; and there are those here flatly counting on it. Point of equity, ker Kifas. Point of equity." There was long silence. The Llun senior's ears lowered and lifted. Her nose wrinkled and smoothed again. "Point of equity," she declared. "The composition of the han is in fact in question. Family right takes precedence. The hearing is postponed until Chanur rights and Mahn have been settled." "No," said a familiar, kifish voice. Among the tall, black-robed figures there was a stirring, and Pyanfar moved her hands to her hips and close to her pockets. More of the kif moved—to the outrage of the hall, the whole kifish contingent left the rim of the meeting hall and came out to the center of it. The stsho moved with them, gangling pale figures, sorrowfully gaunt, their pastel patterns asymmetric and erratic on their white skins, their persons in disarray and their heads drooping. And one kif stood taller than the rest, his stance that of authority among them. Pyanfar pursed her lips and slowly drew them back, eyes broadfocused on all the kif, well toward a dozen of them and, gods knew, armed beneath those robes. "Akukkakk," she said. "We protest this decision," the kif said to the Llun. Not whining, no: he drew himself up with borderline arrogance. "We have property in question. We've suffered damages. This Outsider and these mahe are in question. I claim this Outsider for kif jurisdiction; and I claim these mahe as well for crimes committed in our territories. They're from the ship Mahijiru, which is wanted for crimes contrary to the Compact." "Tully," Pyanfar said. "Papers." He moved up beside her and gave them to her, rigidly quiet. She offered the papers to the page, who took and read them. "Tully. Listed by Kirdu Station authority as crew, The Pride of Chanur, with a mahen registration number." "The connection is obvious," the kif said. "I charge this Outsider with attack on a kif ship in our territories; with murder of kif citizens; with numerous atrocities and crimes against the Compact and against kif law in our territories." Pyanfar tilted her head back with a small, unfriendly smile. "Fabrications. Is the Llun going to tolerate this move?" "In which acts," Akukkakk continued, "this Chanur ship and all its crew intervened at Meetpoint, with the provocation of a shooting incident on the docks, the killing of one of my crew; with the provocation of a hani attack in the vicinity of the station, in which we defended ourselves. In which attack this mahe intervened and took damage, a reckless act of piracy—" "Lie," Gold tooth said. "Got here papers my government charge this kif." "A wide-reaching conspiracy," Akukkakk said, "in which Chanur has involved itself. Ambition, wise hani. Don't you know the Chanur . . . for ambition? I am kif. I have heard . . . the Chanur have maintained a tight hold over the farther territories where your ships go, private for themselves and their partisans. Now they deal with the mahe, on their own; now they make separate treaties with Outsider forces, contrary to the Compact, for their own profit. Kif relations with the mahe are not friendly; we know this particular captain and his companion who hovers armed and waiting just off the station perimeter, threatening our ships and yours. This is your law? This is respect for the Compact?" "Llun," said Pyanfar, "this kif is disregarding the station's decision. I don't need to specify the game he's engaging in. The law protects the han from such outside manipulations. These charges are a tactic, nothing more." "No," said a voice from the gallery behind. A hani voice. A voice she had heard. Pyanfar turned, ears flattened, pricked them up again as she saw a whole array of familiar faces on the other side of the hall. Dur Tahar and her crew; and the Faha beside her. "This is not," the Llun said, "a hearing. The kif delegation has its right to lodge a protest; but the matter is deferred." Dur Tahar walked forward, planted herself widelegged. "What I have to say has bearing on the protest. The kif's right that the Chanur's gone too far, right that the Chanur's made deals on her own. Ask about a translator tape the Chanur traded to mahendo'sat and denied to us. Ask about this Outsider the Chanur claims as crew. Ask about deals worked out in Kirdu offices which excluded other hani and created incidents from there to Meetpoint." "By the gods, ambition!" Pyanfar yelled, and crooked an extended claw at the Tahar's person. "Ambition's a spacer captain who'd side with a hani-killing kif to serve her house's grab for power. Gods!" she shouted, looking about the room at strange faces, at unknowns, insystem crews and landless on Anuurn for the most part. "Is there anyone here from Aheruun? Anyone from that side of the world, someone here to speak for the Handur ship this kif killed at Meetpoint, while they were nose-to-dock and had no idea there was any trouble in the system? Ambition—is the Tahar, who left us at Kirdu crippled and alone and came running home to use the information to Tahar advantage, who sides with the kif who hit three hani ships and a fourth ship from outside our space, a kif who's terrorized these wretched stsho into coming here with gods know what story, a kif who's created a crisis involving the whole structure of the Compact. By the gods, I know what blinds the Tahar to the facts—but you, you, Faha—great gods, they killed your kin, and you stand there taking the part of the hakkikt who had you boarded? What's happened to your nerve, Hilan Faha?" Hilan opened her mouth to answer, stepping forward, ears back, eyes wild. The kif howled and clicked, drowning whatever she tried to say, and howled until Akukkakk himself lifted a bony gray arm and shouted, turning to the Llun. "Justice, hani, justice. This lying thief Chanur was involved from the beginning, private ally of the mahendo'sat, an agent of theirs from the beginning, involved with them in attacks, reckless attacks into our territory which we do not forget." "This kif," Goldtooth roared, louder still, "hakkikt. Killer. Thirty ships his. Make all kif together, this hakkikt. Make move new kind trouble in Compact, got no care Compact, spit at Compact." He strode forward, pulled a wallet from his belt and slammed it into the hands of the page. "Papers say from my government truth. Hani and mahe hunt this one, yes. Got kif run from mahe, move into territory this new Outsider, this Tully. Big territory. Big trouble. I make truth for the han; I make liar this Akukkakk Hinukkui. I witness at Meetpoint; this kif lie." "Danger our station," the stsho stammered, thrust forward by the kif. "We protest—we protest this incident; demand compensation—" "Enough," the Llun said over all the uproar, and hani noise died quickly; kif commotion sank away likewise. "Llun." Hilan Faha said in that new quiet. "Enough," the Llun said, scowling. "The kif has his right to protest and to advance a claim. But since that claim exists, all sides have a right to be heard. There's a further statement entered in this cause." She took a card from her belt, thrust it out for the harried page, who took it in haste and thrust it into the wall slot which controlled the hall viewing screen. It flared to life, rapid printout. stsho kif knnn (*) hani mahe tc'a station ship ship ship ship ship self trade kill see here run watch know fear want see hani escape help knnn violation violation violation violation violation violation self Compact Compact Compact Compact Compact Compact Compact help help help help help help help Tc'a communication, matrix communication of a multipartite brain, simultaneous thought-chains. Pyanfar studied it, took a deeper breath, and Goldtooth looked, and the kif, and all the hani. "It's our shadow," Haral murmured. "It's the tc'a with that rotted knnn." "It got itself an interpreter, by the gods," Pyanfar muttered, and a vast grin spread across her face. "Got itself that tc'a off Kirdu and it's talking to us, gods prosper it—See that, kif? Your neighbors don't like your company, and someone else saw what happened, someone you can't corrupt." "We've got a major crisis thanks to you," Dur Tahar cried, thrusting herself between her and the Llun. "Gods blast you, Chanur, that you can find anything encouraging in knowing the tc'a are involved in this mess. Knnn mobbed my ship outbound from Kirdu, knnn, like in the old days of dead crews and stripped freighters. Are you proud of that, that you've gotten them involved? I call for the detention of this Outsider pending judicial action; suspension of this mahe's permit and papers; for the censure of the captain of The Pride of Chanur along with all her crew and the house that sponsors her meddling." "But nothing for the kif?" Pyanfar returned. "Nothing for a kif adventurer who murdered hani and mahe and provokes a powerful Outsider species, with all that might mean? Ambition, Tahar. And greed. And cowardice. What have you got from the kif? A promise Tahar ships will be safe if this dies down? I turned down a kif bribe. What did you do when they made you the offer?" It was a chance shot, a wild shot; and the Tahar's ears went back and her eyes went wide as if she had been hit hard and unexpectedly. Everyone saw it. There was a sudden hush in the room, the Tahar visibly at a loss, the kif drawing ever so slightly together, the stsho holding onto each other. It was bitter satisfaction, the sight of that retreat. "Bastard," Pyanfar said, with a sudden rush of sorrow for the Tahar, and for the Faha who stood there in that company, ears fallen. Akukkakk stood with his arms folded, kifish amusement drawing down the corners of his mouth and lengthening his gray, wrinkled face. "He's laughing," Pyanfar said. "At hani weaknesses. At ambition that makes us forget we don't trade in all markets, in all commodities. And at his reckoning we'll trade again to get our ships moving again outside our own home system—because there are more kif out there than you see, and hani won't all fight. Hani never do. Hani never have. And I've been stalled long enough. I was promised transport downworld and I'm taking it. I'm going home and I'm coming back, master thief, master killer—and I'll see you in that full hearing." Akukkakk no longer laughed. His arms were still folded. The kif were all very quiet. The whole room was. Pyanfar made a stiff bow to the Llun, turned and walked for the door, but Goldtooth and his crowd lingered, facing the kif. Tully slowed and looked back, and Pyanfar did, scowling. "Goldtooth. You come. I'm responsible for you, hear? As the Tahar's made herself responsible for this kif onstation. Come on." The Tahar said nothing to the gibe. That was the measure of their disarray. "Got friend," Goldtooth said to Akukkakk. "This time, got friend, and not at dock. You docked good, kif, got you nose to station. Maybe you ask hani give you safe escort, a?" Akukkakk scowled. "Perhaps. And perhaps Chanur will be so kind as to do that herself. When she comes back from Anuurn." A chill wind went wandering across Pyanfar's back. She stared a moment at the kif, thinking over the odds. The Llun and the insystem merchanters were thinking likewise, surely, what they might logically do with seven kif ships and two mahe hunters. "Give me," Akukkakk said, "the Outsider. Or the translation tape. It's not so much. I can get it from the mahe, sooner or later." "Ha, like you get from hani?" Goldtooth muttered. "What hani give," Pyanfar said darkly and with distaste, "is a matter for the han. Consensus. Maybe, hakkikt. Maybe we'll talk this thing out, with assurances on all sides. Before it damages the Compact more than it has already." The quiet persisted, on all sides. The stsho stared back at her from haunted pale eyes, the kif from red-rimmed dark ones, hani from amber-ringed black. Kif faith. She turned her back, retreated as far as the door of the chamber, and this time Goldtooth and his crew were with her—and Tully, whose face was pale and beaded with sweat. The door opened and sealed again at their backs. They passed Llun guards. The corridor stretched ahead, empty. "Going to my ship," Goldtooth said. "Going to back off and keep watch these kif bastard." "Going to the shuttle launch," Pyanfar said. "Got business won't wait. Got stupid son and trouble in Chanur holding. Life and death, mahe." "Kif find you go, make one shot you shuttle. Jik make you escort, a? Run close you side, make orbit, get you back safe." She stared up at the mahe's very sober face, reached and clasped his dark-furred and muscular arm. "You want help after this, mahe, you got it. Number one help. This kif lies. You know it." "Know this," Goldtooth said. "Know this all time." Their ways parted at the intersecting corridor. Pyanfar pointed the way back to the dock, a straight walk onward, and Goldtooth took it, his crew with him, a dark-furred, tall body moving off down the hall. Pyanfar motioned her own group the other way, which curved toward the shuttle launch. Steps hurried after them, clawed hani feet in undignified haste. Pyanfar looked about as the rest of her party did, saw a young and black-trousered stationer come panting toward her. The youngster made a hasty bow, looked up again, ears down in diffidence. "Captain. Ana Khai. The station begs you come. All of you. Quickly and quietly." "Station gave me leave for my own pressing business, young Khai. I'm due a shuttle downworld. I'm not stopping for conferences." "I was only given that word," the Khai breathed, her eyes shifting nervously over them. "I have to bring you. The Llun is there. Quick. Please." Pyanfar glared at the young woman, nodded curtly and motioned the others about to follow the messenger. "Quick about it," Pyanfar snapped, and the youngster hurried along at the limit of her strides, hardly keeping ahead of them. It was, as the Khai had said, not far, one of the secondary meeting rooms at which door a whole host of stationers and no few insystem spacers hovered, a crowd which parted at their approach and swarmed in after them. The Llun indeed. The old man of the station, sitting in a substantial cushioned chair and surrounded by mates/daughters/nieces and a few underage sons, without mentioning the client familiars, the black-trousered officials, the scattering of spacer captains. Kifas Llun was there, first wife, standing near him, and there were others of other houses. A Protected house; the Llun could not be challenged, holding too sensitive a post, like other holders of ports and waterways and things all hani used in common, and he had slid past his prime, but he was impressive when he got to his feet, and Pyanfar exchanged her scowl for a respectful nod to him and to Kifas. "This trouble," he said, and his voice shook the air, a bass rumbling. "This Outsider. Let me see him." Pyanfar turned and gathered Tully by the arm. There was a panicked expression in Tully's eyes, a reluctance to go closer to the Llun. "Friend," she said. "He." Tully went, then, and Pyanfar kept her claws clenched into his arm to remind him of manners. Tully bowed. He had that much sense left. "Male, na Llun," Pyanfar said quietly, and the Llun nodded slowly, his heavy mane swinging as he did so and his mouth pursed with interest. "Aggressive?" the Llun asked. "Civilized," Pyanfar said. "But mahe-like. Armed, na Llun. The kif had him awhile. Killed his shipmates. He got away from them. That's where this started. We have a translator tape on him. We'll provide it with no quibbles. I want it on record he gave it freely, for his own reasons. In the Tahar matter—that's a han question. I didn't trust the Tahar as a courier. Gods witness—I'll be sorry to be right. And by your leave, na Llun, I'll be back to answer your questions. There's a matter of time involved. I was given leave to go." "Challenge has been given," Kifas Llun said, and Pyanfar darted her a hard look. "Only now the word came up." Pyanfar thrust Tully back to Hilfy's keeping and started away without a word. "Ker Chanur," Kifas said, and she cast a burning look back. "A quicker way: listen to me." "I'll want a com link," Pyanfar said. "Now." "Listen, ker Chanur. Listen." Kifas crossed the room to her and took her arm to stop her. "Our neutrality—" "Gods rot your neutrality. Keep the kif off my back. I've got business downworld." "Got a ship," one of the insystem captains said unbidden, a hani of Haral's build. "She's old, ker Chanur, but she can set down direct on Chanur land, that no shuttle can do. Tyo freight lander: Rau's Luck. I'm willing to set her in the way of trouble if Chanur's minded." Pyanfar drew in a breath and looked at the aging captain. Rau was no downworld house. Insystem hani, landless and unpropertied except for a ship or two, unless they were Tyo-based, colonials. "Your word is worth something," Kifas said, "Pyanfar Chanur. We're bound by the Compact. We can't do more than pin these kif at the station. You've got the mahe for help. You can do more than we can. Chanur has two more ships in that might be of use. Tahar—" Kifas did not finish the statement; her ears flicked in discomfort. "Yes," Pyanfar said. "Tahar. I'm not so sure I'd rely on their ships either at the moment." "We can't muster a defense," Kifas said. "Your captains are downworld with most of the crews. So are others. We've got kif at dock for as long as we can keep them, but you said yourself—there may be others." "You've got the insystem captains." "Against jumpship velocity—" Pyanfar looked about her, at the spacers present. "Go to the jumpships you can reach; you can fill out crews. Take orders. No matter what house. Get those ships able and ready. I'll get the Chanur captains back here; and any others I can find. In the meantime, keeping those ships ready to go will be the best action with the kif." She looked at Kifas Llun, grim sobriety. "Your neutrality is in rags. Give me one of your people. To bring witness down there to what's going on. I have to get moving. Now. Mahijiru and Aja Jin will keep the kif pinned and the way open. If I don't move, ker Llun . . . the upheaval in the han is going to make differences, differences to more than Chanur. Tahar's down there, I don't doubt they are. Standing in line to get a share of the spoils. You're already in it. I'm not going to let Chanur go under." "Rau," Kifas Llun said. "You're ready to go?" "On the instant," the Rau captain said. "Ginas," Kifas said, with a gestured signal to one of her people. "Go with the Chanur. Talk to them. Answer what you're asked. You're at her orders." The one singled out bowed. Kifas offered the door, a sweep of her hand. "I Llun," Pyanfar murmured in a quick bow of courtesy toward Kifas and toward na Llun, who had seated himself again. Then she turned and swept her own company, the Llun messenger included, toward the door, following the Rau captain. "This way," the Rau said, indicating a turn which would take them toward the small-craft docks. Kohan, Pyanfar persuaded herself, would not have taken challenge immediately as it was offered, not knowing that she had reached the system; and surely he knew by now: it was routine that a house was notified when a ship belonging to it made port. The timing of it argued that his enemies knew; and surely Kohan did. He was too wise to be catapulted into any such thing without some preliminaries: she relied on that, with all her hopes. Two hours by plane from the shuttleport to the airport that served Chanur and Faha and the lesser holdings of the valley: with the Rau's proposal they saved that much time: and on that too she relied. And on a pair of mahe. And gods grant Akukkakk saw some hope for himself. If one of those kif ships got a strike signal off, if the kif was bent on suicide—he might accomplish it, if there were more kif ships lying off out of scan range. Maybe five, six hours lag time for message and strike. With luck, the kif did not know that the hani ships gathered in system were on skeleton crew; with luck the kif would regard them as a threat . . . if no one had talked. "That ship of yours," Pyanfar said to the Rau. "Armed?" "Got a few rifles aboard," the Rau said. Chapter 12 There was no access ramp for an insystem workhorse, only a dark tube into a chill and dimly lit interior directly off the dock. The Rau dived in first and shouted to her crew, a thundering and booming of feet on the uncushioned plates. The air was foul, stinging to the nose. Pyanfar came aboard seconds after the captain of the Luck, put a hand on the hatchway as she stooped to enter and drew the hand back damp with condensation—seals leaked somewhere in the recycling systems. Gods knew what the margin was on lifesupport. She worked her way past lockers to the control pit of the probe, trusting Haral and Chur to get everyone else aboard and settled. "Name," she asked of the Rau captain, dropping down into the three-cushion pit, waist-high, and ducking under the overhead screens. "Nerafy," the captain said, nodded back toward her presumed co-pilot and navigator who were dropping into the pit on the other aide. "Tamy; Kihany." "Got us an escort," Pyanfar said. "Mahe's going to see we get there and back; move it. No groundlings in this lot. Will you give me com?" "We're going," Nerafy said, sinking into her cushion. The hatch boomed shut, deafening. "Kihany: it's Anuurn we're headed for; get the captain that link." Repulse cut in. Pyanfar hand-over-handed her way around the back of the cushions to the com/navigation board and braced herself with feet and a hand on the rim to lean over the board. "I want," she said, ignoring the contrary slams of g against which she shifted without thinking, "relay to Aja Jin. Mahe. Get that ship first." It took a moment. A mahe voice came crackling through. They lost g as Rau's Luck executed a wallowing maneuver, acquired it again. "Aja Jin. Have you got us in watch? Track this signal." "Got," the comforting answer returned. "Got. We watch." "Out," Pyanfar said. She broke it off, not anxious to have long conversations with kif to pick them up. The mike in hand, she tapped the harried navigator on the shoulder. "Next call: satellite to ground station Enafy region, area 34, local number 2-576-98. Speak to anyone who answers." The navigator threw her a desperate glance, shunted her functions to the copilot and started working, no questions, no objections: "What landing?" the copilot was asking; "First we get there," Narafy said. "Got ourselves a rescue run. Speed counts." "Map Coordinates 54.32/23.12," Pyanfar said, listening to the one-sided com. They were in contact with Enafy. In a moment more the navigator held up a finger and she tucked the plug into her ear and applied herself to the mike. "Chanur," she said, shaking; but that was from the cold. "Is Chanur answering?" "Here," said a voice from the world, distant and obscure by a bad pickup. "This is Chanur Holding." "This is Pyanfar. We're on our way in. Who's speaking? There was a moment's silence in which she thought the contact was lost. "It's Aunt Pyanfar," that voice on the other end hissed within the mike's pickup. "For the gods' sake, tell Jofan and hurry!" "Never mind Jofan, whelp! Get Kohan on and hurry up, you hear me?" "Aunt Pyanfar, it's Nifas. I think ker Jofan's coming . . . The Tahar are here; the Mahn have challenged; Kara Mahn has; and Faha's gone neutral except Huran's still here; and Araun and Pyruun have called that they're coming. Everyone's gathered here. They knew—Aunt Jofan, it's—" "Pyanfar." Another voice assumed the mike. "Thank the gods. Get here." "Get Kohan on. Get him. I want to talk to him." "He's—" Jofan's voice trailed off or static obscured it. "I'll try. Hold on." "Holding." Pyanfar rested the back of the hand which held the mike against her mouth, shifted her body in pain: they were under acceleration now. The rim of the pit was cutting into her back. She achieved a little relief, found all her limbs shaking against the strain, the physical effort of the position she maintained. She watched the screens, seeing something else moving on scan. Aja Jin, she hoped. It had better be. "Pyanfar." The deep voice, static-ridden, exploded in her ear. Kohan, beyond mistake. "Pyanfar." "Kohan. I'm in transit. I'm coming. How much time, Kohan?" A long silence. "Kohan." "I'll wait till you get here. I think I can stall it that long." "I'm coming in on a direct landing. I want you to stay inside and hear nothing and see nothing. I have something with me. Something you'll find of interest." . "This Outsider." "News has got there." "Tahar—make charges against you." "Already settled. Settled. You understand?" There was another prolonged silence. "I have my wits about me. I knew you were on your way. Had to be here if this crowd showed up in such graceless haste." She let go a long breath. "Good. Good for you. You keep at it." "Where's Hilfy?" "Fine. Fine and safe. I'm on my way. Now. No more talking. We've got business. Hear?" A breath crackled through the static. "I'll work that Mahn whelp into a fit of his own." It began to sound like a reassuring chuckle. "I'll sit inside sipping gfi and enjoying the shade. Move, Pyanfar. I want you here." "Out," she said. She handed the mike back, a strain of her arm against acceleration, let the arm fall back and shivered as it sank in how long that conversation had been, how clear it was who was speaking from this shell of a ship. They were on directional to the satellite: perhaps no one had picked it up. "Got it set up," Narafy said. "I'm going back to my crew," Pyanfar said. She edged her way out of the pit, one foot against the bulkhead. "Safety line," the captain advised her; she saw it, and tucked down, gained the braking clip on the line and wrapped her hand into it. Launched herself down the long pit of the central corridor, past moisture-dewed metal and aged plastic lighting panels, her own weight and a half on her arm. She reached the barriered recess of cushions where the others had snugged in and Haral snagged her, hauled her with difficulty over the padded safety arm which closed off the compartment, and in several hands, one pair alien, she let herself collapse into the cushions with the rest of them. "Got contact with Kohan," she breathed, sorting her limbs out from among the rest of them. "He's going to stall." Hilfy's face. She saw that tight-lipped relief and felt a little dismay for the girl who had come onto The Pride a voyage ago and the woman who stared back at her, self-controlled and reckoning the odds. "Got contact with the mahe too," Pyanfar said. "They're with us." She cast a look past Chur and Haral to the Llun, Ginas, who nodded, a flat-eared and anxious stare in return "You don't," Pyanfar said, "have to make the return trip There's no reason for you to, ker Llun. We just get you down safe the one time, that's all." "Appreciated," the Llun said tautly. "Captain." Haral thrust a package of chips into her hands, and a bottle of drink. Pyanfar braced the bottle in her lap and hooked a claw into the package, hands trembling with the prolonged strain, used the claw to punch double holes on the.,; plastic bottlecap and spout. The food helped, however difficult to swallow in the acceleration stress. She offered some to the others. "We've had ours," Chur said. Bodies squirmed down the I line, everyone settling. Tully tried to talk, hand signs and mangled words, and Hilfy and Chur communicated with him as best they could, speaking slowly, something to do with the ship and atmosphere. He was cold; they held onto him and settled finally. Pyanfar rolled a strained glance at Haral and then closed her eyes, numbed by misery. There was no more that she could do for either situation, the one on the ground or the one on station. Kohan's nerves would be on the ragged edge by now. This go-and-stop-again psyching for challenge would wear at him by the hour. Like nerving oneself for a jump and walking back from it. The second effort was a harder one. A from-the-heart effort. Gods knew how long the situation had been sawing at Kohan's nerves. Months. Since the night Hilfy left. Since before that—when he saw Khym Mahn likely to fall to challenge. There was a point past which he would heave up any food he tried to eat, awake all night, wearing his strength down with pacing, with the constant adrenalin high which would wear him to skin and bone within days. Huran and some of the other mates had stayed. There were his youngest couple of sons, who had run for the borders if they had any sense, not to linger within his reach. There were a score of daughters, who might muster worth enough to see he ate and slept as much as possible approaching this time. Daughters, mates, and with the captains in, several more half-sisters, who were most reliable of the lot. But there were grown Chanur males who might come straying back from exile to key up the situation further—returned from Hermitage, from wandering, from gods knew what occupations which filled the lives of males in the sanctuaries. Always, at challenge, there were those, hopeless, keyed up, and dangerous, hanging about the fringes. As for young Kara Mahn, he was probably good. He had taken Khym, who had survived thus far more by wit than by strength. Kara had promised both size and intelligence, the last time she had seen him. Chanur blood, after all, Chanur temperament. She cursed her own stupidity, in seeking after a mate like Khym, a quiet and peaceful domicile, a mountain hideaway and Khym, a resting place, a garden like a dream. Khym had listened to her stories, soothed her nerves, made her laugh with his wit; an ideal mate, without threat to Chanur's interests. But gods, she had never thought what she left behind in that place, her own Chanur-blooded offspring, larger than Khym's daughters and sons of local wives; larger; and stronger; and—if such things could be inherited—quarrelsome and demanding. Nothing like family loyalty. Her son yearned after his Chanur heritage so much he wanted to take it for his own. Betterment of the species, hani philosophers had called it. Churrau hanim. The death of males was nothing, nothing but change happening: the han adjusted, and the young got sired by the survivors. One man was as good as another; and served his purpose well enough. But by the gods it was not true; there were the young and the reckless who might, on a better opponent's off day, win; there were challenges like the one shaping up against Chanur, which involved more than one against one. And sometimes—gods—one loved them. She slept somewhat, in the steady acceleration, in sensations so uncomfortable numbness was the best refuge; and in the confusion of jump and time, her body was persuaded it was offshift or perhaps the shift past that. A new sensation brought her out of it, weightlessness and someone hauling her out of a drift as a light flashed. "About to make descent," Haral said, and Pyanfar reached for a secure hold in preparation. It was a rough descent: she expected nothing else. She had no idea of the shape of the lander, but it was not one of the winged, gliding shuttles. The lander hammered its way down after the manner of its kind, vibrating stress into the marrow of living bones and vibrating skin and tissues and eyes in their sockets, so that there was nothing to do but ride it down and wish desperately that there was a sight of something, something to do with the hands, some sequence which wanted thinking about and managing. There was a time she simply shut her eyes and tried to calculate their probable position; she had, she decided, no love of riding as a passenger. Then the sound increased and the stresses changed—gods, the noise. She heard what she fervently hoped was the landing pods extending. They were in straight descent now, a vibration of a rhythmic sort. Touch, one pod and then the others, a jolt and a series of smaller jolts, and silence. Pyanfar flicked her ears with the sudden feeling that she was deaf, looked about her at her shaken comrades. Down was different than before: the gimbaled passenger section had reoriented itself and the central corridor was flat and walkable. "Out," Pyanfar said. "Let's see where they set us down." Hilfy unlocked the padded safety barrier, and they went. Hydraulics operated noisily and when they had come as far as the control pit, daylight was flooding in onto the metal decking from the open lock. The others descended. Pyanfar delayed for an instant's courtesy, a thanks for the Rau crew who were climbing out of their pit, their ship secured. "If you come," Pyanfar said, "well; you're welcome in Chanur land. Or if you stay here—we'll be bringing more passengers as quickly as we can." "We'll wait," Nerafy Rau said. "We put you close, Chanur. We'll have the ship ready for lift; we'll be waiting." "Good," she said. That was her preference. She ducked under the conduits and swung down onto the extended ladder, scrambled down to the rocky flat where they had landed, in the generally wedge-shaped shadow of the lander. The air smelled of scorch and hot metal; the ship pinged and snapped and smoke curled up from the brush nearby. Midday, groundtime. The shadows showed it. Pyanfar joined the others and looked where Chur pointed, to the buildings which showed on a grassy horizon: Chanur Holding; and Faha was farther still. And the mountains which hove up blue distances on their right—there lay Mahn Holding. Close indeed. "Come on," Pyanfar said. She had made herself dizzy with that outward gaze, and shortened her focus to the rocky stretch before her. Horizons went the wrong .way; and the colors, gods, the colors . . . . The world had a garish brightness, a plenitude of textures; and the scents of grass and dust; and the feel of the warm wind. One could get drunk on it; one had enough of it in a hurry, and the sight filled her with a moment's irrational panic, a slipping from one reality to the other. "Not so far," Hilfy panted, latest from the world. "They'll have heard that landing. He'll know." "He's got to," Haral agreed. So will others, Pyanfar thought, deliberately slowing her pace. Rushing up exhausted—no; that was not the wise thing to do. Tully checked his long strides as they did; the Llun who had trailed behind them caught up. Manes were windblown, Tully's most of all. The sun beat down with a gentle heat: autumn, Pyanfar realized, looking about her at the heavy-headed grasses, the colors of the land. Insects started up in panic, settled again. "They'll surely send a car," Chur said. "If they've spotted us." "Huh," Pyanfar said; it was her own hope. But none had showed thus far, no plume of dust, nothing of the sort. "They may," she said, "have their hands full. No good any of them leaving, not if things are heating up." No one answered that. It called for nothing. She kept walking, out to the fore of the others. Familiar ground, this. She had known it as a child. They reached a brook and waded it ankle deep, came up the other side, and by now Tully was limping—"He's cut his foot," Chur said, supporting him while he lifted it to examine it. "You come," Pyanfar said unforgivingly, and he nodded, caught his breath and kept going. Not so far now. They joined the road that led to the gates, easier going for Tully, for all of them. Pyanfar wiped her mane from her eyes and surveyed the way ahead, where the gold stone outer walls of Chanur Holding stretched across the horizon, no defense, but a barrier to garden pests and the like—the open plains lapped up against it in grassy waves. Beyond it—more buildings of the same gold stone. There would be cars . . . the airport was behind them, down the road; they would have come in from there, all the interested parties and the hangers-on, save only the adventurers from the hills, from Hermitage and sanctuaries, who would come overland and skulk about the fringes; vehicles would have driven in along this road, gone through the gates, parked on the field behind the house . . . that was where they always put visitors. When their uncle had fallen to Kohan— The years rolled back and forward again, a pulse like jump, leaving her as unsettled. Homeward . . . with all the mindset which took things so easily, so gods-rotted eagerly. Nature. Nature that made males useless, too high-strung to go offworld, to hold any position of responsibility beyond the estates. Nature that robbed them of sense and stability. Or an upbringing that did. The grillwork gates were posted wide, flung open on a hedge of russet-leaved ernafya, musky-fragrant even in autumn, that stretched toward the inner gates and the house, an unbroken and head-high corridor. She passed the gate, looked back as the others overtook her, and in turning— "Pyanfar." Someone came from among the hedge, a rustling of the leaves; a male voice, deep, and she spun about, hand to her pocket, thinking of someone out of sanctuary. She stopped in mid-reach, frozen by recognition a heartbeat late—a voice she knew, a bent figure which had risen, bedraggled and disfigured. "Khym," she murmured. The others had stopped, a haze beyond her focus. The sight hurt: impeccable and gracious, that had been Khym; but his right ear was ripped to ribbons and his mane and beard were matted with a wound which ran from his brow to chin; his arms were laced with older wounds, his whole body a map of injuries and hurts, old and new. He sank down, squatting on the dust half within the hedge, his knees thrusting out through the rags of his breeches. He bowed his filthy head and looked up again, squinting with the swelling of his right eye. "Tahy," he said faintly. "She's inside. They've burnt the doors down . . . I waited—waited for you." She stared down at him, dismayed, her ears hot with the witness of her crew and of the Llun—on this wreckage which had been her mate. Who had lost that name too, when he lost Mahn to their son. "They've set fires in the hall," Khym stammered, even his voice a shadow of itself. "Chanur's backed inside. They're calling on na Kohan—but he won't come out. Faha's left him, all but—all but ker Huran; Araun's there, still. They've used guns, Pyanfar, to burn the door." "Kohan will come," Pyanfar said, "now. And I'll settle Tahy." She shifted her weight to move, hesitated. "How did you get to Chanur? Kohan knows?" The whole eye looked up at her; the other ran water, squinted almost shut. "Walked. Long time ago. Forget how long. Na Kohan let me . . . stay. Knew I was here, but let me stay. Go on, Pyanfar. Go on. There's no time." She started away, down that road which led to the house, not without looking back; and Hilfy walked beside her, and Chur and the Llun, but Tully—Tully had lingered, stared down at Khym, and Khym reached out a hand to stay him, only looking . . . . Khym, who had delighted in the tales she brought him, of strange ports and Outsiders, and he had never seen a ship, never seen an Outsider, until now— "Tully!" she called, and Haral caught him by the arm and brought him quickly. And then: "Khym—" she called. For no reason. For shame. Kohan had been as soft . . . when Khym had strayed here in his exile, hunting some better death than strangers. He looked up at her, a slow gathering of hope. She nodded toward the house, and he picked himself up and came after them: that much she waited to know. She turned on the instant and set a good pace down the dusty road, eyeing the hedges which followed its bending. Ambush, she thought; but that was an Outsider way, something for kif and mahe, not hani on Gathering. Still . . . . "Scatter," she said, with a wave of her arm to her crew. "The garden wall: get there and we'll settle this daughter of mine. Hilfy: with Haral; Tully—Chur, you take him. Ker Llun, you and I are going through the gate." Ginas Llun nodded, her ears flat with distress, and while the others scattered in opposite directions through the hedge, Pyanfar thrust her hands into her belt and strode along at a good pace around the bending of the road and toward the inner gates. A step scuffed behind her, and that was Khym: she turned to look, to encourage him with a nod of her head, herself in gaudy red silk; her companion in official black; and Khym—grimy rags that might once have been blue. He came near her, beside her, limping somewhat; and gods, the waft of infection in his wounds—but he kept their pace. They could hear it now, the murmur of voices, the occasional shout of a voice louder than the others. Pyanfar's ears flattened and pricked up again; a surge of adrenalin hit fatigued muscles and threatened them with shivers. "It's not challenge," she muttered, "it's riot." "Tahar's here," Khym said between breaths. "Na Kahi and his sisters. That's second trouble. It's set up, Pyanfar." "I can bet it is. Where's our son's brains?" "Below his belt," Khym said. And a few steps later, with the sounds of disorder clearer in the air: "Pyanfar. Get me past Tahy and her crowd and I can make a difference in this . . . take the edge off him. That much, maybe." She wrinkled her nose, gave him a sidelong glance. It was not strict honor, what he proposed. Neither was what Tahar intended. Their son—to end him by such a maneuver— "If I can't stop it," she said, "—take him." Khym chuckled, a throaty rattle. "You always were an optimist." They rounded the last curve, the gate ahead, wide open toward the gardens, the aged trees, the vine-covered goldstone of the Holding itself. A crowd surged about the front of the house, trampling the plantings and the vines. They shouted, taunts and derision toward Chanur; they rattled the bars of the windows. "Rot them," Pyanfar breathed, and headed for the gate. A handful of Mahn spotted her and set up an outcry, and that was all she wanted: she yelled and bowled into them with Khym at her side, and the Mahn retreated for reinforcements in the garden. "Hai!" she yelled, and of a sudden there were Hilfy and Haral atop the wall, and a peppering of shots into the dirt in front of the Mahn, who scrambled for cover. "Get the door," Pyanfar yelled, waving at them, and they jumped and started running: more of the Mahn and some of their hangers-on were on the colonnaded porch, and of a sudden Chur and Tully were on the low garden wall which flanked that, Chur yelling as if encouraging a whole band of supporters. The Mahn darted this way and that, herdwise, and scattered from the door in the face of the three-way charge. Pyanfar raced up the steps and converged with Haral and Chur, gun in hand, burst through the doorway half a step ahead of them, into dimmer light and a chaos of bodies and the reek of smoke. It was a huge room, lit from barred windows, the wreckage of double doors at the end: hani there turned and faced their rush in a sudden paralysis, a hundred intruders who stared at leveled Chanur guns. Some moved; young women put themselves into the fore of things. Others shifted about the fringes, carefully. Voices echoed deep within the halls. Pyanfar kept the pistol braced in her two hands, her eyes wide-focused, taking in all the movements. That young woman—her own image, red-gold mane and stature more than her Mahn sisters: Tahy. Her focus narrowed. The young man—gods, tall and straight and broad-shouldered . . . years since she had seen them. Longer years for her planetbound daughter and son, growing-up years; and they had allies . . . a score of Mahn youths, male and female; and about the walls of the room—Kahi Tahar, na Kahi, the old man, Chanur's southern rival; and others—senior women of holds she suspected as Enaury and others of Tahar's hangers-on, here for the scavenging. "Out of here," Pyanfar said. "Out of here, all of you." "Guns," Tahy spat. "Is that the way of it? We have our own. Is that what you choose, while na Kohan hides from us?" "Put them away," Pyanfar said. She pushed the safety back on, pocketed hers. In the tail of her eye Haral did the same, and the others followed suit. "Now," Pyanfar said. "You're somewhat strayed from the field, son of mine. Let's walk this back out where it belongs." "Here," Kara said. A movement in the corridor behind the Mahn: Pyanfar noted it and drew in her breath. Chanur. A good score of the house. And Kohan, a head taller than the others. "Hold it," Pyanfar shouted, moved suddenly to the side, distraction: the invaders shifted in confusion and hands reached for weapons, a moment's frozen confusion and suddenly Chanur at the Mahn's backs. The Mahn retreated in haste, backing toward the wall that had been at their left, but Tahy and her companions who thrust themselves between Kara and Kohan quick as instinct; Pyanfar dived for the other side, Haral and Chur and Hilfy moving on the same impulse, interposed themselves. She touched Kohan's overheated arm. He was trembling. "Back," she said. "Back off, Kohan." And to Tahy: "Out. No one wins here. If Kohan delayed—it was my doing; and I'm here. With Ginas Llun, who'll back up what I say. With an Outsider, who's proof enough we've got trouble. We've got kif at the station: they've called the captains in . . . to defend Gaohn. It's like that up there. We can't afford a split in the han." Tahy gave a negative toss of her head. "We hear a different story—all the way. No. You want to settle something on our own—we'll oblige you. Kohan need help, that you had to drag him up out of the brush? We'll settle that." "Station's fallen," a voice said out of Chanur ranks, and one of the captains thrust herself forward, Rhean, with crew in her wake. "Word's on the com: they've called for help—it's no lie, ker Mahn." Noise broke out in the room, a ripple of dismay through all those present. The Llun strode into it, neutrality abandoned. "How long ago? Chanur . . . how long?" "Message is still going." Kohan answered, self-controlled, though his breath was coming hard. "Kara Mahn. I forget all this. It's over. Leave now. We'll not talk about it." Kara said nothing. There was a glassy look in his eyes. His ears were back. But Tahy looked less sure of herself, motioned the others back. "You've got your chance," Pyanfar said quietly, evenly. "Listen to me: you've got Mahn. Tahar's not your ally. You go on with this challenge, and Tahar's here to take on the winner: worn down, you understand me. To take two Holdings. Their ambition's more than yours. The Llun can tell you that—a Tahar captain, dealing with the kif—" "Rot your impertinence," Kahi Tahar shouted, and one of his sisters interposed an arm. "A lie," that one said. "Perhaps," Pyanfar said levelly, "a misunderstanding. An . . . excess of zeal; a careless tongue. Back out of here. We may not pursue it. Tahy . . . out of here. The Compact's close to fracturing. It's not the moment. Get out of here." "Na Mahn," Kohan said. "It's not to your advantage." "You'll lose Mahn," Khym said suddenly, thrusting past Hilfy. "Hear me, whelp—you'll lose it . . . to Kohan or to Kahi. Use your sense." Kara was past it. The eyes were wide and dark, the ears flat, nostrils wide. Of a sudden he screamed and launched himself. And Khym did. Pyanfar flung herself about, bodily hurled herself at Kohan as her crew did, as Hilfy and Huran Faha and Rhean and her crew. He backed up, shook himself, in possession of his faculties: Pyanfar saw his eyes which were fixed on the screaming tangle behind her—herself spun about, saw Khym losing the grip that would keep Kara's claws from his throat. "Stop it," she yelled at Tahy, and herself waded into it, trying to get a purchase on either struggling body, to push them apart. An elbow slammed into her head and She stumbled, hurled herself back into it, and now others were trying to part the two. "Tully!" Hilfy shouted; and suddenly a fluid spattered them, straight into Kara's face, and over her, stinging the eyes and choking with its fumes. Kara fell back with a roar of outrage; and she did, wiping her eyes, coughing and supported by friendly hands. Chanur had hold of Tully, she saw that through streaming eyes—his arms pinned behind him, and Khym was down; and Kara was rubbing his eyes and struggling to breathe, She caught her breath, still coughing, shook off the hands which helped her, She knew the aroma; saw the small vial lying empty on the floor—the smell of flowers got past her stinging nasal membranes. "Tully," she said, still choking, reached out a hand and pulled him to her by the back of the neck, shook him free of the Chanur who had seized him—patted his shoulder roughly and looked across at her son, whose eyes were still running water. "Break it off, na Kara. You have Mahn. Call it enough." "Off my land," Kohan said. "Tahar. Be glad I don't challenge. Get clear of Chanur Holding. Na Kara: a politer leave. Please. Priorities. I'll not come at you now. I could. Think of that." Kara spat, turned, stalked out, wiping his eyes and flinging off offered help, dispossessed of his impetus, his dignity, and his advantage. Tahy remained, looked down at Khym, who had levered himself up on his elbows, head hanging. She might have flung some final insult. She bowed instead, to Pyanfar, to Kohan, last of all to Khym, who never saw it. Then she walked out, the other Mahn before her. Tahar lingered last, na Kahi and his sisters. "Out," Kohan said, and the Tahar's ears flattened. But he turned and walked out of the hall, out the door, and took his sisters and his partisans with him. Kohan's breath sighed out, a gusty rumble. He reached for Hilfy, laid his arm about her shoulders and ruffled her mane, touched the ring which hung on her left ear—looked at Pyanfar, and at Khym, who had struggled to his knees. Khym flinched from his stare and gathered himself up, retreated head down and slouching, without looking at him. "Got no time," Pyanfar said. "Well done. It was well done." Kohan blew a sigh, nodded, made a gesture with his free hand toward the rest. Nodded toward the door. "Ker Llun." "Na Chanur," the Llun murmured. "Please. The station—" "Going to be fighting up there?" "No small bit," Pyanfar said. "You handle it?" "Might use some of the house." "I'll go," Kohan said. "I'll go up there." "And leave Tahar to move in on the boys? You can't. Give me Rhean and Anfy and their crews; whoever else can shoot. We've got to move." Kohan made a sound deep in his throat, nodded. "Rhean; Anfy; Jofan—choose from the house and hurry it." He patted Hilfy on the shoulder, went and touched Haral and Chur in the same way—lingered staring at Tully, reached and almost touched . . . but not quite. He turned then and walked back. "Hilfy," he said. "My ship," Hilfy said. "My ship, father." It cost him, as much as the other yielding. He nodded. Hilfy took his massive hand, turned and took the hands of Huran Faha, who nodded likewise. "Come on," Pyanfar said. "Come on, all of you. Move. I'll get her back, Kohan." "All of you," he said. The others gathered themselves and headed for the door in haste, some delaying to go back after weapons. Pyanfar stayed an instant, looked at Kohan, his :eyes, his golden, shadowed eyes; his ears were pricked up, he managed that. "That matter," she said, "this Outsider of mine—I'll be back down to explain it. Don't worry. Get Chanur back in order. We've got an edge we haven't had before, hear me?" "Go," he said softly. "I'll get it settled here. Get to it, Pyanfar." She came back and touched his hand, turned for the door, crossing the room in a dozen wide strides and headed off the porch, where no sign remained of the attack but the trampled garden and a passing of vehicles headed down the road beyond the wall, clearing out in haste. And Khym. Khym was there, by the gate, crouched there with his head on his folded arms. Fresh wounds glistened on his red-brown shoulders. He survived. He went on surviving, out of his time and his reason for living. "Khym," she said. He looked up. She motioned toward the side of the house, that pathway which the others had taken to the back, where they could find transport. He stood up and came, limping in the first steps and then not limping at all. "I'm filthy," he said. "No polite company." She wiped her beard and smelled her hand, sneezed. "Gods, I reek for both of us." "What is he?" "Our Outsider? Human. Something like." "Huh," Khym said. He was panting, out of breath, and the limp was back. They came along the side of the house, down the path by the trees at the back, and latecomers from the house reached them and fell in at their pace, carrying rifles. Khym looked back nervously. "It's all right," Pyanfar said. "You want to go, Khym? Want to have a look at station?" "Yes," he said. They reached the bottom of the hill, where Haral and Chur had started up two of the trucks, where a great number from Chanur were boarding, a good thirty, forty of them, besides those ten or so behind. Tully was by the side of one, with Hilfy. Pyanfar reached and cuffed Tully's arm. "Good," she said. "Up, Tully." He scrambled up into the bed, surprisingly agile for clawless fingers. Hilfy came up after him, and Khym vaulted up with a weight that made the truck rock. Others followed. Pyanfar went around to the cab, climbed in. "Go," she said to Haral, and the truck lurched into motion, around the curve and onto the road, toward the outer gates, flinging up a cloud of dust as they careened between the hedges, jolting into near-collision with the far post of the outer gate before they headed off across the field on the direct course toward the waiting ship. Gods help us, Pyanfar thought, looking back at the assortment which filled the bed of the truck, young and old Chanur, armed with rifles; and a one-time lord; and Tully; and the Llun, who had decided to come back with them after all. The ships had gotten off station to keep the kif there, and the kif were still there, indeed they were; were running the halls of station—kif loose with revenge in mind, a hakkikt who might see his own survival doubtful and revenge very much worth having. She faced about again, feet braced against the jolts as the truck lurched over uneven ground. Haral fought the wheel with desperate turns and reverses, following the track they had walked now, the beaten line of their own prints in the tall grass, where there would be fewer hidden pits and hummocks. "Hope Aja Jin's still in place," Haral muttered. "Hope Hinukku and the rest are," Pyanfar said, bracing her hand against the dash. "If we've got more kif than we had—if they've gotten a call out for reinforcements . . . ." "Lagtime's on our side." "Something had better be," Pyanfar said. "Gods, for a com." Haral shook her head and gave all her strength to the wheel, slowed as they jolted toward the slope of the stream. The truck lumbered its way over the grassy bank, clawed its way over muddy bottom and rocks, slewed about and found purchase on the other bank, headed up again, with the ungainly wedge that was Rau's Luck growing closer and closer. A light was flashing, sun-bright against the ship. Pyanfar pointed to it, and Haral nodded. The Rau saw them coming. Running lights began to flash, red and white, blink code. It was the message they already had. Haral flashed the headlights, a desperate snatch back at the wheel. Planetary speeds. In the time it had taken them to get this far from the house, a jumpship could cross an interworld distance. And perhaps some were doing that. The han was intact, the structure of Holdings which could decide policies; but the loss of Gaohn Station— She cursed herself, to have assumed any revenge would be too great for Akukkakk's pride; to strike at stations—he had done that; no one struck at worlds, not in the whole history of the civilized powers. Except the kif. . . it was rumored that they had done so, in their own rise off their native world, in the contests for power. They had once struck at their own. Chapter 13 The engines put on thrust, a hollow roar of the downworld jets, and the Luck lifted. Pyanfar dropped into the rear of the dark control pit as the deck came up, hit heavily and crouching and tucked down, straightening the blanket and pillow she had gotten to pad her back in that nook, on the pit floor behind the Rau's three cushions. The captain lifted her hand, signal that her presence was noted, and reached at once back to the board in front of her. The Luck went on rising; the gear thumped up into the housings and the pressure mounted. Pyanfar discovered a pain in her shoulder and struggled a little against the blanket to relieve it. Not so steep a lift compared to the angle at which they had landed: the lander flew, of sorts, vertical lift at first, and then an angled flight which still had aft for downside, g-wise. The primaries cut in with a thrust which settled all her gut differentially toward her spine. Some of their company were well off, aft, in the padded passenger shell: Tully and Khym and Ginas Llun were settled there, in thick cushions; and Haral, to keep them company and settle problems. The unlucky rest rode the boards, tilting cushioned partitions expanded from the next bulkhead—blind, dark misery, packed in like fish, four across, the back of the next cushion tilting back and forth almost in one's face . . . gods, gods, to ride like that with the ship going into trouble aloft—she felt guilt for being where she was, in what relative comfort she had. The copilot let an object fall to her. She reached with difficulty and gathered the plastic-wrapped article from the angle of the pit where it stayed fast, unwrapped the earplug and thrust it in. No information was coming in during their ascent, only static, but having the contact helped. Station had gotten that one message off, had still been sending it out when ascent began, which meant that the station central command had been in hani control and that stationers had their hands full, sparing no one to answer questions. It kept going, meaning that the kif had not gotten to it to silence it—or that they had had no critical interest in doing so. But the docks—She pictured the workers fled in panic, disorganized, having no preparation against such an action as the kif had taken. Attacking stations was not a thing hani would do; therefore it was not reasonable; therefore there was no contingency. Gods blast such thinking, and the complacency which fed it. Gods blast her own; and hani nature, that they ran each for their own fragmented concerns, because all the world was set up that way. She had had no choice in going home to Chanur, because a hani would go on with challenge while the house caught fire, until the fire singed his own hide. Hani always went their own way, disdaining Outside concerns, pricklish about admitting they would not be in space at all but for the mahendo'sat explorers who had found them—but that was so. And hani went on doing things the old way, the way that had worked when there were no colonies and no outside trade; when hani were the unchallenged owners of the world and hani instincts were suited to the world they owned. But, gods, there were other ecosystems. They had another one going, in the Compact itself; and they dealt with distances wider than the grassy expanses of Anuurn's plains; and with creatures of instincts which had proven equally capable of being right in other ways. In one unimagined hell, the kif way had worked best; and gods, even the chi way had worked somewhere, lunatic as they seemed, incomprehensible to Outsiders. And Tully—who sometimes made half sense, and at other times made none at all. Had Goldtooth despised her for her desertion, because being hani she had had no choice but to go, in the face of every reason to the contrary? Shame pricked at her, the suspicion that all hani-kind had failed a mahen hope, that hope which had lent those two ships; and that somewhere up above might be the wreckage of her mahen allies and The Pride itself, with a kif waiting to blow this shell of a lander to vapor and junk, along with the hani brain who had just figured out something critical to the species, far too late. Madness. The angle had her brain short of oxygen. There was a grayness about her vision. She felt nothing any longer in her backside and her arms and her legs, and the pressure kept on building. Engine sound changed. They were leaving the envelope of air, still accelerating. She blinked and struggled to move her neck, saw through a blur telltales winking in the darkness, saw a flare of light as the scan screen cleared. She blinked again, trying to see past the silhouetted arm of the copilot, making out something large and close to their position. ". . . Luck," a voice snapped through the plug into her ear, "this is The Pride of Chanur. We'll match with you and lock on." Tirun. If she could have leaped up and shouted for joy she would I have done so. Pinned by the g force, it was all she could do to smile, a strained and difficult smile, with her heart hammering against her ribs and the blood bringing pain to her extremities. Then the Luck's engines stopped, and she gasped a reflexive breath in the sudden relief. The invisible hand which had pressed her to the deck was gone, and she reached in a practiced hand-over-hand to the com board, drifting feet toward the overhead and tucking down again to reach the mike. "Hurry it, Tirun, for the gods' sake. And to the Rau: "Where are the kif? Can you pick them up?" "Station's scan's off," the Rau navigator said. "Not just Gaohn's: Harn and Tyo too, completely down. We've got our own, that's all." "Put on the rescue beeper," Pyanfar said, thrusting that dire news to a far recess of her mind. "The Pride can home on it. Let her automatics take you." "Advice," the captain said. "Your job now, ker Chanur. Gods help us, we're stone blind to any jumpships moving out there." "Keep her trimmed and constant and watch out for the shock." Pyanfar aimed herself back to the shelter of her padded nest in haste. "Those grapples will do the fine matching, don't try the jets. She's moving under comp." "Gods, it's on us," the copilot said. "Closing," Geran's voice sounded through the com plug. "Stand by, Luck." A proximity alarm started, quickly silenced from the board. Scan broke up. "O gods," said the navigator. Pyanfar tucked, clenching the cushion support with all her strength. Impact. The Luck rang and leapt and her body left the deck, grip scarcely holding; hit it again, shoved back as the grapples grated, shifted. Held. There was a comforting silence. Weightlessness. "Got trouble," Tirun's voice said. "Blow that lock out; we've got a tube the other side. For the gods' sake board, abandon ship. We can't defend you." "Haral!" Pyanfar yelled down the core corridor. "Everyone! get forward!" "Captain," Nerafy Rau said. "Come on," Pyanfar said, hauled herself to the captain's cushion and hung there one-handed, staring down at her. "All of you . . . gods, come with us. We'll get you back to your ship if there's a chance of it. If not that, there's kif to settle with, and those people on the stations—will you die here with no shot fired?" "No," the Rau captain said, and started unbuckling. The others did. Pyanfar completed the somersault and looked aft down the corridor, at a white-shirted human sailing up it narrowly in advance of a flood of armed hani. The Rau captain handed her way up from the pit and headed for the nearby lock and Pyanfar grabbed for the board and the mike as the crew left it. "Tirun! Where are the kif?" "Gods know. Mahijiru's running far-guard; tell you the rest when you get here." The bodies of her companions tumbled about her. The lock powered inward and airshock rammed through in a cold gust. "Coming," Pyanfar said, and let the mike go, kicked at the nearest conduit and flung herself into the stream of bodies, into the dark and numbing cold of The Pride's ship-to-ship grapple-tube. Extremities went numb. Breath stung in the lungs and moisture threatened to freeze her eyeballs. It hurt, gods, it hurt. A light glowed green as she arrived in The Pride's null-g outer frame, a safety beacon, a guidance star far across the dark, marking the location of the personnel lift. A blue chain of glowlights dotted across the blackness toward it, the safety line. "Khym!" Pyanfar shouted, thinking of his inexperience, "blue's the guideline, Khym . . . Tully! go to the blue lights!" "Got him," Hilfy's young voice shouted up ahead. "Got them both." A door opened onto the lift. Someone had gotten to it. A distant rectangle opened, blinding white, with a score of dark bodies hurtling and struggling along the blue dotted course toward it, large and small with distance, some like swimmers in the air, some using the rope and propelling the swimmers along. Bodies collided and caught each other and kept going, one after the other, into that lift chamber, where they took on color and identity. Pyanfar found herself slung along the final distance, hauled into the lift; and among the last came the Rau, into that blinding glare. "We're in," Chur was shouting into com. Haral shouted a warning and closed the lift door, and suddenly all the floating bodies tended floorward as the car moved. "Brace!" Pyanfar snapped at the novices, but experienced spacers grabbed them, and of a sudden the car thundered and slammed into synch with the rotating inner cylinder. There was full g, and the lift slammed upward again, with a queasy rear-of-the-car acceleration stress as The Pride put on a gingerly movement. Something banged in the distance. "Grapple's clear," Haral said. The lift went on rising, past lowerdeck, to main. Feet found the floor; bedraggled groundlings hugged those who had a hold on them, ears flat and eyes wild. The car stopped and opened on main. Pyanfar thrust herself through and out, raced down the main corridor for the archway of the bridge, claws scrabbling on the decking against the gentle thrust. Haral was hard on her heels. "Lowerdeck," Chur shouted behind them. "Ride it back down where there's secure space." The door closed; the lift hummed into function again. Pyanfar did not look back. She hurled herself the last difficult distance, past Geran and Tirun at the number three and two posts as Haral found her place and slid into it. Pyanfar reached her own vacant cushion and flung herself into it without a word. Scan images were coming up on her screens, their position relative to the world and the station—a dot that was knnn-symboled, hovering off apart from the chaos of other dots, two marked mahe, and the horrid hazard near the station, a horde of unidentifieds, debris sweeps that marked the death of ships and the course of their remains. "Aja Jin took damage," Tirun said steadily. "Kif invaded traffic control on the station and knocked the scan out. Llun had their hands full; everyone was boarding any ship at all. We broke out of dock and ran with the rest . . . figured they were screening incoming ships. Strike came in three quarters of an hour ago. Outbound now. We're headed back in to station, present course: Fortune got a landing party in. Several others got in after them. Proceed?" "Keep talking. Go as we bear." She reached and hit the motion warning. "We're moving," she said over allship. "Brace; I'm going to keep the com open from our end. We've got troubles and I don't want any stirring about down there. Tirun, what's the comp on that kif movement? Got a course plotting?" The data flashed to the screen. "All stations have killed scan output. Some of the kif are out of dock but we don't know which. Only good thing in it, with station's scan stopped a good bit before the strike, they had only our last-known position to go on and the attack missed most of us. Aja Jin got it, being posted stationary; at least one freighter was hit and we think some of the kif, but we don't know who got hit, because no one's outputting much chatter and a lot of the freighters are scan-blanked and hiding. I figure they'll go for the fixed targets on the next pass—the station, Aja Jin's last position . . ." "Anuurn, maybe." Tirun threw her an ears-flat look. "You've got it going," Pyanfar said. "I'll go with it. Give me the rest of your reckoning. Where do you reckon Akukkakk is?" "I think he was one that got off station; and he can't have boosted fast enough to have run with the strikers. I figure he's one of those ships out there, quiet like all the rest of them. And we find out just which one he is when that strike force comes sweeping back in." Pyanfar nodded. To take the maneuver they had handed him—the undocking of the freighters—and to turn it to his own advantage . . . that was very probable. That was Akukkakk's style, for which she had begun to acquire a sense: a pattern of movements, a tendency to up the stakes when challenged. "He's going to go on sending them in against the station," she judged, "hammer it into junk. That, for a lesson for us. But he knows rotted well which one we are, cousins: we're all too conspicuous, and I've a notion which way he'll go when he can—even odds between us and Mahijiru. And since Mahijiru's got Jik by him . . ." She cast a glance at scan, where the mahe rode as a double blip hard by the kif position at station. "They'll be overriding their own scan, that strike force, but Akukkakk's going to have a good identified image for them. Gods rot him." "We drop our people at station," Haral said from the fourth cushion, "and pull a tight turn, maybe; go sort that crowd out." "Got to do something, that's sure. Tirun: to you." She shunted back what activity her board had received. "Take us in. I'm going to talk to the others. Going to need all the rest of you up here. Stay put, Haral." "Right," Haral muttered. Pyanfar turned the cushion, slid out of it, headed out of the bridge at a dead run into the direction of thrust, digging in for traction. She skidded to a collision with the wall at the lift, hit the call button and caught her breath while it came. It arrived; she stepped in and waited while it sped her to the lowerdeck, tremors in her muscles, a tendency to shiver in what ought not to be a chill. Lowerdeck main corridor. She found the Chanur gathered there, braced sitting in the passage, rifles in laps, the best security they could find near their exit. They scrambled up as she came . . . and there was Chur among them, and Khym; and Tully, with Hilfy; and the Llun and the Chanur captains and their crews. She went among them, caught Chur's arm and looked at the others. "You've understood?" "Understood," Rhean Chanur said. "We try to get the stationers rounded up and if we have to ride through another strike—we get to core and try to wait your pickup after it's past. Gods help us." "The Pride will be back, Rhean; that's your ship that forced the breach: your crew, gods look on them. I don't know what damage she may have taken: you'd better plan for any pickup that comes for you. Anfy: same goes; any ship. Got in-systemers filling jumpship posts, anything we can get. Gods know who's where. The rest of you: if you use those guns, you pair up with the crews and give backup fire. Hit the wrong target and you'll kill your own allies, hear? Or blow a seal; keep your wits straight and know what's behind what you're shooting at. You go shooting on a station, hear me, you put your shots on the decking and work up their legs." Young ears lowered in distress; eyes stared, black-centered. Hilfy's look was something else again, ears pricked, sober. Pyanfar stared at her, at once pleased and heartsick. No way to pull her out of it. No need. Those who went onto station and those who stayed with The Pride were in equal danger. Maybe more, for them on the ship. Akukkakk would see to it, given the chance. "Approaching dock." com said. "Stand by for braking." "We'll not waste time," Pyanfar said quietly, to those about her. "Chur; Hilfy; you're all The Pride can send: do it right and get back; all of you—Khym . . . go with my crew, hear?" He nodded. There was a pricklishness in the air. No one else would have been glad to take him. In Chur's and Hilfy's eyes there was no flinching. He glanced toward them and the remnant of his ears lifted in the look they gave him. For her sake, she thought. Gods help them—if he got one of them killed, rushing into something blind-crazy. Braking started. They braced against the corridor wall—hard thrust, and miserable for the approach. Pyanfar shut her eyes a moment, slid down to a crouch with the rest of them, content for the moment to be where she was and wishing to all the gods she could go with them. Tully—squatted down close to Hilfy; Pyanfar turned her head, tightened her mouth in consideration. That was the one who might bolt. That was the one, deaf to instructions, crazy with anger. Khym crouched farther down, shamed, she knew, by his condition; by the distrust about him, the expectation that he would be more danger than help to his own side, prone to take his own way, prone to male temper and instability—Khym, who had saved all their necks and given them the chance to get aloft in time. Like Kohan, fretting in agony downworld, because he was trapped in Chanur Holding; and gods, he had won. They lost g, made the shifts, such that bodies leaned against one another in the nudgings of the docking jets, and those who had a hold braced those who did not. Contact. The last direction of g confirmed itself and the grapples clanged home, the access thumped into position. "Got contact with a hani force out there," Geran said. "You've got a clear exit. Luck to you." "Have some yourself," Chur called up at the com. "Hai, up there," Hilfy shouted, and the lot of them scrambled up in readiness to rush to the lock. Pyanfar rose with the rest of them. '"Tully," she said, and beckoned him. His face which had been eager took on an apprehension of what she wanted; she beckoned a second time, with the Chanur forces beginning to head down the corridor toward the lock, and when he did not come she went after him and took him by the arm, while Chur and Hilfy delayed. "Go," Pyanfar said to the two. "Take care." They went, in orderly haste, with the others, down the corridor toward the lock. Pyanfar laid her ears back, felt Tully pull at her hand. "Ask," he said. "Fight them, Pyanfar." "No," she said. "You can't hear orders out there, understand? Come with me. Come up to the bridge." If his pathetic small ears could have moved they would have lain down, she thought; it was that kind of look. "Yes," he said in a small voice. "Understand." The lock opened and shut again shortly after. "Coming up," she called to the open com. "Easy on the undocking." Tully came with her, running beside her. She got him into the lift and he leaned against the wall with his eyes on hers, with pain in those eyes, like Kohan's pain—shadowed eyes, his bright mane tangled, his whole body shrunken with exhaustion and unhappiness. "We go," she said as the lift opened onto the bridgeward corridor. "We get the kif, friend, find Akukkakk and settle a score, ship and ship." "There?" He made a wide gesture, infinity. "This system. All too close." She strode through the archway onto the bridge, grabbed Tully's arm and thrust him for the auxiliary seat next Haral's post, none so safe there, but nothing was. She slid into her own well-worn cushion and fastened the restraints while Tirun ungrappled; took the controls as The Pride acquired her own g, sent them out narrower than she would have cut it with station authorities in a position to protest. "Situation as-was?" she asked Tirun. "Figure we've got a little under a half hour on that strike," Tirun said. "Haral: to all ships; got kif among us; broadcast ID's, now—house and origin—and get our own signal going." "Right." She put them over station. Vid showed the two mahe ships clear enough, a scattering of ships which had never made it away from dock, some wrecked, some trailing debris that streamed in the station's rotation. Kif ships, three of them, still at dock, with their tails singed: Mahijiru had done that much. From the mahe . . . nothing, neither signal nor output. But they started to move, one after the other. "We've stirred something," she said. "Our friends have some notion they're not talking about." "Getting ID input," Geran said. Scan started acquiring data, positive ID's on hani ships. The knnn zigged and darted at some velocity, throwing off small ghosts that indicated boosts. Pyanfar ran her tongue over her teeth, refusing that distraction, watching the pattern of those ships as yet unidentified, as more and more identifications came in and The Pride increased her own speed. Another ship was moving in on dock, and another one behind, insystem haulers, at a standstill compared to their own building velocity. Ships were moving in random directions, not to be caught when the strike came in—at least that was their hope. "Rot them!" Haral exclaimed. "Crippled even—look at that speed." Jik, Haral meant. Aja Jin trailed debris; but the two mahe kept accelerating with no apparent impairment . . . straight into the thickest concentration of ships. She eased up, shut down altogether. The mahe had given up flexibility, launched themselves into the heart of things, deliberate and less and less able to veer off and handle a turn. "Maintain our options," she said quietly. Suddenly a freighter designated hani blossomed into chaff. "Captain," Tirun said. Three unidentifieds in the vicinity acquired the enemy designation. Mahijiru and Aja Jin swept toward the group. "Keep out of our way, rot you," Pyanfar muttered. Haral was on com, advising all ships in the area to head off the kif movement. "Going to have the mahe in line of fire if they do a straight turnover," Geran said. "Fire headon—" "Going to let the kif pass our zenith," Pyanfar said grimly. "That's our best side anyway." "I've got it," Tirun advised her, throwing the safety off the armaments of the upper frame. "Knnn's coming up," Geran said sharply, and the proximity alarm beeped as the high-velocity ship ripped from tail to bow, nadir, gone into the developing mahe/kif confrontation so fast scan developed them a line of likely course. "Mahijiru's compliments." Haral relayed. Scan showed debris, hani, mahe, or kif was uncertain: positions were too close. Dots coincided and split as the kif moved toward them. Someone was hit; and suddenly the fight was headed The Pride's way. "Akukkakk's there," Pyanfar said, beyond doubt what kif would rate The Pride his prime target, disregarding the mahe who had just attacked. "Two ship now," Tully exclaimed. Scan showed the mahe still paired, no longer accelerating and probably braking for their return; showed hani moving on the kif from points of the sphere; and two active kif ships. The third was involved with a debris-track, near the knnn's erratic blip. "That kif they get." "This pair we got," Tirun muttered. The double image was closing with them, less and less interval, with their own impetus added to the kif's oncoming velocity. The knnn was on the return now, streaking out of the vicinity of the debris-track. Mahijiru and Aja Jin were farther and farther away, obliged to lose velocity before they could make way on the kif's heading, too close to traffic for jump pulses to assist. "Which one?" Tirun asked. "Take the best target," Pyanfar said. "I can't tell." Hani jumpships were on the near-scan now, several of them, hammering toward intercept with the kif, but not in time for The Pride, No place for a freighter, a race with the swift hunter-ships, even cargo-dumped. No way to win. "Now!" The kif ripped past them, zenith, and they fired. Screens broke up. Explosion slammed The Pride askew and red-lighted the boards. Pyanfar reached in an adrenalin timestretch, fought the pitch and wobble. In the screen's clearing a new rapid image bore down on them, a high knnn wail in com. It went past them, zenith. Pyanfar spun The Pride one hundred eighty degrees in a tail roll, anticipating a kif turnover and return pass, hoping to get a shot off. Mahijiru and Aja Jin would come; were coming; might get back in time. The Pride fired back as the guns came in line: the kif had proceeded into turnover as their respective momentum separated them, and fire came back, broke up screens, red-lighted remaining clear boards. "Got one," Geran yelled. "Look at that bastard wobble. By the gods we got him!" Fire from the other kept up. The interval was still increasing between them, but at a slower rate. It would be coming back . . . soon. "Goldtooth," Pyanfar said, punching in the com, "rot you, hurry it a bit, someone out there hurry it." The knnn was pulling about in a tight turn, one of those maneuvers a knnn could survive and hani could not. It zigged into the interval, into the line of fire. "Good job," Goldtooth's voice reached The Pride. "Got—" Com broke up. Scan suddenly went berserk, all the sensors blind . . . . . . jump field. Gods, a jump field—in crowded space. "Captain!" Tirun yelled, far away and suddenly close as the field let them go. Tully cried out, a miserable wail. Something was there—where nothing had been; a massive presence, a vast blip on scan as it cleared, a monster located to starboard zenith. They were off their heading, displaced. Everyone was. Comp was flickering wildly trying to compensate. Pyanfar keyed into the system, trying to get sense out of it. Gods, the newcomer was huge. Scan had the other blips, that were the kif and the mahe and the hani and the solitary knnn— "Captain." Haral's voice. Corn went on broadcast again, a wailing chorus which overburdened the audio, noise vibrating above and below hearing, wounding the ears. The huge blip broke apart, fragmented, not debris, but discrete parts of which one stayed central and the rest sped outward. "Knnn," Pyanfar breathed. "Traveling in synch. Gods help us all." "Hani—" Com crackled through the static, a familiar, kifish voice. "Pyanfar Chanur—" The knnn ships moved together, a cloud of them, headed for the kif; and all at once the kif's outgoing velocity began to show increase—Akukkakk had way and he was throwing everything he had into it. Retreating. Unable to boost up: the knnn were too close, and closer yet. The solitary knnn ship zigged and darted and joined the chase. "Chanur!" Goldtooth said. Pyanfar watched the screens, frozen in place. Hani voices came over com, panicked, questioning. The chase on scan gathered more and more velocity. Of a sudden came another output, a signal which made no sense to comp: scan started blinking on the ship-sized object the knnn had left behind, asking operator intervention. An alien voice came over com, Tully-like and frightened. Pyanfar cast a glance at Tully, who clung sweating and jump-shocked to the edge of the com counter, whose eyes stared wildly as the voice kept going. "## ship," translator rendered the transmission from the newcomer. "## ship ## you." "Com!" Pyanfar yelled at Haral and got it. Her heart pounded against her ribs. "This is the hani ship The Pride of Chanur. You're in hani space. Friend, hear?" "Captain," Tirun cried, "Captain, the knnn—" The translator response droned in her ears. Pyanfar stared at the screen, at a narrower and narrower gap between the knnn and the fleeing kif. "Tully," she said without looking around. "Haral—give him com. Give it to him." The translator voice went out, cut. She flung an instant's look back, at Tully, who had gotten himself together, who had the mike in hand and talked a wild-eyed rapid patter at these creatures who had arrived in knnn synch, in a ship which had come in hauled like so much freight, unable to communicate with the knnn— "Captain—" She looked about again. Knnn closed with Hinukku, surrounded the kif, became one mass about it, as they had been massed about the Outsider ship at its arrival. "Gods," Tirun muttered. "They're trading," Pyanfar said incredulously. "Like at Kirdu—gods, they're making a trade. An Outsider ship—for Hinukku. For Akukkakk." "Pyanfar!" Goldtooth's voice came over com. "You got sense these bastard?" "Human ship," Pyanfar said, punching in her still-active link. "The knnn just dropped a live cargo on us. Tully's kind. They're still going, by the gods, the knnn are still going, outbound." "Kif ship leave station," Jik cut in. "He go." A solitary kif, of the crippled three at station . . . it was so: a lame kif without a tail, headed out on the course of the other lame kif, inching his way into retreat. "Right down the incoming strike track, that's their course," Pyanfar said, fairly shaking with excitement. "By the great and lesser gods, they're pulling out, they're going to run." There was a sudden and major vacancy on scan, the characteristic scatter-ghost of a ship departed into jump—where the mass of knnn had been, enveloping Hinukku. A vast ghost, a ripple in space-time; and hard after it—a smaller ghost, their own knnn. Vanished. The two remaining kif kept going, realspace and realtime, headed for the far dark and sending out a steady signal, telling of disaster. Running for their lives. "We got," Goldtooth said. "Got, Pyanfar." "Got. Gods know what we've got." She heard Tully still chattering back and forth with the newcomer, heard lilts and tones in his speech she had never heard. She looked back at him, who had all but usurped Haral's com board. He saw her. His face was wet. "Friend," he said to her in her own language. "All friend." Gods knew what there was to say to the newcomers that the translator could convey without foulup. Gods knew how to cope with a dozen other Tullys equally confused and upset as he had been in his arrival. "They come," she said slowly, distinctly. "Tell them they come to station." "Come, yes." She spun about again, toward the screens, started putting on thrust for a stationward course. Other ships were proceeding on that heading, the hani jumpships who had never slackened speed; hani who had kin on station; hani who had crew from station or who had dropped landing parties on the docks to try to assist the Llun. Anything might be happening there, even now, with kif elsewhere in rout. A hundred Outsiders plated in gold could not have interested her at the moment. "Captain—" Geran said; and of a sudden new data came up on the screens, and a familiar steady signal came over audio. "Station's broadcasting again, captain." She heard the mahe advise them of the obvious, heard the alien chatter from the Outsider, who must have picked it up, and the voices of hani sending anxious queries to station. "Station is entirely secure," the answer came back. "This is Kifas Llun speaking; resistance has ended and the station is entirely secure." Pyanfar kept up the thrust, reckless of the lights which advised of damage. That rotted number one vane was hit again; gods knew what else was gone, but the fine control was still there; and likewise their ability to brake: no limping in; no lanes established yet: they were all see-and-avoid. Other signals came in. Harn Station was back on output; and then Tyo, reporting minor damage, minor casualties. Hilfy, Pyanfar kept thinking; and Chur. And Khym: at the bottom of her thoughts, Khym, for whom she had no hope. But that was what he had come looking for, after all. A sweat prickled on her nose. Breath came hard under the acceleration. The mahe traveled with them, and for its own reasons and in its own purpose, the Outsider ship came, outstripping slower insystem haulers for whom that voyage was the work of hours. By the time they could get there, Gaohn Station might have some reckoning of the casualties. Chapter 14 The Pride opened accesses while Mahijiru eased into dock beside her, and Jik's Aja Jin stood watch toward that quarter of the system out of which some stray kif might still come . . . not expected, but they took precautions. The Outsider ship came in more slowly still, permitted docking, but having to accomplish it without understanding the language, the procedures, and without compatible equipment: "Beside us," Pyanfar had told them simply. "You got vid? You see four grapples: airlock placed in center, understand? You go slow, very careful. You have trouble, you stop, wait, back off: small ship can come from station, help you dock. All understood?" "Understand," the answer had come back through the translator. And the Outsider arrived, cautiously . . . wondering, doubtless, at the holed carcasses of kif ships nearby; at the signs of fire which pitted the adjacent section of the station torus. Someone on the dock got a direct line hooked up. "Captain," Geran cried, her eyes shining amber. "Captain, it's Chur and Hilfy. They're there, both of them!" "Huh," Pyanfar said judiciously, because there was a docking Outsider chattering in her other ear at the moment; but relief jellied her gut, so that she heard very little of the Outsider's babble at all. She looked at her crew, and at Tully, whose eyes had lighted at the news. "They're safe," he asked, "Chur and Hilfy?" "We're going out there," Pyanfar said, thrusting back from the controls. "All of us, by the gods." She stood up, remembered the tape they had duped on the way in and pocketed it. "Come on." They came, off the bridge and long-striding down the corridor, Tully too, rode down the lift and marched out the lock. If there was ever a time for running for joy, it was that last walk down the rampway; but Pyanfar held herself to a sedate walk down the ramp, into the wide, fire-scarred dock where hani stood with weapons. Chur and Hilfy and some of the other Chanur—o gods, Hilfy, with a bloodstained bandage round her side and leaning on Chur who had one arm in a sling. They smiled, in shape to do that, at least. Chur hugged Geran one-armed, and Pyanfar took Hilfy by both shoulders to look at her. Hilfy was white about the nose, with pain in the set of her mouth, but her ears were up and her eyes were bright. "We got them," Hilfy said hoarsely. "Got behind them at the dockside while others came through the core and pushed them out to us. And then I think they got some kind of order because they went frantic to get to their ships. That was the big trouble. One got away. The rest—we got." "Khym." Hilfy turned with some evident stiffness, indicated a figure, crouched against the far side of the dock, small with distance. "Na Khym got the one that got me, aunt, thank the gods." "Hit them hand to hand, he did," Chur said. "Said he never could shoot worth anything. He came across that dock and hit that kif, and gods, five of them never more than singed his fur. I don't think they ever saw a hani of his size—gods, it was something. They bailed out of cover and we got the leftovers." Pyanfar looked, at once proud and sad, at that quiet, withdrawn figure. Proud of what he had done—Khym, who had never been much for fighting—and sad at his state and his future. Gods, if they could only have killed him—given him what her son had not had the grace to give . . . . Or perhaps Kara had sensed he could not kill him; that Khym Mahn backed to the wall was a different Khym indeed. "I'll see him," she said. "We're going to get you two to station hospital." "Begging pardon," Hilfy said, "station hospital's got its hands full. Rhean's got someone hit bad; and Ginas Llun—she's none too good either; and a lot of others." "Hilan Faha," Chur said, "and her crew—they're dead, captain. All of them. They led the way in for the core break-through. They insisted to. I think it was shame—for the company they'd kept." "Gods look on them, then," Pyanfar said after a moment. "The Tahar—" Hilfy said bitterly, "got Moon Rising out and ran for jump. Ran for it. That's what they're saying on station. But the Faha wouldn't go with them." "That'll be the end," Pyanfar said. "When that tale gets back to Enafy province, Kahi Tahar and his lot won't show their faces in Chanur land or elsewhere." "Hani," a mahen voice bellowed, and here came Goldtooth and crew, a dozen dark-furred, rifle-carrying mahendo'sat flooding toward them, towering over them. Goldtooth grabbed Pyanfar's hand and crushed it till claws reminded him to caution. He grinned and slapped her on the shoulder. "Got number one help, what I tell you?" Hani were staring at this mahe-hani familiarity. Her crew was. Pyanfar laid her ears back in embarrassment, recalled then what they owed Goldtooth and his unruly lot and pricked the ears up at once. More, she linked arms with the tall mahe, and gave the gawkers on dockside something proper to stare at. "Number one help," she said. "Got deal," said Goldtooth. "Got friend Jik repair, same you get at Kirdu. Chanur fix, a?" "Rot you—" "Got deal" "Got," she admitted, and suffered another slap on the shoulder. She looked at Tully, thinking of Chanur balance sheets, debits and credits. Looked at him looking at her with those odd pale eyes full of worship. Behind him an accessway had opened. His own kind had come, gods, a bewildering assortment, pale ones and dark ones and some shades in between. "Tully," she said, signed with her eyes that he should look, and he did. He froze for the instant, then ran for them, hani-dressed and hani-looking, ran to his assorted comrades, who were clipped and shaved and clothed top and bottom in skintight garments shod besides. Hands reached out to him; arms opened. He embraced them all and sundry and there was a babble of alien language which echoed off the overhead. So he goes, Pyanfar thought with a strange sadness—and with a certain anxiety about losing a valuable contact to others—to Llun, by the gods, who would be eager to get their own-claws in; and Kananm and Sanuum and some of the other competitors in port. Pyanfar shed Goldtooth's arm and crossed the dock toward the knot of humans, her own companions following her. Tully brought his people at least halfway when he saw her, came rushing up and grabbed her hand with fevered joy. "Friend," he said, his best word, and dragged her reluctant hand toward that of a white-maned human, whose naked face was wrinkled as a kif's and tawny-colored like a hani's. The captain, she thought; an old one. She suffered the handclasp with claws retracted, bowed and got a courteous bow in return. Tully spoke in his own language, rapidly, carrying some point—indicated one after another of them and said their names his way—Haral and Tirun, Geran and Chur and Hilfy, and the mahendo'sat at least by species. "Want talk," Tully managed then. "Want understand you." Pyanfar's ears flicked and lifted, the chance of profit within her reach after all. She puckered her mouth into its most pleasant expression. Gods, some of them were odd. They ranged enormously in size and weight and there were two radically different shapes. Females, she realized curiously; if Tully was male, then these odd types were the women. "We talk," Goldtooth interposed. "Mahe make deal too." "Friend," Pyanfar told the humans in her best attempt at I human language. Tully still had to translate it, but it had its effect. "I come to your ship," she said, choosing Tully's small hani vocabulary. "Your ship. Talk." "I come too," Goldtooth said doggedly, not to be shaken. Tully translated. "Yes," Tully rendered the answer, grinning. "Friend. All friend." "Deals like a mahe," Pyanfar muttered. But that arrangement was well enough with her. She suddenly conceived plans—for the further loan of two mahe hunter ships on a profitable voyage. "Captain," Haral said, touching her arm and calling her attention to a cluster of figures coming out of the dockside corridor. Llun were on their way—Kifas Llun herself in the lead of I that group, come to answer this uncommon call at Gaohn Station, a score of black-trousered officialdom trailing after her. They would demand the translator tape, that was sure. Pyanfar thrust her hands into her waistband. "Friends," she assured Tully, who gave the approaching group anxious looks, and he in turn reassured his comrades. "Hilfy," Pyanfar said, "Chur, no need for you to stand through this. Go to the ship. Geran, you go and take care of them, will you?" "Right," Geran agreed. "Come on, you two." No protests from them. Chur and Hilfy started away in Geran's keeping and Tully delayed them to take their hands one by one as if he expected something might keep him from further good-byes. Gods, she had no desire to deal with the Llun or anyone at the moment. Her knees ached, her whole body ached, from want of sleep and from strain. She felt a span shorter than she had come across that blink from Kirdu.' They all must. Tully too. She wanted— She wanted to have time . . . to talk to her own; to find out who else of Chanur was hurt; to call Kohan . . . . And somehow—to talk to Khym. To do something, anything for his misery, in spite of what others thought and said. "Geran," she called out at the retreating group. "Khym too. Get him aboard and tend to him. Tell him I said so." A small flick of the ears. "Aye," Geran said, and went off in Khym's direction while Chur and Hilfy made their own way back. Pyanfar turned to the arriving Llun with a dazzlingly cheerful smile, fished the tape from her pocket and turned it over to Kifas at once with never a fade of good humor. "We register these good Outsiders, our guests, at Gaohn nation," Pyanfar said, "under Chanur sponsorship." "Allies, ker Chanur?" There was a frown of suspicion on Kifas Llun's face. "Nothing the Tahar said weighs here now with us . . . but did you send for them?" "Gods no. The knnn did that. Knnn who got a bellyful of kif intervention in their space, I'd guess; who found these Outsiders near their space and decided in their own curious fashion to see to it that they met reputable Compact citizens of a similar biology—snatched them up in synch, they did, and they took the hakkikt out the same way, may they have joy of him. They're traders, you know, ker Llun, after their own lights. I'll wager our human friends here don't know yet what's happened to them or how far they are from home or how they got here. They'll have drugged down and ridden out the jumps it took to get them here, and gods know how many that was or from where." "Introduce us," the Llun said. "I'll remind you," Pyanfar said, "that we and they have gone through too many time changes. We're not up to prolonged formalities. They're Chanur guests; I'm sponsoring them and I feel it incumbent on myself to see that they get their rest . . . but of course they'll sign the appropriate papers and register." "Introductions," the Llun said dryly, too old and too wise to be put off by that. "Tully," Pyanfar said, "you got too rotted many friends." It was what she expected, grueling, a strain on everyone's good humor, and entirely over-long, that visit to station offices. There was some restraint exercised, in respect to family losses, in respect to frayed and lately high tempers; in respect to the fact that for one time out of a hundred, hani had worked together without regard to house and province, and the cooperative spirit had not entirely faded. There was gratitude to Goldtooth and the mahe ships who got station privileges and repair. Gaohn Station was all too anxious to share the bill with Chanur, aching to get Aja Jin into the hands of Harn Shipyards, to be studied and analyzed during the course of the work. The mahendo'sat were evidently satisfied with the situation—smug bastards, Pyanfar thought, bristling somewhat as all hani did, at the unhappy truth that the mahendo'sat were always ahead of hani, that mahendo'sat technology which had gotten them into space in the first place was responsible for keeping them there. The mahendo'sat were apparently ready for their allies to see the hunter-ships, at least. Rot the Personage and his small fluff with him. Station was eager too for a look at the human ship; and doubtless the humans entertained some suspicions about that and everything else, but it was a fair question what they had in their power to do about it. They were, at least for the moment, effectively lost. "We find home," Tully said, "not far from Meetpoint. Know this. Your record, your ship instruments—help us " "Not difficult at all," Pyanfar said. "All we have to do is send your records through the translator and get our charts together, right? We come up with the answer in no time." "Mahendo'sat," Goldtooth said, "got number one good reckoning location human space. Number one good charts." All too many friends indeed, Pyanfar reflected. Tully went to his own, not without hugging her and Haral and Tirun, and shaking hands energetically with Goldtooth and with Kifas Llun and others—an important fellow among his people now, this Tully, surely; a person who knew things; a person with valuable and powerful friends. Good for him, she thought, recalling the wretched, naked creature under the pile of blankets in the washroom. She made the call to Kohan, a quick call—her voice was getting hoarse and her knees were shaking; but it was good to hear that things on the world had settled down, that Kohan had gotten himself a good meal and that the house was back in some order. While the world had been under kif guns, they had tidied up the house, cooked dinner, and started replanting the garden. Pyanfar lowered her ears at the thought, how little real the larger universe was to downworld hani, who had never thoroughly imagined what had almost happened to them; who heard about the terrible damage to the station as they might hear about some earthquake in a remote area of the globe, shaking their heads in sympathy and regretting it, but not personally touched—worried for their own kin, of course worried; and there would be hugging and sympathy at homecoming. But they set the world in order by replanting the garden and seeing Kohan fed. Gods look on them all. She went on the last of her strength to the hospital, to visit the Chanur wounded, because she was first in Chanur and it meant something to them; because she owed courtesy to Rhean, who sat with her mending crewwoman; because the news from home would do them good, these downworld Chanur not of the ship crews, who understood the necessity of planting gardens. She checked with station command, that the Rau had found a way back to their ship, which another mail freighter had managed to secure for them. And then she and Haral and Tirun walked the long way back to The Pride, all of them hoarse and exhausted and finding the limit of their energy simply in putting one foot in front of the other. She limped, realized she had somehow broken a claw; thought with longing of a bath, and bed, and breakfast when she should wake. But on The Pride, one thing more she did: she stopped by sick bay and looked in on Geran's charges, found Hilfy and Chur comfortably asleep on cots jammed side by side into the small compartment, and Geran drowsing in the chair by the door. Geran woke as her shadow crossed her face, murmured bleary-eyed apology. Pyanfar made a shrug. Tirun and Haral looked in at the door, leaned there in the frame, two worn ghosts. "Khym," Pyanfar said, missing him. "Cot in the washroom," Geran said. "By your leave, captain. He wouldn't accept Hilfy's quarters, but she tried to insist." "Huh." She edged through to see to Chur and Hilfy, saw their faces relaxed and their sleep easy, walked out. "Orders?" Haral asked in apparent dread: "Sleep," she said, and the sisters went their way gladly enough. For herself, she walked on down the corridor to the washroom and opened the door. Khym was safely tucked in bed, nested in blankets on a comfortable cot. One eye was bandaged. The other opened and looked at her, and he moved to sit up—clean, his poor ears plasmed together such as they could be, the terrible scratches on his arms and shoulders treated. Patches of his coat were gone where the scabs had been; his beard and mane were haggled up, doubtless where snarls had had to be snipped out. "Better?" she asked. "Ker Geran shot enough antibiotics into me, I should live forever." Rueful humor. She sank down on the end of the cot, refusing, as Khym refused, to abandon a cheerful face on things. She patted his knee. "I hear you put a wind up the kif's backs." He shrugged, flicked his ears in deprecation. "You got your look at station," she said. "What do you think of it?" Ears pricked up. "Worth the seeing." "Show you the ship when you and I get some sleep." "I can't stay up here, you know. You're going to have to find me a shuttle down tomorrow." "Why can't you stay up here?" He gave a surprised chuckle. "The Llun and others will say, that's who. Not many lords as tolerant as na Kohan." "So station's their territory. So, well. I thought you might consider taking a turn in mine. On The Pride." "Gods, they'd—" "—do what? Talk? Gods, Khym, if I can carry an Outsider male from one end of the Compact to the other and come out ahead of it, I can rotted well survive the gossip. Chanur can do anything it pleases right now. Got ourselves a prize in this Outsider; got ourselves a contact that's going to take years to explore. I can deal with Tully; and with the mahendo'sat—a whole new kind of deal, Khym. Who's to know—if you stay on the ship; who's to question—when we're not in home territory? What do you think the mahendo'sat care for hani customs? Not a thing." "Na Kohan—" "What's it to Kohan? You're my business, always were; he let you stay on Chanur land, didn't he? If he did that, he'd care less about you light years absent on a Chanur ship. And right now, what I want—Kohan's going to have a lot of patience with." He was listening, ears up and all but trembling. "Think so, do you?" "What's downworld got to offer you? Sanctuary? Huh. Think you'd go crazy on a ship? Unstable? Make trouble with the crew?" "No," he said after a moment. And then: "Oh, gods rot it, Pyanfar, you can't do something like that." "Afraid, Khym?" Ears went down. "No. But I have consideration for you. I know what you're trying to do. But you can't fight what is. Time, Pyanfar. We get old. The young have their day. You can't fight time." "We're born fighting it." He sat silent a moment. The ears came up slowly. "One voyage, if the crew doesn't object. Maybe one." "Be a while in port, getting our tail put back together again. Getting navigational details worked out. Then we go out again. A long voyage, this time." He looked up under his brow. "It's different out there," she said. "Not hani ways. No one species' way. Right and wrong aren't the same. Attitudes aren't. I'll tell you something." She crooked a claw and poked it at him. "Hani downworld want their houses and their ways unquestioned, that's all. They don't ask much what we do while the goods come in and don't cost outlandish much; they don't care what we do either, so long as we don't visibly embarrass the house. Kara's going to be upset. But he'll live with it. . . when The Pride's light years out of sight and mind. Might start a fashion. Might." "Dreamer," Khym said. "Huh." She got up, flicked her ears and waited to see him settled again. She walked out then, weaving a bit in her steps and figuring she had about strength enough to get to her own cabin and her own bath and her own bed, in that order. Tully came and went, among his human comrades, and on The Pride. He did not, to Pyanfar's surprise, cut his mane and shave his beard and walk about in human clothes: he did go shod, but no more change than that. For the sake of appearances, she thought; in respect of her one-time advice and the opinion of the Llun (and of Chanur too, that brief time they paid a downworld visit, to afford Kohan time with his favored daughter and a view of their sponsored guests). Tully flourished—grinned and laughed and moved with a spring in his step quite strange in him. He brought a solemn trio of humans off their ship to take notes aboard The Pride—Goldtooth attended with his own records—to ask questions and to exchange data until they had some navigational referents in common. They frowned suspiciously, these humans, but they stopped frowning when they learned precisely where home was—some distance beyond knnn space and kif. "Got between," Tully said enthusiastically, jabbing the chart which showed hani and mahendo'sat territory, cupping one hand on the hani-mahendo'sat side and one hand on the human side, with the kif neatly between. The hands moved together slowly, clenched. "So." So, so, so, Pyanfar thought, and her lips drew back and her nose wrinkled cheerfully. In time, he went, back to his own . . . that last sealing of the lock which marked the separation of the human ship from Gaohn. Ulysses, its name was, which Tully had said meant Far-Voyages. Nearly fifty humans lived on it, and whether they were related or not, she could not determine. They prepared to go. She started back across the docks to The Pride, to follow—with a smallish cargo, nothing of great mass, but items of interest to humans. There might be a chance to see Tully at voyage's end, but it would hardly be the same. He belonged with his own, that was what, and she did not begrudge him that. She planned to have use of that acquaintance, Tully—and the captain of this Far-Voyages. So, of course, did Goldtooth, with his sleek refitted ship, going with them, while Jik carried messages back to the Personage, no doubt, and the mahendo'sat tried to figure out how to cheat an honest hani out of exclusive arrangements. But the odds in that encounter were even. CHANUR'S VENTURE Chapter 1 The encounter of old friends was common enough on Meetpoint Station, where half a dozen species came to trade; and one such old friend came walking Pyanfar Chanur's way when she had no more than put The Pride in dock. She was hani, Pyanfar Chanur, maned and bearded in curling red-gold, sleek of pelt. Her left ear bore the gold rings of successful voyages along its rim, and the bottommost ring had a monstrous gaudy teardrop pearl. Her red blousing breeches were silk, with the faintest striping of orange; and wrapped about the waist was a belt whose dangling ties were finished in precious stones and gold and bronze. She was not quiet, this Pyanfar. She exuded wealth and dignity, and drew eyes wherever she went. And rounding a collection of canisters awaiting dockside pickup, she spied a dark-furred, all but naked shape: mahendo'sat—ordinary encounter anywhere on Meetpoint. But this one flung wide his arms. His eyes lit up, his broad mahen face broke into a charming grin that showed blunt primate fangs all capped in gold. "Pyanfar!" he cried. "You"! Pyanfar stopped dead in her tracks. "You!" She slapped aside the offered embrace and stalked past at a good clip, to make the mahendo'sat exert himself. "Ha, hani captain," the mahe called after her. "You want deal?" She turned about again, planted hands on hips and let the mahe overtake her against all better judgment. A heavy hand descended on her shoulder and the mahe resumed his gilt-edged grin. "Long time," Goldtooth said. "Gods rot you, don't grin at me. You want a smile from me, you mahen bastard? How'd you get in port?" "Just docked. Find my good friend here. Give surprise, a?" He laughed, slapped her on the back, seized her about the shoulders in one lank, coarse-pelted arm and propelled her toward the ship berths. "Got present, hani." "Present!" Pyanfar dug claws into the deck-plates, resisting this camaraderie, aware of probable witnesses, of a whole row of grinning mahendo'sat lazing in front of a canister-surrounded loading area. A ship access gaped ahead. Mahijiru, doubtless. "You owe me, mahe, owe me for tools and two good welders, for fake repairs, for doublecross—" "Good friend, Pyanfar Chanur." A powerful arm shoved her ramp ward through the gathered mahendo'sat, and she spun about and cast an indignant look back before Goldtooth wrapped his arm into a tighter grip and hastened her up the ramp. "Good friend. Remember I save your neck, a?" "Present," she muttered, stalking along the accessway. "Present." But she went, and stopped inside the lock, while some of the mahendo'sat who had trooped after them poured past into the interior corridors. Goldtooth turned sober for the moment, and she liked that less. Her ears were flat. "What kind present, huh?" The mahe winked, decidedly a wink, this trader who was no trader, who played what he was not, with Mahijiru which was not the slow-moving freighter it looked to be. "Good see you one piece, hani." "Huh." Her mouth pursed in better humor, in deliberate good humor. She slapped the mahe on the arm, claws not quite pulled. "Same good see you, Ana Ismehanan-min. You still play merchant?" "We trade sometime, keep us same honest." "Present, a?" The mahe looked to his left where the towering black wall of mahe crew parted. Pyanfar looked—and her ears went up and her mouth fell open at the gangling stsho-cloaked apparition in the doorway to Mahijiru's inmost corridors. A mostly hairless face with mane and beard like spun daylight; a face like nothing in civilized space. "O gods," she said, and whirled about, heading for the airlock, but the mahendo'sat had it packed. "Pyanfar," the human said. She turned, ears flat. "Tully," she said in despair, and lost the rest of her dignity as the human hastened to fling his arms about her. His clothes reeked of mahen incense. "Pyanfar," Tully said, and straightened up and towered over her, grinning like a mahe and trying to stop it, for he knew better. "Py-an-far." In evident delight. That was the limit of his conversation. That mouth was never made for hani speech. Goldtooth set his hand possessively on Tully's shoulder and squeezed. "Fine present, a, Pyanfar?" "Where'd you find him?" The mahen captain shrugged. "Come all the way mahen trader name Ijir, long time mahen ship, all time want you, Pyanfar Chanur, crazy mad human. Come find you, come find you, all he know." She looked up at Tully, who stood there with something brimming over in him, who had no possible business where he was, in mahendo'sat transport, light-years from human territory, in a zone where humankind was banned. "No," she said to Goldtooth. "No. Absolutely not. He's your problem." "He want find you," Goldtooth said. "Friend. Where your sentiment?" "Gods rot you—gods rot you, Goldtooth. Why? For what? What's he want?" "Want talk you. Your friend, hani, good friend, a?" "Friend. You earless, mangy bastard. I just got my papers clear—You know what it cost?" "Trade." Goldtooth came close and put his arm conspiratorially about her shoulders. She stood like rock, laid back her ears and grinned into his face in chill reception. "Trade, hani. You want make deal?" "You want to lose that arm?" Primate fangs gleamed gold. "Rich, hani. Rich—and powerful. You want this human trade? Got. Look this face—" "Have I got a choice?" A wider grin. "Loyal friend. Want you do a thing for me. Want you make this human happy, a? Want you take him to Personage. Want you take him to the han. Make all round happy. Got trade, hani. Profits." "Sure, profits." She shoved back at arm's length and stared up at that earnest mahen face. "Profits like last time, like bills up to the overhead, like hani barred six months from Meetpoint and The Pride out a gods-rotted year—" "Like stsho got lot gratitude hani save their hides, a?" "Same as the mahendo'sat. Same as the mahe who double-crossed me—" Black palms lifted. "Not my fault, not my fault. Stsho close Meetpoint, what I do?" "Snatch the trade, what else? What route you been running?" "You take him, a?" "You brought him here. Friend. It's all yours. So's the lawsuit. You explain it to the stsho!" "Got trade, Pyanfar—" "And get embargoed? Gods rot, you earless lunatic! You try to do for the rest of my business? The stsho—" "Pyanfar." He took her by both shoulders. "Pyanfar. I tell you, one paper this human got, he read for you this paper. They send him, this humanity. They got trade. Big business, maybe much big thing the Compact ever see. You got share." She drew a deep, long, mahe-flavored breath. "Favors, Goldtooth?" "A," he laughed, and hugged her shoulder with bone-crushing force. "Promise, hani. I make promise, keep. Got business. Got go. You take this human. Don't I make promise you get share human trade? I keep. This human come to me, I find my old friend Pyanfar for him. You want share, you take. But you got do this thing." "Now we get to it. Why?" "Got business. Got go fix." "Got business—how'd you get here? How'd you just happen to pull in on my tail?" "Know you come, old friend. I lie off and wait." "How'd you know? I didn't, till the papers cleared at Kura." "Got contacts. Know you got that stsho business clear. So you come here soon." "Gods rot your hide, mahe. That's a lie." Dark eyes glittered, shifted. "Say then I follow you from Urtur." "With him? Out of mahen space? No way, egg-sucker. How'd you arrange it?" The hand dropped from her shoulder. "You sharp dealer, hani." "What say instead the stsho kept Mahijiru off Meetpoint docking lists. Say you were here all along, blocked off the lists. Waiting for me." "You got lot suspicion." "I got gods-rotted plenty suspicion, you earless foundling bastard. Give me the truth." "Might say." "Might say. Might say—The stsho know he's here?" "Know." "Then who are you hiding from?" And on a second thought:" O gods!" "Got kif trouble." "Gods rot you, then you take him! You take this whole business and—" "Good, brave friend. Kif spies already here. Han spies too. Got han deputy ship in port. Know we meet. After this they got plenty curiosity. So you got risk already, hani. Don't want profit too? Besides, you hurt his feeling. Hurt mine." She stood still, a long, long time. Her claws flexed out. She drew them in, with a long slow breath. "Gods rot your—" "Give you fair deal, Pyanfar. Number one fine deal. Know you got troubles. You got han trouble. You promise human trade, you don't got. Lose face. You got mate troubles—" "Shut up." "I keep promise, Pyanfar. You want share profit, you got share risk." "Share suicide. What you think I am?" "You get human trade, your enemies can't touch you, a, hani captain? The han—don't like you lose face. You get rich, keep your brother life, keep your mate. Keep The Pride." A narrow darkness closed in on her sight, hunter-vision set on Goldtooth. It was difficult to hear, so tight her ears were folded. She deliberately raised them, looked about her, at Tully's distressed face. "I take him," she said to Goldtooth, a small, strangled breath. "If—" "If?" "—if we get letter of credit at mahe facilities. Good anywhere. Unlimited." "God! You think I Personage?" "I think you next best thing, you rag-eared conniving bastard! I think you got that power, I think you got any gods-rotted credit you want, like what you pulled on me at Kirdu, like—" "You dream." Goldtooth laid a blunt-clawed hand on his breast. "I captain. Got no credit like that." "Good-bye." She faced about, bared teeth at the crowd blocking her retreat. "You going to move this lot? Or do I move them for you?" "I write," he said. She faced him with ears flat. Held out her hand. He held out his to one of the mahe at his side. "Tablet," he said, and that one vanished hurriedly into the inner corridor with a spatter of bare mahen feet and non-retracting claws. "Better," said Pyanfar. Goldtooth scowled, took the tablet the breathless mahe brought back to him, removed its stylus and wrote. He withdrew a Signature from the belt that crossed his chest and inserted it; the tablet spat out its seal-stamped document. He held it. "I'll translate that," Pyanfar said, "first thing." "You one bastard, Pyanfar." Goldtooth's grin looked astonishingly hani in his dark mahen face. "One sure bastard. No—" He drew it back as she held out her hand; he turned and handed it instead to Tully, who looked at them both confusedly. "Let him hold. He bring. With other documents." "If that paper doesn't say what it had better say—" "You do what? Toss good friend Tully out airlock? You no do." "Oh, no. No such thing. I pay debts where they're due, old friend." Goldtooth's grin spread. He thrust the tablet into a crewman's hands and clapped her on the arm. "You thank me someday." "You can bet I will. Everything I owe. I find a way. How you going to get him to The Pride? Tell me that! You walk him up to my lock, I fix your ears." "Got special canister." Goldtooth held out his hand. "Customs papers," he said, and a crewman held out another tablet and stylus. "You take cargo, a? Shishu fruit. Dried fish. Got four cans. One all rigged, number one good lifesupport. Pass him that way." She shook her head to clear it, stared at him afresh. "I'm going mad. That trick's got white hairs. Why don't you just roll him up in a carpet, for the gods' sake, and dump him on my deck? Deliver him in a basket, why don't you? Good gods, what am I doing here?" "Still good trick. You want this honest citizen, you pay duty, ha?" She drew her ears down tight, snatched the tablet and furiously appended her own signature, handwritten. She shoved it back at the mahe crewman who dared no expression at her at all. "Fish," she said in disgust. "Cheapest duty. What you want, pay more? I tell you, got thing fixed." "I'll bet you do." "Customs ask no question. Number one fixed." "I've got questions. I've got plenty of questions. You set me up, you egg-sucking bastard. So I take this deal. But by-the-gods you tell me everything you know. What kif trouble? Where are they working? Are they on your tail right now?" "Always got kif at Meetpoint." "Then why come here, for the gods' sakes? What are you doing here? The kif know what you've got?" Goldtooth shrugged. "Maybe." "From how long? How long you been at this?" A second shrug. "Packet. In packet got paper tell you. Tully bring in canister. You take, you read all. You run fast. Go Maing Tol, go Personage. Get plenty help from there." "They on your tail?" A third shrug. "Goldtooth, you bastard, how tight?" "Got trouble," Goldtooth said. She weighed that. Mahijiru in trouble. A mahen hunter-ship with more kif troubles than it could handle. "So you got. Where you go now?" "Best thing you don't ask." "Human space?" "Maybe deep in stsho territory. Read packet. Read packet. Friend." "Rot you." "Rot you too," Goldtooth said soberly. His ears stayed up. There were fine wrinkles round his dark eyes. "God save us. Need you, Pyanfar. Need bad." "Huh." She flicked her ears up with a light chiming of their rings. "I'm not a gods-blessed warship, mahe." "Know that." "Sure. Sure." She walked off a pace to get clear breath, looked at Tully, who understood—perhaps a little. Always more than he spoke. Tully would not lie to her. That much she believed. His silence, his level, unflinching stare now, that vouched for his own honesty in this. "When bring to you?" Goldtooth asked. She turned back to him. "Got an appointment in station office. Got to make that. Got to advise my crew. Got to tell them—You give me lot of problems, hear? And you be careful." She extruded a claw and poked Goldtooth hard in the chest, so she saw him wince. "You be careful this package. You be gods-rotted careful, hear?" She meant two things. "Hear," Goldtooth said, full soberly. He heard both things. She knew. "Got three days this port," she said. "Got stall three days with gods-rotted kif sniffing round. I pull The Pride out sooner, big trouble. Lot of attention. When you go?" "Deliver package, wait awhile, then go. Got no cargo but fake cans I give to you." "So." She turned away, met Tully's eyes, patted him very gently on his arm, recalling his fragile skin. "Safe, understand. You do what they say. No fear. These mahendo'sat bring you to me. Understand?" "Yes," Tully said, and looked at her in that way he had, his pale stare desperately intense. Her ears twitched, her nostrils widened with the scent of something more than Meetpoint-sized amiss, more than a corrupt stsho and closed routes and xenophobe stsho councils back in Llyene, atwitter over humanity that wanted through stsho space. Mahen connivances. Kif greed. She looked back at Goldtooth. "Presents. One fine present. Ha!" Goldtooth lifted his head, his brown eyes half-lidded. "Tell you this, old friend. Kif don't forget. They hunt me. Soon hunt you. Not revenge. Kif-thought. Skikkik. Hunt me, hunt you. Tully come here—Got one fine trouble this time. This business Tully bring us only—hurry things. Make timetable ours, not kif's." "Huh," she said. "So I take this gift. I don't like things coming at my back. You watch yourself. You run far, mahe. You do good. Wish you luck." "You got," Goldtooth said. "Wish you luck, hani." She flicked her ears, indecisive, turned and stalked out the airlock through the parting crowd of tall mahendo'sat. Luck. Luck indeed. Her mind was not in it as she walked on down the dock. It kept sorting troubles past and troubles future—dangerous, she thought, catching a whiff of some scent not mahendo'sat nor stsho, but something she could not, in this large, cold space . . . identify. Cargo, maybe. Maybe something else. It set her nose to twitching and set an itch between her shoulderblades. She did not look about, here on Meetpoint's docks, padding along the cold deckplates, beside the gapings of ship accesses, out of which wafted more friendly scents. There were other hani ships at Meetpoint. She had read the list before she had put The Pride into dock: Marrar's Golden Sun; Ayhar's Prosperity; oh, yes, and Ehrran's Vigilance. That ship. That one, that Goldtooth had mentioned, but not by name . . . that han's eyes, which were doubtless on other business at the moment, but which were capable of catching small furtive moves—like a Chanur captain paying calls on mahen ships. There were a dozen other mahen vessels in port: Tigimiransi, Catimin-shai, Hamarandar were some she had known for years. And familiar stsho names, like Assustsi, E Mnestsist, Heshtmit and Tstaarsem Nai. Round the wheel of Meetpoint, beyond the great lock that separated oxygen- from methane-breathers, ships went by stranger titles: tc'a and knnn and chi names, if knnn had names at all. Tho'o'oo and T'T'Tmmmi were tc'a/chi ships she had seen on docking lists before. And kif. Of course there were kif. She had made a particular point to know those names before she put The Pride in dock . . . names like Kekt and Harukk, Tikkukkar, Pakakkt, Maktikkh, Nankktsikkt, Ikhoikttr. Kif names, she memorized wherever she found them, a matter of policy—to recall their routes, their dockings, where they went and trading what. The kif watched her routes with as much interest this last year. She was very sure of that. She did not loiter on the docks, but she made no particular haste which might attract attention on its own. She stared at this and that with normal curiosity, and at the same general pace she strolled up to the nearest com booth along the row of dockside offices, keyed up Chanur credit and punched in the code for the station comlink to The Pride's bridge. She waited. The com whistled and clicked through nine cycles unanswered. There was a kif on the docks. She spied the tall, black-robed form standing over shipside in conversation with a stsho, whose pale arms waved emphatically. She stood with her back to the plastic wall and watched this exchange past the veil of other traffic, the passing of service vehicles, of pedestrians, mostly stsho, pale-robed and elegant; here and there mahendo'sat, dark and sleek. Something winged whipped past, small and upward bound for the heights of the tall, cold dock. Gods only knew what that was. Click. "Pride of Chanur," the voice finally answered. "Deck officer speaking." "Haral, gods rot you, how long does it take?" "Captain?" "Who's out?" "Outside?" "I want that cargo inventoried. Hear? I want all of you on it, right now. No liberties. If anyone's out, get her back. Right now." "Aye," the voice came back, diffident. "Aye, Captain." There was question in the voice. "Just do it!" "Aye. But—Captain?" "What?" "Na Khym's out." "Gods and thunders!" Her heart fell through her feet. "Where'd he go?" "Don't know. To the free market, I think—There some kind of trouble?" "I'm coming back. Get him, Haral. I want him found." "Aye, Captain." She slammed the receiver down and headed back toward the ship in haste. Khym, for the gods' sake. Her mate, gone strolling out in fullest confidence that papers in order meant safety . . . on a stsho trading station, where weapons were banned, as he had gone out of ship at Urtur and Hoas among mahendo'sat; as he had gone wandering wherever he liked through the last two markets—male, and duty-less and bored. Gods. O gods. She remembered the kif then, looked back, one injudicious glance over her shoulder, breaking the rest of her precautions. The kif was still there, looking her way beyond the gesticulating stsho, looking black and grim and interested. She flung around again and moved as fast as a walk could carry her, past Mahijiru behind its darkened (malfunctioning?) registry board, past one berth and the other in the chill, stsho-made air. She was panting in earnest when she came within sight of The Pride's berth. Everything was stopped there. The machinery that ought to be offloading stood still with cans still on the ramp. Haral was outside waiting for her, red-gold figure in blue breeches; and spying her, came her way with scurrying haste. "Captain—" Haral skidded up and braked, claws raking on the plates. "We're looking." "Kif are out," Pyanfar said. That was enough. Haral's ears went flat and her eyes went wide. "With Ehrran clan in port. I want him back, Haral. Where'd he talk about going? Doing what?" "Didn't talk, Captain. We were all busy. He was there by us at the ramp. When we looked round—gone." "Gods rot him!" "Can't have gotten far." "Sure he can't." She took the pocket com Haral offered her and clipped it to her belt to match what Haral had. "Who's on bridge?" "No one. I stayed. Alone." "Hilfy's out there." "First." "Lock up. Come with me." "Aye!" Haral snapped, spun on her heel and ran. Pyanfar strode on. Market, she reckoned. Meetpoint's famed Free Market was far and away the likeliest place to look. Baubles and exotics. Things to see. He might have tried the restaurants before the market. Or the bars of the Rows. Gods rot him. Gods rot her soft-headedness in ever taking him aboard. On Anuurn they called her mad. At times like this she believed it, all the way. She was breathing in great side-aching gasps when Haral came pelting back to fall in at her side. "He's not here," Hilfy said—youngest of The Pride: her left ear one-ringed, her beard only beginning, her breeches the tough blue cloth of hani crew, though she was ker Hilfy, Chanur's someday heir. She met Tirun Araun between two aisles of the dock bazaar, among the stacks of cloth, foodstuffs, the fluttering of stsho merchants. Fluting cries of exotic nonsapients legal here for trade, the shouts of traders and passersby, music from the bars of the Rows alongside the market-echoed off the lofty overhead in one commingled roar. Smells abounded, drowning other scents. Color rioted. "I've been down every aisle, Tirun—" "Try the Rows," said Tirun, older spacer. Her beard was full; her mane hung wild about her shoulders. Her left ear flicked, clashing half a dozen rings. "Come on. I take evens, you take odds. Hit every bar on the Rows. He might have, gods only know." Hilfy gulped air and went, not questioning the orders as Haral herself had not questioned what had happened, except that something had gone wrong. Very wrong. That had been a coded call to get off the docks. At once. Her ears kept lying back on their own; she pricked them up with spasmodic efforts, seeking a hani voice through the din, from out of the row of spacer bars that lined the marketplace. No sign of any hani in the first bar on the row. It was all mahendo'sat inside, honking music and the raucous screech and stamp of drunken spacers. She crossed Tirun's path on the walk on the way out and they split again into the third and fourth bar. Stsho, this den. But she spotted the red-gold of hani backs clustered about a bowl-table, dived through and slid to her knees on the rim. A senior hani spacer turned round and eyed her; other eyes turned her way, all round the table. She bobbed a hasty bow with hands gripping the rim. "Hilfy Chanur par Faha, gods look on you—you seen a hani male?" Ears laid back and pricked in non-sobriety all round the table, six pairs of ears heavy with rings. "Gods—what you been drinking, kid?" "Sorry." That was a mistake. She scrambled to her feet and started away; but the spacer swayed erect, waved wildly for balance as she clawed her unsteady way up the plastic bowlseat to catch her arm. "Hani male, hey? Need help, Chanur? Where you see this vision, hey?" There were derisive laughs, curses—someone was trodden on. The rest of the hani came up on the seat and scrambled out of the pit. Hilfy tore loose and fled. "Hey," she heard at her back, hani-cough, a drunken roar. "Pay!" A shrill stsho warble from another side. "Pay, hani bastard—" "Charge it to Ayhar's Prosperity!" "O gods!" Hilfy dived for the exit, just as a pair of kifish patrons loomed in the doorway. Black musty robes brushed her with a smell that sent the wind up her back. She did not look back or pause as she dived past them both. "Hani rabble." she heard hissed behind her, the noise of drunken encounter mingled with kifish voices. She darted through the outer doors into the light of the market, blinked, hesitating on one foot, hearing above the market noise the sound of hani in full chase behind her—no sight of Tirun. She leaned into a run and plunged into the next odd-numbered bar—stsho again, not a sight of hani. She pelted back out the doors, through the incoming mass of Ayhar clan, who began a turnabout in that doorway in merry disorder. Still no Tirun. She dived into the next odd-number, another stsho den, saw a tall red shape, and heard the voices, a deeper hani voice than this port had ever heard, the chitter of stsho curses, the snarl of mahendo'sat. "Na Khym," she cried in profoundest relief. "Na Khym!" She eeled her way through the towering crowd at the bar and grabbed him by the arm. "Uncle—thank the gods. Pyanfar wants you. Now. Right now, na Khym." "Hilfy?" he said, far from focused. He swayed there, a head taller than she, twice her breadth of shoulder, his broad, scarred nose wrinkled in confusion. "Trying to explain to these fellows—" "Uncle, for the gods' sakes—" "He is," a hani voice cried from the door. "By the gods—what's he doing here?" Khym flinched, faced about with his back to the bar, starting with misgiving at the drunken Ayhar spacers. "Hey!" —A second hani voice, from among the Ayhar. "Chanur! You crazy, Chanur? What are you up to, huh, bringing him out here? You got no regard for him?" "Come on," Hilfy pleaded. "Na Khym—" She tugged at a massive arm, felt the tension in it. "For gods' sake, na Khym—we've got an emergency." Maybe that got through. Khym shivered, one sharp tremor, like an earthquake through solid stone. "Get, get, get!" a stsho shrilled in pidgin. "Get out he my bar!" Hilfy pulled with all her might. Khym yielded and kept walking, through the hani crowd that drew aside wide-eyed and muttering, past the black wall of curious mahendo'sat and the glitter of their gold. Another black wall formed athwart the brighter, outside light. Billowing robes blocked the path to the door, two tall, ungainly shapes. "Chanur," said a kif, a dry clicking voice. "Chanur brings its males out. It needs help." Hilfy stopped. Khym had, with a rumbling in his throat. "Don't," Hilfy said, "don't do it—Khym, for gods' sakes, just let's get out of here. We don't want a fight." "Run," the kif hissed. "Run, Chanur. You run from kif before." "Come on." Hilfy wrapped her arm tightly about Khym's elbow. She guided him through the crowd toward the doorway, past the first brush of robes, trying to look noncombatant, trying to watch the whereabouts of dark kifish hands beneath the dusky cloth. "Hilfy," said Khym. She looked up. The whole doorway had filled with kif "It's got a knife!" A hani voice. "Look out, kid—" Something flew, trailing beer and froth, and hit a kifish head. "Got!" A mahen voice crowed delight. Kif lunged, Khym lunged. Hilfy hit a kif with claws bared and bodies tangled in the doorway. Yiiii-yinnnnn! a stsho voice wailed above the din. "Yeeiei-yi! Police, police, police!" "Yaooo!" (The mahendo'sat). "Na Khym!" Tirun's voice, a roar from outside the tangled doorway, inbound. "Hilfy! Na Khym! Chanur!" "Ayhar, ai Ayhar." "Catimin-shai!" Mugs and bottles sailed. "He's on the Rows! Hurry!" Haral's voice came from the pocket com; and Pyanfar, delaying for a check of eat-shops outside the market, started to run for all she was worth, past startled mahendo'sat and stsho who leapt from her path, herself dodging round the confused course of a methane-breather vehicle that zigged away on another tack. Sirens sounded. The three-story bulkhead doors of the market sector were blinking with red warning lights. She put on a final burst of speed and dived through asprawl as the valves began to move. The edges met with a boom and airshock that shook the deck, drowning the din of howls beyond, and she gathered herself up off the deck plates and ran without even a backward look. The whole market was in turmoil. Merchants or looters snatched armfuls of whatever they could; aisles jammed. Animals screeched above the roar. A black thing darted past Pyanfar's legs and yelped at being trodden on. She vaulted a counter, scrambled on a rolling scatter of trinkets, found a clear aisle and ran toward the Rows where a moment's clear sight showed a heaving mass in the doorway. Stsho darted from that crowd, pale and gibbering; drunken mahendo'sat stayed to yell odds—a pair of hani arrived from the other direction: Chur and Geran headed full tilt toward the mass. She jerked spectators this way and that, careless of her claws. Mahendo'sat howled outrage and moved. A kif-shape darted past her, moving faster than clear sight. She caught at it and got only robe as she broke through to the center of the mob. Plastic splintered. Glass broke, bodies rolled underfoot. More kif ran from the scene, a scatter of black-robed streaks outward bound at speed. "Khym!" Pyanfar yelled and flung herself in the path of his wild-eyed rush after the kif. Behind him Haral and Geran added themselves; Chur and Tirun followed. Hilfy jumped last, atop the heap on Khym's shoulders as it all came down in front of her. They stopped him. They held him down until the struggles ceased. There was mahen laughter, quickly hushed. In prudence, mahe drew back to perimeters, while the noise of looting went on in the market, the crash of glass, the splintering of plastics, the polyglot wails of outrage and avarice. "Gods rot you!" Pyanfar yelled, with a claws-out swipe at anything too near. "Get!" Mahendo'sat gave her room. A small knot of hani spacers stood facing her. Ears were back. The Pride's crew gained their feet, Haral foremost, ears laid back and grinning. Khym levered himself to his feet with Tirun holding fast to his right arm and Hilfy locked to the other side. The last sounds of combat died inside the bar. A last glass broke. "Pyanfar Chanur," a broadnosed hani said in stark, disapproving tones. "Tell it to your captain," said Pyanfar. "Tell it proper. He's my husband. You hear? Na Khym nef Mahn. Hear me?" Ears flicked. Eyes showed whites. The news had not gotten this far out, what lunacy she had done. Now it did. "Sure," a younger hani said, backing up. "Sure, captain." And Chur, at her back: "Captain—we'd better get out of here." She heard the sirens. She looked about past the melting crowd, who sought other bars. Trampled bodies stirred within the doorway. There were cars coming up the dock, with the white strobe flash of Security. Chapter 2 The door hissed back and revealed two guards, which at Meetpoint might have been any oxygen-breathing kind but stsho, considering the stsho's congenital distrust of violence. They hired all their security. Fortunately for the peace at present, these were both mahendo'sat. Pyanfar stopped in her pacing of the narrow room—waiting area, they had called it: stsho euphemism. Other species had other names for such small rooms with doorlocks facing outward. "Where's my crew?" she spat at the mahendo'sat forthwith, ears flattened despite herself. "Gods rot it, where are they?" "Director wants," one said, standing aside from the door. "You come now, hani captain." She pulled in her claws and came, since something finally seemed in movement, and since neither of the two mahendo'sat were armed with more than nature gave them and showed no desire for confrontation. They would not talk, not this pair; not threaten or swerve from duty: mahendo'sat at punctilious, honest best. "Here," was their only other word, at a lift door some distance through the maze. More traveling. The lift went a long zigzag distance through Meetpoint's bowels, and let them out again in white, pastel-decorated halls. Lights obtruded here and there in seeming random—stsho, this section, not making apology to other species' tastes, all pastels and opal colors, vast spaces, odd-angled panels riddled with random holes and alcoves. The tall black-furred, black-kilted mahen guards and the splash of her own scarlet trousers and red-gold hide were equally alien here. A last door, a last hallway of twisting plastiform shapes. She flicked her ears so that the rings chimed, flexed her claws with one deep breath as if she contemplated a leap from some height, and let herself be shown into a pearl-toned hall, a splendor of bizarre walls and white-upholstered depressions in the level, gleaming floor. One gossamer-clad stsho stood to meet them, recorder in hand. Another sat serenely important in the central bowl. Gtst—(stsho had three sexes at one time, and neither he, she, nor it was really adequate) gtst was ornamented in subtlest colors ranging into hues invisible to hani eyes, but detectible at the verges, whites with low violet shimmerings on the folds. Gtst tattooings were equally illusory on gtst naturally pearly skin, and shaded off into green and violets. Pearl-toned plumes nodded from augmented brows, shading moonstone eyes. The small mouth was clamped in disapproving straightness and nostrils flared in busy alternation. Pyanfar bowed before this elegance, once and shortly. The stsho waved a languid hand and the servant-translator, it must be, came and stood near, gist own robes floating free on invisible breezes—stsho-silk and expensive. "Ndisthe," Pyanfar said, "sstissei asem sisth an zis—" with the right amount of respect, she reckoned. Feathery eyebrows fluttered. The assistant clutched gtst recorder and drew back in indecision. "Shiss." The Director motioned with one elegant jeweled hand. The translator stopped in gtst retreat. "Shiss. Os histhe Chanur nos schensi noss' spitense sthshosi chisemsthi." "Far from fluent," Pyanfar agreed. The Director drew breath. Gtst plumes all nodded in profound agitation. "Sto shisis ho weisse gti nurussthe din?" "Did you know—" The translator flung gtstself into belated action. "—the riot in the market took four hours to stop?" "—ni shi canth-men horshti nin." "—Forty-five individuals are treated in infirmary—" Pyanfar kept her ears erect, her expression sympathetic. "Ni hoi shisisi ma gnisthe." "—and extensive pilferage has taken place." "I do share," said Pyanfar, drawing down her mouth in yet more distress, "your outrage at this disregard for stsho authority. My crew likewise suffered from this kifish banditry." That got rendered, with much fluttering of hands. "Shossmeinn ti szosthenshi hos! Ti mahen-thesai cisfe llyesthe to mistheth hos!" "—You and your mahendo'sat co-conspirators have wreaked havoc—" "Spithi no hasse cifise sif nan hos!" "—involved the kif—" "Shossei onniste stshoni no misthi th'sa has lies nan shi math!" "—A tc'a ship has undocked and fled during the riot. Doubtless the chi are disturbed—" "Ha nos thei no lien llche knnni na slastheni hos!" "—Who knows but what this may also agitate the knnn?" "Nan nos misthei hoisthe ifsthen noni ellyes-theme to Nifenne hassthe shasth!" "—You and your crew within three hours of docking have created havoc with every species of the Compact!" Pyanfar set her hands at her belt and lowered her ears deliberately. "As well say all victims of crime are guilty of incitement! Is this a new philosophy?" A long silence once that was translated. Then: "—I am put in mind of papers lately recovered, hani captain. I am in mind of heavy fines and penalties. Who will recompense our market? Who will see to our damages?" "It's true," Pyanfar said with a direct, baleful stare. "Who dares charge the kif—excepting hani. Excepting us, esteemed Director. Tell me, what would happen without hani traffic here? Without mahendo'sat? How would the kif behave at Meetpoint then? Not simple pilferage, I'll warrant!" Plumes fluttered. Round eyes stared, dark centered. "—You make threats without teeth. The han does not bend at your breath. Less so the mahendo'sat." "Neither will the han look with favor on a hani ship beset, on a hani captain detained—I omit mention of the locked door!" "—Have you such confidence you will relate to the han how a Chanur captain suffered such embarrassment? I have heard otherwise. I have heard Chanur's affairs are less than stable with the han in these days." Pyanfar drew a long, long breath, wrinkling up her nose so that the translator drew back a pace. "There is no profit in such a wager, esteemed Director." "—What profit to any dealing with Chanur? We restore your papers and see how you repay us. Where are our damages? Where will you obtain the funds, who claim to be a terror to the kif? We fine you. You dare take nothing from them." "They by the gods steal nothing from us except where we have relied on stsho authority." The moonstone eyes acquired wider, darker centers. "—You have brought a male of your kind here. I hesitate to breach this delicacy, but it is well known that this gender of your species is unstable. This surely contributed—" "This is a hani affair." "—Other hani find the state of affairs on your ship disturbing and improper." "A hani matter." "—A deputy of the han has shown concern. The deputy has assured me that this is not new policy, that the han deplores this action—" "It's none of the deputy's gods-rotted business. Or anyone else's. Let's stay to the issue of safety on the docks." "—Hani have not found it wise to bring their males into foreign contacts, for which they are naturally unsuited and unprepared. Other hani are shocked at your provocation." "The docks, esteemed director. And public safety." "—You have violated law. You have brought this person—" "A member of my crew." "—This person has a license?" "He's got a temporary. All in order. Ask your own security." "—A permit granted at Gaohn station. By a Chanur ally, doubtless under pressure. He is here without permissions—" "Since when does Compact law require permissions for listed crew?" "—Since when does listed crew take liberty during unloading and visit bars?" "This is my ship and my affair!" "—It became a stsho affair." "Indeed it did! And any other question is utter persiflage. Let us stay to the issue: a kif attack on personnel of my ship; on personnel of my ship, who relied on the security assured by stsho law and custom. We have suffered outrage; I have suffered personal outrage in being detained for hours while kif assassins doubtless do as they please on the docks, to the hazard of life and property, some of which is mine—and who guarantees the safety of my goods waiting loading, when we are the victims of this outrage? I hold the station responsible. Where are my crew, esteemed Director? And who pays the indemnities we're due?" This was perhaps too much. The translator wrung gtst hands and stammered on the words, bowed like a reed in the wind on receiving the reply. "—Why not ask the mahendo'sat you conferred with?" Pyanfar's ears went tight against her skull. She brought them up with utmost effort, smoothed her nose and assumed a bland expression. "Would the director mean perhaps the mahendo'sat whose registry board malfunctioned in this well-ordered station?" Another exchange. The translator's skin lost its pearly sheen and went dead white. "—The director says gtst knows about this board. A subordinate has been disapproved in this malfunction." "It would be impolite to suggest higher connections. It would be stupid to doubt them." The translator made several gasps for air and performed, with further hand-wringing. "—The subordinate in question had no inkling of higher complicities, such as you and your co-conspirators arranged. This mahen ship has elected departure during the disturbance. The disturbance reached also to the methane-breathers. The director asks—are you aware of this? Are you aware of hazards with tc'a and chi?" "Not my affair. Absolutely not my affair." "—The director asks—do you want the merchandise this person left?" Pyanfar took in her breath, feeling an impact in the gut. "—It is," the translator rendered the next remark, "perishable." "I take it then station will deliver this merchandise . . . recognizing its obligation." "—There are entanglements. There is, for instance, the question of our damages. This shipment is impounded." "I refuse to be held to account for thieving kif! Take it up with the mahendo'sat you dealt with!" "I cannot translate this," the translator said. Gtst eyes were round. "I beg the esteemed hani captain—" "Tell gtst if I behaved as the kif did gtst would not be speaking to me about damages." "Ashosh!" the Director said: the translator turned and folded gtst hands on gtst breast, lisped in softest tones, turned with moonlike eyes at widest. "—We will speak of damages later. Now this merchandise, this—perishable merchandise." Pyanfar set her hands within her belt, stood with feet set. "In the estimable Director's personal keeping, I trust." "—Four canisters. Am I a menial, to keep such goods personally?" "Gods rot it—" She amended that, flicking up her ears, trying for a quieter tone. "Considering they are perishable, I trust there is some care being taken." The translator relayed it. The Director waved a negligent hand. Gtst eyes were unblinking, hard. "—Customs matters. Unfortunately the consignor in his haste for departure left papers in disarray, lacking official stamps. Have you suggestions, hani captain, that would prevent this property being sold at public auction? There would, I am certain, be interested bidders—some very rich. Some with backers. Unless the esteemed Chanur captain takes personal responsibility." A blackness closed about the edges of the room, on everything but the graceful nodding stsho. "—Also," the stsho continued, "the matter of papers lately cleared. This station is dismayed . . . utterly dismayed at the betrayal of its trust. I am personally distressed." "Let's talk," Pyanfar said, "about things good merchants like us both understand. Like fair trade. Like deal. Like I take my small difficulty out of Meetpoint within a few hours after getting my cargo in order, and I take it elsewhere without a word to anyone about bribes and mahendo'sat. You want to talk trouble, esteemed Director? You want to talk kif trouble, and word of this getting back to your upper echelons? Or do you want to talk about the merchandise, and finding my crew, and letting me take this off your hands—with my permits in order—before it gets more expensive for your station than it already is?" The translator winced, turned and began to render it in one hand-waving spate. "Ashosh!" the Director said; and other things. A flush came and went over gtst skin, mottlings of nacre. The nostrils flared in rapid unison. "Chanur sosshis na thosthsi cnisste znei ctehtsi canth hos." Another flinch from the translator, a rounding of round shoulders as gtst turned. "Tell gtst," Pyanfar said without waiting, "gtst is in personal danger. From the kif, of course. Say it!" It was rendered. The Director's skin went white. "—Unacceptable. There is a debt which in your doubtless adequate if unimaginative perception you must acknowledge was incurred by your crew, to have released a member of your species widely acknowledged to be unstable—" "A member of my crew and my mate, you fluttering bastard!" Nostrils flared. "—The debt stands. No agreement embraced such damages." She drew her own breaths with difficulty, trying to think, hearing words that sent small fine tendrils into quite different territory. Goldtooth, blast you—there was a setup, all the way . . . . And her ears sank, so that the translator edged back a pace, gtst eyes wide and showing the whites about the moonstone round of them. The director's plumes fluttered, hands moved nervously. "I make you a deal," she said. "We get that cargo, we get the money for you." "—You will sign affidavits of responsibility." "Don't push it, stsho." "—Your visa is canceled," the answer came back. "And the visas of your crew and this male hani, under whatever pretext you secured civilized permits for this unstable person. You will forfeit your permission to enter our docks and forfeit any Chanur ship's clearance to dock here until this debt is paid!" "And this cargo?" "Do you doubt us? I make you a gift of it. In appreciation for your own damages, of course." Pyanfar bowed. Gtst waved a hand at gtst attendant. "Sthes!" It was not at all the courteous farewell. More corridors. There was an affidavit to be signed, the terms of which set a cold misery at her stomach. She looked up from the counter and the stsho clerk backed all the way around the desk dropping papers as gtst went. "That do it?" she asked with, she thought, remarkable calm. The stsho babbled, refusing to come closer. "—Gtst say got more," one of the guards translated. She had heard that much. She wrinkled her nose and the stsho dropped more papers, gathered them, gave them to the mahendo'sat to avoid bringing gtstself closer. "Customs release, hani captain. All fine you sign this." "Wait, hani captain. Must secure permission to leave." She drew small even breaths, signed this, signed that, kept directing no more than baleful stares at the stsho official and gtst fluttering aides. At last: "No more forms?" "No, hani captain. All got." "Crew," she demanded, for the third time and this time with a broad, broad smile. "Ship, hani captain; they long time got release. Same got release Ayhar clan. We go you ship now." "Huh," she said then, and took the open door, stalked out, with her mahen escort to key the lift for her. No other word. None seemed apt. She stared at the uninteresting pearl-gray of the lift doors while the lift zigged and zagged its way through Meetpoint station. She thought, during that interval. Thought very dark wordless thoughts that involved stsho hides and a certain mahe's neck, until the lift stopped and opened its doors on the cold air and noise of dockside. She oriented herself with a quick glance at the nearest registry board, a black, green-lit square above the number 14 berth: Assustsi. She drew a cold, wide-nostriled breath of the dockside taint-oil and coolants, cargo and food-smells and all the mongrel effluvium of Meet-point, like and unlike every other station of the Compact. Leftward was Vigilance's berth, number 18. Ehrran clan ship. Doubtless someone of the deputy's staff was nosedeep in reports, writing it all up for the han in the worst possible light. Gods knew what that white-skinned bastard had spilled to willing ears. Or what Ayhar had had to say, to save its own skin. Gods-be-bound that Prosperity and Ayhar would never claim responsibility, financial or otherwise. Chanur's enemies in council would pounce on it, first chance. She started walking, constantly aware of the two dark shadows that stalked behind her, but ignoring them. Gantries towered and tilted in the curved perspectives of the station wheel. The dock unfurled down off the curtaining horizon as she walked, and she made out The Pride's berth, counting down from fourteen to six. There should have been canisters outside The Pride's berth. She made out none, and thought further dark thoughts, still not looking back. She passed berth 10, which had been Mahijiru. That berth was sealed completely, the gantry drawn back with its lines in store-position. Number ten board remained dark, not listing the name or registry of the outbound ship. Malfunction. Indeed, malfunction. Connivances, mahendo'sat with stsho—with stsho who ran before every wind that blew—and now, with Mahijiru on the run and Goldtooth unable to break the director's neck in person—was the prevailing wind kif-tainted? It rankled, gods, it rankled, that stsho had dared confront her, stsho, that she could break with one swipe of her arm. And dared not. That was the crux of it. Stsho showed one face to the kif, one to the mahendo'sat—yet a third to hani: non-spacing, stsho law had regarded hani till a century ago, because (though hani preferred not to recall the fact) it was the mahendo'sat had given hani ships. An artificially accelerated culture. Hani were still banned from stsho space, on their very border. Trade was at Meetpoint only, or inside non-stsho space. And hani in their good nature were patient with these fluttering dilettantes who bought and sold-everything. They backed Chanur to the wall. It was stsho doing. Everything. And the han being political, and the han being shortsighted, and most of all because she was a fool who expected otherwise, Chanur was in trouble at home. Of course the stsho knew it, sure as birds knew carrion-had gotten news even a hani ship like Prosperity had not; and threw it up in her face at first chance. Gods, that the han fed stsho bigotry and wielded it for a weapon— A deputy of the han has shown concern— Or—a cold, fully sensible fear got past the outrage: the stsho had independent sources and played everyone for a fool—Goldtooth, the han, even the kif. They were capable of that. Thoroughgoing xenophobes and slippery as oiled glass. Lately the stsho had a new xenophobia to keep them busy. They had humankind to worry about, with concerns and motives world-bound hani had no least idea of. Goldtooth, rot you, how much does gtst know? How much the bribe? Nothing holds a stsho that's already paid. Nothing persuades one against gtst own profit. She walked past nine, eight, seven. She saw no activity outside The Pride. No sign of any loaders, the cargo ramp withdrawn, the canisters missing. The cans were inside, she hoped. She kept alert for any sight of kif on the docks and found none. The few passersby with business on the dock were mostly stsho, a few mahendo'sat, no hani. If they noticed the rare spectacle of a hani captain being trailed by two hulking mahendo'sat station guards, they gave no sign of it. This was Meetpoint, after all, where folk minded their business, knowing well how trouble tended to travel down line of sight. At the upward-curved limit of the horizon, only its bottom third visible, the great seal of the market zone was still shut, on gods knew what kind of damage. Money was being lost while that market was out of action. Hourly the tab went up. The Pride's ramp access gaped ahead, berth six. She ignored her escort, not even looking back at them as she took out the pocket com. "Haral. I'm coming in." No answer. "Haral." She walked up the rampway into the chill, yellow-lighted access, hearing no footsteps behind—walked warily, thinking of kif ambush even here. Ambush and stsho treacheries. She met a shut hatch beyond the bend of the tube. She had expected that, and hit the bar of the com unit in the accessway. "Haral. Haral, gods rot it, it's Pyanfar. Open up." The hatch shot open at once, with a waft of warmer, familiar air. Tirun was there; and Chur, appearing armed from the lower-deck ops room down the corridor. Both showed the plasmed seams of recent wounds on their red-brown hides, Chur with a stripe of plasm visible across the leather of her nose, a painful kind of cut. "Huh." She walked in past the lock. "Close that. Everyone aboard?" "All accounted for, nothing serious." She came to a stop and gave Tirun one long stare. "Nothing serious. Gods and thunders, cousin!" Tirun's ears fell. "On our side," Tirun said. "Huh." She turned and stalked for the lift, with their company as the inner lock hissed shut at her back. "Where's Khym?" "Na Khym's up in his quarters." "Good." She shoved that distress to the hindmost, swung about in the lift as they got in with her. Chur anticipated her reach for the button, tucked her arm behind her again in haste when she had pushed it. Pyanfar glared at her. "What else is wrong? What's Haral doing up there?" "Got a lot of messages in," said Tirun. "Still coming. Board's jammed." "Huh." The lift slammed upward. Pyanfar studied the door in front of her till it opened and spat them out on main, then strode for the bridge with a cousin on either side. "Who's called in?" "Stsho, mostly," Chur said. "One message from Ayhar's Prosperity. Banny Ayhar requests conference at soonest." "And some mahen nonsense," said Tirun. "No ship code." She gave Tirun a second hard look, caught the lowered ears, the tension round the nose. She snorted, walked on into the bridge where Haral stood to meet her, where Hilfy got up from com—o gods, Hilfy—with her side patched in bandages. Geran with her right ear plasmed along a rip. "You all right?" Haral asked. "We got a message from stsho central . . . said you were coming." "How courteous of them. They give you any trouble?" "Kept us locked up filling out forms," said Geran. "Sent us out about an hour ago." "Huh." She sat down in her own place, at The Pride's controls, swung the chair about in its pit to look at the solemn row of faces. Hilfy, her niece, young and white about the eyes just now. Haral and Tirun, tall, wide shouldered, daughters of an elder Chanur cousin; Geran and Chur, wiry and deft, daughters to Jofan Chanur, her third cousins. A row of earnest, sober stares. She gazed last and steadily at her brother Kohan's favorite daughter, at Hilfy Chanur par Faha with a scratch down her comely nose and her ears, gods forfend—plasm on a nick in the left one. Heir to Chanur's mercantile operations, while-and-likely-after Kohan Chanur ruled at home. On the last edge of adolescence. Fearfully proud. Once and silently she wished Hilfy safe at home, but she did not say that. Home was a long, long way away and Chanur interests were at stake. "I want a watch on com," she said. "I want scan set to alarm if something comes in, if something budges from this station. I don't care what it is. I want to know." "Aye," said Haral. "Tally's back." Ears went up. Eyes went wide. Hilfy sat down. "Good gods," Chur said. "Mahijiru's here. Was here. Goldtooth's cut loose and run." There were other things to break to them, like being backed into agreements, like a fool of an aging captain who had believed for one moment in a way out of what she had gotten Chanur into, a way into human trade and all it meant. "He was going to slip us a canister with a special cargo. Don't blame me—" She waved a hand. "Goldtooth's originality, gods help us. But the stsho are playing power games. That can's tied up in red tape in customs. I think I've got it fixed." Chur and Tirun sank into seats where they were, ears back. "Sorry," Pyanfar said tautly. "Sorry, cousins." "Got a chance?" Haral asked. Meaning lost trade. Lost chances. A whole variety of things, in loyalty too old to be completely blind. "The mahendo'sat've come through?" "Don't know. They just headed out and left us the package. There's worse news. The kif are onto it." "Gods." Geran leaned onto the back of Chur's couch. "And the bar fight—" "Set up. Absolutely it was a set-up." She recalled with chagrin the kif watcher while she had been on the docks. "Maximum confusion. Goldtooth kited out. Under what circumstances—gods know. Messages were going up and down that dock like chi in a fire drill. Maybe it was a kifish smash-and-grab. Maybe not. Likely it was targeted at the stsho. They've sure got the pressure on." "The kif know about that can?" Tirun asked. "Gods-rotted mahe shoved a shipment out in the middle of bolting dock like their tail was afire—what else could they guess? Gods know who's been bribed. Gods know how long the bribes will hold. —Khym all right, is he?" Silence for a moment. Haral shrugged uncomfortably. "Guess he is," Haral said. "He have anything to say?" "Not much." "Huh." "Said he'd be in his quarters." "Fine." She bit it off. They were blood kin, she and the crew. All Chanur. All with the same at stake, excepting Khym, Mahn-clan, male, past his prime and his reason for living and belonging anywhere. Her brother Kohan Chanur relied on her, back home. Meetpoint in ruins. Kif on the loose. Stsho facing her down. The Pride nose-deep in it again. She had gone softheaded as well as softhearted. Hani everywhere muttered to that effect. Only her long-suffering crew would not say it, even yet. And Hilfy, of course Hilfy. Worship shone undimmed in those young eyes. Fool kid, she thought. And to the crew at large: "What happened with our cargo out there?" "Cans on the dock were gone when we got back," Tirun said. "We filed a theft report with station. Cans still inside are safe." "Kif are fast. Power her up. We go on using station's hookups, but we keep our own online. Look sharp, hear? Don't ask me how long this goes on. I don't know. Contact customs. I want to know where that incoming shipment is." No one mentioned costs or what the stsho might do. No one mentioned licenses, and the docking rights and routes it had cost too much to regain. No one mentioned Khym, a private folly that had long since become a public one. Not a backward look. No protests. Just a quiet moving toward stations, the whine of chairs receiving bodies all about her as she powered her own chair about and keyed in the old com messages. From a mahendo'sat, unidentified: "I leave paperwork, leave cans same station office. Good voyage. Got go quick. Same you." She drew one long, quivering breath. From Ayhar's Prosperity: "Banafy Ayhar to Pyanfar Chanur: We have a matter between us. I suggest we keep it private. I suggest you bring your witnesses to my deck. Expecting immediate reply." "In a mahen hell." "Captain?" She restrained herself from violence to the board. "Reply to Ayhar: Tell it to the kif." "Captain—" "Send it." Geran ducked her head and bent to the keys. Other messages crawled past, mostly stsho: a dozen threats of lawsuit from irate bazaar merchants; two scurrilous letters from stsho vessels in port, impugning Chanur sanity; others were rambling. Four were anonymous congratulations in mahen pidgin, some sounding inebriate, one babbling obscure mahen religious slogans and offering support. From Vigilance, not a word. "Tirun," said Chur behind her. "Got that customs contact." And a moment later: "Captain," Tirun said. "Got the customs chief on. Claims the papers aren't in order on that shipment." She spun the chair about. "The Director cleared that! Tell gtst so." "The customs chief says you have to come and sign." "I signed that god-rotted thing!" Tirun relayed as much, politely phrased. Amber eyes lifted. Ears flicked. "Gtst says that was the customs release. Now they want a waiver against claims by the consignor—" She punched it in on her own com. "This is Pyanfar Chanur. If I come over there I bring my whole ship's company. Hear? And you can explain that to the Director, you flat-bottomed bureaucrat!" Silence from the other end. She broke the contact. "Tirun: you and Geran get across that dock to that office and watch those cans all the way." "Kif," Tirun said. "Gods-rotted right the kif. They've got their bluff in on the stsho." "Customs is back on," Chur said. "Give it to five." She punched it in. "Well?" "I have schedule, hani." "You just put us at the head of it. Hear? I'm sending my own security. I've been robbed once at this forsaken station. Not again!" She broke the connection, leaned back and exhaled a long, long breath, staring at Tirun. "Get!" "Aye!" Tirun and Geran scrambled up and headed for the door. "Arm and take a pocket com!" she shouted after them. "And be gods-rotted discreet about it!" She spun the chair left to Haral. "I want that forward hold warmed and pressurized." "How long's Tully been in there?" Hilfy asked. Pyanfar shot a glance at the chronometer overhead. "Figure six hours. At least." "How good's that lifesupport?" "The way Goldtooth's set up the rest of this mess—who knows?" She shoved her chair around and keyed up comp, hunting cargo lists, mass records. "This list updated?" "No," Hilfy said. "I need that list, gods rot it, niece." "I'm on it," Chur said, "Scan to your number four, captain." She smoothed her nose with an effort, twitched her ears and heard the jingling of the several rings. Experience, they meant. Wealth. Successful voyages. She sat and watched for anything untoward, monitoring station corn, scan, every pulse and breath of information Meetpoint central let them have. Their own systems showed live in a series of amber lights. "Pressure's coming up," Haral said. "Estimate of mass loss to three, captain." She shunted it to Records. Comp brought up the revision. "Fine that down, Chur. Navcomp's taking main five." "You've got them." Nav's five segments unified themselves in comp and shunted other programs to different banks: command screens acquired nav's displays. Maing Tol. From Meetpoint that was Urtur to Kita Point to Maing Tol at best. "We can't singlejump." she said at last. "Not with the cargo we've still got, not anything like it." Silence all round. "Aye," —finally, from Haral. She sat staring at the graphs. "Aunt," Hilfy murmured, and turned her chair with a wide-eyed look and the comset pressed in her ear. "Aunt, it's Geran. Says customs has those cans loaded and out already; they have a bunch of mahen security on it, too." "Good gods. Something's going right. How long?" "How long?" Hilfy relayed; and her eyes flickered as she listened. "They're coming now." "How's that pressure?" "Pressure's good," Haral said. "Captain—" Chur. "Someone's down at the access com—It's Banny Ayhar, captain. She wants to talk to you." "Gods rot!" She punched in all-ship com. "Ayhar, get clear, hear me!" "Who is this?" "Pyanfar Chanur, rot your eyes, and clear my dock! There's an emergency in progress." "What emergency? Chanur, I'm not in a mood for more connivances. You hear me, Chanur—" "I've got no time for this." She spun the chair about and left it. "Haral, stand by to open up that hold. And tell Ayhar get herself out of the way. Hilfy, Chur, come on." They heeled her down the corridor at an almost run, into the lift for downdecks. She hit the button. Com snapped from the panel above the lift controls, at the first lurch of the car down. "Captain." Haral's voice. "Geran's on. They've got kif out there." She put a claw in the slot before the lift had a chance to pass the next level and stopped the car right there, on a level with the airlock. "Hilfy!" she said in leaving, before Hilfy had a chance to follow her and Chur. "Go on below and get that bay opened up." "Aunt—" One youthful protest, hands lifted, before the door closed between. They ran all-out, she and Chur, stopping only for the weapons-locker and the com-panel in the hall. "Get that hatch open!" Pyanfar yelled at Haral, and headed for the lock. Chapter 3 They hit the access tube running and came round the bend head-on into hani coming up the accessway, a broad, scarred hani captain flanked by two senior crew. Pyanfar evaded collision. "Gods rot you—" Banny Ayhar yelled, and Chur cursed; there was the thump of impact. "Gods rot you!" Pyanfar yelled, whirling about, outraged, as Chur recovered from her stagger and spun about at her side. "I told you clear my dock!" "What's it take to bring Chanur to its senses?" Banny Ayhar yelled. "When's it stop, hey? —You listen to me, ker Pyanfar! I've had enough being put off—" "We've got kif after my crew, blast your eyes." "Chanur!" She spun and gathered Chur and ran, with the thump of running Ayhar at their heels at least as far as the passageway's exit onto the downward ramp. "Cha-nur!" Banny Ayhar roared at her back, waking echoes off the docks; but Pyanfar never stopped, down the rampway and past the frozen cargo ramp and the gantry that held The Pride's skein of station-links. "Chanur." Far behind them. There was a curious absence of traffic on the chill, echoing docks, and that silence itself was a warning. Trouble was in sight even from here, around a big can-loader grinding its slow way beside the ship accesses four berths distant. An odd crowd accompanied it—a half dozen mahendo'sat in station-guard black strode along beside. Two red-pelted hani in faded blue breeches rode the flatbed with the tall white cans, while a dozen black-robed kif stalked along in a tight knot; and if any stsho customs officer was involved at all gist was either barriered inside the cab or fled for safety. "Come on," Pyanfar said to Chur—no encouragement needed there. Chur kept beside her as they crossed the space at a deliberate jog, not out to provoke trouble, not slow to meet it either. Her hand was in her spacious pocket, clenched about the butt of the gun she tried to keep still and out of sight, and her eyes were constantly on that knot of kif, alert for anything kif-shaped that might show itself from ambushes among the maze of gantries and dock-side clutter to the right and the office doors to the left. "Hai," she yelled with great joviality, when they were a single berth apart. "Hai, you kif bastards, about time you came out to say hello." The kif had seen them coming too. Their dozen or so scattered instantly all about the moving can-carrier, some of them screened by it. But from the carrier's broad bed, from beside the four huge cans, several mahen guards dropped down to stand at those kif's backs. "Good to see you," Pyanfar gibed, halting at a comfortable distance. Kifish faces were fixed on her in starkest unfriendliness. "I was worried. I thought you'd forgotten me." "Fool," one hissed. She grinned, her hand still in her pocket, her ears up, her eyes taking in all the kif. Two moved, beyond the moving can-carrier, and she shifted to keep them in sight. The smell of them reached her. Their dry-paper scent offended her nostrils with old memories. The long-snouted faces peering from within the hooded robes, the dark-gray hairless skin with its papery wrinkles, the small, red-rimmed eyes—set the hair bristling on her back. "Do something," she wished them. "Foot-lickers. Riffraff. Petty thieves. Did Akkukkakk turn you out? Or is he anywhere these days?" Kifish faces were hard to read. If that reference to a vanished leader got to them, nothing showed. Only one hooded face lifted, black snout atwitch, and stared at her with directness quite unlike the usual kifish slink. "He is no longer a factor," that one said, while the carrier groaned past under its load of canisters and took itself from between them and four more kif. More soft impacts hit the deck beside her. From the tail of her eye she saw a red-gold blur. Tirun and Geran had dropped off the flatbed rear. They took up a position at her left as Chur held the right. "Get back," she said without looking around at her two reinforcements. "Go on with the carrier. Hilfy's in lower ops. Get that cargo inside." The mahen station guards had moved warily into better position, several dark shadows at the peripheries of her vision, two of them remaining in front of her and behind the kif. "You carry weapons," that foremost kif observed, not in the pidgin even the cleverest of mahe used. This kif had fluency in the hani tongue, spoke with nuances—dishonorable concealed weapons, the word meant. "You have difficulties of all kinds. We know, Pyanfar Chanur. We know what you are transporting. We know from whom it comes. We understand your delicate domestic situation, and we know you now possess something that interests us. We make you an offer. I am very rich. I might buy you—absolution from your past misjudgments. Will you risk your ship? For I tell you that ship will be at risk—for the sake of a mahendo'sat who is lost in any case." She heard the carrier growling its way out of the arena, out of immediate danger. Chur had stayed at her side. So had the six mahendo'sat station guards. "What's your name, kif?" "Sikkukkut-an'nikktukktin. Sikkukkut to curious hani. You see I've studied you." "I'll bet you have." "The public dock is no place to conduct delicate business. And there are specific offers I would make you." "Of course." "Profitable offers. I would invite you to my ship. Would you accept?" "Hardly." "Then I should come to yours." The kif Sikkukkut spread his arms within the cloak, a billowing of black-gray that showed a gleam of gold. "Unarmed, of course." "Sorry. No invitation." The kif lowered his arms. Red-rimmed eyes stared at her with liquid thought. "You are discourteous." "Selective." The long gray snout acquired a v-form of wrinkles above the nostril slits, a chain slowly building, as at some faint, unpleasant scent. "Afraid of witnesses?" "No. Just selective." "Most unwise, Pyanfar Chanur. You are losing what could save you . . . here and at home. A hani ship here has already witnessed—compromising things. Do I hazard a guess what will become of Kohan Chanur—of all that Chanur—precariously—is, if anything should befall The Pride? Kohan Chanur will perish. The name will have never been; the estates will be partitioned, the ships recalled to those who will then take possession of Chanur goods. Oh, you have been imprudent, ker Pyanfar. Everyone knows that. This latest affair will crush you. And whom have you to thank, but the mahendo'sat, but maneuverings and machinations in which hani are not counted important enough to consult?" The transport's whining was in the distance now. She heard another sound, the hollow escaping-steam noise of the cargo hatch opening up, the whine of a conveyer moving to position and meshing; old sounds, familiar sounds: she knew every tick and clank for what they were. "What maneuverings among kif?" she asked the gray thief. "What machinations—that would interest me, I wonder." "More than bears discussion here, ker Pyanfar. But things in which a hani in such danger as you are would be interested. In which you may—greatly—be interested, when the news of Meetpoint gets to the han. As it surely will. Remember me. Among kif—I am one who might be disposed toward you, not against. Sikkukkut of Harukk, at your service." "You set us up, you bastard." The long snout twitched and acquired new wrinkles in its papery gray hide. Perhaps kif smiled. This one drew a hand from beneath its robe and she stepped back a pace, the hand on the gun in her pocket angling the gun up all at once to fire. It offered her a bit of gold in its gray, knobbed claws. She stared at it with her finger tight on the trigger. "A message," it said, "For your—cargo. Give it to him." "Probably has plague." "I assure you not. I handle it. See?" "Something hani-specific, I'm sure." "It would be a mistake not to know what it is. Trust me, ker Pyanfar." It was dangerous to thwart a kif in any whim. She saw this one's pique, the elegant turn of wrist that held the object—it was a small gold ring—before her. She snatched it, the circlet caught between her claws. "Mistrustful," said Sikkukkut. Pyanfar backed a pace. "Chur," she said, and with a back-canted ear heard the whisper of Chur's move back. Sikkukkut held up his thin, soot-gray palms in token of non-combatancy. His long snout tucked under. The red-rimmed eyes looked lambent fire at her. "I will see you again," Sikkukkut said. "I will be patient with you, hani fool, in hopes you will not be forever a fool." She backed up as far as put all the mahen guards between herself and the kif, with Chur close by her. "Don't turn your backs," she advised the mahendo'sat. "Got order," said the mahe in charge. "You go ship, hani. These fine kif, they go other way." "There are illicit arms," said another kif in coldest tones. "Ask this hani." "Ours legal," said the mahe pointedly, who had heard, perhaps, too much of mahendo'sat involvement from this kif. The mahendo'sat stood rock firm: Pyanfar turned her shoulder, taking that chance they offered, collected Chur in haste and headed across the dock, all the while with a twitch between her shoulderblades. "They're headed off," said Chur, who ventured a quick look over her shoulder. "Gods rot them." "Come on." Pyanfar set herself to a jog, not quite a run, coming up to The Pride's berth, to the whining noise of the cargo gear. The loader crane had a can suspended in midair, stalled, while three hani shouted and waved angry argument at her crew beside the machinery. "Ayhar!" Pyanfar thundered. "Gods rot you, out." She charged into the midst and shoved, hard, and Banny Ayhar backed up with round eyes and a stunned look on her broad, scarred face. "You earless bastard!" Ayhar howled. "You don't lay hands on me!" She knew what she had done. She stood there with the crane whining away with its burden in fixed position, with Tirun and Chur and Geran lined up beside her as the two Ayhar crew flanked their captain. Thoughts hurtled through her mind, the han, alliances, influences brought to bear. "Apologies." It choked her. "Apologies, Ayhar. And get off my dock. Hear?" "You're up to something, Pyanfar Chanur. You've got your nose in it for sure, conniving with the mahendo'sat, gods know what—I'm telling you, Chanur, Ayhar won't put up with it. You know what it cost us? You know what your last lunatic foray cost us, while ships of the han were banned at Meetpoint, while our docks at Gaohn were shot up and gods be feathered if that mahen indemnity covered it—" "I'll meet you at Anuurn. We'll talk about this, Banny, over a cup or two." "A cup or two! Good gods, Chanur!" "Geran, Tirun, get those cans moving." "Don't you turn your back on me." "Ayhar, I haven't time." "What's the hurry?" A new ham voice, silken, from her side: Ayhar crew's impudence, she thought, and turned on it with her mouth open and the beginnings of an oath. Another captain stood there, her red-gold mane and beard in curling wisps of elegance; gold arm-band; gold belt; breeches of black silk unrelieved by any banding. Immune Clan color. Official of the han. "Rhif Ehrran," that one named herself, "captain, Ehrran's Vigilance. What's the trouble, Chanur?" Her heart began slow, painful beats. Blood climbed to her ears and sank toward her heart. "Private," she said in a quiet, controlled tone. "You'll excuse me, captain. I have an internal emergency." "I'm in port on other business," the han agent said. "But you've almost topped it, ker Chanur. You mind telling me what's going on?" She could hand it all to the Ehrran, shove the whole thing over onto the han's representative in port. Give Tully to her. To this. Young, by the gods young, ears un-nicked, bestowed with half a dozen rings. And cold as they came. Gods-rotted walking recorder from one of the public service clans, immune to challenging and theoretically nonpartisan. "I'm on my way home," she said. "I'll take care of it." Ehrran's nostrils widened and narrowed. "What did the kif give you, Chanur?" A cold wind went down her back. Distantly she heard the crane whining away, lifting a can into place. "Dropped a ring," she said, "in the riot. Kif returned it." The lie disgusted her. So did the fear the Ehrran roused, and knew she roused. "This what the han's got to? Inquisitions? Gathering bad eggs?" It scored. Ehrran's ears turned back, forward again. "You've about exited private territory, Chanur. You settle this mess. If there are repercussions with the stsho, I'll become involved. Hear me?" "Clear." Breath was difficult. "Now you mind if I see to my business, captain?" "You know," Ehrran said, "you're in deep. Take my advice. Drop off your passenger when you get back to Anuurn." Her heart nearly stopped while Ehrran turned and walked away; but it was Khym Ehrran had meant. She realized that in half a breath more, and outrage nearly choked her. She glared at Banny Ayhar, just glared, with the reproach due someone who dragged the like of Ehrran in on a private quarrel. "Not my doing," Ayhar said. "In a mahen hell." "I can't reason with you," Ayhar said, flung up her hands and stalked off. Stopped again, to cast a look and a word back. "Time you got out of it, Pyanfar Chanur. Time to pass it on before you ruin that brother of yours for good." Pyanfar's mouth dropped. Distracted as she was she simply stared as Ayhar spun on her heel a second time and stalked off along the dock with her two crewwomen; and then it was too late to have said anything without yelling it impotently at a retreating Ayhar back. The first can boomed up the cargo ramp into the cradle; Tirun and Geran kicked their own balky Loader around with expert swiftness, raised the slot's holding sling and snagged it into the moving ratchets that vanished into The Pride's actinic-lighted hold. The can ascended the ramp, while Chur, beside the crane operator on the loader, shouted at the aggrieved mahe, urging her to speed. "Chur!" Pyanfar yelled, headed for the ramp-way and the tube beyond. Chur left off and scrambled after, leaving the docksiders to their jobs. Pyanfar jogged the length of The Pride's ramp and felt a stitch in her side as Chur came up beside her in the accessway. A han agent on their case. A chance to get rid of Tully into the keeping of that same agent and she had turned it down. Gods. O gods. They scrambled through the lock, headed down the short corridor to the lift, inside. The door hissed shut as Pyanfar hit the controls to start the car down, rim-outward of The Pride's passenger-ring. "Got it?" Haral's voice came to them by com. "Gods know," she said to the featureless com panel, forcing calm. "Keep an eye on those kif back there—hear me?" "Looks as if the party's broken up for good out there." "Huh." It was a small favor. She did not believe it. "Aye," Haral agreed, and clicked out of contact. The lift slammed into the bottom of the rotation ring and took a sudden jolt afterward for the holds. "Know which can?" Chur panted beside her, clinging to the rail. "Gods, no. You think Goldtooth labeled the gods-rotted thing? Couldn't use the small cans, no. Couldn't consign it direct to us. Had to trust the stsho. Gods-rotted mahen lunatic." The lift accelerated full out, lurched to a second stop and opened its door on a floodlit empty cavern of tracks below the operations platform where they stood. Their breaths frosted instantly. Moisture in the hold's lately acquired air formed a thin frost on all the waiting cans and the machinery. The cold of the deckplates burned bare feet. The gusting blasts of the ventilation system brought no appreciable relief to unprotected hani skin and nose linings. "Hilfy?" Pyanfar shouted, leaning on the safety railing to look down into the dark. Hilfy-Hilfy-Hilfy the echo came back in giant's tones. "Aunt!" A figure in a padded cold-suit crouched far below the operations scaffold, a glimmer of white in the shadow of the first can to reach its cradle at hold's end. "Aunt, I can't get this cursed lid off! It's securitied!" "Gods fry that bastard!" Pyanfar ignored the locker with the coldsuits and went thumping down the steps barefoot and barechested. The air burned her lungs, froze her ribs. She heard noise behind her, a locker-door rattle. "Get those suits!" she yelled at Chur, and her breath was white in the floodlight glare. Another can locked through with a sibilance of pressurized air and a resounding impact with its receiving cradle as she came down beside the can-track rails that shone pewter-colored in the general dark. The incoming can rumbled past like a white plastic juggernaut and boomed into the cradle-lock as she arrived. Hilfy scrambled to the side of it and jerked the lever that secured the lid. Internal-conditions dials glowed bright and constant on the top-plate. "Locked too," Hilfy said in despair, rising, her voice muffled by the cold-mask she wore, overwhelmed by the crash of another arriving can headed up the outside ramp. "That Goldtooth give us any key-code?" "Gods know. The stsho might have it." Pyanfar shivered convulsively as Chur came pelting up with coldsuits and masks and thrust a set into her numb hands. She stared distractedly as the third can locked through, ignoring the coldsuit, thinking of stsho treachery the while the can rode the hydraulics down and jolted into the third cradle. She shouldered aside Hilfy's move to check its lid and tried it herself. Locked too. "Gods-rotted luck," Pyanfar said, rising, fumbling the slot-apertured cold-mask into place with fingers that refused to set their claws. The pads of her feet felt the burn of the decking plates. She stared helplessly at Chur, who had gotten her own mask on and held out the cold suit she had dropped. "It has to be the last one, that's all." "What if there is a key?" Hilfy asked. Her teeth chattered fit to crack, despite the cold-suit. "And the stsho have got it. "Number four's coming in," Chur yelled over the rising thunder of machinery, and the fourth can locked through and rumbled down the track toward them as they scrambled to meet it. Chur got to it first, crouched down and tugged fruitlessly at the lid. "It's locked too." "Gods and thunders!" Pyanfar yanked her pistol from her pocket and fired past Chur into the lid mechanism, stalked down the row and fired at the next and the next and the next. Maintenance lights on the lids went out. The smoke of burned plastics curled up in the actinic light, mingling gray with their breaths. "Get torches if you have to! Get those lids off." "It's coming!" Chur cried, tugging at the smoking lid, and Hilfy dived to help, past Pyanfar's own numb-footed advance on the can. It was fish, a flood of dried fish, that sent its stench into the supercooled air; the next one, dried fruit. The third— "This is it," said Chur, pawing past the cascade of stinking warm shishu fruit, for a second white lid showed through the spilling cargo. She reached it on her knees and wrenched the lock lever down, tugged with all her might at the lid and tumbled back as it came free. A form like some insect in its cell lifted a pale, breather-masked face in a cloud of steam as the inner air met outer. With a muffled cry Tully began to writhe outward, in a frosting stench of heat and human sweat that almost overcame the fish and fruit. Chur helped, kneeling—seized Tully's white-shirted shoulders and dragged him free in a tumble and slide of fruit, in a cloud of breath and steam from his overheated body. He gasped, struggled wild-eyed to his feet, hands flailing. "Tully," Pyanfar said-he was blinded by the lights, she thought; he looked half-drowned in the heat that narrow confinement had contained. "Tully, it's us, it's us, for the gods' sake." "Pyanfar," he cried and threw himself into her arms. "Pyanfar!"—losing breather-cylinder and hoses and stumbling through the stinking fruit in which he had slid outward. He pressed his steaming self against her, his heartbeat so violent she felt it through his ribs. "Easy," she said. Hunter instincts. Her heart tried to synch with his. "Careful, Tully." She kept her ears up all the same, carefully disengaged his shaking arms and pushed him back. His eyes were wild with fear. "You safe. Hear? Safe, Tully. On The Pride." He babbled in his own tongue. Water poured from his eyes and froze on his face. "Got," he said. "Got—" and abandoned her to dive back into the can, pawing amid the tangle of discarded breathing apparatus and trampled fruit, to stagger up again with a large packet in his grasp. He held it out to her, wobbling as she took it from his hands. "Goldtooth," he said, and something else that did not get past his chattering teeth. "He's going to freeze," said Chur, throwing one of the two coldsuits about his thinly clad, hairless shoulders. And perhaps he only then recognized the others, for he cried "Chur," and staggered a step to fling his arms about her, shivering visibly as the cold disspated the last of his heat. "Hilfy!" —as Hilfy unmasked herself; he reached for her. But his legs went and he slid almost to the ground before Hilfy and Chur could save him. "Hil-fy!" —foolishly, from a sitting posture on the burning cold deck, with Hilfy's arms about him. "Get him up," Pyanfar snapped at them both. "Get him to the lift, for the gods' sakes!" —waving them that way with the packet in one hand, for her feet were freezing and Tully's wet clothes were stiffening, with crystals in his hair. He made shift to walk when they had pulled him up. He hung on them the long, long course down the tracks to the platform stairs, and labored the metal steps with them supporting him on either side and Pyanfar shoving from behind. He faltered at the top, recovered as they heaved him up with his arms across their shoulders. "Hang on." Pyanfar reached the lift and punched the button for them, held the door open on that blast of seeming heat and the glare of light while Hilfy and Chur between them dragged Tully in and held him on his feet. A dull white frost formed on the lift surfaces. "Paper," Tully mumbled, lifting his head. "Got." She closed the door after her and sent the car hurtling forward. Chur held Tully tight against her body and Hilfy pressed close on the other side as the car reached the forward limit and started its topside climb. "Get him to sickbay," Pyanfar said as it went. "Get him warm and for the gods' sakes get him washed." That brought a lifting of Tully's head. His beautiful golden mane was wet with melting frost and clung to the naked skin about his eyes. He stank abysmally of fish and fruit and scared human. "Friend," he said. It was his best word. He offered that, and that frightened look. In distress Pyanfar reached out and patted his shoulder with claws all pulled. "Sure. Friend." Gods, not to be sure of them. And to have come this far on hope alone. "Got—Pyanfar, got—" His teeth chattered, no improvement to his diction. "Come see you—Need—need—'' The lift stopped on lower decks, hissed its doors open. "Take care of him," Pyanfar said, standing firm to stay aboard. "And do it fast. I want you on other business. Hear?" "Aye," said Chur. "Pyanfar!" Tully cried as they dragged him out. "Paper—" "I hear," she said, and held the packet as the door closed between them. "I got it," she muttered to herself; and remembering another matter, put a hand into her pocket and felt the ring beside the gun barrel, a ring made for fingers, not for ears. Only mahendo'sat and stsho wore finger rings, having no under-finger tendon to their non-retractile claws; having one more joint than hani had. Or kif. Not to mention t'ca and knnn and chi. A human hand was mahe-like. Tully had been in kifish hands once. They had gotten him from them. And gods knew he would not forget it. Gods-rotted Outsider. A few minutes dealing with him and she was shaking all over. He had a way of doing that to her. "He's all right?" Haral asked as she arrived sore-footed on the bridge. "Will be. Shaken. I don't blame him." She settled to her chair, filthy as she was, and curled her frost-singed feet out of contact with the floor. Haral, immaculate, had the diplomacy not to wrinkle her nose. "You hear that Ehrran business?" "Some." "Got ourselves one fat report going home, I'll bet. Tirun and Geran in?" "They're dumping out that fish and fruit. Getting rid of the stuff. Spoiled cargo, we call it. Send it out as garbage." "Huh." She leaned back into the chair, hooked a claw into the plastic seal of the packet and ripped it open. "What's that?" "Expensive," she said. The fattish packet yielded several clips of papers, a trio of computer spools. She read labels and drew a deep breath at finding the document Goldtooth had given into Tully's hands—virtually indecipherable mahen scrawl, a printed signature, and hand-printed at the top: Repair authorization in crabbed Universal Block. ". . . good repair . . .", she made out. That the rest of it was unreadable gave her no comfort at all. Another document, pages thick, swarming with neat humped type in alien alphabet. She flipped through the pages with further misgivings. Human? She guessed as much. The third document (typed): Greeting, it said. Sorry go now, leave you this. Got lot noise on dock, got kif, got trouble, got one mad stsho give me trouble. I send can customs, trust stsho Stle stles stlen not much far. He Personage on this station, got faint heart, plenty brain. If, Stle stles stlen, you reading this I promise cut out you heart have it for last meal. Tully come big trouble. Mahen freighter Ijir same find his ship, human give him come. "Bring Pyanfar," he say, all time "Pyanfar" not got other word. So I bring. One stubborn fellow. I know he ask hani help. Also I know the han, like you know han, lot politic, lot talk, lot do nothing. Lot make trouble you about this mate business—forgive I mention this, but truth. You stupid, Pyanfar, one stupid-bastard hani give jealous hani chance bite your ankles. That translate? I know what you do. You too long go outworld, got foreign idea, got idea maybe hani male worth something. You sometime crazy. You know Chanur got personal enemy, know got lot hani not like mahendo'sat, same got lot hani got small brain, not like change custom, same got hani lot mad with stsho embargo. What you try, save time, fight all same time? Hope you get smart, eat their hearts someday. But someday not now. You go han they make big mess. I know. You know. You go han they turn all politic. Instead go mahen Personage like good friend, take Personage message in number one tape. Sorry this coded. We all got little worry. Now give bad news. Kif hunting you. Old enemy Akkukkak sure dead, but some kif bastard got ambition take Akkukkak's command. We got another hakkikt coming up, name Akkhtimakt. I think this fellow lieutenant to Akkukkak, got same ugly way make trouble, want prove self more big than Akkukkak. How do this? Revenge on knnn not good idea. Revenge on human another kind thing; same revenge on you and me. Ship in port name Harukk, captain name Sikkukkut. This number one bastard claim self enemy this Akkhtimakt, want offer deal. This smell many day dead. You add all same up, run mahen Personage. Paper good. You make number one deal mahendo'sat this time. You got big item. Forget other cargo. Be rich. Promise. You hani enemies not touch. Wish all same luck. I got business stsho space. Got fix thing. Goldtooth Ana Ismehanan-min a Hasanan-nan, same give you my sept name. She looked up, ears flat. "What's it say?" asked Haral, in all diffidence. "Goldtooth wished us luck. Promises help. He's bribed the stsho. Someone got those papers fixed to get us here and gods-be if any of it was accident." She gnawed a filthy hangnail. It tasted of fish and human. She spat in distaste and clipped the papers into her data bin. "Tell Tirun and Geran get out cargo unloaded. Get Chur on it. Fast." "All of it?" She turned a stare Haral's way. It was a question, for sure; but not the one Haral asked aloud. "All of it. Call Mnesit. Tell them get an agent down here to identify what's theirs. Tell Sito sell at market and bank what's ours." "They'll rob us. Captain, we've got guarantees; we've got that Urtur shipment promised—We've got the first good run in a year. If we lose this now—" "Gods rot it, Haral, what else can I do?" Embarrassed silence then. Haral's ears sank and pricked up again desperately. So they prepared to run. Prepared—to lose cargo that meant all too much to Chanur in its financial straits, trusting a mahen promise . . . for the second time. And for the first time in memory Haral Araun disputed orders. "I'm going for a bath," she said. "Do what with the incoming cargo?" A faint, subdued voice. "Offer it to Sito," she said. "Warehouse what he won't take. So maybe things work out and we get back here." Likely the stsho would confiscate it at first chance. She did not say what they both knew. She got out of the chair and headed out of the bridge, no longer steady in the knees, wanting her person clean, her world in order; wanting— —gods knew what. Youth, perhaps. Things less complicated. There was one worry that wanted settling—before baths, before any other thing shunted it aside. She buzzed the door of number one ten, down the corridor from her own quarters, down the corridor from the bridge. No answer. She buzzed again, feeling a twinge of guilt that set her nerves on edge. "Khym?" She buzzed a third time, beginning to think dire thoughts she had had half a score of times on this year-long voyage—like suicide. Like getting no answer at all and opening the door and finding her husband had finally taken that option that she had feared for months he would. His death would solve things, repair her life; and his; and she knew that, and knew he knew it, in one great guilty thought that laid her ears flat against her skull. "Khym, blast it!" The door shot open. Khym towered there, his mane rumpled from recent sleep. He had thrown a wrap about his waist, nothing more. "Are you all right?" she asked. "Sure. Fine." His pelt was crossed with angry seams of scratches plasmed together. His ears, his poor ears that Gaohn Station medics had redone with such inventive care and almost restored to normalcy—the left one was ripped and plasmed together again. He had been handsome once . . . still was, in a ruined, fatal way. "You?" "Good gods." She expelled her breath, brushed past him into his quarters, noting with one sweep of her eye the disarray, the bedclothes of the sleeping-bowl stained with small spots of blood from his scratches. Tapes and galley dishes lay heaped in clutter on the desk. "You can't leave things lying." It was the old, old shipboard safety lecture, delivered with tiresome patience. "Good gods, Khym, don't . . . don't do these things." "I'm sorry," he said, and meant it as he did all the other times. She looked at him, at what he was, with the old rush of fondness turned to pain. He was the father of her son and daughter, curse them both for fools. Khym once-Mahn, lord Mahn, while he had had a place to belong to. Living in death, when he should have, but for her, died decently at home, the way all old lords died; and youngsters died, who failed to take themselves a place—or wander some male-only reserve like Sanctuary or Hermitage, hunting the hills, fighting other males and dying when the odds got long. Churrau hanim. The betterment of the race. Males were what they were, three quarters doomed and the survivors, if briefly, estate lords, pampered and coddled, the brightness of hani lives. He had been so beautiful. Sun-shining, clear-eyed—clever enough to get his way of his sisters and his wives more often than not. And every hani living would have loved him for what he did at Gaohn, rushing the kif stronghold, an old lord outworn and romantically gallant in the eternal tragedy of males— But he had lived. And walked about Gaohn station with wonder at ships and stars and foreignness. And found something else to live for. She could not send him home. Not then. Not ever. "It was a good fight," she said. "Out there." His nose wrinkled. "Don't patronize, Py." "I'm not. I'm here to tell you it wasn't your fault. I don't care how it started, it wasn't your fault. Kif set it up. Anyone could have walked into it. Me, Haral, anyone." His ears lifted tentatively. "We've got one other problem." She folded her arms and leaned against the table edge. "You remember Tully." "I remember." "Well, we've got ourselves a passenger. Not for long. We take him to Maing Tol. A little business for the mahendo'sat." The ears went down again, and her heart clenched. "For the gods' sakes don't be like that. You know Tully. He's quiet. You'll hardly know he's here. I just didn't want to spring that on you." "I'm not 'being like that.' For the gods' sakes I've got some brains. What 'business for the mahendo'sat'? What have you gotten yourself into? Why?" "Look, it's just a business deal. We do a favor for the mahendo'sat, it gets paid off, like maybe a route opens. Like maybe we get ourselves that break we need right now." "Like the last time." "Look, I'm tired, I don't want to explain this all. Say it's Goldtooth's fault. I want a bath. I want—gods know what I want. I came to tell you what's happened, that's all." "That kif business . . . have anything to do with this?" "I don't know." "Don't know?" Aliens and alien things. He was downworlder. Worldbred. "Later. It's under control. Don't worry about it. You going to be all right?" "Sure." She started then to go. "I was remarkable, Py. They arrested me and I didn't kill even one of them. Isn't that fine?" The bitterness stopped her and sent the wind up her back. "Don't be sarcastic. It doesn't become you." "I didn't kill anyone, all the same. They were quite surprised." She turned all the way around and set her hands on her hips. "Gods-rotted stsho bigots. What did they say to you?" "The ones in the bar or the ones in the office?" "Either." "What do you expect?" "I want an answer, Khym." "Office wouldn't speak to me. Said I wasn't a citizen. Wanted the crew to keep me quiet. They wanted to put restraints on me. Crew said no. I'd have let them go that far." She came back and extended a claw, straightened a wayward wisp of mane. He stood a head taller than she; was far broader—they had at least put weight back on him, from that day she had found him, gone to skin and bones, hiding in a hedge outside Chanur grounds. He had been trying to find his death then, had come to see her one more time, in Chanur territory, with their son hunting him to kill him and Kohan apt to do the same . . . if Kohan were not Kohan, and ignoring him for days: gods, the gossip that had courted, male protecting male. "Listen," she said. "Stsho are xenophobes. They've got three genders and they phase into new pysches when they're cornered. Gods know what's in their heads. You travel enough out here and you don't wonder what a stsho'll do or think tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Hear?" "You smell like fish," he said. "And gods know what else." "Sorry." She drew back the hand. "Human, is it?" "Yes." He wrinkled his nose. "I won't kill him either. See, Py? I justify your confidence. So maybe you can tell me what's going on. For once." "Don't ask." "They think I'm crazy. For the gods' sakes, Py, you walk in here with news like that. Don't kill the human, please. Never mind the kif. Never mind the gods-be-blasted station's going to sue—" "They say that?" "Somewhere in the process. Py—I don't put my nose into Chanur business. But I know accounts. I was good at it. I know what you've put into this trip, I know you've borrowed at Kura for that repair—" "Don't worry about it." She patted his arm, turned for the door in self-defense, and stopped there, her hand on the switch. She faced about again with a courtesy in her mouth to soften it; and met a sullen, angry look. "My opinion's not worth much," he said. "I know." "We'll talk later. Khym, I've got work to do." "Sure." "Look." She walked back and jabbed a claw at his chest. "I'll tell you something, na Khym. You're right. We're in a mess and we're short-handed, and you gods-rotted took this trip, on which you've gotten precious few calluses . . . ." The eyes darkened. "It was your idea." "No. It was yours. You gods-rotted well chose new things, husband: this isn't Mahn, you're on a working ship, and you can rotted sure make up your mind you're not lying about on cushions with a dozen wives to see to the nastinesses. That's not true anymore. It's a new world. You can't have it half this and half that—you don't want the prejudice, but you gods-rotted well want to lie about and be waited on. Well, I haven't got time. No one's got time. This is a world that moves, and the sun doesn't come round every morning to warm your hide. Work might do it." "Have I complained?" The ears sank. The mouth was tight in disaste. "I'm talking about policy." "When you know the outside you talk about policy. You walk onto this ship after what happened in that bar and you walk into your quarters and shut the door, huh? Fine. That's real fine. This crew saved your hide, gods rot it, not just because you're male. But you sit in this cabin, you've sat in this cabin and done nothing—" "I'm comfortable enough." "Sure you are. You preen and eat and sleep. And you're not comfortable. You're eating your gut out." "What do you want? For me to work docks?" "Yes. Like any of the rest of this crew. You're not lord Mahn any more, Khym." It was dangerous to have said. So was the rest of it. She saw the fracture-lines, the pain. She had never been so cruel. And to her distress the ears simply sank, defeated. No anger. No violence. "Gods and thunders, Khym. What am I supposed to do with you?" "Maybe take me home." "No. That's not an option. You wanted this." "No. You wanted to take on the han. Myself—I just wanted to see the outside once. That's all." "In a mahen hell it was." "Maybe it is now." "Are they right, then?" "I don't know. It's not natural. It's not—" "You believe that garbage? You think the gods made you crazy?" He rubbed the broad flat of his nose, turned his shoulder to her, looked back with a rueful stare. "You believe it, Khym?" "It's costing you too much. Gods, Py—you're gambling Chanur, you're risking your brother to keep me alive, and that's wrong, Py. That's completely wrong. You can't stave off times. I had my years; the young whelp beat me." "So it was an off day." "I couldn't come back at him. I didn't have it, Py. It's time. It's age. He's got Mahn. It's the way things work. Do you think you can change that?" "You didn't see the sense in another fight. In wasting an estate in back and forth wrangling. Your brain always outvoted your glands." "Maybe that's why I lost. Maybe that's why I'm here. Still running." "Maybe because you've always known it's nonsense and a waste. What happened to those talks we used to have? What happened to the husband who used to look at the stars and ask me where I went, what I'd seen, what outside the world was like?" "Outside the world's the same as in. For me. I can't get outside the world. They won't let me." "Who?" "You know who. You should have seen their faces, Py." "Who? The stsho?" "Ayhar." "Those godforsaken drunks?" "Last thing they expected—me in that bar. That's what the stsho owner said. 'Get away from me, get away from my place, don't go crazy here.'" "Gods rot what they think!" "So? Did I teach them anything? Stsho didn't want to serve me in the first place. And I'd had—well, two. To prove I wouldn't, you know—go berserk. And then the riot started. What good's that going to do you—or Kohan?" "Kohan can take care of himself." "You're asking too much of him. No, Py, I'm going back downworld when we get back." "To do what?" "Go to Sanctuary. Do a little hunting." "—be the target of every young bully who's honing up his skills to go assault his papa, huh?" "I'm old, Py. It catches up with a man faster. It's time to admit it." "Gods-rotted nonsense! You'll go back to Anuurn with a ring in your ear, by the gods you will." He gave a smile, taut laugh, ears up. "Good gods, Py. You want my life there to be short, don't you?" "You're not going downworld." "I'll beg on the docks till I get passage, then." "Gods-rotted martyr." "Let me go home, Py. Give it up. You can't change what is. They won't let you change. Gods know they won't let me. Whatever you're trying, whatever grandstanding nonsense you've gotten into—give it up. Stop now. While there's time. I'm not worth it." "Good gods. You think the sun swings around you, don't you? Ever occur to you I have other business than you? That I do things that don't have a thing to do with you?" "No," he said, "because you're desperate. And that's my fault. Gods, Py—" A small, strangled breath, a drawing about the mouth. "It's cost enough." "You know," she said after a moment, "you know what's kept the System in power? The young expect to win. Never mind that three quarters of them die. Never mind that estates get ruined when some young fluffbrain gets in power over those that know better and tries to prove he's in charge. The young always believe in themselves. And the graynoses flat give up, give up when they've got the estate running at its best—They get beaten and it's downhill again with a new lord at the helm. All the way downhill. You know other species pass things on, like mahendo'sat: they train their successors, for the gods' sakes—" "They're not hani. Py, you don't understand what it feels like. You can't." "Kohan ignored you right well." "Sure. Easy. I wasn't much. He still ignores me. How do you think I'm here?" "Because I say so. Because Kohan's too old and too smart to hold his breath till I give in. And by the gods the next time some whelp comes at him with challenge we'll tear the fellow's ears off. First." "Good gods, Py! You can't do that to him—" "Keep him alive? You can lay money on it. Me. Rhean. Even his Faha wife. Not to mention his daughters. Maybe some son, who knows? —someday." "You're joking." "No." "Py. You remember the fable of the house and the stick? You pull the one that's loose and it gets another one—" "Fables are for kids." "—and another. Pretty soon the whole house comes down and buries you. You start a fight like that in the han and gods know—gods know what it'll do to us." "Maybe it might be better. You think of that?" "Py, I can't take this dealing with strangers. I get mad and I can't stand it, I ache, Py. That's biology. We're set up to fight. Millions of years—it's not an intellectual thing. Our circulatory system, our glands—" "You think I don't get mad? You think I didn't want to kill myself some kif out there? And I by the gods held my temper." "Nature gave you a better deal, Py. That's all." "You're scared." He stared at her, eyes wide in offense. "Scared and spoiled," she said. "Scared because you're doing what no male's supposed to be able to do; and guilty that maybe that makes you unmasculine; and gods-rotted spoiled by a mother that coddled your tempers instead of boxing your ears the way she did your sister's. He's just a son, huh? Can't be expected to come up to his sister's standard. Let him throw his tantrums, and keep him out of his father's sight. Makes him potent, doesn't it? And gods, never let him trust another male. Rely on your sister, huh?" "Leave my family out of this." "Your sister hasn't done one gods-rotted thing to back you. And your worthless daughters—" "My sister did back me." "Till you lost." "What's she supposed to do? Gods, what's it like for her, living in Kara's house with me running about as if I were still—" "So she's uncomfortable. Isn't that too bad? Spoiled, I say. Both of you, in separate ways." His ears were back, all the way. He looked younger that way, the scars less obvious. "You want," she said, "the advantages I have and the privileges you used to have. Well, they don't go together, Khym. And I'm offering you what I've got. Isn't it enough? Or do you want some special category?" "Py, for the gods' sake I can't work on the docks!" "Meaning in public." "I'll work aboard." A great, gusting sigh. "Show me what to do." "All right. You clean up. You get yourself to the bridge and Haral'll show you how to read scan. It's going to take more than five minutes." She sucked at her cheeks. She had not meant to make that gibe. "You can sit monitor on that. Our lives may depend on it. Keep thinking of that." "Don't give me—" "—responsibility? —Nice, boring, long-attention-span jobs?" "Gods rot it, Py!" "You'll do fine." She turned and punched the door button with a thumb claw. "I know you will." "It's revenge, that's what it is. For the bar." "No. It's paying your gods-rotted bar bill same as any of us would." She stalked out. The door hissed shut like a comment at her back. Chapter 4 Tully was at least on his feet—seemed to be feeling like Tully, which meant insisting on cleaning himself up if he wobbled doing it, crashing about the lowerdecks washroom talking to himself (or thinking that he was being understood) and generally insisting on his privacy from females even if they were of different species. Hilfy dithered between communications from Haral topside via the hallway com panel, frantic requests from Chur in the op room down the corridor (Tirun and Geran were busy down in cargo offloading canisters, with attendant booms and thumps up through the deck plates), and the barricaded washroom into which disappeared a pair of Haral's blue trousers and out of which issued steam and the indescribable mingle of human-smell, fruit, fish and disinfectant soap. "You all right?" Hilfy asked, when a hairless arm snaked the offered trousers from around the corner of the door. "Tully, hurry it up. We've got other problems. Fast? Understand?" A mumbled answer came back and the door went shut as if he had leaned on the control as soon as she had gotten her arm out. Hilfy looked round in desperation as Chur came trotting back from ops waving a pair of pocket corns and with a third clipped to her drawstring waist. "Got it," Chur said. "Translator's up and running." "Thank the gods." She pounded on the door again, whisked it open as Chur thrust a pocket com and earplug around the corner to their passenger and drew her arm back. "Tully—" she said to the unit Chur gave her. She put the earplug in with a grimace. "Tully? You hear me now?" "Yes," the sound came back, mechanical, from the com loop to the translating computer. "Who talk?" The translator's syntax was far from perfect. "Tully," Chur said, "it's Chur talking. Hilfy and I got other work, understand? Got to go. You hurry it up; we take you to quarters, get you settled in." "Got talk to Pyanfar." "Captain's busy, Tully." "Got talk." The door opened. He leaned in the doorframe, wearing blue hani trousers, which fit, but barely; and shirtless like themselves. His all but hairless skin was flushed from the heat inside and his mane and beard were dripping wet. "Got talk, come # # talk to Pyanfar." "Tully, we've got troubles," Hilfy said. "Big emergency." She took him by the arm and Chur took the other, drawing him along despite his objections. "Got cargo troubles, all kinds of troubles." "Kif." He went stiff and stopped cooperating. "Kif are here?" "We're still at dock," Hilfy said, keeping him moving. "We're sitting at Meetpoint and we're as safe as we're going to be. Come on." "No, no, no." He turned and seized her arms with his bluntfingered hands, let her go and shook at Chur. "# No # # #" Hilfy shook her head at the static breakup. The translator missed those words. Or never had them. "Hilfy, Chur—mahen # take # ship # human. I bring papers from #. They ask # hani make stop these kif. Got danger. We're not safe # Meetpoint." "What's he mean?" asked Chur, her ears gone lower, up again. "You catch that?" "Go get hani fight these kif," Tully said. "Good gods," Hilfy said. "Friend," he said again, the hani word, that sent garble through the translator, less forgiving of his mangled pronunciation. His strange blue eyes were aflicker with fear and secrets. "Friend." "Sure," Hilfy said. She felt a cold lump at the pit of her stomach, hearing the clank and whine of cargo at work below. Things clicked into place of a sudden, that her aunt had committed them to something more than running an illegal passenger—being desperate, with Chanur's financial back to the wall. It was more than human trade Tully brought. Trade might save their hides. But entanglements with kif, deals with a mahendo'sat who was not the trader he gave out to be— And the likes of Rhif Ehrran breathing down their backs all the while—she had heard it all from Chur. The han would have their ears. Pyanfar took the com to the shower with her, hung it on the wall outside. On the day's record so far, she expected calamities. The first call brought her dripping from shower to the mat outside undried, mane and beard and hide cascading suds. "Captain." Haral's voice. "Trouble?" "Na Khym's here. Says you said he should sit scan monitor." "Show him what he needs." Dead silence from the other end. Then: "Aye, captain. Sorry to bother you." Back to the shower then, to wash the suds off. She slicked the mane back, flattened her ears and squinched her eyes and nostrils shut, face-on to the water-jet for one precious self-indulgent second. She sneezed the water clear and cycled from water to drier, fluffing out her mane and beard, enjoying the warmth. The com beeper went off again. "Gods rot." She left the heat and stood damp and shivering by the hook, fumbling the answer slot. "Pyanfar." "Captain." Haral again. "Got a kifish message couriered in. From one Sikkukkut. Says it's for you personally." "Open it." A long silence. "He's offering partnership." "Good gods." She forgot the physical cold for a deeper shock. "Says he wants to talk with you face to face. Says—gods—he's talking specifics here. He names ships he says are after us. Says we have mutual enemies. He gets into kifish stuff here—pukkukkta." "Gods-rotted pukkukkta changes meaning in every context—get linguistic comp on that. Get it on the whole thing—Keep alert up there." "Aye, captain. Sorry." "All right." She sneezed and cut the com off, returned to the shower and recycled the dryer. "Captain. Captain." She left the staff and snatched up com. "For the gods' sake, Haral—" "—Captain, sorry. That request for scheduling—It seems we're being sued. Got six lawsuits against us and station says it can't give clearance without—" She shut her eyes a moment, composed her voice and kept it very calm. "Get the station-master online. Tell gtst to issue orders." "By your leave, I've tried, captain. Call won't go through. The stationmaster's office says gtst is indisposed. The word was gstisi." Personality crisis. "That gods-rotted white-skinned flutterbrain isn't going to Phase on us! Countersue the bastards and start prep for manual undock as soon as they get that cargo clear. Get everyone on it down there. And send a message to the director and say if gtst doesn't get this straightened out I'll give gtst new personality more damages to worry about, some of them to gtst person." "Aye," Haral said. She threw clothes on, her third-best trousers, green silk with moiré orange stripes in the weave; a belt with bronze bangles; the pearl for her ear. Her best armlet, the heavy one. The alien ring was on the counter, from the pocket of the red breeches. She considered, dropped it indecisively into her pocket, pocketed the gun again, clipped on the com and pattered out into the hall in haste, claws clenched, headed for the bridge. "Captain." The pocket com again, this time from her belt. "Captain, I got the stationmaster on." "I'm coming," she said, and hastened, down the corridor into the open door. Haral looked about; Khym sat at the righthand station, intent on the scan, the light flickering off his dutiful, martyred scowl. Haral handed her the transcription. "Gtst is out. A new individual is in power. I think it's still the last one, in a personality shift. The new Director wants payment in full. Says we got the better of the last director, drove gtst into a crisis that wasn't due for twenty years, and this one's determined to get gtst money up front. Intends to impound all offloaded cargo." "Gods rot—" She swallowed it, seeing the movement of Khym's all-too-hearing ears backward at her voice. She read the demand for payment. "Four hundred million—" "Nine hundred with the lawsuits. I think that's the problem. Someone important has sued and gtst has to do something." "I could guess who." "Gods. Kif. Possible." Haral rubbed her scarred nose, looked up from under her brow. "You thinking of breaking port?" "Maybe." "If we do it they'll blackball us. Every stsho port. Every stsho facility. They'll never lift the ban." "Same if we don't pay." "Aye, captain," Haral said morosely. And lifting her ears: "Captain, we could offer them the profit. Earnest money, like. Offer to give them more'on next trip. Gods know how we'll pay off the shippers—but that's tomorrow. And it'll be tied up in litigation anyway, soon as it hits Site's warehouse." "Maybe." Pyanfar combed her beard with her claws, looked distractedly toward Khym's broad back. Shook her head as at some heavy blow. "How's that unloading going?" She missed the sound of the conveyors of a sudden. "Finished down there?" "Sounds like." "Rot their eyes." Meaning stsho. She sucked in her mustache ends and gnawed at them. "Pukkukkta." "Captain?" "Pukkukkta. What did comp say it meant?" "Like trade of services." Haral snatched up a printout and offered it to her hand. "Like revenge. This is the item. Over regular channels, it was." Greeting, the message said, Chanur hunter. Beware Parukt; Skikkt; Luskut; Nifakkiti. Most of all beware Akkhtimakt of Kahakt. These aspire; that one aspires most. I Sikkukkut am with you in pukkukkta for this cause and speak to you in words which precisely describe kif, therefore ambiguity of translation lies at your feet. I Sikkukkut know about your passenger and likewise say this: wisest to give this passenger to me. You would then be rich. But I Sikkukkut know the sfik of hunter Pyanfar that this passenger has sfik-value and will be defended. Therefore I Sikkukkut say to the sfik of Pyanfar Chanur that she must give this word to this passenger: I Sikkukkut will speak with him at an appropriate time. Shelter by my side, hunter Pyanfar. Together we might make a fine pukkukkta, and the cost is less today than tomorrow. Signal me and I Sikkukkut shall come to the dock where we shall find a quiet place to talk. "Kif bastard," Pyanfar said, and crumpled the paper. "He wants Tully. That's what he wants. That's what would buy him status." She looked at Khym, who sat listening to it all, saying nothing; but his ears were back. "Consign a can at random to Harukk. Tell them and then tell the stsho." "To the kif?" Haral gasped, and Khym turned round at his post with the whites of his eyes showing. "As a gift. To one Sikkukkut, captain of Harukk. Let the stsho sue him." A thoughtful, wicked look came into Haral's eyes, bewilderment to Khym's. "No one sues the kif," Khym said. "No," Pyanfar said, "they won't. And let Sikkukkut and the station worry what's in that can, whether it's valuable or not. If he won't take it he'll have to wonder. If he does and finds nothing but trade goods—kif have remarkably little sense of humor, where face is involved. Sfik. And gods know if he has one of his cronies pick it up he'll have to wonder whether he got all that was in it. Kif don't trust each other. They can't." "But—" Khym said. "No time. Do it, Haral." "Aye." Haral sat down at com, stuck the receiver in her ear and punched out a blinking light. "Captain, that's Tully again. He's called up here a dozen times. Keeps asking something about a packet of papers. He wants to come up here and discuss it with you." "Gods." She raked at her beard distractedly and stared round her at the bridge, at Khym's broad back as he kept dutifully to the board, proving—proving things to her. Deliberately. Stubbornly. Then she realized what she was thinking and thrust the thought away. Male and male, same space. Old ways of thinking died hard. He's not hani, for the gods' sakes. And they're on the same ship. "Tell him come up," she said. "Tell everyone get up here soon as they secure the hold. Prep ops for undock. And send that message." "Aye." Haral's voice droned the communications in sequence. She punched from one to the other channels without amenities. Then in snarling stsho: "Meetpoint Central Control, this is the hani ship The Pride of Chanur, berth 6, responding to your notification regarding cargo: must inform you can 23500 has already been consigned to berth 29, Harukk—" "Get through to Sikkukkut," Pyanfar said to her back. "Tell him there's a shipment for him in the hands of the stsho." "You can't afford to lose that cargo," Khym said, swinging round. "To stsho or to kif. Pyanfar—" "Captain," she said, folding her arms. His eyes burned. She stood her ground. "You're on the bridge. It's captain. Eyes to that board." He visibly trembled. The sigh gusted through his nostrils like the breath of a furnace. And he turned back to the board. "Huh," she said, her worst anticipations overturned. "The stationmaster wants to talk to you," Haral said. "I think it's gtst interpreter." "I'll take it." She sat down in her place at controls and stuck a com plug in her ear, leaned toward the board pickup and punched the blinking light. "This is Pyanfar Chanur. Have you a question, esteemed director?" "The director informs you—" the reply came back "—this high-handed threat will not suffice. We have your signed acknowledgment of responsibility, but this does not cover lawsuits and our liabilities. We wish payment now." "Is that so?" Her lips drew back as if she had the director in sight. "Tell the Director gtst new Phase is a scoundrel, a liar and a pirate." A pause. "—Our demand is just. The damages of four hundred million must be paid and the lawsuits must be settled—" "Collect it from the kif." "—If The Pride of Chanur undocks without payment it will violate treaty and application for reparations will go to the hem. Now this message would be more convenient than usual to deliver." She sucked in her breath. Gods. For a stsho, the old bastard had a certain flair. "—Your response." "Bargain. On the one hand we will countersue. If we lose we will appeal to the court at Llhie nan Tie, to Tpehi, to Llyene, and the case will go on for years—while gtst remain legally responsible for holding our goods in warehouse while litigation proceeds." "—This might be acceptable." "On the other hand—on the other hand, esteemed director—" "—Get quickly to this other hand." "If the request for payment were otherwise phrased, and if Meetpoint makes itself responsible for all present and future lawsuits out of the settlement, money might be forthcoming." "—Please restate. Was this an offer of payment?" "The station assumes full financial responsibility for present and future suits and reparations arising from the riot, releases all cargo claims, trades with our factors at listed station exchange rates, and provides us one unified bill for The Pride's damage repair." "Please restate, Chanur captain. This translator understood 'ship damage repair.'" "You have it right." A delay. "—This smacks of illegality." "Absolutely not. We will swear to damages suffered by The Pride during the disturbances. Never mind what kind. I'm sure you have the talent to word it so we can both sign it." "Please; please, this translator must be correct." "You've got it. You clear our record, expedite us out, and pad that gods-rotted bill as much as you want. I'll meet you on the dock with the credit authorization in a quarter hour." "—This is subterfuge. Chanur is known destitute." "Revise your information, esteemed director. Chanur just called in a debt." Prolonged silence. "Well?" "Excuse, esteemed Chanur captain. This will take consideration." "You by the gods get me out of here." More silence. "Please be discreet." "Would the esteemed director contact me on an unsecure channel? The esteemed director is no fool. It would not be profitable for gtst to appeal to the han, in whatever form. This would surely tie up the funds in litigation." She turned and motioned furiously at Haral. "Legal release," she said into the pickup; and to Haral, and her eyes fell on Khym once-lord-Mahn, on a tense expression turned her way. She motioned at him, listening with one ear to stsho dithering. Do it, she mouthed. "—Listen, I told you, pad the bill all you want. I'm not coming to the office again. You're coming to the docks and you're going to sign a release for all damages, hear that?" There was frantic activity to her right. Haral had comp reeling up legal forms and Khym was leaning over her shoulder muttering corrections and wordings. By the gods, Mahn's ex-lord, ex-legal counsel. In his element. She grinned at the mike and listened to more blather. "Simply put," she said to the director, once Stle stles stlen, "you sign ours, we sign yours, we get our papers clear and our cargo sold for top going rate, and you can show the High Director at Nsthen you got full compensation, right? Otherwise you report unpaid damages. Which do you want?" "The director relays to you gtst profound distress that Chanur should have been slandered by fools. Gtst is sending you the papers at once and further sends you a gift to make amends for this misunderstanding." "Chanur will reciprocate in acknowledgment of the director's wisdom in detecting these slanders." She searched rapidly through the data bin for the appropriate forms, copied those, snagged the one that Harai thrust into her hand, fully printed, bilingual in stshoshi and ham and ready for signature. "Profound gratitude, yes." She broke the contact and flipped the documents looking for key clauses. "Watertight?" "Full release," Khym said. "It had better be." She gathered up all the papers, spun the chair on its mechanism. "Eyes back to that scan, hear?" "You need escort, captain?" Haral asked. "You stay here. Tell Hilfy meet me at the lock. I gods-rotted don't need protection from the stsho and I want you at controls. In case." She flung herself out of the chair and headed for the door. Tully was inbound, in great haste. "Pyan-far!" he cried. "Sorry, Tully, no time." She brushed past, or tried. He caught her arm. "Got talk! Pyanfar!" "No time, Tully. Haral—see to him." "No # listen I # go #!" He snatched again when she broke the grip and tried to overtake her in the hall. "Pyanfar!" As she left him behind. "Pyanfar— " She made it into the lift and shut the door between. She punched com. "Haral. Get Tully under wraps. Get him his drugs for jump. And stay by those controls!" Not the most logical series of orders. Gods, Tully and Khym loose on the same level of the ship, Haral busy— The lift stopped on lower deck. The door opened, on Tirun, Chur and Geran, standing at the lift. Haral's voice rang through the lower corridor—"Who's free down there?" "Get topside," Pyanfar said, coming through them, papers in hand. "Move it, hear?" Their fur was draggled, dark-tipped with sweat. They smelled of it. "Get Tully put somewhere." "Aye." The door closed and they went up. She headed down the corridor at a long stride, where Hilfy waited at the lock, slant-eared and with the whites showing round her eyes. "Calm down, imp," she said, meeting that look. "It's just the stsho this time." But she still had the gun in her pocket. It lately seemed a good idea. The Pride's area of the dock was quiet now, ghostly quiet, with the giant doors to the market still sealed, with the cargo access shut and the station's cargo ramp drawn back and dark. No cans stood about the dock. Only the gantry remained, the huge air ducts socketed to the vent panel beside the water in- and outflow hoses, but those were in shutdown inside. The sensor-bundle, the sextuple power cables and the com lines: that was all that tied The Pride to station now, those and the access tube, the station personnel ramp, and the probe and grapples that, behind that triple-thick wall, added failsafe to The Pride's own steel-armed grip. Not much, compared to the truck-wide cargo ramp. Not much to hold them now that that link was free. A ship could break away from grapples if it had to, taking damage and trusting station valves and gates to shut. Not even kif had done such a thing, reckless as they were of life, but stsho in their paranoia might think of such possibilities. Pyanfar cast one narrowed look at that contact with their docking probe and thought such lawless thoughts. Like turning pirate. Like what a desperate hani could do, if she lost a gamble with the mahendo'sat and the han and there were nothing left at home. Her crew would stay loyal and to a mahen hell with the han if Kohan Chanur died. Good gods. The thought chilled. It came of advancing age. Of having a male aboard. Put the mind in different modes. Like hunt and nest and kill the intruders instead of the polite surrender to the han on which civilization rested. Pulling sticks, Khym called it. Hani ships going far and wide across Compact space with males aboard and all the attendant mindset in the crews. Riot on station docks, interHouse brawls, crews at odds with other crews and hani born in space, never knowing Anuurn under their feet at all, with no Hermitage in reach. Gods, what am I doing here?—standing by Hilfy, gun in pocket, watching a stsho official car come humming up the dock. Somehow she had gotten into this. The steps to it eluded her at the moment, but the steps that led from it— A kif offered alliance—and for one fleeting moment it truly looked attractive. She was running out of friends. The car rolled up and stopped humming; hummed again in a different key as the door slid down and Stle sties stlen's current persona put out a pink-shod foot. The translator got out the other door and hastened round with a flurry of robes like rainbow light, to offer gtst hand to the director. Stle stles stlen (or whatever gtst called gtstself this hour) straightened to gtst feet and waved gtst limp-wristed, long-fingered hand. "Shoss." A paper appeared from some depth of the translator's robes. Gtst offered it, gtst mooncolored eyes fluttering in wide nervousness. "Take it," Pyanfar said to Hilfy, assuming the loftiness the stsho understood: assistants traded papers, perused them. "Bill," Hilfy read in a small strangled voice, "for 1.2 billion credits, aunt." "I figured. Let me see that." Hilfy handed it over. Document-reading proceeded to a higher level as Stle sties stlen took the release forms into gist own pearly hands. A long rustling of pages while the gantry lines thumped and hissed overhead. "All right," Pyanfar said. "Hesth," said Stle sties stlen, and in hani: "Where is this money?" She held out the appropriate paper. Stle stles stlen took it in gtst own hands, and gtst head came up and gtst eyes went wide. "Well?" Pyanfar said, keeping her ears up, her expression confident and bland. "—This is an extravagant power," the translator rendered. "Of course it is. And I'm sure the esteemed director will want to file that copy. I keep the original." "Esteemed hani friend," said Stle sties stlen. "Got a pen?" Stle stles stlen snatched it from the translator and offered it gtstself. If gtst had had external ears they would have pricked far forward. She signed; gtst signed; documents changed hands and Chur and the translator signed. Hectic flushes almost to pink chased nacre across Stle sties stlen's pearly skin. Gtst looked up with adoration in gtst eyes, waved gtst hand and out of the inexhaustible rainbow robes, the translator brought a smallish presentation box, which Stle sties stlen proffered gtstself. "Accept this trifle." "Munificent." Pyanfar pocketed the box. "Your files have my manifest: do select a case of Anuurn honey for your table." "Excellent hani." "I go first on the departure list." "Oh, yes." Gtst bowed, fluttered. "At earliest." Gtst backed toward the car and stopped, looking wide-eyed, then ducked inside. The translator saw the director inside and the door raised, whisked gtst rainbow self around to gtst own side. The car hummed to life, opaqued its windows, and hummed a quick u-turn, off down the docks. "Aunt—" Hilfy said. She turned, expecting one of the crew had come outside. She saw instead a kif between them and the lock, and her hand twitched toward her pocket—prudently stopped with a mere twitch. She stood stiff-legged, hearing Hilfy sotto voce beside her, the belt-com doubtless thumbed: "Haral, for the gods' sakes—Haral—there's a kif out here—" The kif flourished a hand among its robes, billowing the hem like the edge of some dark wing. It sauntered forward with the ease of an old, old friend. "That you, Sikkukkut?" "Strange. I can tell hani apart." "Get off my dockside." "I came to follow up my message. The ring. How did your passenger receive it?" "I forgot. Frankly, I forgot." "Can it be he couldn't receive it? Damaged in shipment, might he be? That would distress me." "I'm sure it would. Get out of my way." "Your crewwoman's calling help, is she?" "You won't want to stay around to see." The thin wrinkled snout acquired a chain of wrinkles. "So you're putting out. Beware of Kita Point." "Thanks." More wrinkles. "Of course. There are such limited ways out of Meetpoint. Except for those the stsho permit. Except for us—who go where we like. I wonder where Mahijiru is." "Don't know, then? Good." "Your sfik will kill you." "My ego, is it? Come on, Hilfy." She started forward, picking a course to The Pride just out of kifish long-armed reach. But he moved to intercept them. "We are both hunter-kinds, hunter Pyanfar." And with a twitch of that long hairless nose: "Kif are better." "Hani are smarter." She had stopped, hand in pocket. "I have a gun." Sikkukkut's long black nose gained wrinkles and lost them. "But being hani—you dare not use it unless I prove armed. This is the burden of a species its hosts fear not." "It's called civilization, you earless bastard." A dry kifish sniffing, like laughter. "The stsho are grass to us. You will not join with me." "In a mahen hell." He lifted both hands, palm outward. "I do not challenge, hunter Pyanfar." Her hand tensed on the gun, to be quick; but the tall kif turned his black-cloaked back and walked off with that peculiar stalking gait. "Sfik," Hilfy muttered, who was the linguist among them. "Means like pride, like honor, if the kif had any." "If," Pyanfar said, staring after the kif and not forgetting a sweep about to see if there were confederates lurking: there were not. "That mouth may speak hani; that brain's pure kif. Move it. Get out of here." "I have a gun," Hilfy said, backing away as she was told. "Come on, aunt. Let's both get out of here." "Huh." She backed, turned, grabbed Hilfy by the arm and both of them hastened up the rampway into the access, headon into Tirun and Chur who were coming out. "Good gods," she said when her heart had restarted. "Sounded like you had trouble," Tirun said. "It walked off," she said, and gathered them all up, marched them ahead of her past the safety of the airlock. Chur shut the door. "Kif?" asked Tirun then. "Kif," she said, and looked around sharply at movement to her left, where Geran stood, with Tully. "Got talk," he said. "Geran, for the gods' sakes I said settle him." "It's urgent, captain." "Everything's urgent. Get in line." "Aunt," Hilfy said, with that kind of look Hilfy could get when something was utterly out of joint. "Got paper," Tully said, breathless. "Got—" The translator garbled over mangled hani words. "Get me a plug, will you?" One materialized out of Hilfy's pocket, and she put the audio into her ear. "Tully, what are those papers?" "Got paper say human come fight kif # # need hani." "Rot that translator. I'm losing that." "Human come fight kif." A very cold lump settled to her stomach. "Why, Tully?" "Make kif #. Friend, Pyanfar. Bring lot human come fight kif." The cold grew colder still. "Sounds like," said Tirun, "more than one ship involved." "They want help," said Hilfy. "That's why he came. That's what I think he's saying. It's nothing to do with trade." "Gods," she muttered, and looked up, at an earnest human face, at four crewwomen with faces taut with the same kind of thoughts. "Kif know this, Tully?" "Maybe know," he said. He drew a great breath and let it go, held out his hands as if appeal could get past the translator. "Come long way find you. Kif—kif make trouble # one time fight Goldtooth friend." "Goldtooth," she said. The name was a bad taste in her mouth. "What am I supposed to do with you? Huh?" "Go Maing Tol. Go Anuurn." "Gods rot it, Tully, we got kif up to our noses!" His pale eyes locked on hers, desperate. "Fight," he said. "Got make fight, Py-an-far." She lowered her ears and brought them up again, glancing round at her crew. Scared faces. Looking to her for answers. "Ought to give him to Vigilance," she muttered, "and advertise it to the kif." No one said anything. She imagined the consequences for herself if she did that. The fragile Compact broken wide open, kif chasing a han deputy ship. Or Ehrran leaving him on a stsho station, where not a hand would be raised to prevent kif from walking in and doing what they liked. Kif would do anything, if profit in doing it outweighed the profit in restraint. "Where we taking him?" Tirun asked. "Maing Tol, Goldtooth says." "Captain—We do that and that blackbreeches'll have our ears. Begging the captain's pardon." More questions of her orders. She stared at Tirun, at a cousin, an old comrade; at another Chanur whose life was at risk. "You want to turn him over to Ehrran, Tirun?" Tirun stood there with her ears down, with rapid thinking going on behind her eyes. "We could send another can to Vigilance," she said. "Let that kif bastard wonder." The idea struck her fancy. But: "No," she said, thinking of those same consequences. "Can't risk it. Come on." She seized Tully by the arm and dragged him into motion, then abandoned the grip as she headed for the lift. "Get Tully settled. Get his drugs for him and get up to the bridge." "Go?" Tully asked, close at her heels. "Pyanfar—go Hoas?" "Urtur," she said, reaching the lift. She looked back as Chur and Hilfy took him by the arms. Tirun punched the door and held it. "Going to Urtur. Going fast. Take the drugs. Stay out of the way. Understand?" "Got," he said, and let them pull him off down the hall. She stepped into the lift and Tirun got in and pushed the buttons. One worried look from Tirun. That was all. "I know," she said, which summed it up. She pulled the presentation case from the pocket where she had put it, opened it as the car shot upward. A note. Beware Ismehanan-min, it said. Meaning Goldtooth. She handed it to Tirun. The door opened on the upper corridor. Chapter 5 There was quiet on the bridge, a great deal of calm and quiet, considering the situation, Khym brimming with questions, and a handful of exhausted crew. No one said a word. Six pairs of eyes were on her, expecting her to come up with something remarkably clever. 1.2 billion credits. Hilfy still looked to be in shock. "Got a few problems," Pyanfar said, sinking into her chair, which was turned to face the bridge at large. "I think we'd better take that docking clearance the stsho promised and get ourselves our of here before they change their minds. Chur, Hilfy, you sure Tully's set, got his drugs, knows to stay put." "Aye," Chur said. "I don't promise we get a calm ride out of here. And we're going to push it hard. We're headed for Urtur. We're stripped. We can one-jump it. When we come in there we keep our ears pricked and get the news. Gods send it isn't kif. Questions?" Dead quiet. She picked up a courier cylinder from the document pocket on the side of the chair. "Chur." "Aye." "Get one of the docking crew to shoot that through the pneumat. Fast." Chur took it, whirled and headed out of the bridge with a scrape of claws. So that was seen to. If Stle sties stlen did not have all their messages intercepted, rot his pearly hide. "Crew to stations. Khym—" She stood up and in the general mill of crew taking seats she took Khym's arm and took him into the small nook of quiet in the corridor outside. "For this one I recommend the tranquilizer," she said. "Tully takes it. Topside med kit still has it." "I don't need it," he muttered, his ears gone down. "I don't need—" "Listen to me. Old hands lose their stomachs in this kind of thing. G like planetary lift; we'll be cycling the vanes—" "I'm not going to my cabin. Look, you wanted me on the bridge, work, you said—" "You're not staying on the bridge." "There's the observers' seats." "No." "Please, Py." His voice sank to its lowest pitch. His amber eyes were quick and large. "Captain. Win a ring, you said. In front of them, for the gods' sake, Py. I won't make trouble. Won't." Her ears fell; her heart went over. "Gods rot it, this isn't a simple hop from port to port." "Part of the crew. Isn't that what you meant?" "This isn't a question—" "Pride's pride, Py. You put me there; you by the gods leave me there. Or do you think the crew won't have it?" Soft-headed, that was what. "You take number one observer," she said. "You watch Geran watch scan and if you get sick in the cycles you by the gods reach the bags undercabinet, I don't care what else is going on. If you haven't ridden through a high-v vector change with someone heaving up you haven't seen a mess. Got it?" She jabbed him with one sharp claw, saw him go tight around the nose. "Besides, it fogs the screens." Without a word he ducked back into the bridge. She went back behind him, while he set himself into the first of the three observer posts, at Geran's elbow: Geran gave him a look, betraying no dismay, but a look all the same. He fumbled after belts and began fastening them—not nervous, no. He only missed the insert twice. She slipped into her own place, snapped the restraint one-handed and powered the chair about all in one smooth sequence, because she could, and failed to realize why she did it until she had. She argued him onto the bridge for one reason and turned surly when he put himself there. And knew it. Gods. "Ready to disengage the probe," Haral said. "Chur's still down there. Hilfy, advise Vigilance they've got a message coming." "Aye." A small delay. "They acknowledge. That's all." She gave Rhif Ehrran that, she was not prone to destructive chatter. Advise you, that couriered message said, kif on our trail. Stop at nothing, even attack on han deputy. Do not attract interest. Station at hazard. Ours more. We take evasive measures, best possible. No explanation possible. Well to be out of port when that hit Ehrran's lap. A series of thumps rang up from the bow, The Pride's own language of clangs and bumps, reliable as her telltales: docking probes had retracted; vents were sealed. Outside the station hull, the grapples disengaged. "Gantry's clear," Haral said, busy with the prep sequences. "Where's Chur? She make it?" Com relayed. "She's coming," Tirun said. "All clear." "Give me out-schedule." "Up," Tirun said, and: "Huh." Banny Ayhar's Prosperity was on the list, outbound for Urtur via Hoas Point. So was Marrar's Golden Sun. There went gossip on its way to Anuurn, fast as a loaded merchant ship could travel and carry an Ehrran message. Likewise a stsho ship had gone outbound half an hour ago, one E Mnestsist, Rhus flisth' ess commanding. Hoas-bound for Urtur. So every ship bound from Meetpoint to mahen-hani space had to go to Urtur via Hoas. Unless they were doing it cargo-stripped, to make Urtur in a single jump. The Pride's own course showed Urtur-via-Hoas, which was a lie. There were other possibilities from Meetpoint: Nsthen in stsho space, where only stsho and methane-breathers were allowed. The tc'a border-port of V'n'n'u; the tc'a port of Tt'a'va'o: methane-breather/stsho again. The kif port of Kefk, the one kifish corridor to Meetpoint; Kshshti in the Disputed Territories. Messages could go a great many ways from Meetpoint, that being the nature of Meetpoint in its conception. And a tight-beamed lightspeed message could get to an outbound ship like E Mnestsist before it had time to jump. It could still do a vector change . . . if one Stle sties stlen had something gtst wanted relayed. Conniving bastard. The Pride of Chanur was listed departure ———, without a time. They had been bumped up ahead of Prosperity and Golden Sun. That would not sweeten Barmy Ayhar's mood, no question at all. And there was not a single kif listed. "No telling what's been delayed off that list," she muttered. "Could have a raft of kif leaving ten minutes behind us. Station that can't keep its registry boards running dockside, gods know what it does with out-schedules when money changes hands—power up, Haral: keep us null for outbound." "Up," Haral said; she heard the distant sound of the pumps delivering their load; the electric whump! of startup normally followed by the louder crash of cylinder-lock going off; but it stayed locked. They would have no g but after-thrust on this system transit. Safer that way. It made sudden moves safer. She heard the sound of running feet scramble into the bridge at her back; heard a body hit a seat. "Chur's in." "Message went," Chur said over the com, above the noise. "Saw it go into the slot." "Helm to one." Helm to her own board. She pushed buttons, let the auto-interlock stay in during the undock, the computer reckoning their mass and how hard to push to stay inside legal parameters. The holds were empty. The thrust-indicator was way down. The ordinary mark would have hit The Pride like a hard kick at an empty can. "Aunt." That was Hilfy at com one. "Question." "Ask it." "That bill—" "What about that bill?" "Mahendo'sat paying that?" "Huh. Yes." "They know it?" "Tell you something, imp. There's two strong reasons for one-jumping this. One of them's the kif." "Gods, aunt—" "Tirun, you teaching the kid to swear?" "How do we pay it?" "It's paid. Goldtooth paid it. He just doesn't know it yet. Stand by the vector shift. We're not going out of here like last time. By the book, at least till we get running room." They reached the l-zone limit, two-vectored as they were with station's spin and their own bow-thrust, headed tailfirst across the invisible mark. She gave the port thrust a ten-second burn that slewed the bow about in the same line as spin and gave comp its heading. "But, aunt—" The comp did the next burn, trueing up. "Put it this way. All of you listening? There's a little matter with the mahendo'sat. They're paying the bar bill. Hear? —Put her zero two on mark, Haral. Get the cameras working port-side." "Want a look at that kif?" "Number one right, cousin. Geran, handle that." "Got it. Image to your four." The image came to fourth screen on her board, clear, fine color, the outside of Meetpoint Station, a portion of its torus shape, the huge painted dock numbers obscured here and there by ships nose-on to station. "Main that," she said. The drifting image went to all stations, the strange shape of a stsho trader, the sleek, wicked silhouette of kif, leaner than they had to be; and one, one with uncommonly large vanes and a series of tanks about the waist. "Those tanks will blow off real easy," she said. "Take a good look, Hilfy, Khym. A real good look." "Hunter-ship," Hilfy said. "No trader. That's for sure. Gods-rotted kif hunter. That's Harukk, no need to look for numbers." She keyed the safety systems to ADVISE ONLY and pushed the mains in hard. G hit, pressed her elbow into the brace and triggered the over-arm lock that held her hand within reach of the board. New system. It worked. She had rigged The Pride with what protections they could afford, since Gaohn; handholds, line-rigs, braces at all boards. A few extra firearms, quietly acquired. "That's the kif reason," she said against the g. "And the other one for putting a little hurry on—I'd like to beat a certain check to the bank." "Can we cover it?" Tirun's voice, over com. "Later?" "Huh. That's still Goldtooth's problem." "What's going on?" asked Khym. Silence, except for ship noise, the long misery of acceleration. "What's going on?" he asked again. "Just a business arrangement," she said. "Hold onto your stomach. We're coming up on two-range. Going to give ourselves a boost." "Pyanfar—" "Tell you later. Haral, set her up." "Captain, got another ship undocked," Chur said from scan. "Gods rot. Who?" "Can't tell yet. Station's not talking. Stand by." They were not yet far enough and fast enough for g to play havoc with information: not far enough and fast yet by far to be out of range of that sleek kif ship back there. That ship could start out a day late and be waiting for them on Urtur rim. No question. She drew quiet small breaths against the g and calculated. A rush after them made no sense, for a ship that fast. It was not kif that had undocked. She was willing to bet not kif. It had no need to race, being able to guess their course. "Ship is knnn." "Oh, good gods." "What's the matter?" (Khym.) Knnn. Methane-breathing, dangerous and lunatic in their moves. No one wanted the knnn stirred up. And kif trouble might. Any trouble might. "What's the matter?" (Khym again). "Long explanation," Pyanfar muttered. "Hold the questions, Kyhm. We're busy." "Com coming up," Hilfy said. An insane wailing came over com, knnn-song, which announced to the universe and other knnn whatever it was the knnn thought good to say. Or it was simply singing for its own amusement, and putting it out on com out of thinking as obscure as the rest of its logic. "Bearing zero two by fourteen." Askew for them. That meant nothing. Knnn ships obeyed different laws. "Stand by that cycle," she said, and listened for Haral's acknowledgment. "Take it twice. We're getting out of here." Vanes cycled in, a brief, stomach-wrenching lurch to a higher energy state. Nausea threatened. Instruments recycled with a flurry of lights, recalibrating. She checked the nav fix on Urtur. "Knnn no change," Chur said. Second pulse. "Helm to one." Controls flashed live under her hands as Haral handed it over. They were up to v, outbound. "Stand by jump. Fix on that knnn to the last gods-rotted second." Knnn had policy, somewhere in their moves. Black hair-snarls animate on long thin legs, they built good ships—far better ships than oxygen-breathers could survive, unless things also went on in them that played games with stress. Nothing could talk to knnn but the leathery, serpentine tc'a, and tc'a brains were manifold matrices. Nothing could reason with knnn but tc'a. Time was, knnn took anything they liked, stripped ships in midcourse, raided the earliest stations: so stsho said. It was before the hani came. Tc'a got through the concept of trade—at least so knnn left something in their forays. Now they darted manic-fast into methane-breather sectors, deposited some object, which might be anything, and skittered off again with whatever they wanted—which might, again, be anything. Tc'a coped. Chi did, one supposed; but chi, looking like a collection of yellow, rapid-moving sticks, were crazier than knnn. And tc'a themselves were hazy on trade-concepts. Gods knew how they ran their worlds. No outsider did. "Mark to jump: five minutes." "How's that knnn?" "Still—It just cycled, captain." "I want better news. That's four and counting." "Continuing to cycle. That's into our lag-time—" Meaning that in the lag of lightspeed information the knnn might be doing other things. "Rot the book." She shoved the jump cycle in. —dropped —seatfirst— —topside down— —rightside up —back again in here and now, and the stomach still wanting to turn itself inside out— There was that wretched halfway-there, while senses swam, fingers took an hour clenching on controls, instruments underwent a slow ripple of lights that took a subjective day arriving at nothing special at all— Solidity then, with one focus, sharp-edged and dreadful as the soft uncertainties before, with endless fascination in the angles of counters, the colors, the textures. A mind could get lost in the endless detail of a counter-edge. Pyanfar swallowed against the dry mouth and copper taste that came with compressed time, flexed hands that had not flexed for three-odd weeks local. The chronometers showed a dubious 3.2 days. The body reacted: would shed hair and old skin within the hour as if entropy had hit, not quite three days' worth, but some: and Tully's drugs would wear off, while the bowels and kidneys had other, later consequences, and blood sugar went through loops and dives, obscuring sense and hazing senses and doing things to the stomach. Beep went controls. She shoved the Dump down hard. Second phasing in and out of hyperspace, bleeding off velocity in the process. Third. Her stomach heaved. She held her jaw clenched. The copper taste was worse. Beep. "That's Urtur beacon confirmed," Haral read off. "Heading zero, nine, two." Automatic alarms went off in her skull, memories she had forced there weeks ago. "Geran! 'ware of kif. Do we have company?" "Checking." Three subjective days since she had done out-bound at Meetpoint and she felt the ache in her shoulders. "Khym. You all right?" An incoherent answer; he sounded alive. "Got Urtur beacon," Haral said. "Tirun. Sort it." "Aye." That was Urtur beacon information coming in, constant-send, giving incoming ships the exact position of objects insystem so far as known. Course assignment would come, as soon as bounce-back time had delivered their presence to Urtur's robot outrange beacon and its automated systems computed them a lane. "Advise Beacon," Pyanfar said, "that we're through-traffic. Get your star-fix." Her hands shook. Crew would be in no better state. She wanted a drink, imagined floods of liquid, iced, deluges of flavors. Even tepid. Brackish. Anything. "Fix on Kirdu," Haral said. "Affirmative. Laying course for Maing Tol via Kita Point." "Message sent," Hilfy said. "How long to station signal?" "About two hours," Tirun said. "That's 2.31. Beacon doesn't show any ship in the range. It's not picking us up." "Beacon signal," Hilfy said. "Aunt—We're getting a code-call off beacon. We've got a message waiting. Stand by." "Huh." A cold feeling settled to Pyanfar's stomach. "Put it through on one." The beacon robot had output something triggered by The Pride's automatic ID, like a tripline. They came into system, beacon affirmed their identity and spat out what it held memory-stored for them. Expensive mail. Very. And the robot scan was still not showing them added to image of Urtur system. It was not direct scan-image. It was computer-generated; and the computer failed to put their existence on the screen. "We've got an error," Haral said. "Bastard beacon's giving us Kshshti heading, wants us to take starfix on Maing Tol. Put that lane request through again, Hilfy. It's gone crazy." "Hold that." Pyanfar stared at the message coming up on her number one screen. She keyed the Print on: it hummed and spat out hardcopy into the documents bin. Strings and strings of codes. More codes. Theirs . . . Ana Ismehanan-min, it said, to good friend. Advise you got bad trouble Kita Point. Beacon give you now new heading. I fix with Urtur authority, number one good. Go Kshshti route. Know got close kif, but Kita got too many kif. Mahen ship, kif ship, got two hand number ship. Mahen ship not got be everywhere too quick. Sorry this trouble. You one-jump Kshshti number one fine, no trouble, no stop middle of dark like Kita. You reach Kshshti you give authorization code Hasano-ma. You do good; Know you number one quick thinker. Kif not catch. "You egg-sucking bastard!" The restraint held her seated and half cut off her wind. She took a clawed swipe at the tray and slammed the printout onto the clearspace of the panel; but the screen kept on feeding codes and the printer kept on going in idiot persistence. "Message from beacon," Hilfy said, carefully unperturbed. "Blinker alarm advises us acknowledge and accept new heading." She cut the screen output. The printer, undefeated, hummed and spat out yet another sheet. Second message. More codes. Urtur station advise you course change big urgent. You not be register on system scan. Beacon blank you image give you cover. Go quick. "Beacon's not malfunctioning," she muttered. "It means it. That bastard Goldtooth set something up with Urtur. They're routing us to Kshshti." "Kshshti's half kif," Geran protested. "We go in there—" "It's a one-jump. He's right in that, if Kita's blocked. At least we won't be out in the dark nowhere with the kif . . . Call up Records: what's Kshshti got for muscle?" "Searching," Chur said. ". . . . Got two hunter-ships assigned from Maing Tol; stats show ten percent stsho calls, sixteen t'ca-chi, thirty-two kif, fifty-one mahendo'sat—I don't get any assurance on those hunter-ships being there. Based there, it says." "Fine." She gnawed at her mustaches and twitched her ears while the beacon went into its Acknowledge-comply routine and com flashed warning lights. Tick-tick. Tick. Tick-tick-tick. Haos was still possible. So was Kura. The stsho. The han. "We go with it. Don't see what else to do. Beacon's going to blow a circuit otherwise." "We're pretty deep in the well," Haral said, understated caution. The star had them firmly now: vector shift meant total dump. Meant a rough reacquisition, fighting to get more v back than a star wanted to give them. "Got no choice, have we? Advise Tully. Can't wait around." Hilfy relayed. "Tully's coherent. He says go." "Set it," Pyanfar said, and raked the last printout from the bin. And stared. It was not the comp readout she had expected. That was on the bottom of the tray. Another beacon-sending had come in, autoed into the printout bin. No codes this time. Perfect hani. Hani ship The Pride of Chanur: avoid Kita. Akkhtimakt has established watchers there. You will not come alive through that space. Be no fool. A shiver went over her skin. "Hilfy." "Aunt?" "You read that number-three message?" A silence. Hilfy searched her bin. "Who sent that?" Hilfry wondered, quiet and hoarse. "Someone fast," she said. "Brace for dump," Haral said. The vanes cycled in, a dizzying pulse half-forming their hyperspace bubble, a ripple like vision through oil. It let them go and Haral began their realspace course-change then, a long sickening hammering of correcting directionals and mains. G hauled at an already outraged gut. "Got the Maing Tol fix," Haral said. And a long, long while later, when the engines reached null-v and kept burning: "We just passed null." And later, as bodies ached in one long misery: "Closing on mark." "Go when ready," Pyanfar said. Urtur's dust had not hit the hull yet, but the place always sent the wind up her back. Blanked off station scan, for the gods' sake. A ship hurtling dark and unreported through Urtur system with Urtur Station's collusion, a risk to other ships— Fearing what? Kif insystem? "Stand by the pulse." Haral's voice cracked with fatigue. "Want me to take it?" "I've got it set. Stand by." Another pulse, another queasy moment neither here nor there. There was the bloody smear of a red light on the board. "Vane two red," Pyanfar muttered. "Stop it there." "We're a shade off v." "What blew?" (Khym, weakly.) "There something wrong?" "Regulator in the vane column," Pyanfar said, blinking it all into focus again. Her bones ached. "Ship doesn't like all this change of mind. Tirun, I want an interrupt check on that vane." "Right." Tirun's voice shook with exhaustion. No complaints. "Sure like to know why it didn't cut off." "Solve it from inside." "Urtur's no gods-rotted place for a walk." "We in trouble?" Khym asked. "Just got a little mechanical problem. Still got one backup left on that system. Regulator ought to have shut the vane down short of blowing what blew. I think our problem's there. That's an in-hull problem. No big trouble." But it was trouble. Something made it blow. And Kshshti was a long, long one-jump. Big stress. If that vane went— "What's our transit time?" "Got—" Haral said, "—48.4 hours to next jump." "We'll find the glitch by then." She powered the chair back, needing room to breathe. Another quarter turn of the chair and she saw Khym sitting there, head leaned back against the cushion, breathing in slow, careful intakes, looking her way with a bleak curiosity. He had not been sick. Was not. Was plainly determined not to be. Holding it, she guessed. "Tully wants to come topside," Chur said. "Fine." She was numb, with a certain insulation between herself and calamities back at Meetpoint, and the one back there on their tail. She looked aside as all number-four screens acquired an image from The Pride's outside eyes, habit when they arrived at a place. Haral had done that, reflex or a statement: no panic. Just routine operations. Urtur was spectacle enough, to be sure, one great fried egg of a star and system magnified in their pickup, a yellow star for a yolk that glowed hellishly in the flattened disk of dust that surrounded it. Planets swept dark orbits in the disk, accreted rings of their own. Urtur's worlds were mostly gas giants, with a few well-cratered smaller planets buried in the muck. No place for a walk indeed. Particles would hole even a hardsuit in short order. Mahendo'sat owned Urtur system, doing mahen things like poking about in the dust hunting clues to why Urtur was like it was—for pure curiosity, which was why mahendo'sat did a great many peculiar things. But at the same time and practically, they maintained a case for the methane-breathers, who thought methane-dominant Elaji a fine fair place, with its clouds aglow with the constant flicker of lightnings and meteors making streaks by the minute in an atmosphere already greenhoused by previous impacts. Oxygen-breathers got photos of the surface. Tc'a revelled in it, and mined rare metals, and had industry in that hell. Knnn too. And where, she wondered, considering that deficient scan image, was their own private knnn? Blocked off scan the same as they, and out of range of their own pickup? Gone, perhaps. Off their track entirely. She did not trust that. Not finding the knnn simply meant they had not found it. The Pride did a minor course correction, a gentle push at her left. For any ship going crosswise to the dust circulation, Urtur transit was a matter of finding the most useful hole in the debris and presenting as little as possible of the vane surface to the particles during ecliptic transit. They had damage enough to contend with, gods knew. "Get her set and we go auto for a while. You can do those checks after we get some food in you, Tirun. Who's on galley?" "Me," said Hilfy. "Get on it." And not without thought: "Crew-youngest always gets the extra duty. You help her, Khym." Khym just stared at her from the oblique, a desperate, half-drowned stare. Hilfy turned her chair, released her restraints and levered herself out of it. Khym moved then, got up like a drunk and held onto the chairback for a moment. Work, indeed work. And he followed Hilfy without a backward look, by the gods, the ex-lord of Mahn on galley duty, no complaints. She drew a long slow breath and remembered youth, Mahn, its fields, the house with the spring. And a tired elder hani who tried to begin all over. At bottom. In a dimension he hardly understood. "Going to be one lot of mad shippers," Tirun muttered. "Remember that rush order from that factor?" "Bet Ayhar nabs it," Chur said. Pyanfar released her restraints and got to her feet. Her joints ached and there was fire down her back. She stopped in midstretch. Tully was there in the doorway, ghostlike silent in the white noise of The Pride's working. He rested one arm on the doorframe, and stood there, barefoot, in simple crewwoman's breeches and nothing else, looking wan and cold. No more friend, no more Py-anfar. Just that bruised, cornered look that wondered if anyone had time for him. "I know," she said. "We get you fed." "Safe?" he asked. He knew ships, enough to feel The Pride faltering—and himself alone and knowing all too much. "Ship—" He made a helpless motion. "Break?" "Got it under control," she said. "Fine. Safe, all fine." The pale eyes flickered. "Fix soon," she said. Fear looked back at her, habitual and patient. She beckoned him and he left the door and walked all the way inside. Mobile blue eyes flicked this way and that, scanning monitors for what they could read, quick and furtive move. They centered on her again. "Got talk." He had gotten a little hani. She grew accustomed to his slurring speech. The translator spat useless static. "Got talk, please got talk." "Maybe it's time we do." A great uneasiness came over her, things out of joint. Males and tempers and their old friend Tully, whose alien face had that strange, distracted movement of the eyes. Fear of them as well as well as kif? And suspicious reprobate that she was: Lies, Tully? Or plain self-interest from the start? "Sure," she said. She stank, reeked; she thought instinctively of baths, of males and quarrels and a thousand lunatic distracted things like impacts at this speed, and the vane that showed intact in the image on Tirun's screens (but it was not, inside, and that could be bad news indeed.) Urtur. Docking with, likely, kif about. And not a hope of help. Urtur had no muscle adequate to fend off anything. Poor human fool, we could lose us all here, don't you know? They'd move in, take what they liked, you foremost— "Come on," she said to the crew at large, who were all tremble-handed at their work. "Break it off. We eat, get some sleep." She caught Tully by the arm. "You come and tell me, huh?" Chapter 6 The dust whispered on the hull like distant static, above the other sounds-abrading away, Pyanfar reckoned; but their vanes were canted edge-on to it, the observation dome and lenses were shielded, and that was the best that they could do. So The Pride exited this fringe of Urtur with a little polish on her hull. They made what speed they could through the muck at system-edge. Meanwhile— Meanwhile they crammed shoulder to shoulder into the galley. They had already extended their table with a fold-out and a let-down bench end when na Khym became permanent. Now they squeezed a few inches each and got Tully in, a company of seven now, unlikely tablefellows. But Tully was still wobbly in his moves, his hands shaking as he gulped cup after cup of carbohydrate-laced gfi and nibbled at this and that; while Khym—Khym ate, plenty, for one who had been wobbly-sick half an hour ago. Pyanfar shot glances his way—misgiving (he bade fair to make himself sick) and halfway pleased (he had lasted the rough ride, by the gods, and gone white-nosed as he was to galley duty, and was on incredibly good behavior.) There might not have been another male at table for all the attention Khym paid between his plate and the rotating center-section with the serving-trays. There was silence at table, mostly—a little muttered discourse as Tirun and Chur and Haral brought their vane-problem to table with them, and worried it like a bone. A little "have this," and "try that," from Hilfy who tried to slip a little more substance under Tully's ribs. No harrying, no pressure—take it slow, she thought. And: Keep him calm, keep everything low-key . . . the while she watched him relax at last, their old friend, old comrade. It was as if he had—finally—come back to them the way he had been, easier and finally letting go. Time then to talk of things, when he might tell them the truth. Perhaps they had cornered him, pushed him too much, assured him too little. Perhaps he felt the panic in the air and only now felt easy. Perhaps now there would be truth. "Your House send you?" Khym said suddenly, looking straight Tully's way, and sent her heart lurching past a beat. Tully blinked that into slow non-focus. "Send?" the translator queried, flat-voiced . . . O gods, trust indeed, wide-eyed innocence. "Send me?" "I don't know that they have Houses," Pyanfar said, and found her fingers flexed and the claws out. Khym tried the situation. She knew him. And she knew Tully. Of a sudden the silence round the table was absolute. She wanted to stop it, to shut it off, and there was no way, no way with Khym in bland, smooth attack-mode. Hunting, gods rot him. Pushing for reaction, the crew's and hers. "Don't use big words. Translator can't handle them." "House isn't a big word." "Stick to ship-things. Technical stuff. You don't know how it comes out the other side." "Say again," Tully said. "I asked who sent you." "# # send me." "See?" said Pyanfar. "You get a word it won't make sense." "Name home," Tully said. "Sun. Also call Sol. Planet name Earth. Send me " "He does talk." "So," Pyanfar said. Her ears pricked up despite herself. "Sun, is it?" "Where are we?" Tully asked. "Ur-tur?" "Urtur. Yes." He drew a great breath. "Go Maing Tol." "Seems so. By way of Kshshti. You know that name?" "Know." He moved his plate aside a handspan and touched his strange, thin fingers to the table surface. "Meetpoint—Urtur—Kshshti—Maing Tol." "Huh." He had never known much of the Compact stars. Not from them. "Goldtooth teach?" "Mahe name Ino. Ship name Ijir." "Before Goldtooth got you, huh? How'd you find Goldtooth?" He looked worried. Or the translator scrambled it. "Go Goldtooth, yes." "You with him long?" "#?" "Were you long time in Goldtooth's ship?" Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. His eyes met hers and dived aside after one frozen instant, reestablishing contact perforce. "Where did you meet Goldtooth?" "Ino find him." It did not satisfy her. She sat and stared, forgetting the bite on her fork, not forgetting Khym at her elbow. No fight; don't pick a fight, no trouble while Khym's in it. The strictures crawled up and down her nerves. "You come how long ago?" Geran asked. "Don't know," he said, glancing that way. "Long time." "Days?" "Lot days." He could be more precise. He knew the translator's limits. Knew how to manipulate it better than he did. He picked up the cup and drank, covering the silence. Perhaps the rest of the crew picked up the undertones. She thought so. There was not a move at table. Only Tully. Their old friend. She reached slowly into the depths of her pocket, hooked the small, thin ring with a claw and laid it precisely on the tabletop. Click. His face went a shade further toward stsho pallor, and then he reached for it and took it up in his flat-nailed fingers, examining the inside band. His eyes lifted, that startling blue, wide and dreadful. "Where find?" he asked. "Where find, Pyanfar?" "Whose?" She knew pain when she saw it and suddenly wished the ring back in her pocket and them less public than this. A kifish gift. She was a fool to have suspected anything but misery in it, a double fool; and having started it there was no way to go but straight ahead. "Mahe got?" he asked. "Goldtooth?" "Kif gave it to me," she said, and watched a tremor come into his mouth and stop, his face go paler still if it were possible. "Friend of yours, Tully?" "What say this kif?" "Said—said it was a message for our cargo." The tremor started again, harder to control. No one moved at table, no one on left or right. For a long time that lasted, with the dust rattling on the hull, the rumble of the rotation, the distant whisper of air in the duct above their heads. Water spilled from Tully's eyes and ran down into his beard. "Friend, huh?" She coughed in self-disgust and shoved her plate back, creating a stir and a little healthy living noise. Scowled at the crew. "Want to get that vane fixed?" "Where get?" Tully asked before anyone could move. "Kif named Sikkukkut. Ship named Harukk. Who did it belong to, huh?" His mouth made a sudden straight line, white-edged, as he looked down and put the ring on. It was too small. He forced it. "Need #," he murmured, seeming to have nothing to do with them or here or now. "This kif," she said, slipping the words past while the shock was fresh. "This kif was at Meetpoint, Tully. He knew you'd come to us from Goldtooth. He knew our way ahead was blocked. What more he knew I have no idea. Do you want to tell us, Tully? Whose is it?" The blue eyes burned. "Friend," he said. "Belong friend stay Ijir." She let go a breath and shot a look past a row of puzzled hani faces. "So Goldtooth hedged his bet, huh? You come to us. Your companions go somewhere else. Where?" "Kif got. Kif got # Ijir." "Then the kif know a gods-rotted lot more than you've told us. What do they know, Tully? What are you up to, your hu-man-i-ty?" "They ask help." "How much help? Tully—what are you doing here?" "Kif. Kif." "What's going on?" Khym asked from her left. "What's he talking about—kif?" "Later," she said, and heard the breath gust through Khym's nostrils. "Tully. Tell me what's in that paper. You tell me, hear." "You got take to Maing Tol." "Tully. Gratitude mean anything to you? I saved your mangy hide, Tully, more times than I ought." He gave back against the seat. The eyes set again on hers with that tragic look she hated. "Need you," he said in hani words, a strange, mangled sound that confused the translator to static. "Friend, Pyanfar." "I ask him," Khym rumbled. "No," she said sharply, and felt an acid rush in her gut, raw panic at the potential in that. She brought her clenched hand down on the table and rattled dishes. Tully flinched, and she glared. "Tully, You talk to me, gods rot you. You tell me what those papers are." "Ask hani come fight ship take human." "Make sense." "Want make trade hani-mahe." "Truth?" "Truth." The eyes pleaded for belief. It did nothing for the feeling in her gut. Wrong, it said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For kif trouble alone the mahe might have asked the han direct. Trade—was the lure, and there was something in the trees. She shifted her eyes past his shoulder to Haral, wise, scar-nosed Haral. Haral's ears canted back and her mustache drew down with the intimation of something odorous. But there was nothing profitable in pushing Tully. Trust. They had a little of it. There had been a time he had staved off kif for months, led his interrogators in circles despite torture, despite the murder of companions. Tully had held out. More, he had escaped, off a kifish ship. That was no fool. And no one to be pushed. "Vane," she said with ulterior motives. "Go." "Aye." Haral moved, shoved Chur's shoulder. Hilfy and Geran shifted to clear the seats and Tully got up. "Get the galley cleared," Pyanfar said- "Tully. You just became juniormost. Help Hilfy with the galley. Khym—you fetch and carry on the bridge. Whoever needs it." "I want to talk to you," Khym said, unbudged. "No time to talk." She turned her head and met his scowl with her own as he stayed put on the bench, still blocking her way out. "Look, Khym, we've got a vane in partial failure. One of us may have to take a walk after it yet. You got a question that tops it?" His ears went down in dismay. "Out," she said. "We could go to Kura, couldn't we?" "No. We can't. Can't shift course again this side of Urtur—we're in the dust; we've got a vane down . . . . The last course change gods-rotted near killed us, you understand that? I haven't got time to discuss it." She shoved and he moved. She got up and looked back at him, at Hilfy and Tully who were gathering dishes at furious speed. But Khym lingered, a towering hurt. She gathered up her patience, took him by the arm, walked him to the privacy of the bridgeward corridor. "Look, Khym—we've got troubles." "Somehow," he said, "I figured that." "Kshshti's mahen-held," she said. "Barely. If the kif have Kita watched they've likely got something in at Kshshti. But there's help there or the mahendo'sat wouldn't send us that direction." "You trust what they say?" She looked behind him, where one stark-pale human hastened to hand dishes off the table and close doors. "I don't know," she said. "Go." "You don't put me off, Py." She gave him one long burning look. "Chanur property," he said. "I do forget." "What do you want, Khym? I'll tell you what I want. I want that gods-rotted vane fixed. I want us out of here. Are you helping?" He drew a long, long breath and cast a look over his shoulder in Tully's direction. "Pet?" "Shut it up. Right there." The ears that had half-lifted sank again. "All right. That was low. But for the gods' sake, Py, what have you got yourself into? You can't make deals outside the han. They'll have your hide. That Ehrran ship—" "Noticed that, did you?" "Gods, Py!" "Hush." He coughed. Caught his breath. "Chanur property. Right." "Did you expect different?" She jabbed him hard. It took a lot to get through a male's skin when he had that look in his eyes. "Are they right?" "Who's right?" "The stsho in that bar." His nostrils dilated, closed, dilated, and his nose went pale round the edges. "I don't see what that has to do with it." "Hilfy back there. You hear a question out of her?" He looked over his shoulder, where Hilfy was closing cabinet latches, click, slam, click, one after the other; and Tully was folding the table up. He looked round again and his ears were flat. "Go help Tirun," she said. "I asked a question." "No. You questioned, and by the gods that's different. You want Haral's rights, you by the gods earn them." He brushed past her and stalked off bridge-ward. And stopped, about half a dozen paces on—faced her, to her relief and her dismay. At least he had not retreated to his cabin. And gods, not more argument. He stood there. Cold, deliberate protocol. "Help Tirun and Haral," she said. "The rest of us haven't got a deathwish. That vane's got to be fixed." That was the way, mention the word. Dead, dead. Death. Hit him between the ears with it. Her stomach churned. "Fine," he said, bowed, turned and talked off, a massive shadow against the lights of the bridge beyond. She spun on her own heel and walked back into the galley proper, to Tully and Hilfy, who stood idle. "Out," she said to Hilfy, and Hilfy scrambled past her. Footsteps pelted bridgeward. Tully stood trapped against the cabinets, leaned there with elbows on the counter behind him. "All right," she said, "Tully, I want the truth." "Maing Tol." "I scare you, huh? Maing Tol, Maing Tol. Listen to me. You don't play stupid. You gods-rotted well understand me. You wanted to talk. You wouldn't give me peace of it. So talk. And keep talking." Maybe the translator garbled that. He had that look. "Talk, Tully. You want to be friends, by the gods you deal straight with me." "I sit," he said, and ebbed down onto the mess table bench as if his legs would no longer hold him. "Truth." She came closer in his silence, leaned both hands on the table and glared into his face. "Now, hear?" He flinched. He smelled of fear and human sweat, like when she had held him, when his heart had beat so hard she could feel it like hammer-strokes. She reached out pitilessly and pinned his arm with claws out. "You risk my crew, Tully. You risk Chanur. By the gods you don't lie to me. Where you come from, huh?" "Friend," he said. "You want I rattle your brain?" He drew several rapid breaths. "Maing Tol. Go Maing Tol." She stared, at arm's length from his face, stared a good, long while. "You come find me. Need, you say. Need what? You talk, now you talk, Tully. Need what? Number one fool? Where you been, Tully?" "Human space. Want come. Want, Pyanfar." "So you come to the mahendo'sat." "Mahe come human space." "Goldtooth?" "Name Ino. Ijir." She drew a long, long breath. "Doublecrossing bastard." Meaning Goldtooth, mahen trade and a towering great lie. "Say again." Blue eyes looked at her with vast worry. She lifted her hand from his arm and patted his face ever so gently, claws pulled. "Keep talking. More. How did this Ijir come into the business, huh? Was it trading in human space." "Human ship—" He made diagrams on the tabletop. "Human. Kif. Mahe. Not good go so— kif. Three human ship. Gone. Not see. Not come home. Try go stsho. Mahe come-go." He drew route-pictures, mahen traders reaching human space. "Ijir come. Say want bring human come talk mahe. Want I come. I, Tully." His mouth twisted in a strange expression. "I small, Pyanfar. Human lot mad. They same send me. I small. Mahe think me big. Want. Take. Human think me make trouble. Shut up, Tully. What you know?" Another intersecting line as Ijir moved out of human space toward the Compact. "Gold-tooth come. Lot talk, Ino, Goldtooth. Goldtooth want talk me, not talk lot other human, other human lot mad." He drew a great breath, looked up at her as if to see whether she understood his babble, and there was pain in his expression. "Politics," she said. "And protocols. Same there, huh?" He blinked, confused. "Go on." "Goldtooth want talk me. Want me go Goldtooth ship. I say go find you, you friend, good friend. Not know Goldtooth. Want help. Want you talk these mahe." "That bastard." Another blink of skyblue eyes. "So," she muttered, "the mahe wanted you, huh? And set up a rendezvous. Wanted you. Someone they could talk to. Someone who would talk, huh? What about that paper? What's in it? Why Maing Tol?" "I spacer." Tully's mouth trembled in that way he had when he was upset. "I never say I #, Pyanfar." "What about the paper, Tully? Whose is it? What's in it?" "Ijir meet Goldtooth, he say make paper—same paper human on Ijir got—" "Copy the paper, you mean." His head bobbed vehemently. "Same. Yes. Say he take me go find you, go talk stsho, go bring paper Maing Tol, help human—" He held up the hand that bore the ring. "Kif got them. Kif got Ijir, got paper same you got—" "How long time?" He shook his head. "I don't know." His look grew desperate. "I ask come hani, ask, ask many time. Goldtooth friend? He friend, Pyanfar?" "Good question," she said, and puzzled him. She reached and patted his shoulder, tapped him with a clawtip. "Safe, understand. Tell me. Why Maing Tol? And why me?" He shivered, palpably, and reached across the table to grip her retreating hand, ignoring the reflexive jerk of claws. "Big trouble. Lot human ship, lot go Maing Tol soon." "Across kif space? There's knnn out there! How many ship, huh, how many human ships are you talking about? Three? Four? More than that?" "Paper say—we make stop kif come human space, take human ship. But Goldtooth say me— Goldtooth say— think now maybe not kif got human ship. Maybe knnn." "O good gods." The heart sank in her. If there had been a bench under her she would have sat down. As it was she just stared. "Goldtooth say message got go Maing Tol make stop mahe, make stop kif, go fight—" "Fight? Gods-rotted humanity can't tell knnn from kif?" "Not." "Well, for the gods' sake you know knnn! Did you tell them, did you tell them the difference?" "Who I? They don't hear. Shut up, Tully. I'm small person, small, not #, Pyanfar!" "Gods and thunders." "Pyanfar—" "Lunatics!" "Goldtooth friend?" he asked again. "I do good?" She stared at him a long, long time and he just looked scared. Scared and on the other side of a half-functioning translator. And the gulf of other minds. "Goldtooth's mahendo'sat," she said flatly. "And he's got a Personage breathing down his neck. They went to get you, friend, because they wanted trade. I'll bet on that. And those human ships weren't getting through. Ijir's no common trader, no way. They wanted to get you to a rendezvous—find out what humanity's up to. That was the game. But they found out too gods-rotted much and now Goldtooth's scared. Scared, understand? Kif, the mahe can handle. But if knnn have their small black feet in this—o gods, Tully—you lunatics." "Got lot ship come—lot, Pyanfar. Got fight kif, got make stop knnn." "No one fights the knnn! Gods and thunders, you don't pick a fight with something you can't talk to!" Wide eyes looked back at her in distress. "Where's Goldtooth, Tully? You know?" A shake of an uncomprehending head. "Huh." She shoved back from the table feeling her knees gone jellylike. And still that blue-eyed stare was on her. Lost. Don't go to the han, Goldtooth had said; and Beware of Goldtooth—from Goldtooth's stsho ally— With Vigilance in the selfsame port. Suspicions occurred to her, vague and circular, that the han ship might have gotten wind of the clearing of Chanur papers, of mahen money passed to stsho— —that that ship's presence and Goldtooth's might have had connections Goldtooth would not say . . . han/mahen consultations. Stsho like Stle sties stlen, with slippered feet well into it . . . . And self-interested betrayals, at more than financial depths— Knnn. Gods, stsho the ultimate xenophobes, and knnn the ultimate reason . . . living right next door—living, or traveling, or whatever it was knnn did with those ships of theirs. Perhaps, hani had whispered, stung by stsho references to the mahendo'sat bringing hani into space to balance kif— —perhaps a great deal that the stsho knew came from methane-breathers. Tc'a were likely. But had limbless serpents originated their own tech? Or had chi, who might be parasites—or slaves—or pets—to the tc'a? Not likely. Goldtooth had reason to run scared. And being mahe he had done a mahen thing: he had gone for the contacts that he knew. Same as the whole mahen species had: bring Tully. Go get him. While with trouble in the offing Goldtooth had wanted her. Not the han. Not Ehrran. The han knew the mahendo'sat, by the gods: it was why the law existed against taking foreign hire. Mahendo'sat went for Personage. For the Known Quantity. They set up powers. Tore them down. Tied hani rules in knots and brought down powers by ignoring them in crises. Here's unlimited credit—friend. Tell us what you know. Same as they worked on humans. Send for Tully. Gods, they'd drained him dry. Even kif had failed at that. (I do good? Tully asked. With that blue-flower stare.) They had her by the beard, that was sure. Had her, and maybe Stle stles stlen himself. Until humanity launched ships at the Compact, and knnn objected. "Trouble?" Tully asked. She lifted her ears, turned on him the blandest of looks. "We'll fix it. Just go back to your quarters, huh?" "I spacer. I work." He patted his pocket. "Got paper, Py-an-far." He did. That was truth. Citizen of the Compact, licensed spacer. More mahen maneuverings. He could not handle controls. He needed a pick to reach the buttons and he was illiterate in hani. So they locked him up below and shoved him this way and that. He had looked for better from them. Gods knew he must have looked for better. "Na Khym's aboard," she said, feeling the flush all the way to her ears. "Male, Tully." "Friend." The flush went hotter. "As long as you aren't in the same room, fine. Go where you like. Just stay out of his way. Males are different. Don't argue with him. Don't talk to him if you can avoid it. Just duck your head and for godssakes keep your hands off him and us." Blankest confusion. "Hear?" "Yes," he said. "Get." She turned him loose and watched him go for the bridge. She waited for the explosion—realized she was waiting, claws flexed, and drew them in. There was the dust-whisper, high-pitched with their velocity, reminding her of movement, of The Pride's hurtling toward a jump she had to make now. No way out but that. The bridge lights were still on, with all of them snatching sleep where they could, going back to quarters for rotating breaks and coming back to the paper-snowed number-two counter, while the dust whispered and the occasional impact of larger fragments hit the hull. ("We'll shine like a new spoon when we get through this," Hilfy had said early on; "We'll be cratered like Gaohn," Tirun had replied, which they were not yet.) The dust screamed now and again, v-differential. Now and again The Pride's particle-sensors and automated systems sent the trim jets into action, little instabilities in g which put a stagger into a walk down a corridor. Now and again The Pride's scan showed her something major and the ship moved to take care of it. But hani work went on too. And human: a section of the comp still had the working light on that meant Tully was still at it, doing what he could do—working away with linguistics from his terminal in his quarters. He hunted words. Equivalencies. Fought the translator into fewer gaps and spits. Learned hani. That was what he did, far into the hours. And Khym, shambling red-eyed and shivering from out the corridor-errand to the so-called heated hold: "Got the stores moved down," he said, and cast a worried eye over boards he could not read, at backs turned to him and work still underway. "Go on to bed," Pyanfar said. "Hot bath. You've done all you can." "We're still in trouble, aren't we?" "We're working on it. Go. Go on. Need you later. Get some sleep." He went, silent, with one backward, worried glance. She sighed. Heard other sighs from crew, rubbed her aching eyes and felt a twinge of shame. "Suppose he secured that?" Tirun wondered. "He'll remember." But there were his habits in galley—dishes left, a cabinet latch undone. She walked over and keyed in security check. All doors showed closed and a sense of panic still gnawed at her. On the monitors the numbers still rolled up bleak information. Constant operation. No matter what they tried. They went deeper into the dust, into the well, and station information showed four kif docked, one loose and outward bound, two mahen freighters and six tc'a miner/processors. Bad odds. "Gods rot." From Haral. Another theory failed. "Go on break," she muttered, back on the bridge the third time, finding Tirun still in the huddle of three heads round the console: Hilfy had changed with Chur; and Haral was back after shift with Geran; while she had stood two straight herself. "Gods rot it, Tirun, didn't I tell you get?" "Sorry, captain." Tirun's voice was hoarse, and she never looked up from the papers and the moving stylus. "Got this one more idea." She subsided onto the counter edge, steadied herself through another of The Pride's attitude corrections. She gnawed at her mustaches and waited, wiped her eyes. The stylus scratched away on the paper. "There's the YR89," Haral said, putting out a hand to point. "If it went—" "Huuuh." The snarl was hoarse and vexed and Haral got the hand out of Tirun's way. Fast. Scratch-scratch went the stylus. More silence. The dustscream on the hull grew louder. The Pride corrected. There was a resounding impact. "Gods rot!" (Hilfy.) Ears went down in embarrassment. She ducked her chin back to her arm on the counter-edge and tried to pretend former silence. Tirun shoved a strip under the autoreader. The slot took it. Lights rippled as if nothing at all were wrong. Tirun's shoulders slumped. "Anything left untried?" Pyanfar asked. "Nothing," Haral said quietly. "It's a ghosty thing," Tirun said. Her voice cracked. Her ears flagged. "I can't turn it up." "Stress-produced?" "Think so. Always possible the unit was rotten. Remember that fade at Kirdu." Pyanfar heaved a breath and stared at Tirun, reading that grudging mistrust of an unclean system. "We've still got one backup," she said. "We'll be down to none at Kshshti. Enough for braking. If we're lucky." Pyanfar thought about it. Thought through the whole vane system. "Back to the regulator," she said. "You want to replace that Y unit?" A long, long worming up the vane column, with The Pride yawing and pitching under power. A long, dark solo job fishing a breaker out of the linkages, where the system was already in failure. From inside-because the particles would strip a suit. "No. I want all of us to see Kshshti, thanks." She drew a deep breath. "We put in for repair when we get there, that's all." Noses drew down. Ears sank. "Well, what else can we do?" "I'd try the column," Hilfy said. "Hero's a short-term job, kid." And to Haral: "We go on schedule." "If it would get us—" Hilfry said. "I'd gods-rotted put Chur up that thing if it'd work: at least she'd know the system." Ears sank; shoulders slumped. "If someone gets killed up there," Tirun muttered, "gods-rotted lot of trouble getting you out of the works. Might fry the system along with you. Captain's right the first time." "Sure takes out the Kura option," Haral said. "Huh," Pyanfar said. "Isn't an option." "There's Urtur." "There's Urtur." She let go a long, long breath and thought about it as she had thought about it the last ten hours. Spend days on Urtur. With five kif, two mahendo'sat freighters and six tc'a who were apt to do anything. Or nothing, while the kif blew them apart or boarded. "The mahendo'sat," she said, "want us at Kshshti. Goldtooth does. You looked at that scan image? You want to bet Sikkukkut's not passed the word along?" "Kif got the dice," Haral said. "No bets. You get anything out of Tully to tell us what this is?" Pyanfar slumped against the cabinet back and stared at Haral. "Big. Real big. You want to hear it? Mahendo'sat tried to get humankind in the back door. Humans lost some ships. I think this Ijir's a hunter-ship. It went in and got Tully—typical mahen stunt. They wanted to figure out what was going on and they wanted Tully in their hands. He'd talk. He'd trust them. He'd tell them anything they asked." "O good gods," Hilfy murmured. "That's not the end of it, niece. Humanity wanted to send their real authorities to the mahendo'sat, I'm guessing, because they had trouble. Mahendo'sat wanted Tully, because they have trouble. Here it gets complicated. I think this whole thing's touched off the knnn." No one moved. Eyes dilated to thinnest amber rings. "I think," Pyanfar said, patiently, quietly, "humans failed a promised trade, mahendo'sat investigated, sent a ship—humans from their side blame the kif, and Tully's not high up enough that humanity would've told him much beyond that. He couldn't know the knnn angle. So the mahendo'sat got Tully and rendezvous'd with Goldtooth at some point beyond Tvk, I'm guessing. For questions. Gods know. Tully said the delegation was vexed that Goldtooth wouldn't talk to them; just to him. And Goldtooth took him aboard alone, Ijir went for Maing Tol, Goldtooth went gods know where, and meanwhile our papers miraculously got cleared, when stsho had refused us for months, and Goldtooth and we together ended up at Meetpoint." "So did the han," Hilfy said, and Pyanfar looked her way and blinked. The thought leapt to her mind too, two points connecting. "Stle stles stlen." "The stationmaster?" Haral asked, hoarse and fatigued, but her ears pricked sharp. "Might well be. The han called for consultation; our papers bought back by one side or the other—Someone wanted us in this. Feels like mahendo'sat. Feels like Goldtooth himself. We're his Known Quantity. But so's Stle stles stlen. Theoretically. I wouldn't lay odds on anything right now. Someone got things moving. Gods know the stsho took our money to clear those papers, but maybe they took everyone's, who knows?" "Gods-rotted situation," Haral muttered. "Twice over if Ehrran's in it," Tirun said. "Where's Goldtooth headed?" Hilfy asked. "I asked Tully that. He doesn't know. He says. Likely he doesn't." "He came through here," Haral said. "Kura? Kita?—Kshshti-bound?" "We think he came through here," Tirun said. Her voice cracked. "I'd not lay odds anything's right-side up with that son." "Bait-and-switch," Pyanfar said. "Gods-rotted mahe's slippery as a kif. No, I don't swear that message wasn't put in before he got to Meet-point. Or by some outbound agent. Alarm's being rung down from Meetpoint to Urtur to Kshshti, that's what, and we may just think we're the wavefront." "That knnn at Meetpoint—" Tirun said. "Not forgetting that." "We can't do anything about it. Except get out of here." "And stay in one piece," Haral muttered. "Kshshti's a long jump." "We can make it. Even if we blow that vane. Distance may blow it, but it'll help us too: we'll come in with marginal v. We can stop, at worst. At best, it wasn't the Y unit and the vane will hold all the way." "It may and it may not," Tirun said. "If it's that. One of those goes ghosty, gods, you don't know whether you've got it or not. Ever. It could hold to Kshshti and we could lose it at Maing Tol when we've got higher v." "One thing I want you to do. Put that whole vane over to backup from the board up. In case we've got a ghost in another unit. Let's just clear all the original systems. Can you do that in four hours?" "Can," Tirun said. "Not you. You get some sleep." "I'll get it," Haral said. "We give up that Y-unit to third redundancy?" Tirun asked. "Could have damaged it when that regulator went backup. If that's sour it'll sure take that linkage out." She thought about it. Thought about going no-backup-at-all, which was how desperate it was. "No," she said. "I'll dice with the number two. What we've got aboard—if nothing else—we can't risk on that kind of throw. It'll get us there with something left. That's all we dare try." "What have we got aboard?" Tirun asked. "Message from humanity to Maing Tol and Iji. Translator. Message from Goldtooth to his Personage. Gods know what that is. About the knnn—most likely." She drew a deep breath and considered the chance it involved the hem. Alliances. Doublecrosses. "All systems to number two and we jump to Kshshti on schedule. Tell Chur and Geran what we're doing when they come on duty." "Not the menfolk?" "Gods, don't worry them. Tell them we fixed it all." "What—" Hilfy asked ever so quietly, "what about Tully if we go lame at Kshshti? We'll be stuck at dock. Gods know the kif—" "What we do, imp—we get ourselves to Kshshti and whatever happens, by the gods, we put him in mahen hands. Let them worry about him. Hear? They've got two hunter-ships to their account. Let them take it." She stood up again. "Get some rest. All of you this time." "Aye," Tirun murmured in what of a voice she had left. Hilfy stared at her open-mouthed. "Nothing else to do," Pyanfar said to her. "Nothing else. He's worth too much to take chances with. That message is. Understand? We've had it. That vane's got us." "We go in like this we could be down a week!" "So we take our damage. We can cover the bill. We've got that. We're done, imp. Finished." "I could make it," Hilfy said, "up that column and we'd have that unit replaced." "Wrong. Chur would have to do it. She's smallest. And she's not fool enough." There was silence but for that. That and the dust. She got up and walked away, staggered a little as she reached the corridor and The Pride corrected course again. She had another, chilling thought and turned, pointed at Haral. "No way this kid tries it. You sit on her. Someone goes up that column I'll space her. Hear?" "Aye," Haral said. No one followed her. Presumably they were clearing up the paper. Closing down. Her eyes blurred with exhaustion and she refrained from rubbing at them as she passed Khym's cabin. She thought of going to him. She had not—not since Hoas. It was not her time; had not been, then. Such niceties went by the board with them as they had in her world-visits. But sleep would not come easy with the dust, the small shifts of g that went on constantly: and he might be asleep; and there would be questions if she waked him. Did you fix it, Py? She opened her own door and walked in, sat down at the desk and methodically cleared the clutter of her own work away. Course-plottings. Calculations every way she could make them in hopes of getting another dump-and-turn that would turn them off toward Kura and hani space, without breaking them down at Urtur and stranding themselves here with the kif. None were feasible. And if they were—if they were, knnn notice fell on hani thereafter. Goldtooth, you mahen bastard. Seeing to the safety of his own, that was sure. So she handed the package back again: Here, fool mahe, you take it. Good luck. Run fast. And Tully— She rested her head against her hands. Gods, gods, gods. Knnn. And the failsafe that was Ijir, whatever else it had been, with its humanity aboard, and just gone backup. Kif had it, gods help them. Kif would take them apart, mahe, humans, everyone. Tully knew, who had spent time in kifish hands, who had gone to hani for help because he heard them laugh once, across Meetpoint docks. Gods rot Sikkukkut and all kifish gifts. They were out of it, that was all. Whatever gain or loss there was yet to be made, The Pride had gone her limit. So they should be glad to be out of it. A vane down. They could not jump The Pride again. They rolled the dice for Kshshti. That was gambling all their lives. At Maing Tol the odds went up, that it would not hold for braking. Hero's a short-term job, kid. So what was stung, that they had to give up and lay back and let others do what hani failed at? And hand Tully on alone to mahendo'sat? "All secure," Haral said, beside her, at her post. "I take her, captain?" "I'll take this one," Pyanfar said, and reached and settled her arm into the brace. She glanced up at the reflection of the rest of the bridge, crew in place, Khym in his observer's post. Fixed, they had told him. And his face had lightened, trusting them. Fixed, they had told Tully, who was harder to lie to, being spacer himself. And he had drugged himself into a haze by now, as his kind had to do. "Star-fix positive, Maing Tol," Haral said. The dust whined over the hull, constant but thinner now. "Going to dust up Kshshti a bit," she said. "Can't be helped." Haral rolled a glance in her direction, a stark, stark stare. "Can't be helped," she said. Sudden silence then, as the jump field began to build and the shields came up. They rode their luck this time. Chapter 7 There were hazard lights blinking urgent alarm, and Harals voice protesting— "—Captain—" —Plaintively, as if she had not heard the beeps and already begun to reach. There was perhaps some mercy in being human and drugged out of one's mind . . . . "Got it," Pyanfar coughed, though her throat had gone to stone in the long slow leak of time past the instruments, in the inside out of jumpspace. "Location?" One went lethargic, grew fatally tranquil in that dizzy flow where one could do nothing, nothing but watch and take a subjective day moving a finger. There was an itch at the tip of her nose just as important as their collective lives . . . . But the intellect knew what the will forgot. The mind was primed with a sequence of things she had waited two months to do. The right hand reached the control she had meant two months ago to reach and brought the field up while they still had power, long before they had gotten buoy signal. The eyes sought instruments, diverging lines that had to meet— The fields of Mahn, yellow in the sun, the woods, the dappled shade . . . . The vine outside the wall of Chanur, that branched like a river, from one great gnarled trunk; and generations of Chanur had climbed it, branch to branch to branch— "We're on." That was Geran's mumble confirming destination. "We're in the jump range." Location: need the vector. "We're alive," Hilfy murmured. "We're going to make it, going to make it—" —as if she were utterly surprised. There it was, that red line trued right on. "Huh." Pyanfar coughed her throat clear and blinked away the haze. "Of course we did," Geran said. "Have any doubt, kid?" There were safety procedures for a ship to follow when coming in from dust-ringed Urtur and they were not following them. They were coming into a system with c-charged dust in their company. Some of it would slip the smaller field of their dump and go through Kshshti system like a hard-radiation storm. "One more dump," she murmured, pleaded with the ship. "Stand by"—thinking of a ship she had seen die—of a ship which had had a vane shot to flinders, and jumped without a chance in a mahen hell of slowing down. Nothing to do then but capsule the crew and hope— She shoved the dump in and felt her eyes roll as the field cycled up . . . . come on, come on, ship, hold it— More failure lights blinked and held steady. Branches on the wall . . . . "Got to be that Y unit," she muttered to Haral, to no one in particular, and had visions of that dying ship again. None of that crew was alive now. Those the mahendo'sat had hauled down in their capsule and saved—they had died at Gaohn, standing off the kif. She moved an arm and did a third dump, watching in blear-eyed fascination as the lines on the scopes crept together and merged like silken threads, red and blue, as The Pride dragged at the interface and let the bubble go. Down again, and the wail of alarms calling her back to life. "Still over mark," Haral muttered. "That's twenty." "I know. We've got it, we've got it left with the mains." She shoved the jump drive off and sent The Pride into an axis roll, canceled g and threw the mains on to finish the job the drive had failed. There was margin left. "Kif. Are there kif? Look alive back there." "Scan's clear," Chur's voice returned. "Kshshti positive; got the beacon. Stand by course input." Monitors changed priorities. The course change flashed in, very little off their present heading. She put the bow down and trued up. "That's luck," Haral said of the course they had been handed. "Huh," she said. "That's priority for you." Rotational g picked up again as the vector change took effect. "Find out what we lost." "Stand by," Tirun said. There was long silence, while comp ran diagnostics under Tirun's hands. "It didn't hold?" Khym's voice, sounding plaintive and a bit shaken. "Did we lose that vane again?" "Didn't hold," Geran said. "But we're all right." "Not leaving here real quick, are we?" He was trying. And getting harder to deceive. Pyanfar swallowed hard, and took the damage summary as it came flickering to the screen. "We're all right," she heard Hilfy say, which was probably into the com, for Tully. "We're through. We just had trouble with that unit. Sit still down there." "Blew two holes in final-backup," Pyanfar muttered to Haral, in conversation-tone. "Gods," Haral said. That was all. And sent Kshshti system image her way, onto all the screens. "Not much, this place." "Huh." It was not. A dull orange sun with only moons for company, moons and a station. Small mining, sufficient for its needs. Some trading. Mostly mahendo'sat maintained it because it would be someone's, situated as it was; and best it should be theirs, when it was a connection on a route straight for Maing Tol from Kefk, inside kif space. With a shipyard facility, thank the gods. "Lot of traffic," Pyanfar muttered, picking up the com chatter. "Gods-rotted lot of traffic to be out here at this hole." "Kita," Haral reminded her. "Kita for sure. Word got spread uncommon fast, didn't it? Or we lost more time than we ought in that jump." "Huuuhn." No comment. Not here, not now. Not with Khym on the bridge. Twenty stars were The Pride's regular ports of call. Not Kshshti. It was not a port any hani sought. "Nasty little place," Geran muttered from back along the counter. "Real nasty." There was time. There was time for a great many things as The Pride came limping in toward Kshshti— Time to hear the chatter of the station before their wavefront reached station and station's then-wave reached them: the chitter and wail of methane-breathers in confused conference, the clicking sounds of kif whose uncoded remarks were on ordinary kifish business, terse and uninformative. No hani voices. No sign of hani at all. "Station answering," Hilfy said as that wave came in. The feed was routine, coldly businesslike transmission. It might have been any approach to a mahen station, less lively than some. "Queer quiet," Haral muttered. "I'd've expected a curse to a mahen hell and back again, the way we came in." "Huh," Pyanfar said. "Bet you to a mahen hell all of this is set up from the start. We're expected and they're not rattling this thicket, no." That got a look from Haral. Not a happy one. So they glided closer and closer to Kshshti with the noise of methane-breathers whispering over com. Rimstation. Border station. Kif claimed the star; mahendo'sat had built the station and held it with the tc'a and chi, whose mining had no particular profit. Nothing at Kshshti did . . . except its nuisance value to kif ambitions across the line. "Where's that shiplist?" she asked of Hilfy. "I want names, imp." "I'm still trying," Hilfy said. "Station says they've got computer trouble." "Sure they do. Like the board at Meetpoint." "Beg pardon, aunt?" "Gods-rotted lot of malfunctions lately. Get that list. Tell them read it off by voice and cut the nonsense." "Don't know what we can do," Haral muttered beside her. And that was truth. The vane systems boards flickered steady disaster under Tirun's probes. It was all down. Everything. "We'll manage," she said, "something—" but her gut was knotted up in one unceasing panic. She fished the repair authorization out of safekeeping and shifted to put that in her pocket, braced for arguments with mahen officials. There would be outcries, howls, delays if she could not face them down. And if there was no ship for Tully, if there were the wrong kif, and no help— Not leaving here real quick, no. "List is in," Hilfy said. "To your one," Haral said and put it to the screen. 14 Iniri-tai: Maing Tol 9 Pasunsai: Idunspol 7 Nji-no: Maing Tol 30 Canoshato: Kshshti: insystem 29 Nisatsi-to: Kshshti: insystem 2 Ispuhen: Maing Tol: repair 32 Sphii'i'o: V'n'n'u 34 T'T'Tmmmi: N'i'i 40 A'ohu'uuu: Tt'a'va'o 49 knnn 50 knnn 51 knnn 52 knnn 10 Ginamu: Rlen Nle 20 Kekkikkt: Kefk 21 Harukk: Akkt 22 Inikktukkt: Ukkur 8 Ehrran's Vigilance: Anuurn 15 Ayhar's Prosperity: Anuurn 3 The Pride of Chanur: Anuurn: enroute "Gods," Haral muttered. "Party, huh?" She drew down her mouth as at a bad taste. "Kekkikkt. Remember that one?" "Couldn't forget. A whole list of good news, isn't it?" "Got help." She scanned the mahen section again. "Insystemers and short-hoppers. Ever hear of Iniri-tai?" "No." "Pasunsai?" "No. Neither of them." "Gods rot, there's supposed to be a hunter ship here." "Got Vigilance," Haral said dryly. "Huh." She rose to the humor, but there was ice at her stomach. "What do we tell them?" She remembered what she had told them at Meetpoint, the final message. Kif on our trail. No explanation possible. "Something inventive. We'd better." "Ayhar," Tirun muttered between her teeth. And that was the second good question. "That scrapheap never beat us here on the Urtur route, that's sure." "How'd they know?" "Want to guess?" Haral made a sound in her throat, not a pleasant one. "Rhif Ehrran's got a lap pet." "What do we do?" "Huh. I'm thinking about it." Meaning she did not know. Meaning there was nothing they could do but bluff and Haral already knew that much. Vigilance had gathered itself a witness, that was what—footed the bill to divert a merchant carrier like Prosperity off its normal run. They had dumped cargo at Meetpoint, same as themselves. And knew where to intercept them. Same as Harukk had known. Gods, were they the only ones running blind in this business? "Stsho? Stle stles stlen? Gtst knew Goldtooth's plans. If gtst had talked— "Captain," Hilfy said. "Tully's asking to come up." More questions. Pointed ones. She drew a deep breath and downed the panic. "Tell him yes. Tell him—" —watch his step. But he knew how to move in a ship underway. He had felt the uncertainty in their dump, had understood more surely than Khym had that they were in trouble, and what kind they were in—that they had escaped dying outright. But they were lame—at Kshshti. With the kif. Now what, now what we do, huh, Py-an-far? Tully did not take long about it. Pyanfar turned her chair from his reflection overhead to the solidity standing in the doorway. He looked worried. He glanced about him, scanned the monitors with an eye that knew what it was looking for, that could read more off the graphics than he could understand in words. "Safe," she said to him. "We're safe in Kshshti. Got help here. Big hani ship." He nodded. He did hope. That was in the look he gave her. But something else was in the slump of his shoulders as he turned and sought the seat Hilfy offered him, observer, beside her post. Quiet, thank the gods..She was ashamed of herself, remembering that he never did go to masculine extremes. Professional. It was hard to remember that, that Tully, whatever else he was, was not prone to hysterics. There, she thought, Khym. That's how. That's how it's done. You can do it— The way she had believed it once, having voyaged with Tully, so that she hoped— Khym was looking at her now, one hard, unforgiving stare. Sure, Khym. It's fixed. Tully, perhaps, had never fallen for that lie in the first place. And Khym had, perhaps, just seen that shiplist. She turned back to controls. Blinking lights and mahen chatter had no accusations. The metal speck that was Kshshti became a star, a globe, resolved itself into torus shape in the vid; became an aggregate of plates and flashing lights as The Pride moved in and fell into rotating pattern with the wheel. "In lane," Haral said. "Autos on." "Take her in." Of a sudden the hours mounted up like leaden weight. She spun about and faced the bridge as a whole, saw Khym sitting there with his elbows on the console facing the scan. Tully's pose was much the same. But he turned to face her, with that haunted look he had worn for days. "We'll get that repair done here," she said. "Kshshti can handle it." Hilfy looked her way. So did Khym. And Khym's stare was dark. Another lie? she read the backslant of one ear, the flare of nostrils. Her own pulse raced. She held herself in place, silent, with nothing to say to either of them. Lies and lies and lies. "When we get in," she said to Hilfy, looking straight at her, "I want a mahen courier in here. I don't care who it is. Dock manager will do. Don't shake things up, but get us someone who can get us someone else. Shouldn't be hard. Suggest we've got a cargo difficulty." Khym sat there. It occurred to her that in his life he had never told a witting lie . . . being downworld hani, dealing with hani and believing in the han. And it had never occurred to her that in dealings off-Annum she had had many faces—one for stsho, one for mahendo'sat. She was more hani with the kif. "It isn't Annum," she said across the bridge in a low, hard voice. "Nothing's Anuurn but Anuurn itself, crewman, and we aren't home." Maybe he understood that much. She saw a slight flicker in the eyes. "Pyanfar," Tully said. "Maing Tol. Go Maing Tol." She put the com plug into her ear. "I understand," she said. He was scared. Terrified. "Quiet, hear? We got you. We'll work it out. Fix, understand?" He said nothing, neither he nor Khym. "Gods rot," she muttered, and got up. "Take her in, Haral." She stalked off aft, caught the safety grip and looked back. "I'm going to clean up. Tirun, you wash up; I want you with me. I want that courier, niece." It was not an easy thing to manage, a cleanup during dock approach. She had inhaled a bit of water and stung her nose, but that meeting was its own kind of emergency—to be presentable as possible, formidable; and there was not, here, the time to spend on it. She overdid it, if possible—wore her finest red breeches, her most resplendent rings. She reeked of perfume. That was interspecies courtesy; and it was strategy, to drown subtle cues to sensitive alien noses. Face the bastards down, by the gods. It was The Pride at stake. And with it— The Pride nudged her way into dock, smooth, smooth glide now; a last warning from Haral and another shift of g as all ship rotation ceased, only spin-match carrying them now. The sensation of fifty pounds extra weight eased off. She held on to the recessed grip by the cabin door, trusting Haral's skill, and dock came softly, a thump against the bow, a clang of grapples going on, the steadying of g force at a mahen-normal .992 as they became part of Kshshti's wheel. She gave her mane and beard a final combing, twitched the left ear's rings into order. The sudden silence of the ship at rest gave an illusion of deafness: the constant white noise had ceased. "Aunt." That was Hilfy from the bridge. "I made that contact. We've got a customs official on the way." "Good." She clipped a pocket com to her waist, tucked a pistol into her pocket-gods, no way for an honest hani to do business. But Kshshti, as she had said to Khym, was not Anuurn, and the universe was a lonely walk among species that had been at this hunt long before hani came. Fix the rotted vane at Urtur; crawl up the column, indeed. Hilfy Chanur would have. Would do, when she inherited The Pride. Hilfy would make high and wide decisions, take the straight course, not the devious. Perhaps she had done that herself once. She tried to remember. Perhaps age dimmed the recall. She thought not. No, by the gods. Young fool, in charge of her ship. Not for by-the-gods years yet. But the thought appalled her . . . to go back to Chanur, sit in the sun and waste away. Haral, Tirun, no youngsters themselves, to give up their posts to bright-eyed youngsters who thought everything was simple— Gods. She latched the drawer tight, and walked out, a little rubber-kneed in Kshshti's heavier g. "Captain." From the pocket com, Haral's voice. "Message from Vigilance. Rhif Ehrran's at our dock." "Oh, good gods." "They want the lock open." She put a claw in the pocket com. "Where's that customs officer?" "On the way. That's all we know. Stall?" She thought about it. Gave it up. There was no need starting off hot. "No. Let her in. Due courtesy. You and Chur and Khym stay on the bridge and keep your eye on things. Hilfy: galley. Geran and Tully, half an hour to clean up and trade watch with first shift. Move it." Crew was tired. Exhausted. Gods knew how much rest they would get. Or when. "Aye," Haral said. "They're about to hook up the accessway." "At your discretion." She took the lift down, the while the ship-to-station connections whined and clanked away against the outer hull, the thunk! of lines socketing home, the portside contact of the access tube snugging into its housing on the hull. Tirun joined her, swung along with a visible weight in her right-hand pocket and not a word of expectations. Kshshti, after all. "Ehrran's out there," Pyanfar said. "Heard that." Cheerlessly. "Figured black-breeches would be quick about it." There was the final thump, that was the seal in place. "Stand by," Haral said. "Ker Rhif," Pyanfar said-took up a pose facing the han deputy and her black-breeched crewwoman; not insolent, no. Just solid enough to invite no farther progress down the corridor. "Ker Pyanfar." Rhif Ehrran took up a like pose, arms folded. Armed, by the gods: a massive pistol hung at the side of those black silk trousers. The crewwoman carried the same. "Sorry to trouble you this early. I'm sure you've got other things on your mind." Pyanfar blew softly through her nostrils, comment enough. "What caused the damage?" Ehrran asked in that friendly, official way. She pursed her lips into a pleasant expression and glared. "Well, now, that's something we're still looking into, captain. Likely it was dust." "You want to explain that last message at Meetpoint?" "I think it's self-explanatory. I meant it. It would be a lot better if you avoided us right now. We've got a problem. I don't pretend we don't. I don't think it ought to involve the han." "You feel qualified to decide that?" "Someone has to. Or the han's in it. I hadn't wanted that." "You hadn't wanted that." She refrained from retort. It was what Ehrran wanted. It was all she needed—if anything lacked at all. "Where do you plan to go?" Rhif Ehrran asked. "Nowhere, till I get that vane fixed." "Then?" "Maing Tol. Points beyond." A silence then. "You know," Rhif Ehrran said, "you've had a lot of experience out here, a lot of experience. Do I have to tell you the convention regarding hiring a ship out?" "You don't. We're not." "You're sitting in a border port with your tail in a vise, Chanur. Are you still going to brazen it out? I'm giving you a chance, one chance before I suspend your license on the spot. You get that two-legged cargo of yours down here and turn him over." "You're not referring to my husband." Ehrran's ears went flat and her mouth opened. "I didn't think so," Pyanfar said. "Who sent you? Stle stles stlen?" "See here, Chanur. You don't negotiate with me. I've got a han ship eight light-years into the Disputed Territories because I figured you'd foul it up, I'm likely to get my tail shot up getting out of here, and I'm not in the mood to trade pleasantries. I want the alien down here. I want him wrapped up and ready to go, and be glad I don't pull your license." "We aren't carrying any alien. You're talking about a citizen of the Compact." "I'm aware of the fiction the mahendo'sat arranged. Let's not argue technicalities. Get him down here." "He's a passenger on my ship. He has some say where he goes." "He'll have no say if this ship has no license." She drew a long, slow breath. The world had gone dark all round, excepting Rhif Ehrran's elegant person. "There's Compact Law, Ehrran. I trust you'll remember that." "You're on the edge. Believe me that you are." She stood there with her heart slamming against her ribs and the light refusing to come back. She was aware of Tirun there, at her side. She could not see her. "Where will you take him? To the han?" "Just leave that to us." "No. You're talking about a friend of mine. I can be real difficult, ker Rhif. And we're not in hani space." There was long, frozen silence. Rhif Ehrran's ears flicked then, breaking the moment. "You're a fool, Chanur. I can't say I don't respect your position." "Where's he going?" "Trust me, Chanur, that things go on in this universe somewhat remote from your interests. Suffice it to say that this is not a unilateral action." "Gods rot it, he's not a load of fish!" "If you have such concern for his safety, captain, I'd suggest you distance you from him and him from you—considering the condition of your ship—and let me get him out of here." She looked away, found no solace elsewhere. Glanced back again. "We'll bring him." "I'll send a car." "Someone of my crew will take the ride with him," she said quietly. "By your leave. He's not going to like this." "I assure you—" A dark figure appeared in the corridor, at the accessway: Ehrran's ears twitched round and body followed as Pyanfar reached for her pocket, but it was mahendo'sat, not kif. "Customs officer," Pyanfar said. "Advice," Rhif Ehrran said. "This is Kshshti. Not Meetpoint. If you can get this ship running, get back to Urtur and get on to Kura. Fast. If she won't stand it, sit tight" "Same advice you give Prosperity?" "Prosperity's on han business, Leave it at that. Stay out of things that don't concern you, Chanur." "I hear you. I hear you very well." "The car will be here in an hour. I don't want any foulups." "Understood, captain." Ehrran inclined her head in scant courtesy, collected her crewwoman and departed the corridor, past the mahendo'sat who turned and stared. It was a small, worried-looking mahen official who slouched past the departing Ehrran with a backward look. Mahen female, this, a clerical with the usual clutter of clipboard and signatures and seals and notebooks hung about her chest; but the belt which held up the kilt about her rather pot-bellied person had the badges of middling authority. Then the gut came moderately in and the head came up—no miraculous transformation, only the suddenly sharper look of this disreputable individual. "Voice, I," she said. "Huh," said Pyanfar, laying back her ears. She set her hands on hips, drew a neat quick breath, tried to reset her wits for another frame of reference. Gods. A Voice, yet. No dockside official. "Ehrran know you? Whose voice?" A second look back, this one taller and disdainful. The Voice—if voice it was—have no name, no particular identity, and yet a considerable one, being alter-ego to some Personage, speaker of the unspeakable, direct negotiator. She straightened round again. "Voice stationmaster Kshshti. Stationmaster send say you number one fool come in like that." "No choice." "More fool deal with fool." The Voice gestured over her shoulder, where the Ehrran had vanished. "Where cargo?" Pyanfar made a deprecating gesture toward the self-claimed Voice. "Where authorization?" The mahe drew out one small object from her belts, a badge inlaid with gold and the Kshshti port emblem. "You keep this cargo aboard." She laid her ears down, pricked them up again. "Look—" "Keep. Not permit this transfer." Pyanfar tucked her hands in her belt, turned a frown Tirun's way and looked back again. No time to start shouting. Not yet. She gestured toward lower-deck ops. "Look, you want go sit down, Voice? Get drink, talk?" "What talk? Like got big cargo, got damage, got make foulup whole business?" "Look Honorable." Now it was time to shout. "The Pride's no gods-blasted warship, got no weapons, hear? I risk my ship twice, got damage, and I got the promise of your government to make it good." She pulled the authorization from her pocket and handed it to the Voice. "We got downtime, got cargo lost—" "We fix." It was like leaning on a wall and feeling it go down. She was off her balance an instant, staring into those dark, earnest eyes. Then it made sense. She drew in a breath and twitched her ears back in the beginnings of negation. "Meanwhile," the Voice said, "you stall this fool deputy." "No. Not possible." "You want help, got." "You bet I got. Got authorization." She retrieved the paper from the Voice's hand and waved it under the Voice's nose. "Un-con-di-tional. Code Hasano-ma! That mean anything to you?" "We not permit this transfer." "Well, take it up with the deputy. I can't stop it. It's my license. You understand that?" The Voice came close, tapped her on the chest with a dull-clawed forefinger. "Hani. You we know longtime. This other fool we got no confidence." "I can't do anything." White rimmed the dark eyes. "You get number-one repair job, make quick. Want you back in action, Pyanfar Chanur. You listen. We got right now no ship here stop this bastard. Got delicate situation, got stsho upset—you know stsho bastard, know hani got young fool, old bastard stsho lot smart, lot timid, got own interest. Not say not-friend. Got own interest. Our interest got you fix up. You fix han." Her jaw dropped. "Good gods! what do you think I am?" "Maybe we talk, huh?" "There's nothing to talk about." She waved a hand aft. "That's the Y unit out. The Y unit took the main column linkage. When the linkage failed—" The mahe waved her own lank black-furred hand. "Get you fix, you take this cargo." "I'm telling you you can't get that vane fixed fast enough. Two hundred, three hundred work hour fix that vane. We sit here we got kif positioned all round this system. Plenty time for that. Mahe, we've got knnn loose!" "God—!" "Not our fault. Mahendo'sat set this up, all the way. Your own precious Personage at Maing Tol. We got routed here. Number one usual mahen foulup, like Meetpoint, like got Kita blocked, like desert me with no support—" "Ship come. Meanwhile get you fix. Lousy hani engineering, huh?" "Gods rot, you route a ship through Urtur and throw a course change at it and see how it holds!" Minuscule mahen ears twitched. The nose wrinkled and the Voice lifted a deprecating hand. "Technical not my business. Personage say: Find damage, fix, send this fool away quick before got kif organize. We fix. You hold this cargo." "Can't do!" "Want repair?" The breath strangled her. "I'm due repair, you bastard. I've got the paper says so. I can't stall the deputy . . . ." The Voice frowned. Her small ears folded, twitched as she looked up and jabbed again with the finger. "We take care this cargo. We take him station center, big inquiry, lot fluff. Get you fix, bring back cargo—twenty hour." "Can't be done in twenty hours." The mahe lifted one finger. "Bet?" She stared at the mahe, thinking treachery, thinking double-cross; and all the same her pulse raced. She threw a look at Tirun, saw her cargo chief/engineer with that same wary, heart-thumping thought. "They'd have to replace the whole gods-rotted tail to make that schedule," Tirun muttered. "No patch job." "Got good system," the Voice said. "Better. Mahen make. Match up you systems no trouble. Twenty hour, you run. We fix han deputy. We confiscate this cargo. Let deputy go Maing Tol make complaint." "Gods, you know what you let me in for?" "How much already, hani? You think. How much you got?" "We'd still have kif." She gnawed a hangnail and stared at the Voice. "Always got kif." "You know a ship named Harukk?" "Know. One bastard." "He's been with us since Meetpoint. He knows what we've got. Ship named Ijir. Our backup. It's gone. Kif have got it." "Damn, hani!" "Kif got whatever it had. They know whatever it knew." The mahe's mouth made a hard line as she looked down and up again. "You run fast, hani. We get you fix, you burn tail get hell out Kshshti. Maybe arrange small accident this Harukk. Maybe skimmer bump vane, huh? Maybe multiple collision." "All three? You want kif feud?" "Raindrop in ocean, hani. You make deal?" She gnawed her mustaches, looked at the deck plates, looked up at the mahe. "Deal. You handle the deputy. You stop her. Caught between local government and a han order—I can't very well contest a confiscation, can I—if it gets here first." "We get car. Take custody." The mahe drew a watch from amid the clutter of her belts. "Time now 1040. You expect action, maybe—half hour." "I want a Signature on that repair order." Small ears twitched. "You doubt word?" "Records get lost. I'd be in a mess later if that happened—wouldn't I?" "So." The mahe wrinkled her nose, made a grimace more hani grin than primate, whipped up a tablet. She scribbled and affixed a Signature. "Repair authorize, charge Maing Tol authority. Got. You satisfied?" Pyanfar took it, waved a hand toward the outbound corridor. "Speed, huh?" "Twenty hour," the mahe said, fixed her with a hard stare that held something of mirth in it. Then she turned on her heel and walked off toward the outbound corridor. Pyanfar drew another breath, inhaled the mahe's lingering perfume. Blew it out again and looked at Tirun. "Got a chance," Tirun muttered. "Gods know what they'll pin on our tail. Or what they'll stand by when the inquiry board meets. We just agreed to get shot at. You know that?" "Better odds than ten minutes ago." "Huh." But her heart was still pounding against her ribs. It was hope, unaccustomed in. the last two years. The Pride, back in prime condition. Finish this job, get the hold loaded on credit at Maing Tol before the other bills came in. It was a chance, one chance—and if the human mess settled down and the human trade materialized, if that came through—She waved an arm at the exit. "Shut that. We've got kif out there." Meanwhile—meanwhile there was one difficult thing to do. The smell of gfi went through the bridge, ordinary and comforting; voices drifted out of the galley, noisy and normal. But Haral was back at her post, damp from a hasty shower, and turned a solemn look back while Pyanfar slid the tablet's Signature codestrip into comp. Comp talked to ship-record, to station comp, back and forth in a rapid flurry of codes. "Checks out," Pyanfar said, while Tirun came and draped an arm over her sister's seatback, two sober, weary faces. Haral had heard. There was no question about that: Haral always listened when there were strangers on the deck. "Tully listen in?" Pyanfar asked. "No." "Where is he?" A nod toward the galley. "Everyone's there." "Huh." She drew her shoulders up as against some cold wind and looked that way. She tucked her hands into the belt of her trousers. "Come on. Both of you. Let the damage list go." They followed, two shadows at her back—cursed lot of nonsense, Pyanfar thought, screwing her courage up. Gods, where was common sense, that breaking one small bit of unpleasantness upset her more than facing down the hem? There was noise, chatter, Khym's deeper voice wanting something from the cabinet— "Sit down, Tully," Chur said. "For godssakes, na Khyrn—Hilfy, where's the tofi got to? Can you find it?" And glanced around at Pyanfar. "Captain." "Sit," Pyanfar said sharply, stilling voices, the tofi-search, the opening and closing of cabinets. Geran came and put a cup in her hand. "You too. Sit down, Khym." —as he made one last foray into a cabinet. He snatched a substitute and subsided scowling into the middle of the benches, shaking the spice into his cup and concentrating on that while others found their seats left and right of him. Pyanfar braced herself at the galley corner where stable footing existed in-dock, foot braced at the edge of the shifting step-up of the gimballed table section. Khym sulked, in general foul humor, and pretended full occupation. She leaned there, sipped the liquid and felt the warmth coil through a boding chill at her stomach. Others were still, not the rattle of a spoon, only a shifting as Tirun and Haral nudged Tully over and slid into the benches. "I'll make this fast," Pyanfar said. "I've got to. Tully, is that translator picking me up?" He touched his ear, where the plug was set. Looked at her with those bright, worried eyes. "I hear fine." She came and sat down on the jumpseat, leaned her elbows on the table, the cup between her hands. She faced all of them. But Tully most directly. "You'll know," she said, "we never did fix that thing at Urtur. Shut up, Khym—" before Khym could quite get his mouth open. "Tully, there wasn't a way to fix it. Hear? So we made it in. One vane is gone. Takes time to fix. Understand? Now we got a little trouble. There's a hani here wants to take you on her ship. You understand? Hani authority." The pale eyes flickered with—perhaps—understanding. One was never sure. Fright: that, certainly. "Go from you?" he asked. "I go? Go new ship?" "No. Now listen to me. I don't want them to take you. This is a mahen station. Mahendo'sat, understand? Mahendo'sat take you to the center of the station, keep you safe, fix the ship. Twenty hours. You understand? They're going to take you with them into the center of the station." "Kif. Kif here—" "I know. It's all right. They won't get near you. The mahendo'sat will bring you back when we're ready to move. This way we keep the other hani from taking you to their ship. We keep you safe, understand?" "Yes," he agreed. He held the cup in front of him, in both his hands, looking as if he had lost his appetite and his thirst. "Got to move fast, Tully. Get down below. Take whatever you need. Clothes. A car is coming." "Car." "No nonsense this time. You'll be under guard all the way. Not like the stsho. Not like Meet-point. Mahendo'sat have teeth." "One of us," Hilfy said quietly, "one of us could ride along. Make sure they understand him." There were a lot of unspoken questions around the table, a lot of worried looks from hands who knew what damage existed in the vane. No one was questioning. "Listen," Pyanfar said, moving the cup on the table out of her way. "Truth: twenty hours. We're going for a first-class job. Whole new assembly back there." "Gods," Geran breathed in reverence. Chur blinked; and Hilfy stared. "They say twenty hours. They want us headed out of here for their own reasons. Now move it. We've got to have him down at the dock in ten minutes, packed and out." "One of us ride along?" Chur asked. "You and Hilfy." So the two of them had always fussed over Tully. Keep them both happy. "Armed. This is Kshshti." "I'll go," Khym said. She glanced his way with a furrowing of the brow. Honest offer. Feckless lunacy. "If there was trouble," he said. "No." "If—" "No." She stood up and tossed the cup into the disposal. "Get it moving. Nine minutes." Crew hurried. Haral took Tully in tow, her hand hooked about his elbow, and headed for the bridge. "Pyanfar," Khym said, working his own way out from between bench and table. "Pyanfar, listen to me." "If you want to sulk go to your quarters and get out of the way." "Is it Ehrran?" "I haven't time." She brushed past his arm and headed for the bridge, spun on one foot as she heard him following and brought him up short. "Use some judgment, Khym." "I'm trying to help!" She gave him one long desperate look, and watched his expression go from anger to desperation too. Anguish. She sorted a dozen jobs. All of them took skill. "You want to help, I want Kshshti data pulled from comp. Go do that." She spun about again and headed bridge-ward, for the papers she had under security. That had to go. It was all one package, Tully and that envelope. If Ehrran knew about Tully she likely knew he came with documents. And all of it had to go into mahen custody. Fast. She could keep the deputy off the bridge: the law gave her that. But since the kif hit Gaohn, since a great many changes had happened in the han— One took no chances. Gods knew what Prosperity would swear to. It had gotten to that. Distrust of foreigners. Distrust of hani who defied the conventions. Foreign ways, they said. Hani males outside Anuurn: the keepers of the home, learning there were things outside the han, friends stauncher than other hani, outsider-ways of thought. She reached the bridge, opened the security bin beside Haral and took out the precious packet—committed treason by that if not before. She slammed the bin shut. Haral looked round at her, her scarred face quite, quite calm. Khyrn was there too, just watching, from the side, as staunchly downworld in his own way as Ehrran's clan. Worried. And silent now. "Got something coming outside," Haral said, whose eyes and ears were partly The Pride's from where she sat. And whose discretion was absolute. "Two minutes, captain." Chapter 8 She headed down the corridor from the lift in haste, keyed the airlock to inside-manual and looked back as Hilfy and Chur and Geran came hurrying along with Tully in their midst. "Car's on the dockside," Harral advised them from the general address. "You operating that on manual?" "I've got it," Pyanfar said, touching the pickup by the lock controls. "Just keep a sharp lookout up there." The four arrived, Tully dishevelled looking and disreputable in a white stsho shirt half tucked into the blue hani trousers. The shirt was far too big, the trousers too small; and for luggage he clutched a white plastic sack of the kind they used for utility—a change of clothes, toiletries, gods knew what they had thrown together for him in so short a time. "Got the translation tapes?" "Got," Tully answered for himself, patting the bundle. "Here." She handed him the packet. "Tuck that in too. For the gods' sakes don't give it to the mahendo'sat." He knew what it was. She saw the disturbed look, the doubt. "Go on," she said, and triggered the inner lock. It hissed open with an exhalation of cold air. "Chur, Hilfy, you watch it. You watch it coming back. Don't you walk it. If they don't give you a car, you call and I'll see they do. Tell them priority. Tell them Personage." "Right," said Chur. She walked into the lock with them, pushed the button for the second door on alternate-set, so that the first closed behind them. She took no chances. Not now. The yellow accessway gaped like a ribbed gullet. The chill hit like a wall. "Hurry it." "Pyanfar," Tully said of a sudden, and turned and balked. She put a hand on his back and propelled him ahead of her. "Come on, come on, Tully. It's all right." She walked by him with her crewwomen trailing after, kept her arm at his back and kept him moving down the accessway. He was cold already. She felt the stiffness in his movements as they hit the slant and headed down to the rampway. "Won't be long. Bodies will heat up the car." —Chatter to keep him distracted. She saw the gray of the docks like docks anywhere, the pair of vehicles with the strobes flashing. "Translator's going to be out of range awhile, but they'll get you hooked up again when you get to station central. There's an outside chance—a small chance, understand? —it might be more than twenty hours. Might be, might be—they might have to shift you to some mahen ship. I don't think so—" He balked again as they came down the last few steps, turned and gave her a panicked look. "Captain," Chur said from behind, sharp and urgent: she heard the engines at the same time, looked toward the sound down the dock. Another car, headed their way in a great hurry, from up-dock. "Gods rot," she muttered, grabbed Tully by the arm and pulled him on. "Fast, Tully." The mahendo'sat in the cars got out, excepting the two drivers, one curly brown, a tasunno mahe, smaller than the others and rare this side of Iji; an officer and four others the gods-knew-what race of generations-back spacers, black and tall and bearing badges and sidearms on the usual harness. Not friendly-looking. Like one black wall. Tully balked again, looked about in panic as the moving car hummed up and braked, resisted again as two of the mahe grabbed him and pulled him toward the open door of the second mahen car. "Pyanfar!" he cried. Hilfy started forward, but Pyanfar caught her arm and held her as the number-three car door slid down and three Ehrran crew got out in haste. "Hold it," the senior said. "Hold it there." Pyanfar shrugged and faced them. She had let go Hilfy's arm, and everyone had stopped—the mahe trying to get Tully into the car, the Ehrran who had bailed out of their vehicle. "Go on," Pyanfar said to Hilfy, and moved the hand at her side. "Chur, Hilfy. It's all right. Sorry, Ehrran. You've been preempted. Stationmaster's intervened." "You," the foremost Ehrran said, gesturing at the mahendo'sat. "Where's the authorization?" The mahe officer said something in one of Iji's manifold languages, waved a hand. The rest pulled Tully into the car and Chur and Hilfy piled in after. Doors began to close. "Chanur," the Ehrran said. Pyanfar gave a second shrug, displayed empty hands. "Out of my control." "That's your personnel," "Just to keep him quiet on the way. You'll have to take it up with station offices." There were limits. Cursing a captain to her face was one; calling her a liar was another. The Ehrran did neither, but it was in her eyes, that were lambent brass. The mahen vehicles snugged up the doors and began to move. Ehrran cast a wild look that way, waved an arm at her crewmates and they dived back into their own car. "Evidently the Ehrran haven't got a com in there," Pyanfar observed to Geran, who had stood fast by her left. "Gods be!" The hani vehicle swerved wildly about and cut close to the mahendo'sat, dropped back as the mahendo'sat refused to be passed on the narrow dock. "Cheeky lot," Geran said. "Won't go well out here. Gods-rotted black-breeches thinks it's Anuurn. Ought to be interesting when they get news to their captain, oughtn't it?" Geran turned a quizzical look her way "I rather imagine they had trouble getting a car," Pyanfar said. "For some reason." Up the row there was another swerve, visible as the cars went up the curving deck, headed for the curtaining tangle of lines that would cut off the view. "Gods rot—" "They're crazy," Geran said. "Come on," she said, spun on her heel and headed up the ramp, with quickening long strides. "Put me through to Vigilance," she said when she hit the bridge, not out of breath, not quite, but blowing through her nostrils. Geran was still with her, equally disarranged. "Got that on vid," Haral said with quiet satisfaction, the while Khym stared in confusion and Tirun moved past his seat to reach com. "That maneuver going out." "Sharp," she said. Haral smiled and powered her chair back round to business with the damage check. "They don't answer," Tirun said, half turning in her seat. "No response." "Log that. Call the station office and file a protest." "Hazard to our personnel?" "That'll do." She drew a quieter breath, hands on hips. Looked at Khym and saw a gleam in his eye she had not seen since Mahn. She stood a breath taller, walked over to lean over Haral's shoulder. "Next thing's that repair crew. Any sign yet?" Kshshti docks passed in a blur of gray and brown, of dingy fronts obscured by the shielding of the car windows as the vehicle hummed along, buzz-thump-thump as the soft tires hit the joints of unshielded deck plating with manic speed in time to Hilfy Chanur's heart. She leaned to look back again as far as the shield-dimmed car window afforded: the Ehrran vehicle had fallen in behind them, no longer attempting to pass, but staying close on their tail. Tully's leg pressed hers on the left, the three of them occupying the back seat with Chur on the far side. Two of the mahen guards sat in front with the driver. The escort car filled much of the forward view, they ran so close to its tail: the strobe atop that lead car limned objects and the three mahendo'sat in front in unreality and blocked out the outside so that it had no color. Beside them office fronts and gantry machinery passed in a blur. "Easy." She felt a shiver from Tully and patted his leg as she straightened around to look his way. "Safe, Tully. It's all right." The translator had stopped working as they passed out of range. But some words he understood on his own. "Safe, hear?" He nodded, glancing distractedly her way. He had his plastic bundle clutched firmly in his arms and they sat close to him to keep him warm. The white flash from the front of the car glanced off his pale skin and pale hair and turned his nervous movements into something surreal. "I—" he began, and the car lurched, swerved, threw them all forward and left with a suddenness that brought the rear of the escort car up in Hilfy's view as she turned her head, the car, the mahendo'sat driver fighting to turn, the guards flinging up arms to protect themselves as the car slewed into angled impact, glanced, hooked itself perversely into the escort car's torn body and kept slewing round, grating metal as a tire stripped off the rim and jolted over deckplates. Things blurred, snapped clear in a howl from the mahendo'sat, and a fist slammed them; the back of the seat flew up in Hilfy's face and she grabbed for Tully as her head hit the padding with the shock of explosion whumping through the air and the whole car tilting and slamming down again. "They're firing!" Chur yelled and that reality got through to Hilfy's brain, sent her hand clawing for the gun in her pocket, numb-fingered from a shock to her elbow somewhere in the spin. The car had stopped. The forward window was cracked. The driver was slumped; both guards were alive . . . . "Stay inside," Chur was yelling from the other side as one guard worked at the door on that side. A shock hit the car and blossomed in a fireball beyond the cracked front window and Hilfy got the gun out as the stench of ozone roiled through the door in silver smoke. The door opened on manual, slammed down as the smoke poured in and the mahe sprawled as he went out in a pop of weaponsfire through the smoke: his comrade fired from inside and another shock hit the car, fire bloomed, deafening. "Hilfy!" Tully dragged at her as cold air hit from the other direction, as Chur got the door open on the sheltered side and bailed out of the car. Hilfy flung a look in the other direction, pasted shot after shot at the flutter of black kif robes amid the smoke, intending to go when she had stopped that. But alien hands seized the waist of her trousers and skidded her sharply backward across the slick seat even as she fired. An arm whipped round her waist and jerked her from the door backwards as she got off a last few shots. Tully tried to carry her, but she twisted free, got her feet on the ground and ran for herself, Tully beside her, Chur— Another shock blossomed by her, and she was flying through the air, the deck coming up under her hands and under her face as something heavy came down on her and sprawled. She was running then after a blank space, her legs working, not knowing how she had gotten there or where she was going until the gray of a girder came up and hit her shoulder and she spun, flailed for balance and caromed into Tully, arms about him as she decided on cover and kept falling, crawling then, along the base of the gantry over deckbolts. She gripped the hard edge of the base rim, hitched herself along, lay still then. Smoke roiled along the overhead where red alarm strobes flashed, staining girders and smoke alike. Sounds were distant, through the ringing in her ears. She felt small distant pains, saw Tally's face twisted with exertion and with pain. "Chur?" he said, twisting on his elbow to look back. In panic: "Chur?" And Hilfy rolled over to look through the obscuring smoke, wiping her eyes and trying to see and hear. "Chur?" she cried. The red-gray smoke gave up a momentary view of tangled vehicles and other wreckage, of running figures, of fire from various quarters. She heard the dim chitter of kif commands, flinched as a shot came their way and reached to her pocket for the gun, but it was gone. "Hilfy—" Tully cried, and pulled her further back as kif poured past them to take up position. "O gods," she breathed. "We're behind the wrong gods-rotted line!" Shots popped off the wall behind them and ricocheted wildly. She ducked down and in the first pause in fire she grabbed Tully by the shirt, scrambled up and ran with him while the smoke held—but that smoke was not dissipating as it should, the fans were not working, and it dawned on her battered skull that they were cut off, shut down: section doors had sealed. "Where?" Pyanfar shouted into the com as if volume could help, aware of Tirun and Khym and Geran at her back and a great silence elsewhere on the bridge. "What 'stay still'? You gods-rotted incompetent—where around the rim?" —Babble poured into her ear. She whirled round as her eye caught movement, saw Haral's running arrival on the bridge and waved a furious hand at her crew. "Arm! Move it!" "Got section seal go," the mahen official was saying into her ear. "Got no chance kif get away, you wait report—" "You authorize us past that seal. Hear?" "Office got no authority—" "Get it!" She cut the official off in midword and shoved her way past Khym. Geran had the sidearms out of the locker. "Get the rifles," she said. They had them. It was illegal, a defense they never admitted to port authorities they had. "Aye," Haral said, and ran. "Pyanfar—" Khym said. She put the lock on controls, spun about and ran. Khym was with them and she had no desire to stop him. Not in this. The huge section doors were shut, red and amber strobes on their surface spearing through the wafts of smoke that reached even here. Sirens wailed and echoed in the vastness of the docks. "They're shut, they're sealed," Hilfy gasped, blinking smoke-tears and half-carrying the human who half-carried her, the two of them weaving past the clutter of dockside bins and chutes as they tried to get the break they needed to get past the line of fire. "We can't get out—Tully, stop!" Shots broke out from a new direction. She dragged him off his balance. They both staggered, thumped into the echoing side of a bin and she landed hard on her rump as Tully collapsed with a gasp. Flesh stank. He rolled over, clutching at his arm and she kept pulling at him, claws hooked into his shirt as she worked toward the corner— O gods, that there be shelter there— There was an alleyway of a kind, a recess for freight loading, a door with a white light over its recess. SERVICE ACCESS, said a battered sign, ROHOSU COMPANY. Beside it, mahen graffiti, obscurely obscene. She tried the door; but it was locked like every other door along the row once the emergency had sounded. She rang the bell; battered at the unyielding steel. "Open up, gods rot you! We're hani! Let us in!" No answer. Tully babbled something. Sirens. She heard them too, far down the dock. She sank down by him, pried his hand from his arm and grimaced at the wound the dim light showed, black edged and bleeding hard. She grabbed the tail of his shirt and tore a wide strip of cloth off, pressed it tight and put his hand on it, ripped another strip off to tie it with. "Easy," she breathed, senseless chatter to keep him from panic. "Easy, you're all right, all right, hear?" He slumped back against the wall, his face gone to waxen color. The hand of the wounded arm shook and the tremor spread to the rest of him as he began to go into shock. But he listened, his eyes on her whenever she looked. "Listen," she said, "listen, station's onto it now. And The Pride—they'll have heard by now. The captain's doing something, you can bet she'll get us help—Pyanfar, understand?" "Pyanfar come." "Bet on it. All right, huh?" She got the bandage around his arm, put his hand on it to hold that. She snugged the knot tight and he mumbled something in human, language. No translator. The translator-tape— —in the bundle of clothes. With the papers. Back at the wreck. With Chur— "Hilfy—" He stiffened, eyes fixed toward the exit of the alley. She turned her head. Shadows moved in that red-dyed smoke, paused and conversed outside, a gathering of black robes, tall, stoop-shouldered silhouettes. Tully edged aside, out of the light the door cast. She moved too, as carefully as she could, as far as Tully did, and put her arms about him to hide his pallor with her own redbrown hide as much as she could within the shadows. She felt Tully shivering; felt her own stomach knotted up when she recalled kif eyesight. They were night-hunters by preference; and Tully—white shirt, pale hair, paler skin— She kept her arms clenched about him. And saw that conversation outside their refuge break up, the kif start to move. One stopped and looked their way. "Open that gods-rotted door!" Pyanfar yelled, and used the rifle butt on the guardroom spex, so a scared mahendo'sat in the section-control yelled back threats from the other side. "It's clear from the Personage!" she yelled. "Open that section-seal!" "Au-to-matic," the yell came back through the com-transfer, in mangled pidgin. Mahen station. Half the personnel never managed fluency in pidgin. "Personage!" she yelled back in mahen Standard. Gibberish came back. This one spoke dialect. Black-robed shadows filled the alleyway, dark, featureless, except for the wan light of the bulb in the low ceiling of the door recess and Hilfy gathered herself to her feet. Tully struggled and she helped him by his good arm to give him that chance at least. "Run if you can," she said in a low voice, thinking perhaps she could break a hole for him. But he knew so few words. He pressed closer to her as the kif gave them less room. He would try to fight-blunt-fingered, without any advantage, without even speed to outrun a kif. And it was Tully they wanted: alive. She had no doubt of that. "Got claws," she said beneath her breath. "You don't. Run, understand?" The kif moved closer, keeping their circle. "We'll not hurt you," one said. "You're in the wrong place, young hani. Certainly you are. If you had a gun you would have used it, would you not? But we aren't your enemies." "Who?" She perceived the origin of the voice: the speaker stood out among the rest, taller, finer-robed, and she guessed the name as she edged into Tully, trying to keep open space about them as the kif moved and shifted. "Sikkukkut. From Meetpoint. You remember me, young Chanur. I have no wish to hurt you, either one. And there are far too many of us. Come, be reasonable." The kif moved, all of them at once. "Run!" she yelled at Tully, spun and swung and kept swinging as her claws carried a kif headon into the wall. "Run, for godssakes, run—" Black cloth obscured her vision, cleared as Tully pulled one off her, and she rattled that one's brains. But kif claws pulled Tully by the shoulder, and grabbed him by the arm. "Gods blast!" she cried and tried to get that one off him, but two kif got her arms and a kifish arm came hard about her throat. The door thundered back on chaos, the flash of red lights on smoke the fans refused, the sweep of floods, the lunatic strobe-flash. "Gods," Geran muttered. The center of the trouble was evident, a knot of flashing white lights stabbing into the smoke far up the dockside. Pyanfar started running first, rifle in both hands—"No, wait—" from the mahen official who had gotten the door open. "Hani, got wait!—" But Geran was pace for pace with her and gaining—fleet-footed Geran, whose sister Chur was in that mess. A laser shot streaked the smoke. Pyanfar brought the rifle up and fired on the run. Geran did the same, not with particular skill, but with dispatch; and more fire came behind her, with the mahen official screaming for them to take cover. Khym shouted, something: the heights distorted it, twisted it into a blood-crazed roar. A volley of smoke-bounced shots came back from kif near the wreckage and Pyanfar dived aside, remembered Khym behind her with one heart-stopping fright and rolled to cover his blind rush. But he came skidding in beside her, gasping, with the pistol quickly braced up hunting targets as Tirun reached their cover. Geran and Haral had tucked in with the mahendo'sat next a stack of cans: shots spattered the plastic and those three ducked. Then a flurry opened up from the other side, and for a moment the pop of projectile fire rang everywhere off the overhead: mahen voices yowled distant satisfaction and she put her head out, sprawled back again because shots were wild and going a dozen ways about the wreckage and up the dock to their position. Geran got off three quick shots from her side, Haral another burst. "That's mahen fire!" Haral yelled, seeing something from her vantage; and Pyanfar ventured another look, saw fire going the other way and pelted out of cover the last long sprint for the wreckage, from which cover a steady spatter of fire went out aimed the other way. Mahe braced in among the tangle started at their arrival, and hani among them turned about with backlaid ears. Ehrran. Pyanfar slid in among them, grabbed an Ehrran shoulder and shook it as Geran arrived, and the rest of the crew. "Where's Chanur?" Pyanfar shouted into the Ehrran crewwoman's baeklaid ears. "Where, gods rot you!" The Ehrran pointed mutely to a hani lying on the deck and Pyanfar's heart lurched over as Geran scrambled that way, to her sister's side. "Where's the rest?" Pyanfar yelled, and a larger hani arm appeared from behind her and seized a fistful of Ehrran beard. "Where are they?" Khym shouted, and the Ehrran waved a frantic hand toward the dock at large. "—Ran—they ran—Somewhere out there—" Pyanfar let go her grip with a shove and abandoned the Ehrran to get to Chur. Chur was alive. They had propped her head off the deck and the wound that had spread blood all about was hard-sealed and glistening with plasm that stopped further bleeding. Geran bent over her, just holding her hand, looking more than scared. "How is she?" Pyanfar asked. "She hurts," Chur said for herself, past scarcely moving jaws. Her eyes were slitted. "Where's Hilfy—Tully?" "We don't know. Where'd you lose them?" A weak move of Chur's head. A try at pointing. "Got out," she said. The pointing was nowhere in particular. "Don't know." Pyanfar looked round at the others who hovered near. "That packet. Tully had it in his hands. Hunt the wreck." "Got," Chur said thickly, reached feebly behind her head, delirious, Pyanfar thought, until she recognized the thing Chur's head was lying on. Chur tried to pull it. Tully's plastic sack. "Gods," Pyanfar said with feeling. "Geran. Stay with her. You hang onto that. They'll get an ambulance in here real soon." "Not Kshshti," Chur said. "Pride." For a moment Pyanfar failed to understand her, then gripped her arm. "No way we leave you here. Got that?" "Got," Chur said, and let her eyes close. "Stay with her," Pyanfar said to Geran. "We'll find them." She stood up, keeping low, for there were still shots flying, drew Tirun and Khym and Haral off to the mahen position. She seized one by the arm and pulled him about. "Hani. Seen hani?" "No got," he said. "Alien?" "No got." She edged back again, cast about amid the confusion of arriving emergency vehicles, the thunder of PA above sirens, each confounding the other. Evacuate, she made out. Evacuate, evacuate—unsafe— —getting the non-involved clear. She hoped. Possibly the whole sector of the station had gone unstable in the explosions. In the mahen-language shouting and the noise of the sirens there was no knowing. She put her head up, for firing had stopped, ducked down again as her own crew pulled her down, but there were still no shots. "Think they're through out there," she said, and seized Haral by the arm. "Get Chur into an ambulance. Geran's not to leave her. Whatever." "Right," Haral said; he turned to leave and froze, so that Pyanfar turned to look too, where hani had appeared among the emergency vehicles, some black-trousered, several blue, the first sight of which lifted her hope and the second dashed it. "Ayhar," she spat, and hurled herself to her feet. "Ehrran!"—for Rhif Ehrran was in that group, and she headed for them in mingled wrath and hope, dodged round a stretcher crew and a fire-control team headed into the wreckage. Hani faces turned her way, Banny Ayhar and Rhif Ehrran chiefest of them. "Chanur!" Ehrran shouted, headed her way, "By the gods, Chanur, you've really fouled it up, haven't you?" She slowed to a walk, with long, long strides. A hand caught her arm and she jerked free. "Captain," Tirun begged her. "Don't. She stopped. Stood there. And Ehrran had the sense to stop out of her reach. Tirun was on one side of her, Khym on the other. "Where are they?" she asked Ehrran. "Gods if I know," Ehrran said, hand on that pistol at her side. The whites showed at the edges of her eyes. "Gods rot it, Chanur—" "Be some use. We need searchers. They may have taken cover somewhere, anywhere along the docks." Ehrran flicked her ears nervously, turned and lifted a hand in signal to her own. "Fan out. Watch yourselves." "Move," Pyanfar said to her own, and they did. Hilfy moved a finger, a hand, discovered consciousness and remembered kif, with the kif-stink all about her. She tried the whole arm, both arms, a deep panicked breath, and opened her eyes on a gray ceiling and bare steel and lights, with the memory of a jolt she had not fully heard, with her arms tangled in something, her legs pinned—the wreck—o gods— She turned her head, a dizzy haze of lights, a bright spot of light with kif clustered round something pale on a table, something pale and human-sized. She heaved, met restraints that held her to a surface. Blankets wrapped her arms about, and they had her fastened about that. She heard another clank of machinery, shieldings in retraction, all the familiar sounds, watched the kif cast an anxious look up and go back to their work—Clank! Thump! Ship sounds. It was the grapple-disengage. The kif stayed at work, clinging to the table on which Tully lay when the g stress shifted. There were hisses, the click of kifish speech. She shut her eyes and opened them again and the nightmare remained true. Pyanfar stopped and looked about her, swung the rifle about as she heard someone coming in this zone of wreckage and shot-out lights. Hani silhouette against the lighted zone. "Captain," Haral cried, and the echoes went up. "Captain—" Her first officer gasped for breath and stopped, leaning on a gantry leg. "Harukk just left dock. Mahendo'sat just sent word . . . ." She said nothing. Nothing seemed adequate. She only slung the rifle to her shoulder and started running for the center of the search, for what help there was to find. They had left. "Tully," Hilfy said. The g stress was considerable, and it was hard to breathe; the kif had beat that out the door, gone somewhere for protection, but they had left Tully lying there on the table, no blanket, nothing against the cold. "Tully—" But he did not move. She gave over trying to rouse him. They had patched the worst, she reckoned. They were headed for long acceleration, for jump, and they wanted their prisoner to stay alive that long. She, she reckoned, was quite another matter. Against Chanur, quite a number of kif had a score to settle. "Going where? She built the map in her head. Kefk, likeliest. Kefk, inside kif territory. They could do that in one jump. The whole ship jolted. Hit, she thought with one wild hope that someone, somehow, had moved to stop it; but the g grew worse then, incredibly worse. The ship had dumped cargo, no, not even cargo: she remembered Harukk, the sleek wicked lines of her docked at Meet-point. It was the false pods that had just blown, and stripped Harukk down to the hunter-ship she was. Nothing could catch her now. "How long ago?" Pyanfar shouted at the messenger, and the tall mahe backed up a step. "Soon ago, soon." The mahe laid hands on his chest. "I messenger, hani captain, got com shot up, come office Personage give me same, say bring you." Pyanfar took a swing at nothing in particular, turned away and found Rhif Ehrran in her path. "Well, Chanur? Got any brilliant plan?" "If you weren't down here on the dock, if you hadn't left the only ship fit to chase them sitting crewless, you gods-rotted fool—!" "To do what? Chase a hunter-ship to Kefk? You're the fool, Chanur. There'll be a full report. Believe me that there will." "Py, don't!" It was Khym who got her arm in time and dragged her back, so it was too late to do it at white heat. She straightened herself, stared at the Ehrran whose crew had moved in to back their captain. "Captain," a mahe said, moving in. "Captain, Personage want see, quick, please quick. Got car." She shoved the rifle at Khym, turned and followed the mahe across the littered deck. She was aware of Haral with her, Tirun, Khym hastening to catch up. "Chanur." A hani voice, a portly hani moving up from the side. "Chanur—" Banny Ayhar caught her arm and tried to stop her. She flung the hand off. "Get out of my way, Ayhar. Go lick Ehrran's feet." "Listen, Chanur." Ayhar caught her arm with force this time and thrust her bulk in the way. "I'm sorry! You want passage?" She stopped dead and stared at Banny Ayhar's broad face. "She hire you?" "No." "Who did?" "See here, Chanur—" Pyanfar walked off. Chapter 9 The lift let them out where Tully and Hilfy should have gotten to, in the upper security levels, where guards looked nervous at the appearance of a clutch of blood-stained hani armed with rifles, and one of them a male. But doors opened for them unquestioned, doors upon doors of Kshshti's utilitarian architecture, gray steel, heavy security, armed guards at intervals. Stars and dark: Pyanfar lost the sight in front of her for that, remembrance of the kif hunter-ship in dock at Meetpoint, sleek, deadly, fast; of a ship outbound to Kshshti nadir and the jump range at a greater and greater fraction of c. She went there the guard motioned, went where doors parted. The last let them into a dim chamber with a plasteen division, with violet light beyond. On the white-lit side, a desk and two mahendo'sat. On the violet one, a huge serpent-form, which moved and shifted restlessly before the waist-up glass. Tc'a. The sight of the methane-breather shocked her to an involuntary stop. The barrier looked frail, the presence hani were accustomed to see only on vid and dimly, showed detail that made it seem all too imminent: wrinkled, soft-leather skin with phosphor-glow in the gold, eyespots large as a fist, five of them clustered round a complex trifold mouth/sensor. The tongue darted, constantly. The body shifted to this side and that, which tc'a always did. "Esteemed captain." The Voice spoke, uncharacteristically subdued. "I present the Personage Toshena-eseteno, stationmaster this side Kshshti; the Personage Tt'om'm'mu, stationmaster methane side." "Honorables," Pyanfar murmured. The tc'a alone deserved the plural, several times over; and gods help psychologists. The leathery serpent-shape loomed closer, twisted to peer through the glass with its five orange eyespots. A wailing came through, five-voiced, from a brain of multiple parts, as a monitor below the glass displayed the glowing matrix: TC'A TC'A HANI HANI MAHE KIF KIF CHI CHI STAY STAY STAY GO GO UNITY UNITY ANGER ANGER ANGER GO GO STAY STAY STAY STAY STAY GO MESSAGE "Thank the tc'a Personage. What message?" "Kif." The mahen Personage rose slowly from the desk, robes falling into order, severe robes unlike the display of Personages elsewhere. He held out a paper with his own hand, and she took it. "This come," the Personage said, not through the Voice, "from Harukk. All three kif ship outbound. We got two mahe ship chase." "Shoot?" "No shoot." She held a small, horrid doubt whether they should have refrained, hostages or no. For the hostages' sake. If it were The Pride in pursuit—but she pushed that thought away. Unfolded the paper. Hunter Pyanfar, it said. When the wind blows one should spread nets. Mine was fortunate for us both. Should your sfik insist to meet with me, Mkks is neutral ground. There you may reclaim what is yours. "He's got them," she said for the crew's benefit. She gave the paper to Haral. Mkks. Disputed Zones. Not Kefk, in kif territory. Bait. Where she could reach it. "I make order," the Personage said, "mahe ship track this kif. Go Mkks. Try use influence." "Influence. How much influence, when a kif's got what he wants?" The Personage made a small, casting-away gesture. Pyanfar stood there with her pulse hammering in her ears and no trust at all. Nothing, where they crossed the mahe's interest. "You follow this kif?" the Personage asked. "Or you go Maing Tol?" Which gets my ship fixed, Honorable? But she did not say that. She cast a look toward the glass where the tc'a dipped and wove aimless patterns. Back then to the mahendo'sat in his ascetic robes. "You have a suggestion?" The Personage lasped into mahen language. "Hani captain," the Voice said, "kif use proverb mean he got result from confusion someone else. Maybe not plan. Got maybe other motive. This Sikkukkut—" The Voice shifted footing and put her hands behind her. "Forgive. Not got polite hani word. Hatonofa, He look get number-one position." "I know the word. I don't know this kif. No one knows a kif, but another kif." Another exchange between Personage and Voice. "Personage," said the Voice, "want make delicate this. I confess lack skill." "Say it plain. I'll add the courtesy." "Ask what else you got this kif want." "I don't know." The tc'a made a sound. CHI TC'A HANI HANI KIF KIF KIF STAY WARN DATA DATA WANT GOT WANT TC'A KSHSHTI MKKS MKKS MKKS KEFK AKKT FEAR WARN DIE DIE TAKE TAKE TAKE "Information," Toshena-eseteno translated that. "What's the Kefk and Akkt mean?" The screen went dark and stayed that way. "What's it mean?" she asked the mahe. "Not clear." The Personage walked to the glass and laid his hand on it. "Not always clear, tc'a colleague. Warn you. Got warn you. Crew—already work repair you ship. Where go?" She gnawed her mustache. "Twenty hours." "Maybe do better." The screen lit again. The serpent wailed. CHI TC'A CHI KNNN HANI HANI MAHE TC'A HANI HANI HANI SAME OTHER OTHER KSHSHTI KSHSHTI KSHSHTI KSHSHTI KSHSHTI KSHSHTI KSHSHTI MKKS MKKS MKKS MKKS MKKS MKKS KSHSHTI SEE SEE SEE SEE GO DIE STAY DANGER DANGER DANGER THREAT DANGER DANGER DANGER "What threat?" Pyanfar asked. The matrix had potential to be read in any direction. The computer picked it out of the harmonics and no sequence was certain. "Knnn? What hani die? Present or future?" The tc'a reared back from the glass. AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID "Is that the answer or the reaction?" The tc'a dipped and weaved. A chi skittered up into view from below the glass, a hani-sized bundle of rapidly moving sticks phosphoresced in the violet light. It clambered up the tc'a wrinkled side and clung there, touching with frenetic quivers of its limbs. The Compact's sixth alleged intelligence. Or a tc'a symbiont. No one had figured that out. DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER "Still, be still." The mahen Personage lifted his hands to the violet glow, turned about against the light. His ears were back. The light glistened in a halo about him; his profile was shadowed, featureless. "One broke out of Meetpoint," Pyanfar said. "Knnn. Tc'a too. There was trouble there. Haven't seen it since." "Knnn come, go. No one ask." "Might be here, you mean." "Knnn business. Not talk this." "They snatched the human ships." "Not talk this!" The Personage turned to face her, totally shadow now. She flicked her ears and lifted her head in one long grudging breath. "Apologies." A second, shorter breath. The air seemed close. "I'd better go, Honorable." "Where you go?" the Personage asked. "Maing Tol? Mkks?" "You want to tell me which?" "I say, you not listen, true?" Not dull-witted. No. And not, adding up the asked and not-asked, not knowing everything Goldtooth had planned or done. Maybe the wavefront of that information was one lonely hani ship. Or maybe Maing Tol had not trusted Kshshti security. Coils within coils within coils. To pull the snake's tail one had to know which end was which. "I got orders," Pyanfar said, "mahe who gave me this job. He trust. You?" The Personage said something the Voice did not render, and turned and gazed at Tt'om'm'mu. The tc'a and chi were otherwise occupied, the chi busy waving its limbs over the tc'a's leathery hide. Speech, maybe. No oxygen-breather knew. The mahe turned round again. "You go where choose. Got no bill, no dock charge. Kshshti give." "Gratitude." The mahe joined his hands in courtesy. The tc'a Tt'om'm'mu—remained occupied. "Hurts," Chur murmured. Her eyes cleared somewhat, looking up at them clustered about her bed. "Want—" The rest of it faded out. "Sedation's pretty heavy," Geran said, leaning forward from her low stool at the bedside to brush at her sister's mane. Pyanfar nodded, hands within her belt. Geran had gotten the news outside the door, knew the contents of the message. "Good treatment here. Kshshti medics get a lot of practice." It was a joke, desperately delivered. Eyes still closed, Chur gave a twitch of a smile, as forced as the joke. "Get me out of here, captain. Gods-rotted dull port." "Get your rest." Pyanfar leaned over and closed her hand on Chur's arm. "Hear? We'll be back." "Where's Hilfy? Tully?" Chur's eyes opened, far sharper than she had thought. "You find them?" "We're working on it." "Gods rot." Chur moved, a stir of her whole body. "Where are they?" "Go to sleep. Don't move about like that." "Something's wrong." "Chur." Geran slipped a hand in and held her arm. "Captain's got work to do. Go back to sleep." "In a mahen hell. What's the news?" There was no lying about it. Not to Chur. Not likely. The blood pressure would go up and up. She would worry at it. "Mkks," Pyanfar said. "Kif snatched them both. One Sikkukkut. Says he's talking deal. Wants us to go to Mkks to meet him." "O gods." "Listen." She held Chur's arm, hard. "Listen. It's not hopeless. We've got help from the mahendo'sat. We'll get them back. Both." "You going to let the mahendo'sat do it?" She hesitated on that answer. Gave it up for the second truth. "Haral and Tirun and I. We can handle The Pride. They're going on the repairs." Chur's ears went down against the pillow. Her eyes were shut. "Promised. You." "Can't do it. Can't do it now." "Tomorrow. I'll be there. At the ship. Geran too." "You rest." "Huhhhhnn." Chur's eyes flashed open. "Patch will hold. I'll stand jump just fine. Captain." Pyanfar stood back, met Geran's eye. "See you at the ship," Geran said. Pyanfar laid her ears back. "Listen." She set a hand on Geran's shoulder and drew her aside. "We can handle it, much as we can do. Gods-rotted place to be left. Stay with her, huh?" "Then what?" Shipless. Two hani, stranded. She had no answer for that. "See you," Geran said. One hani left behind. No better. Chur without Geran. They had never been apart, never looked to be. It was a final shock, in what sense remained unnumbed. "See you." She dropped the hand and turned to gather up Tirun and Haral. Khym stood by the door. No rifles. They had left those outside with a nervous stsho medic and scrubbed up in a washroom. But the stench of smoke still hung about their clothes. Strong soap and smoke. The smell turned her stomach. "Come on. Better let her rest. —Chur. You take it easy, hear? We'll fix it. Trust us for it." Asleep, she reckoned. "Captain." Geran bent beside the bed and picked up a white plastic sack. Washed, since Chur had had it beneath her head. "It's in there. Packet's intact." "Huh." She took the white bundle and tucked it within her arm. Kif would have killed for it, would have wiped the station to get it—if they knew. The stationmasters themselves had not known. Knew comparatively little, all things considered. "Thank her, huh?" She laid the sack on the bridge counter, lacking the heart to delve into the personal things. She drew the packet from it and checked inside. Intact. Rumpled papers. Recordings protected in their cases. She put the lot into security storage, closed the coded latch. Sounds reverberated through the hull, horrendous sounds from aft as skimmers performed their work and cut away the stern assemblies. The shocks went through the very frame as a third of The Pride's length was sheared away. "Py. Captain." She looked up and back. Khym was standing there. "You didn't mention me—when you talked about crew going to Mkks." "Khym—" "I can fetch and carry. I can scrub galley. Lets skilled crew free. Doesn't it?" Protective instincts rose up. Another image did. Khym's arm between her and the Ehrran; Khym, whose mind had gone on working when hers quit. "Good job," she said, "that business on the docks." She walked past him, patted him gently on the arm. "Captain." Not Py . . . . She looked back, saw rage, and hurt. "For godssakes don't dismiss me with that." She stood there, trying to recall what she had said or done. "I'm tired," she said. "I'm sorry." He managed nothing, no answer. "You want to go," she said, "gods rot it, you're in. Get killed with the rest of us. Happy?" "Thanks," he said flatly. In a hostile tone. She turned and walked off. It was the best way, when his tempers got obscure. Gods defend him. Fool. He was fond of Hilfy, that was what. Age got on him and he doted on daughter-images, remembering his own. Theirs. Tahy. Who had been no defense to him against her brother. Hilfy respected him. Called him na Khym. Fixed special things for him and pampered him the way he was accustomed. Gods rot. She reached the galley, delved into cabinets and threw gfi into the brewer, feeling the wobble in her knees. She had not cleaned up, except the scrub at the hospital. She did not care to now, wanting only something on her stomach. "Fix that for you?" Khym offered, having followed her. "Sit down, Py." Her arm tautened to slam the unit lid down. She lowered it carefully and looked around, bland as he was. "Galley's all yours." "How much did you put in?" "One." He added more, going quietly about his business, So he had created a place for himself, and truth, if he freed up crew on this one, he was useful. Whatever they were doing to the tail rose to a distant shriek. "Py." He offered the cup and she took it. He poured the rest, capped them, to deliver where Haral and Tirun were. But Haral showed up, bathed and with her blue coarse breeches still showing wet spots, her mane and beard hanging in ringlets. She had a paper in her hand. "That mine?" she asked of the gfi, and laid down the paper in front of Pyanfar. "That came in." Pyanfar looked at it. Sipped thoughtfully at the gfi. Ehrran's Vigilance, Rhif Ehrran captain, deputy of the han, Immune, to The Pride of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur captain, chief vessel Chanur company: This will serve as legal notice a complaint will be filed regarding breach of Charter, section 5: willful disregard of lawful order; section 12: hire of vessel; section 22: illegal cargo; section 23: illegal arms; section 24: discharge of arms; section 25: actions in breach of treaty law; section 30 . . . . She looked up as Khym left on his errand. "They missed the illegal system entry." Haral gave a short, dry laugh and sat down. The Pride shuddered to operations aft, and the humor died a rapid death. "We answer that?" "Fills the time." She drew a deep breath. "Sleep, rest, plot course. We take for granted they'll get us out of here." Haral's eyes drifted to the clock. Hers too, irresistibly. "Tully," Hilfy murmured. The g force kept on. Her nose bubbled with every breath; some blood vessel had popped inside, adding misery upon misery. Her hurts throbbed, and might be pouring blood, but she could not tell and the cocooning blanket would soak it up. Tully was still out. She talked to him periodically, in the chance he should have waked, to let him know one friend was with him. But he did not respond. Possibly they had taped a drug patch to him to keep him under. Perhaps he had just failed to come to. Instincts wanted to call for help and other instincts remembered what would come and told her to keep her mouth shut and let him go if he could. They were headed for jump. And if he were awake he would be terrified. So was she, when she let her attention wander to herself. When she did that she hoped there was a ship or two chasing them that would let off an unexpected shot before they got to jump, and solve their problems at one stroke. Think of anything but the place where they were going. Think of Pyanfar, who was likely taking the station authorities apart and telling them what to do about it, which thought gave her a surge of hope; and Haral—she pictured Haral sitting in that chair whose upholstery she had worn out and turning round just so, with that unflappable calm that never broke, not even when in her first tour she had made a dangerous mistake. Want to fix that? Haral would say. O gods, she wished she could. The thrust died of a sudden, just died, in one stomach-lurching shift to inertial. Prep for jump. "Harukk's left," Tirun said, when the word came in. "That's 43 minutes light, station-center. Pursuit ship relayed image. Jumped . . . about an hour and fifteen ago." Timelag, Tirun meant: reporting time was in that, what ship scan could pick up and relay, beating the beacon report by a few minutes. Pyanfar nodded, kept working on the course plottings, a great deal of it futile until they had the readout on the new rig. When it got finished. When. "That's affirmative on Mkks vector." "Huh." Her hands shook. She flexed her claws out and in and powered the chair about, taking a look at the work aft, which their dome camera was fixed on. She flinched inwardly at the sight, The Pride stripped of her familiar outlines. There was a new unit moving in. They had the transmissions from the pusher. And getting ship and tail unit joined was only the roughest beginning of the matter, a matter of preparing disconnect-ravaged surfaces for new welds. Hard-suited workers showed like sparks in the working floods, like a swarm of insects where they had backed off for that unit's arrival. Service-corn frequency was never silent, crackling with chiso, the mahen patois that bridged their scores of languages, easier than trade-tongue for mahendo'sat. "I'm going to get some rest," she said, for the smothering weight of all of it came down at once, and getting herself out of the chair and down the corridor loomed as a major undertaking. "Call Haral up when you have to." "Aye," Tirun said. Not an expression, not a question what they were going to do or how. She appreciated that. Time did twists now. In one fashion she could relax, because for the next stationside several weeks Harukk and its company were in the between, in the compression of hyper-light, where everything was in suspension and nothing would start again until the Mkks gravity well took hold. Two weeks at least, in which everything was stopped. No pain. No fear. Nothing, till they came out again. But Tully needed drugs for that gravity-drop, needed them like stsho needed them. Perhaps kif knew this. Perhaps they cared to keep him sane. Better, perhaps, if he was not. She waked, suddenly, caught at the edge of the sleeping-bowl and realized she was not falling, despite the thumping of her heart. She rolled and looked at the clock and punched the lights on and the com connection. The hammering was silent. That had waked her. "Bridge, gods rot it, it's 0400!" "Aye, captain." Haral's voice. "Nothing's going on. Thought we'd let you sleep." "Uhhhnn." She leaned her elbow on the bed-edge. "That tail set?" "They're welding now." "They're not going to make that deadline." "They've got techs working on the boards already. They're pushing it." "Gods." She let her head down on her arm, feeling as if a wall had come down on her yesterday and some of the bricks still lay there. Lifted it again. "How's Chur?" "Geran called, says she's doing all right. They both got a little sleep." "Huh. Good." "Got a call from Vigilance. They got our paper. Ehrran's chewing sticks." "Good." "Got a pot of something fixed in galley." Her stomach rebelled. "Fine." She passed a hand over her face, rubbing her eyes. "I'm coming." She punched the com off, rolled out and sat on the bed edge trying to convince her legs to work. Gods, Hilfy. Tully. That settled back on her shoulders. There was the packet in the security bin. There was Tt'om'm'mu's writhing shape in its violet glow and the mahendo'sat, together against the glass (don't ask about the knnn) and mahendo'sat making vital connections on her ship, when mahendo'sat incompetency had let kif do as they pleased. Incompetent? Kshshti stationmaster, and no better than that? Suspicions had tramped her subconscious half the night, rose up in memories of dreams of a kif in the shadows of that room. Of delicate connections in the column links, some mahen technician carefully making a sequence of mistakes that would send false readout to the boards. Gods, what if— A body could go crazy on what-ifs. Like treachery from Goldtooth from the start. Like Vigilance being in the right—for hani interests. Like Chanur on the wrong side of matters and about to become expendable in some mahen intrigue. Or traitorous. She got up, showered, dressed in a subdued way, a pair of old breeches she saved for rough work. No earrings but the plain ones, such as any spacer wore. Khym had done much the same, in a pair of silk breeches that had seen the Meetpoint riot and would never be the same. He met her in the galley with gfi and a dish of something overspiced—not good at cookery either. But the job got done and the stuff was far from fatal. "Good," she said, to please him, and coupled with that was the ugly thought that nothing mattered much, beyond Mkks. Tomorrow. Their tomorrow, and their next tomorrow, when they would come out the other side of jump. How much time-gain for a hunter-ship like Harukk and its ilk? Days faster than The Pride at absolute best. Harukk would be in port at Mkks as much as a week by the time their day-after-tomorrow came, and they spent time working up to dock at Mkks, and all the attendant nonsense. If they got that far. She shivered, swallowed an overspiced last mouthful and washed it down with gfi. Her ears kept going down despite herself. She pricked them up. Looked Khym's way. "There's a procedures list in comp," she said to him. "Checklist." "Got it," he said, displaying a paper on the countertop. Gods, efficiency. She poured the whole matter out of her mind and got up and walked off. Maybe—maybe the kif would hold off in Hilfy's case, until they had used the bait for everything they could get. Not Tully. No. Not with a chance to pull information about all humankind from him, and a week to do it in. The first time kif had had their hands on him he had had a word or two he could speak, and a handful more he could understand, and never admitted either to the kif. Now he could get a hani sentence out. And Sikkukkut had fluency. "Captain," Haral said when she walked out on the bridge. "Got a request from the repair chief. They want to get column access from inside. I told them go ahead. I'm opening lower deck for that." "Get their security down there." The thought of outsiders straying at random through The Pride's interior workings set her nerves on edge. But they were out of personnel. Out. Totally. "Second item," Haral said. "A freighter turned up about 0300 last watch in approach to 29. Our scan's been down. It just turned up, blink, on station output, at the one-zone. I didn't think it was worth waking you, but I queried station. They identified it as Eishait, said it came in during the Harukk business and security had it scan-blocked. I queried Prosperity. They had their scan shut down. They're too far round the curve for the cameras to help. I put in a call to Vigilance, begging your pardon—" "They get it?" Haral dipped her ears. "They said, quote, they had no authority to release information. I suggested they wake their captain. They suggested I wake you." She drew a tight slow breath and leaned against the counteredge nearest the doorway. "At that point," Haral said, "it was committed to dock and I figured there wasn't all that much to do about it that fast. Stationmaster's office stuck by the Eishait story. I called Prosperity back and suggested one of them take a walk down that way." "Should have waked me, gods rot it." "Prosperity agreed. They say it's all security down there. Can't get past. Our work crew never stopped back there, no sign of any concern while that ship was inbound. Meanwhile there's nothing kifish on com. I think it's a mahen hunter." "Not friendly of station not to say. Wouldn't you think?" "Worries me," Haral said. "Whole gods-forsaken place worries me." Her eyes shifted minutely aft, by implication including the repair work. Back again. "You still want that mahen security on our access?" The breakfast lay uneasy at her stomach. "Put them on it. They're all we've got. And log those exchanges." "They're logged." Haral powered her chair about and punched into the station comlink. "Kshshti central, this is the watch officer, from the bridge, The Pride of Chanur. . . . Get me dock security." Pyanfar stood away from the counter and looked left as Tirun came shambling in half asleep and nodded a courtesy. "Morning," she said to Tirun. "Chur's doing fine. Get some breakfast." "Huh," Tirun said, and went, blindly trustful. Down on lowerdeck they had a lock about to open. Pyanfar sat down in Tirun's place at bridge ops, conscious of the pistol she kept in her pocket, its weight swinging against her leg. She started locking doors, putting the lift on key/bridge operation only, sealing every hold access but the necessary one that would get work crews to The Pride's vitals. "Security's coming," Haral said. Mahen workers came and went, an occasional splatter of bare running feet, a rush of black and brown mahen bodies in the lower corridors carrying this and that item the tech wanted—honest mahendo'sat, Pyanfar convinced herself. She came down to see the faces, to judge reactions, and the earnest look of the workers reassured her. Their speed reassured her, and the surprised reflexes of respect. Some recognized her, blue breeches and all as she took the tour through ops, where mahen techs ran checks. Above, aft, the first new vane pane was moving up in the careful grasp of a pusher-ship, and suited mahendo'sat prepared the column to receive it. It was a hundred ten panels wide to the old ninety and looked monstrous large. The old drive could not have pushed it. The old drive The Pride's old heart, had gone off in the clutches of a mahen pusher and a new, mahen-made unit was coupled to the ship's alloy spine, struts recoupled—as good amputate a part of her, and put back some fancy foreign part. She watched the floods sparkle bright off the panel rim and glisten off the black panel surfaces as the pusher turned. A shiver prickled up her back, worry about telemetry complications, systems that might not mesh and set them, further back, despite the Voice's assurances. Topside, Tirun ran calculations and more calculations, had the third, this time sulphurous request in for raw specifications on the individual units . . . . "Make soon," the reply had come back from the supervisor, "give composite." And when Tirun objected that: "Got get security clear give that information." "Good gods!" Tirun had screamed into com. "It's part of our ship, you gods-rotted lunatic!" "I make request," the supervisor said. Meanwhile the panel was moving in, and mahendo'sat ran their own checks in ops; and things felt—marginally in control. Not just the unit back there on the tail. The bill. The finance. Nine tenths of The Pride's physical value, excluding her licenses and rights—and mahendo'sat picked up the tab. Foreign hire. Vigilance had made that charge already. They were down there logging everything. There would be inquiry. The han would have questions. A lot of questions. If they lived through Mkks. She turned from the screens, walked past a cluster of chiso-babbling mahendo'sat who had their own instruments linked into auxiliary sockets on the ops board, headed out in the hall for fresh air. They had the place chilled down for the mahendo'sat. The hall was frigid. A cold draft wafted in from the lower lock, with the flavor of Kshshti docks, oil and old beer and mahendo'sat as she passed that corridor. Workmen in their orange coveralls came in, some went out. She pursued her way to the lift. Hilfy. The thought came nudging in whenever she let it, and she pushed it away. "Captain," mahe said. "Come." She stopped, blinked at the workman who beckoned her to the lock, opened her mouth to refuse that imprudence, but the mahe had flitted around the turn again, hasty as every mahe was hereabouts. Some gods-rotted supervisor with questions. Her ship. Her access. She refused the jangling of her nerves and went after the workman. But her hand was in her pocket as she walked into the lock. No one. She spun a look over her shoulder, looked back again as something dark came into her way, mahe-tall and spacer-ringed with gold. Her finger tautened, hand cocked to aim through cloth and all. "Pyanfar!" the mahe cried, flinging up both hands; and the finger stopped. "Jik!" she gasped, and her heart started up again. The mahe still held his hands up till she had gotten hand from pocket. "Where'd you come from?" And then she knew. "That's Aia Jin in 29, isn't it?" "Same." Jik still looked nervous. "Make quick come here. Got trouble, huh?" She looked him up and down., this lank solitary mahe with enough gaud in his dress to turn a hani envious. "Jik." It seemed half the troubles in the universe fell off her shoulders. "O gods. About time. About gods-rotted time, hear me?" He flung up his hands again, pleading for quiet. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back toward the lift. "Come in here like this," she muttered, fishing up the key. She stuck it in. "Dressed like that." The lift doors hissed wide. "Get in." She snatched him inside, this mahe a third again her size. He leaned against the lift wall as it shot them up topside and the door shot open. Khym was in the hall. His mouth fell open at the sight. "Jik," Pyanfar identified him. "My husband, Khym. Old friend. Goldtooth's partner. Come on, Jik." Chapter 10 Nomesteturjai was his name: captain Keia Nomesteturjai. Jik to tongue-bound hani, this thin, anxious-looking mahe. "Sit," Pyanfar said and, spinning the com-post chair about, backed Jik into it. She leaned on the counter and one chair arm with not an arm's length between their noses. "Where's Goldtooth?" "Not know sure." "What, not know?" Jik's dark eyes shifted uncomfortably at that range. "Think near Kefk." "Kefk!" "Not know sure." The eyes shifted back and forth, bloodshot-rimmed. "Not good make guess." "Gods and thunders, what are we in?" "You go Mkks?" She stood back. "Khym. Get him a hot drink, huh?" Gods. Him. A weary twitch went through her nerves, a panic rage at biology. But: "Aye," Khym said and went. Pyanfar sat down on the counter edge. Haral settled one hip on the console near her station, to keep an eye to things, Tirun slouched onto the padded arm of observer two. "We talk," Pyanfar said. "Real slow. You understand me." "Not sleep," Jik said, wiping a lank, blunt-clawed hand over his face. His shoulders slumped. "God, lousy course change Urtur system." "It took us out," Pyanfar said. "Come on, Jik. What's going on out there? Hilfy and Tully are headed for Mkks, Chur's in hospital, they're dicing up my ship, the Personage says he's sorry and don't discuss the knnn I've had on my tail." The arm went stiff in mid-motion, eyes fixed on hers. "Knnn." "Out of Meetpoint. Maybe to here. I don't know. Kshshti stationmasters are nervous as stsho. What's going on?" "Got kif take human ship. Human lot upset." "Knnn take human ship, gods rot you, tell it straight! And I've got other news. Ship named Ijir. The other courier with other humans. Kif got it." "God." He leaned back against the leather seat, arms on either rest, and looked at her. "How you know?" "Message from Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin. Same as got Tully and Hilfy." "He got Ijir?" "Don't know." Jik let go a deep long breath. His reddened eyes traveled up again as Khym padded in with a tray. Khym offered him the first, stiffly courteous, and Jik took it without a flinch. "We not meet. Both Gaohn station." "Huh," Khym breathed, a grinding in his throat. But his ears came up with interest. He passed cups around, kept one for himself and settled, silent—gods, decorous—on the arm of the com-station seat, empty tray aside on the counter, quiet as Haral, as Tirun. "Hunter ship," Pyanfar said for Khym's benefit, while Jik drank gfi and wrinkled his nose, shuddering as he drank. Gfi was not a mahen favorite, but it was substance and Jik seemed to need that. The strength looked to have drained out of him as if he had run a long, long time. "Best pilot in mahen space," Pyanfar said, not lying. "You talk to the stationmaster, Jik?" Weary eyes lifted, guileless. "Go station center, talk." Another sip of gfi, another small shudder and grimace at the taste. "Got ask you—Pyanfar. Where packet?" She drew in a long, long sip of her own cup. "What packet?" Jik swallowed hard. The gfi was hot and tears sprang to his eyes, which acquired a heat of their own and a hard glitter of thought. "Bastard," he said. "No game." "It isn't. When they get my tail back working, huh? You know, it occurs to me with Aia Jin in port they might take me off priority. They got hunter ship, huh? Not need hani now." "Fix." "Sure, they will." He sat there a moment, breathing in and out and a good deal more rapid going on behind his eyes. "You got packet, huh? Kif got Tully, you got packet and you go Mkks. What want? Give both to kif?" "Maybe trade." The least uncertainty crept into his expression. "No. You no do." It became fear. "You got too much smart, Pyanfar." "No," she said, gazing deep into his eyes. "I got friends. Don't I, Jik?" He drew a breath, "You give packet. Damn, hani! You try hold this thing, Kshshti authority board and take!" "Stationmaster doesn't know it exists. Does he? Not Eseteno, not Tt'om'm'mu, not our pink-slippered cutthroat Stle stles stlen. But you know. And the fewer know it exists, the better. Don't you think?" She jabbed a claw at him, "How'd the kif know to move that quick, to set up an ambush on the docks? How'd we get set up, huh?" "You say Stationmaster?" "You say kif make lucky guess?" "I know this Eseteno. No. No, Pyanfar. Not. He honest, long time got post. Trust him." "All right. That's one. But how far down the line does honest go? How much does it take? Kif got some security agent's relatives, make deal, huh?" Jik's dark face was very sober, ears down. "All time possible." "Maybe same got agent repair crew, huh?" "Kif want you go Mkks. Want blow ship there got lot chance. Not need sabotage." It made sense. It was the cheerfullest reassurance she had had since the docks blew up. She drew her mustache down, thinking on the odds. "Give packet," Jik said. "Got go Maing Tol, this packet. I ask. Number one important." "Goldtooth's observations, is it? His report—what's going on out there in kif space. Knnn stuff too." Jik's small ears went back. "You got no profit make guess, Pyanfar." "I make deal. I trust my honest mahe friend. That repair crew stays on the job and my engineer gets specs on those parts number one quick." "Got." "Got authority, do you? Lot of authority, same as Goldtooth." Jik's ears twitched. "Some thing yes." "Some thing, huh? You want this packet, you go with me to Mkks." "Hani, I guard you tail at Gaohn!" "Guard it at Mkks and you get the packet." Gently: "You bastard, Pyanfar." "You same kind bastard. You say, you do. I know this." "I go Mkks," he said. "Get the packet, Haral." Haral moved. Jik leaned back into the leather cushion and watched, bestirred himself to take it when it came, this largish several-times crushed envelope with a dark stain at one corner. "All here?" Jik asked. "Everything they sent me. What are you going to do with it?" "Try find honest captain." "In this port? Stay away from the hani." "A?" He looked her in the eyes and the ears sank slowly before they came up again. The face had no fool's look, not now. "Trouble, huh?" "Lot trouble." "You come." "Come where?" "Come with. We talk these hani." "No." Jik stood up. "I go. Sure thing we talk. Want share?" "Gods rot—Gods rot it, I've got enough trouble! Leave my name out of it!" "They got jealous, huh?" "Look, look, you earless lunatic, there's laws, there's regulations I already break— The han's after my hide, you understand me? Chanur's got troubles! You want to hand them proof, huh? It's illegal for me to work for foreign government, understand? Against the conventions!" "You carry cargo government give." "That's legal. Gods rot it, you know the distinction. You trade, what time you're not up to no good—" "So you carry cargo." He lifted the packet. "Same legal." "Look, look, Jik—old friend. They're looking for an excuse. They want find trouble, understand? You'll get us skinned, all of us." "What choice got? Pyanfar, good friend, got no choice. Packet got go." "Send it with the tc'a!" Ears flicked. "No." Short and sharp, a small flicker in the eyes that rang alarms. "Not number one good idea, Pyanfar." More alarms. Methane-breathers, with their own interests. Tt'om'm'mu rearing up behind his glass, violet and murky phosphorescences. "You come," Jik said. "Maybe better you be there, huh, stop stupid mahe say wrong thing these honest hani?" "No! Absolutely no!" She got up, flung off across the bridge, waving her arms and dislodging Khym from her path. She looked back again. Jik still stood there with the packet in his hands and that Tully-look on his too-narrow mahen face. "Pyanfar." He held up the envelope. "No," she said. "Chanur," the Ehrran said, Rhif, rising from a much-scarred and grimy chair. KSHSHTI PORT AUTHORITY the office said on the outer door, in four different alphabets with letters missing. CONFERENCE in three: the hani line had fallen off altogether and left only brighter paint behind, misspelled. "Ehrran," Pyanfar said. And with a glance at the other hani captain in the narrow room: "Ayhar." Jik closed the door behind them both and they were all alone with each other. "You?" Ehrran asked of Jik. "The Personage send you here?" "No," Jik said quietly, with unflappable good nature. "I ask Personage send you." It shot straight through Ehrran's guard and Pyanfar got a quick furtive breath and swallowed it quick, straight-faced, watching the Ehrran's face. Quick re-thinking, by the gods. Rhif Ehrran drew herself up, mouth not quite closed, and then it did close, and the Ehrran stared closely at this raffish-dressed mahe. "Sit," Jik said, "captains, I ask you." Pyanfar pursed her mouth and sat, watched first Banny Ayhar lower her portly self into a grimy seat and then fastidious Ehrran, who looked as if she had a mouthful of salt and no idea where to spit. "What I got ask," Jik said, taking his own seat at the battered table, in this despicable little office, "what I got ask-" He laid the rumpled envelope on the table. "Need courier." "Who needs?" The question got out past Ehrran's well-groomed mustaches. "I'd like to see some Signature, if you don't mind." "A." Jik bent a lank wrist toward his kilt belt, deftly whipped up a small folder, spun it across the table. "That good?" The Ehrran picked it up as if it had been charged, extruded claws to pull the two leaves apart, and read something there that brought her head up and her ears to level. She mutely flipped the holder closed and spun it back again. Jik replaced it. "Know you," he said. "Rhif Ehrran. Where you course?" "Han business." "A. Maybe got same business lot trouble kif. Maybe got invoke treaty." "Maybe you can get Chanur to do your work." "Maybe invoke treaty. Need you, Ehrran." Ehrran's eyes smoldered. One claw came out, traced a pattern on the tabletop, a clean green line amid the grime. "I've got business, mahe." "So. Maybe got. I got. Got hani citizen with kif. Got hani shot up, a? No, I tell you, ker Ehrran. You in mahen space, inside mahen agreement—" Jik held up one blunt-clawed finger, forestalling a word from the Ehrran. "You here, a? I call other side treaty, got number-one emergency, got need ship run courier—" "You want to buy other hani?" "Gods rot—!" Pyanfar straightened and a dark-furred mahen arm landed slam! on the table between her and the Ehrran. "I make request," Jik said. "Of-fi-cial, a? Treaty stuff. Now, we got cooperative agreement, agreement like I tell you, Ehrran. You got say yes, say no. You honor treaty?" The ears were flat already, the fine fair nose rumpled, the eyes ruddy amber. "What do you want?" "You on hunt. Tell you this hunt go Mkks." "Mkks!" "Mkks, hani. Got other thing Ayhar do." He shoved the packet skidding at Ayhar's startled grasp. "You got priority undock, captain. You got. You run damn fast. Know you. Know you, Banny Ayhar. You got lot year, lot smart. I know, huh?" Ayhar's ears sank. Her eyes showed white rims. "Where?" Ayhar asked. "Maing Tol." Banny Ayhar drew the packet up in her hands, drew her mouth down taut, not without a shift of her eyes Ehrran's way. But Ehrran never looked. "No trouble," Ayhar said, all quiet. "Good," Jik said. "You go. Go fast, ker Ayhar. You not talk, you not wait. Got six my crew see you get car, see you car get ship. Dock crew already work get you out." Ayhar stood up, the envelope still in her hands. "You not open," Jik said. "Gods be feathered if I want to," Ayhar muttered, and looked this way and that . . . delayed then, with a look back. "Ker Pyanfar. You want that crewwoman ferried out?" "No," said Jik ahead of anything. "You run. Run hard. Not ask why. You not got safety. Not got choice." "See here—" But it faded. Whatever Ayhar had meant to say faded out. She looked a moment at Jik and turned then, the envelope in her hands, and vanished out the door. Ehrran had gained her feet, ears flat. "Chanur," she said, "out." Pyanfar leaned back and fixed Ehrran with a cold stare. "I'll stay, thanks. I can sit proxy to Chanur's interests. Or is the mahen captain more privy to han business than a member is? I'm here to witness. Formally." Ehrran drew a long, long breath, and her eyes were dark-centered. Perhaps she considered the recorders. "Kshshti's already had one security breach . . . ." "My crew, my niece, my passenger, Ehrran. You want to talk to me about security breach—" "We'll settle that. Elsewhere. This action of yours—" Ehrran looked at Jik, with no more pleasant face. "My course is Kefk." Jik waved a loose, limp hand. "Now Mkks." The hand returned to his hip above the gun and rested there. "Ten, maybe twelve hour. You think got business Kefk. No. Lousy place, Kefk. You no go." "To do what? To do what at Mkks?" "You stay my tail, a? You dock left. Dock right, Chanur. Three number one bastard go take walk Mkks docks, a?" There was a long, long silence. Ehrran stood staring, hunter-fix. "Right," Ehrran said. "Ten hours. I'll trust this gets authorized higher up, na Jik." She walked out, flat. The door whisked shut. "Pyanfar," Jik said, and gestured that way, in Ehrran's wake. "Huh." Pyanfar got up with a grimace, collected herself and followed Jik outside, where three of his crew waited, all of them gaudy as Jik himself, even toward raffish; guns carried openly. An abundance of gold chains and armlets, and one had a knife. "All done," Jik said, laying a hand on her shoulder, "got fix good, a?" "Sure. Sure, fix." She looked round at him with her ears back. "Expensive fix, friend. She won't forget." "Got soul like kif, that hani." "Number one right. What business? What's she after?" The hand squeezed, a pressure of blunt claws. The mahe's dark eyes wrinkled round their edges and looked only tired. "This Ehrran hunt hani ship. Not you, no, she got rumor got hani work many side this thing. Han lot upset. This Rhif Ehrran, she want this renegade real bad. Think maybe you, a? Han lot crazy. They don't like the stsho make sudden clear paper, bring you to Meetpoint. Got lot suspicion, the han. I tell you, Pyanfar, you got go home talk sense these hani." "Who cleared those papers up?" Jik pushed her doorward. She braced her feet. "Who, gods rot it?" "Goldtooth talk good stsho, got same treaty, a?" "Stle stles stlen." Jik rubbed the bridge of his nose, where an old scar showed gray. "Same got Ayhar." "What 'same got Ayhar'?" "Stle stles stlen. Got somehow station damage charge, a? Got big bill, Ayhar. Stsho seize Ayhar cargo." "O gods." "Lot scared, Banny Ayhar. Stsho send here, direct route, run courier old bastard Stle sties stlen. Same come Vigilance. Same Stle stles stlen got long talk Rhif Ehrran after you leave Meetpoint, a?" "That eggsucker!" "One scared hani, Ayhar." "Gods rot. What's gtst after?" But ideas occurred to her. A certain bill. A detailed report to the han sent by way of Vigilance. And another thought muddled past, about timing, information and mahen interests. "You came from Kura, huh? Sure, you did." Jik held up both hands. "Maybe come Meetpoint. Forget these detail." "Gods rot it, can't somebody tell the truth?" "Lot truth." "Sure." She jerked her arm as he laid a hand on it to move her on, and he gave her all her reach for distance between them. "Sure," she said. "Maybe fifty-fifty, huh? What happens now when I get outbound? Maybe have an accident?—Sorry, old friend? Repair crew made a mistake? Hope you enjoy the trip? Gods rot—" "No. Swear to you." Jik held up his hands again and dropped them. "Say message come to Kshshti. I get same here." "Who sent you here?" "Mahen agent, a? Got here, there agent, same hani, same kif. I not say more, Pyanfar. See? I one time try tell truth, got big trouble." Ayhar? she wondered. Gods, no. Not Banny, not that lot. They loved their liberties too well. Methane-breather? T'T'Tmmmi had come in from Meetpoint. She had seen it on the list. It was still in port. Tt'om'm'mu's spy, reporting to methane-side of Kshshti? Circles upon circles. It sent a cold, cold feeling to the stomach. Knnn. But no one talked to knnn. No one could—excepting tc'a. "You come," Jik said, mistaking overload for acquiescence, taking her by the unresisting arm, flinging his over her shoulders. "Get you safe back ship, Pyanfar. Got time maybe catch sleep. Tell you truth . . . I come Kura way, lousy long run. Sleep make you better, a?" He squeezed hard, dropped the arm again as they came out into the general offices and walked through. Mahen crew hastened to open the outside door. Station guards stood with rifles beside the waiting car. Kura. Kura was in hani territory. And Ehrran had folded fast when she had a look at the authority in that small wallet Jik had at his belt. Ayhar-Ayhar had been folded before she got there, ears down. Scared. Plenty scared. She got into the car at Jik's side in back, surrounded by mahe whose musky flavor got past the perfumes. A guard caught her eye, one curly-furred and smallish, and alarms rang. "That one," she said to Jik, digging claws into his knee, "outside—" "Name her Tginiso," Jik said, ducking his head to look past her out that window. "Eseteno aide." "She was with the car when Hilfy went. Her fur's not singed." For a moment the air seemed very close, the scent of mahendo'sat all-enveloping, and she knew who she was talking to, hunter-captain, mahe with mahen interests very much at stake. She felt Jik's arm shift across the seatback. "Move," he said to the driver in the mahen tongue. The car leapt forward with a burr of the motor, wheels bumping on the plates like a panicked heartbeat. Not a word from Jik, only a shifting of his eyes from one side to the other, watching everything along the sides. Pyanfar watched him, among the rest. Friend. Companion. Along with Rhif Ehrran. The car thumped along, dodged pedestrians. Jik took out his pistol and thoughtfully took the safety off in his lap, no small piece like her pocket gun, no, nearly as long as his forearm, with a black, wicked sheen. The mahe on the other side drew hers and kept scanning the surrounds, the whisk of gantries past, of lines, machinery, canisters, all places for ambushes. Berth five passed. Jik spoke to the driver in something mahen and obscure. "We go close," Jik said. "Want you go fast up ramp." "Gods rot it, my whole lower deck's occupied." He pressed her knee. "Same good get you safe in ship." The car veered: a ship access and guards loomed into the way and the car veered again, bringing the door even with the access. The door flew up and Pyanfar scrambled out with Jik and the crewwoman close behind. Up the ramp then, a slower pace, the long, chill walk through that yellow gullet with the L bend to the lock. Pyanfar looked back, looked round again as they reached the lock and Jik laid a hand on her shoulder. "Safe. Safe here." "Sure. The stationmaster's handpicked aides—" "Listen. I know you safe." "You know. What's in that ID, Jik? Who are you? Who are you working for?" Both hands settled on her shoulders. There was nowhere to look but dark mahen eyes, a plain mahen face. "You got watch on you deck, understand, got number one good watch." "Who? What are you talking about?" Jik's lips went tight. "Mahe take orders somewhere else. Same good tech, a? Not make mistake." "Like that aide? Safe like that?" "I fix." That left cold after it. Jik lifted his hands from her shoulders, held one finger up. "Then," Jik said, "get good sleep." "Ayhar's jumped," Khym said, who sat monitor on com, and the board checks paused for the moment. He scribbled furiously on the lightpad and his florid scrawl came up on screen three as Haral punched it through, a string of numbers meaningless to him, but he got them down with speed. Heading, velocity, strength of field. "It's on its way," Tirun muttered, and Pyanfar felt a twinge of relief as the full scan input went to the number two: no pursuit. There was a tc'a out. T'T'Tmmmi. Outbound on the same heading, none too quietly. TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A TC'A . . . its transmission said, with ship-function babble in all its harmonics, a tc'a ship fully occupied with tc'a business and the speaker thinking only of its/their jobs. Tc'a did not lie, so the story ran, could not. Once a tc'a began to output, the underminds had to be there or the harmonics failed and the whole matrix fell into gibberish. So someone non-tc'a had reckoned, from what gtst thought tc'a had claimed, a hundred years ago. She went back to work, running checks through the systems, resetting failsafes and running them again and again, putting comp through one and the other simulation as it re-programmed itself. "Pride." Khym's low voice, answering some call, in the profound silence, the click of keys, the sometime shift of a body in a leather seat. "First is busy. Can you—" The shift of a heavier body. "Ker Tirun. It's Vigilance. They want a crew member." Tirun muttered something and took it. "Gods rot," she said. "You don't need to go up the line for that, Ehrran . . . . That was a crew member." Pyanfar turned around. "Fine," Tirun said, and punched the contact out. "That's a confirm on the Ayhar jump." Pyanfar said nothing. There was nothing to say. Tell Khym to stand his ground and ignore a request for higher authority? But next time it might be something that truly had to get someone more knowledgeable. Log the discourtesy? Who would read it but the han? Khym was busy already, a look of concentration on his broad, scarred face the while he listened to station chatter that flowed past him like so much babble, sorting for anything of interest, anything of tc'a or knnn, anything of kif or mahendo'sat. Doing the best he could. In Hilfy's vacant post. Pyanfar turned back again, twisted in her seat a third time as she heard the lift work down the corridor. "Captain!" Tirun spun her chair as she did, as she came out of her chair reaching for her pocket and Khym was out of his place. "Identify." Haral had usurped com function to her panel and keys clicked to freeze locks, but the lift door opened all the same. Hani. Hani and smallish and one of their own. "Geran," Pyanfar muttered, and the gun went back. No rejoicing, not from any of them. It was not that kind of time, an hour to go and Geran out of place. "Something wrong?" Pyanfar asked as Geran walked onto the bridge. "Chur all right, Geran?" "Left her below, snugged in." "Gods and thunders!" Geran shrugged, padded over to main scan, rested a hand on her seatback and looked round again, ears at half, and obduracy in the stare she gave back. "Don't like to cross those docks, captain. Scary place out there." It took a good long moment of even breathing to cope with that. "Geran—" in a tone quiet enough to warn a chi. "We've got one hour, one gods-rotted hour to get things sorted out. You two—" "Captain, please." Geran's voice sank to the same level, but all wobbly. "Chur'd kill me for saying it, but she's scared. Gut-scared. Being left here—the ship and all—where'd she be? What good's two of us—here? By ourselves? Where's home, but The Pride?" Something superstitious settled into her own gut, nothing reasonable. "Look. We're not after suicide, hear me? Jik's in port. He's got Vigilance on our side for what she's worth. We're going to Mkks to do some good. Hear me? Now get Chur back where she belongs." "She is. Same as me." Geran's claws sank into the chairback, tendons stark on the backs of her hands. "What's all this new stuff worth with half a crew, huh? Chur can walk—walked across that dock out there from the lift, she did, just fine." "Good gods." "The plasm took; the wound won't tear. Got her packed in real good and the time-stretch'11 give her a good few days to heal. Might be on her feet by the time we get to Mkks—" "The gravity-drop'll kill her." "No. Not Chur." She folded her ears down and Geran stood her ground, meant to stand it, gods knew. And they needed that pair of hands. Needed hands that could fit hani-specific controls, fit a hani crewwoman's space. "Gods rot," she muttered and walked off the other way with a wave of her hand. "Bring her topside. Put her in my cabin. Put her close to us. Pack a med kit in there." "My cabin," Khym said. "She can have mine." "Do it." "Thanks," Geran said, all heartfelt. "Thanks, captain." "And get yourself back here. We've got a tight schedule, huh?" "Aye!" Geran scrambled and took Khym with her. Pyanfar looked at Tirun and Haral. Tirun's face carefully showed nothing; Haral's was toward the boards, occupied with business. "Odds just went up," Tirun said, "captain." "We need crazy people on our side?" She threw herself into the chair, powered it about again, feeling a shameful comfort to know one more seat was filled. The lift hummed, Khym and Geran going down to see to the transfer. "Getting a confirmation from Aja Jin," Haral said, who still had com. "Getting a readoff on course, They're putting us out gods-rotted deep in the well." She looked at the figures that flashed onto monitor one. "Huh." She keyed that data set into the simulator and watched the lines tick across the screen, affirmative, affirmative, can-do. It was still The Pride's boards, but something alien answered from aft, up the circuit-synapses through the metal spine. "Huh." It made her nervous, in a way that camera-view did not, that picked up the wider vanes, the rakish lines of the vane-columns. That was plain to inspection. The heart and core of it was not, that added some twenty percent to their unladed mass and threw varied percentages into the figures of moving that mass. Old familiar reckonings went by the board. They had to lean on comp entirely, trust it without the dead-reckoning knowledge what the answers ought to be, when it told them The Pride could make a jump that she could never in a mahen hell have survived half a week before. "We go with it," she said. THE KIF STRIKE BACK Chapter 1 The Pride came in, dropping suddenly into here and now; and Pyanfar Chanur reached for controls, half-dazed yet. Where? she thought, with one wild panicked notion that the drive could have betrayed them and they might be nowhere at all. There were new routines to remember. There were new parameters, new systems— No. Go on comp, fool, let the autos take her— "Location," she said past jaws gone dry as dust. "We're in the range," Tirun said. The first dump came, phasing them into the interface and out again; and The Pride of Chanur hauled herself back to realspace with authority. "We're alive," Khym said. And that surprised them all. "Chur?" Geran asked. "Here," a voice said from in-ship com, faint and slurred. "I'm here, all right. We made it, huh?" Second dump: The Pride shed more of the speed the gravity drop had lent her. And kept going, while the red numbers reeled on the board, a passage-speed that flicked astronomical measures past like local trivialities. "Just passed third mark," Haral said. "Huh," said Pyanfar. "Beacon alarm." "No response." Pyanfar's eye was on the scan image Mkks' robot beacon sent them, positions of everything in Mkks system. Beacon protested their velocity. "Get me that line, gods rot it, can we do it?—where's that line? Wake up!" The line flashed onto the monitor, red and dangerous, showing them a course that broke every navigation code in the Compact. Alarms flashed: the siren howled. Pyanfar laid back her ears and reached frantically to controls as Haral synched moves with her to get the numbers ripped loose from scan-comp and embedded in nav. She keyed a confirmation, one press of a button. Alarms died, and The Pride kept going, hellbent on the line— ("We're on, we're on, we're on!" Tirun breathed—) —sending a c-charged jumpship on a course straight to Mkks station, a maneuver two stars wide, betting everything they had that Mkks beacon would be accurate. They were racing the lightspeed wavefront of their own arrival, the message which that jumprange beacon back there sent to Mkks—chased that moment down the timeline as fast as any ship could dare, with enough energy bound up in their mass to make one great flare if anything Mkks beacon had not reported should turn up in their path—a nova in miniature, a briefly flaring sun. Pyanfar let the controls go, flexed aching hands and reached in null g drift for the foil packet she had clamped to the chair arm. It escaped her claws and she snagged it back, bit a hole in it and drank the contents down in several convulsive gulps, shuddering at the taste and the impact on her stomach. It was necessary: the body shed hair, shed skin, depleted its minerals and moisture. Shortly blood sugar would surge and plummet, and she had to be past that point when The Pride's course reached critical again. There was no hope now of steering. They were going too fast to skew off to any influence but the star's, and that pull was plotted into their course. She wiped her mane back and rubbed an itch on her nose that had been there since Kshshti. "Mkks nine minutes Light," Haral said. Nine minutes till Mkks station got the news of their arrival; mahendo'sat authority would take a few minutes more realizing they had not made that critical third velocity dump. In the meanwhile The Pride was shortening the nine minute reply interval. In much less than eighteen minutes, they would run into the outgoing communications wavefront of a frantic station. That was time as starships saw it: but someone had to call the kif on com; someone had physically to push buttons and get to kif authority, while in each running stride of kifish feet down a corridor an inbound jumpship traveled a planetary diameter. "Send," she said to Khym. "The Pride of Chanur inbound to Mkks: requesting shiplist and dock assignment. We want berths clear on either side of us. We have cargo hazard. Send." That would confuse them: a ship behaving like vane malfunction and talking like cargo emergency. Eight point nine minutes to get that message to station. Fifteen point something by the time station could so much as reply if they were instantaneous. Someone had to turn a chair, ask a supervisor, report the message. She heard Khym send it out—gods, a male voice from a hani ship: that alone would confound station central. They would not have heard its like before—would be checking their doppler-receivers for potential malfunction, doubting the truth while it hurtled down on them, even techs accustomed to c-fractional thinking— "Send again: Message to Harukk, Sikkukkut commanding. We have an appointment. We've come to keep it. We'll see you on the docks." (Someone deciding to relay that to the kif; kifish feet racing to locate the commander: another moment to decide to undock or sit tight—an instant's consideration and a planetary diameter flicked by.) Ten minutes to launch a ship like Harukk if they ripped her loose from dock without preamble: forty more to get her sufficient range from mass to pulse the fields up. Harukk had a star to fight for its velocity, and that star was helping them come in. Another half minute down. At this dizzying rate, inside this time-packet, there was a curious sense of slow-motion, of insulation from kif and threats. And a sense of helplessness. There were things the kif could do. And there was time for those things—like pressing a trigger, or cutting a defenseless throat— The dizziness hit; the concentrate had reached her bloodstream. "You sick, Khym?" "No." A small and strangled voice. It was not the first time. "Chur?" "Still with you, captain." "Tirun: got a realtime check?" "483 hours in transit, by the beacon." "That's twenty minutes to final dump," Haral said. On schedule, on mark. They had worked it all out at Kshshti, before they undertook this lunacy; worked it out the hard way, in the hours before undock, and in the long hard push that sent The Pride out to a jump by-the-gods deep in the gravity, well and brought her in gods-rotted deep in this one, in a maneuver a hunter-crew would stick at and no merchanter ever ought to try. Strange ports, foreign trade, dice-throws and wide bets. But no voyage like this one. Mkks was no hani port. Not a place where any honest freighter would care to go. And no honest merchanter had that outsized engine pack they carried; or that ratio of vane to mass. Pyanfar said nothing. She uncapped the safety switch on what few armaments The Pride had, and broke another law. "Eighteen to final dump," Haral said. "Call coming—Tirun—Tirun—which one?" Khym's voice betrayed strain and panic, inexperienced as he was at that board. Disoriented as well as jump-sick, it was well possible. But the switch got made and the station's voice came through, dopplered out into sanity. Mahen voice. "Confirm dump, confirm dump—" "Repeat previous message. Tell them we want that shiplist. Fast." There were codes they might have used to get cooperation from the mahendo'sat. There was no way to use them. The kif had ears too. So they went at it the hard way, and Mkks station began to panic, dopplered message overlaying message, continuing a few seconds yet in the initial assumption: that they had a ship incoming dead at them in helpless malfunction. By now their own message would be flashing to the kif, who would not be so naive. The kif might—might—at this stage get a ship out to run; but she had not read Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin as that breed of kif. Not with prisoners in his hands. It was a hall somewhere within the upper reaches of the ship docked gods-knew where. Hilfy Chanur knew the ship-name now. It was Harukk. And she knew the kif seated before her, among other kif. His name was Sikkukkut. He sat as a dark-robed lump on an insect-chair, among its black, bent legs. Sodium-glow relieved the murk close in, casting harsh shadow and orange-pink light. Incense curled from black globes set about the room and mingled with ammonia-stench. She could not so much as rub her offended nose. Her hands were linked with cords behind her back, Tully's likewise, for all the good that he could have done if his hands were free. Tully's face was pale, his golden mane and beard all tangled and sweat-matted, his fragile human skin claw-streaked and bleeding in the lurid glow. He had done his best. She had. Neither was good enough. "Where did you hope to go?" Sikkukkut asked. "To do what?" "I hoped," Hilfy Chanur said, because it never paid to back up with a kif, "to fracture a skull or two." "No fracture," Sikkukkut said. "Concussed."—whether that this was a kif's humor or a kifish total lack of it. Harukk's captain unfolded himself from his insect-chair in a rustling of black robes. There was no color save the sodium-light, none, throughout all the ship. Objects, walls, clothes were all grays and blacks—They're color blind, Hilfy thought, really, totally blind to it. She thought of blue Anuurn skies and green fields and hani themselves a riot of golds and reds and every color they decked themselves in, and held that recollection like a talisman against the dark and the hellish glare. Sikkukkut moved closer. There was a sound like the wind in old leaves as other kif moved beyond the lights and the curling wisps of smoke. She braced herself; but it was Tully the kif aimed at. "This speaks hani," Sikkukkut said. "It tries to pretend not—" Hilfy stepped into his path. "And where our understanding fails," the kif said in flawless hani accents, "I know you have expertise with the human. We can secure that. Can't we?" He brushed past her and jerked Tully suddenly toward him by one arm and the other. The kif's claws made small indentations in his flesh and Tully stood there, face to face with those jaws a hand's breadth from his eyes. Hilfy could smell the sweat and fear. "Soft," Sikkukkut said, tightening his grip. "Such fine, fine skin. That might have value on its own." Closer still. "Let him go!" The dark snout wrinkled and the tip twitched. Kif sustenance was mostly fluid, so outsiders said: they were total carnivores, and disdained not at all to use those razored outer jaws. Two rows of teeth, two sets of jaws. One to bite and one fast-moving set far up inside that long snout to reduce the outer-jaw bites to paste and fluids the tiny throat could handle. The tongue darted in the v-form gap of the teeth. Tully jerked and winced in silence. The long face lifted, to use its eyes at level, its jaws— "Stop it! Gods rot it—stop!" "But it will have to stop struggling," Sikkukkut said, "I can't release my claws.—Tell him so . . . ." Hilfy took in her breath. But Tully had stopped resisting, stopped—all at once, betraying himself. "Ah. It does understand." "Let him go." The kif sniffed, jerked Tully against his chest and flung him free all in two quick motions. Tully stumbled back. Hilfy thrust her shoulder between him and Sikkukkut's step forward and stood her ground with her knees wobbling under her from stark fear. Her ears were back; her nose rumpled into a grin that was not at all the grin of Tully's helpless primate kind. A dry sniffing. Kifish laughter. Sikkukkut gazed at her from within the hood, the dim light glinting off his eyes. "Implicit in the hani tongue are concepts like friendship. Fondness. These are different than sfik. But equally useful. Particularly I do not discount them when you have such success talking to this creature. How have you bound him?" "Try kind words." "Do you think so? I have been kind. Perhaps then my accent confuses him. Tell him I want to know everything he knows, why he came, to whom he came, what he hopes to do—Tell him this. Tell him that I am anxious and impatient and many other things." She weighed it for what seemed forever. She wondered that the kif s patience could last so long. It broke. The kif reached and she blocked that reach a second time with her shoulder. "—He's asking questions, Tully," she said all in one breath. "He wants to talk." Tully said nothing. "Guess he doesn't understand," she said. "He gets words muddled up—" "I was skku to the hakkikt Akkukkak in his day." Sikkukkut's voice was soft, cultured; but in its softness she heard distinctly the clicks within the throat, the clashing of inner jaws as he lifted his chin. "We do know each other, he and I. We have met—before this. At Meetpoint. Does he remember?" "—Friend of Akkukkak's," Hilfy said. Distract him; gods, distract him, get him off the hunt. "—If kif had friends." "This human has sfik," Sikkukkut said, unmoving. "Akkukkak failed to know this. How could so soft a creature have so much sfik as this, to elude kif on Meetpoint docks? Had I been there, of course, he would have fared less well. And now I am here, and he is here, and I am asking him these things." "—He's still asking questions," she said to Tully. "I shall be asking them," Sikkukkut said. "I do ask them." The silence lingered. Light kifish fingers touched her shoulder, stroked the fur— —withdrew. She sucked in a kif-tainted breath, trembling. Her ears were flat. She went deaf, near blind, hunter-vision narrowed to one long black tunnel focused on the kif. But Sikkukkut drew away. He settled down again onto his many-legged chair and tucked his legs up until he indeed resembled some ungainly insect. Tully's shoulder touched hers and leaned there. She felt his weight, the chill of his flesh: gods, no, stay upright, don't give way, don't faint, they'll go for you— The kif lifted his hands to the hood he wore and dropped it back to his hunched shoulders, the first sight she had ever had of any kif unhooded, and it was no pleasant thing, the long dark skull, the dull black wisp of mane that lay forward-grained along the centerline: he was virtually earless, stsho-like in that respect. She had seen models. Holos. None were this peculiarly graceful, ugly thing. The eyes rested on her, apt for such a face, dark and glittering. "You will understand these things: this creature has more than sfik-value; it has sfik itself. Let me speak in hani terms: Akkukkak perished of embarrassment. Therefore I love this creature, because it has killed my superior and now I have no superior." "Gibberish." "I think it quite clear. It has value. If it yields me its value and tells me what I ask I shall be further grateful," "Sure." "Perhaps I shall keep it in my affection and let it see the death of my friend Akkhtimakt. Perhaps I shall let it eat of my rivals." It still spoke hani. The words meant other, kifish things. Her nape bristled. She wanted out, out of here. "Translate this." "—He's crazy as all kif." The thin body shook and hissed atop its insect-perch. "Bigot. I shall make my own translations. Kkkt!" "Fool!" mahen authority screamed into com; and other, less complimentary things. "Stand by third dump," Pyanfar said. "You fool, daughter ten thousand fools, what do? what do? You get report sent han this outrage; we report you endanger—" The Pride dumped speed, a breakup of telemetry— —phased in again, into a new flood of station chatter. "Khym. List." Tirun's voice, prompting him in his muzziness. "Shift it. Move." The incoming shiplist turned up on number two screen, Haral's transfer of data smooth and routine while station's voice suddenly grew quieter . . . "That's two minutes Light," Geran said. They were virtually realtime with Mkks station, moving at a crawl now, within the capacity of their realspace braking thrust. Harukk, the shiplist said. There were other kifish names. A lot of them. A few mahendo'sat. A stsho. (A stsho, at Mkks!) A flock of tc'a and chi in Mkks' small methane-sector. "Thank the gods," Pyanfar muttered, and began to take he telemetry again, shifting her mind back to business. "Approach," she said; and when Geran delayed: "Course clearance, gods rot it, look to it!" She began The Pride's high-v braking roll. "Hang on. We're going with it. Now." "What business?" Sikkukkut asked; and Hilfy pressed close to Tully's side, hearing the shifting of bodies about them beyond the smoke and the lights. "What did it arrange with the mahe? Kkkt. Ask it. Get an answer, young Chanur." "—He's asking about deals," Hilfy said, and shifted again, for a kif moved up on that side of Tully. She looked at Sikkukkut. "He doesn't understand. He can't understand, gods rot it. He uses a translator on our ship. He can't speak, he can't shape our words even if he knew what I was saying to him." Sikkukkut gathered up a silver cup from the table, a ball-like thing studded with thumbsized, flat-ended projections. He extended a dark tongue, dipped his snout into it and drank—gods knew what. He lifted his face. A thin tongue flicked about his muzzle. He still held the cup, his fingers caressing the flat-studded surface. "Choose better words: They will harm him, young Chanur, my skkukun; they will. Persuade him. Break this silence of his. If there are mechanical translators needed, we will supply them. Only make him speak." "I'm trying." She shifted again, bringing herself between Tully and the circling kif. "Back off! Tully, Tully, tell him something. Anything. I think you'd better." —lie, she wished him; play the game, I'll help you—She felt the chill of his body against her side. She tried to look up at him, but he looked only to the kif, perhaps without the wit left to lie at all. "Perhaps," said Sikkukkut. A door opened, admitting sullen light: another kif came in, silhouette like all the rest. "We should consider another private interview with him. Kkkk-t?" The kif hastened past the others. Sikkukkut turned his head. "Ksstit," it hissed. "Kkotkot ktun." Message. Hilfy drew a breath and felt Tully shiver against her. The interloper bent its hooded head near its captain's and whispered shortly. Sikkukkut rested with his hands upon his knees. His shoulders moved with a long, long breath and his jaw lifted. "Kkkt! Kktkhi ukkik skutti fikkti knkkuri. Ktikkikt!" All about them the room rustled with kif. Take them from here. Hilfy knew that much kifish. But not the inflections. Not why, or what had happened, or what happened next. Kif closed about them: Tully let out an unaccustomed sound as they tore him from her side. "Claws in," she yelled at the kif, "you stupid clot!" She raked a kifish shin with a bare-clawed foot. A returned blow jolted her teeth and claws bit into her shoulders. There was nothing, with her hands tied, that she could do. They were enough to carry her. They seized her about both knees and did that at the end, despite her twisting and turning. "Bastard!" she yelled past kifish bodies. She saw Sikkukkut still sitting there like some graven image in the dark, flanked by other kif. "They are here," Sikkukkut said. The door came between and closed. Mkks station was a wall in front of them as The Pride homed in: the berth Mkks had assigned her glowed with the comeaheads on the number two screen while the closing numbers ticked off. "—Please you wait," mahen authority had protested via com during the last part of their approach, a much, much more conciliatory tone. "Got already advise Harukk, same want conference, repeat, want conference. Request reply—" And closer still, in their silence: "We make request you delay dock, Pride of Chanur, you got problem, please, we negotiate—" Because there was no way a station like Mkks had to stop any ship from coming in. And worse, there were fifteen vulnerable kifish ships dead-vee at dock, attached to Mkks' very vulnerable side. Mkks would have sounded alarms by now and thrown the section-seals on its docks, fearing projectiles launched, fearing kif; and riot. "—Please," the protest went on from Mkks authority: "you stop this make negotiate the kif: We forbid you carry quarrel here." But they had the berth they demanded, a clear spot with nothing directly next them on either side. There were kif at hand. Harukk was in the sixth berth down, within the section. Two mahen traders were docked far over on the other side of Mkks' torus. Kif ships lined the adjacent section's docks. There were more mahen ships beyond. The solitary stsho. And tc'a and chi on methane-side. "—We meet you at dockside. We bring security. Make negotiate this matter. We appeal—" Clank-thump. The grapples took, from their side and from station's; the hookup routines started. They had a docking crew waiting. And security. So Mkks Central said. "They've stopped talking," Khym said anxiously, meaning he had done nothing to cut them off by accident, in his inexperience. "They just went quiet." But half a heartbeat later, another call came through. "This is kif port authority," said a clicking voice." You are clear. Welcome to Mkks, Pride of Chanur. You may even bring your arms. The hakkikt extends safeconduct. You will have guides. Welcome, again, to Mkks." "Gods rot those bastards!" Geran cried. "They've got their own personnel inside Central for sure," Tirun said. "That was a valid code." "Move. We've got no choice." Pyanfar powered her chair about and hurled herself out of it, slapped the back of Haral's seat. "Get that linkup made." "Rifles or APs?" Tirun was already on her feet; Haral's sister, tall, full-maned and bearded, with gold rings winking from her ear. There was Geran, slight and fairer: slight indeed against the size of Khym nef Mahn who climbed out of his seat and towered there, wider and taller and dead grim. "APs," Pyanfar said with a tautness about the mouth, a drawing-down of her mustaches. "But I'll take a rifle; want you with one, too. Might want a distance weapon on those docks—might want a lot of distance, huh? And I don't think we have to worry about the law here." There were quiet laughs, a soft explosion of ugly humor. Tirun opened the locker and passed out side-arms to her and Geran, mahen weapons that fired an explosive shell, not the motley patchup of pocket guns they had had back at Kshshti: APs with the necessary extra cartridge-case on the holster belt. And the two rifles, hers and Tirun's, longer-range and capable of a precise target, unlike the APs. Pyanfar took the rifle and checked the safety and cycled the power-test while com crackled with further instructions. "We will meet you outside," the kifish voice said. Thumps and clanks went on, the securing of lines and hoses. The kif intended ambush. They took that for granted. Ambush might come later, after they had gotten far from the ship, or it might be a kifish rush the moment the airlock opened, and gods help any mahen dock-worker caught between. "They're moving the access link in." Haral spun her chair about. "We're in." She rose and belted on the AP Tirun handed her. "One of us," a voice said from the door, "has got to stay here and hold the farm." "Gods rot—" Pyanfar did not need to turn. She saw Chur clearly from where she stood. Geran's sister leaned in the doorway of the bridge, blue breeches drawstringed perilously low, beneath the bandages swathing her midsection. "Chur—" "Doing fine, thanks." The tightness about Chur's nose and mouth denied it. "Na Khym's worth more outside, isn't he? And I can bust her loose from dock if need be." Chur limped across the bridge into her sister's reach and waved off Geran's help. She reached for her own accustomed seat at scan and leaned on the back of it, kept going as far as Haral's copilot's post and sat down. "You tell me when you want her opened, captain. I'll figure shut for myself. No mahe's getting in, huh? Gods rotted sure no kif either." Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and threw one look at Geran, whose head lifted in terminal stubbornness. No reasoning with either sister. It ran in the blood. No reasoning with that sudden fire in Khym's eyes, when he saw a chance more to his liking than sitting guard up here. "Fine," she said. "Get Chur a rifle. In case. And get him one. Move it. Khym, you keep your wits about you out there. You don't breathe without my order. Hear? We've got one problem on those docks. One. Hear me?" "Aye." They were husband and wife at other times. Not here. Not out there. As males went, he was a rock of stability and self-control. And Chur was right: he was helpless with the boards. Clank-thump-clang. The access way was firm. They had connection to Mkks station. Geran laid a rifle into Chur's grasp. Chur lifted it deliberately, though she had done well to lift a hand the other side of jump's time-stretch. Click-click. Safety off and on again. looked up, ears pricked, mouth pursed in a wry smile that showed hollowness below her cheekbones, substance waste in jumpspace healing. Her gold-red fur was lusterless and dulled. Light showed through her ear-edge where rings belonged. Chur had not dressed for amenities, not even important ones like that. "Get them out, huh?" Chur said, meaning Hilfy, meaning Tully, and gave a look at Geran before all of them. "Want you all back, too." she said. "Come on," said Pyanfar. She turned on the pocket com she had hooked to her belt and gestured at the door. She wore no finery this trip, none of the bright color she favored, just blue spacer breeches, same as the rest, excepting Khym, who wore plain brown. She headed out the door without a backward look, with Khym thumping along beside her and Haral and Tirun and. Geran at her back. "Com's live," Chur's voice pursued them down the corridor toward the lift, all-ship address that echoed everywhere. Behind them the bridge door hissed shut, sealing Chur in. "Hurry it." Pyanfar hit the lift button and held the door open, diving inside last as the door shut and the lift whisked downward with a g drop of its own. They were rank at close quarters, unwashed since jump. Wisps of shed fur clung to bodies and clothes; copper taste filled her mouth. None of the crew was better off, none of them fit for diplomacy dockside. The gun dragged at her hip. The heavy rifle in the crook of her arm offered no comfort at all. Gods, gods, kif outside; mahendo'sat—honest mahen station guards trying to prevent trouble and protect their own folk. The last thing any of then wanted was to shoot their way past allies who were duty-bound to stop them. The lift braked and let them out again on lowerdecks. They sorted themselves out into an order of instinctive precedence as they headed down the hall: herself and Haral; Khym with partnerless Geran; Tirun at the rear, Haral's sister-shadow, a little lame in a long run, but veteran of too many ports to let anything reach their backs. And Khym—calamity waiting a chance, she thought; lousy shot, male-like; male-like, a worry in a crisis; and twice as strong as any of them if it came to a set-to hand to hand. "Got a call from a mahen officer named Jiniri," Chur's disembodied voice boomed out from com. '"We got ourselves some mahen station guards out there and a lot of citizens. I told them keep clear; they're not—not listening—" "You all right up there?" "Fine, captain." The voice was hoarse and thin. "Fine." Stronger that time. "Watch yourselves, huh?" They reached the bend toward the airlock. "We're there," Pyanfar said to the pickups in the corridor. "Where's the kif? See any?" "Can't tell for sure. Haven't heard a sound in the access and I've got the gain up full. The com—they say they're out there. Mahe—mahendo'sat—out there—Me, I'd just as soon they were." "Gods-rotted trouble. Tell them get out of it. Fast." "Won't listen—They invoke the Compact. Say—say—gods rot, you can guess." Pyanfar snicked the safety off her rifle; there were two echoes and a couple of different sounds as Haral and Geran took the APs from their clip-holsters, took the safeties off and sent cartridges to the chambers. "We're set. Open us up." The hatch hissed open. They herded in and stopped, facing the outer door. "Seal us out and let's go," Pyanfar said. The way behind them closed; the facing hatch shot open on an empty accessway, a yellow-lighted passage, icy cold. Pyanfar dashed to the last point of cover where the accessway bent; Tirun took the other side with her rifle and the two of them came round the bend together, with three more guns aimed past their backs. No kif. Empty passage. Pyanfar jogged soft-footed as far as the debouchment, where the yellow access tube gave over to descending rampway, a slope of interlocked gratings leading down to the pressure gates, and down again, a long exposed walk to the dock. People down there. Crowd-noise. A knot of about forty civilian mahendo'sat waited at the bottom of that long ramp, with a handful of mahen guards, dark, tall, primate: black-furred and one conspicuous tasunno, brown. And, gods, an anomaly in the midst of the crowd, a white-skinned stsho in drifting rainbow gossamer. The crowd surged forward with a gibbering outcry at the sight of them. "Smell it?" Haral muttered, at her side. Ammonia: kif scent. The dilapidated dockside was in twirl light, and a hundred doorways showed on the anti-dockward side, any one of which might hold a sniper; if the wind had! not been up her back before, that smell would have sent it. She headed down in haste, a quick thunder of steps on the; old-fashioned steel rampway, Haral at her side. The mahendo'sat below shouted and pushed and shoved among themselves, attempting the ramp while the guards struggled to-hold the line. One passed, came striding forward right onto the foot of the ramp as they came down to it. "You crazy, crazy!" The official-looking mahe waved her hands as they came face to face; her howl rose louder than the rest, even the stsho's agitated warble. "You go back 'board, we negotiate this trouble, not bring guns this dock! You keep back our line, let our guard do, hani captain! Hear? Go back you ship! We arrange talk; come, go between talk, you, kif hakkikt! No go down, hear! We got accommodations—we fix—" They had it down smooth, she and Haral: she could deal with the mahe knowing her second in command was watching the crowd; and Geran and Tirun would be watching left and right, with the known space of the ramp at their backs. God knew where Khym's attention was. She ignored the waving hands, the attempt to catch her arm, and brushed the officer aside. "Come on," she said to her crew, and left the ramp, parallel to the line of guards who had their hands full with agitated dignitaries. "You no go!" the mahe cried, trying to get in front of her again. The black face contorted in anguish. "No go!" Pyanfar shoved with the rifle, sideways-held, which drew a collective gasp from the crowd. "Private business," she said. "Get your people out of the way, I'm telling you—Go! Get! Get cover!" "Not bring guns! Go, go you ship, not do, not do!" And from the stsho, who eluded the guards to rush, up and wave white arms in her face: "You break Compact law. Complaint, we make complaint this barbarous behavior—We witness—" "Move it!" A second shove. The stsho recoiled in a wild motion of gtst spindly limbs, retreating in a flood of gtst gossamer robes and a warble of stsho language, headed full-tilt away from the scene. "Ni shoss, ni shoss, knthi mnosith hos!—" "Maheinsi tosha nai mas!" the mahe cried; and mahendo'sat guards turned from crowd-control to facing hani rifles with their riot-sticks, as the mob discovered they were not at all interested in getting closer. There was a low sound of dismay und the docks grew astoundingly quiet. "Move them," Pyanfar said, gesturing with rifle barrel still averted from the mahen official. "Hasano-ma. Authorization from your Personage. Hear?" The mahe had drawn back to range herself with her guard. She stood with diminutive ears laid back. But they came up at Personage. Fear grew starker on her face. "You've got your tail in a vise, Voice. I advise you, go back to Central and stay there. Fast." "Captain!" Haral hissed. "Your left." A shadow advanced at her flank, from the obscurity of gantries and machinery—kif, in numbers. The mahen Voice heeled about and held up her hand in the face of the advance. "You stop! Stop! You break law!" as the crowd shrieked and scuttled from between, and kept going, all but the Voice and her handful of nervous guards. The kif drifted to a stop like a shadow-flow. One kept walking ahead, a black-robed figure. The rest stayed still, rifles in their hands. The whole dock seemed hushed, but for the distant whir of fans and clank of pumps and the fading sounds of fleeing civilians. Law. The Voice's protest echoed faint and powerless. Mkks was in this moment very, very far from mahen law. And the mahendo'sat who claimed this disputed star station depended on pretences that had teeth only when mahen hunter-ships were in port. Not in this hour, that was sure. Pyanfar's ears flattened. She let them stay that way. "Well?" she said to the hooded kif who had stopped a little distances! removed, rifle crosswise in its hands. "We were invited here. Name of one Sikkukkut. You represent him?" The kif walked closer. Guns leveled: Khym's; hers. Haral's and Geran's were trained on the main mass of kif; and Tirun—Tirun, rear-guard, was not in her view; but she was back there and alert, that was sure. The kif regarded them with dark, red-rimmed eyes. Its gray wrinkled skin acquired further wrinkles up and down the snout and lost them. "I have message, hani." It held out a thin hand. It held a small gold ring between its thumb and retractable fore-claw. Tully's. Pyanfar held out her hand and the kif dropped the ring into her open palm, no more willing than she to be touched. "Is the human alive?" "At present." Hilfy too? Pyanfar ached to ask and knew better than to give a kif a hint where the soft spots were. She kept disdain in the set of her mouth. "Tell Sikkukkut I'll talk about it." There was a long pause. The kif gave no ground. "You come to trade. The hakkikt will see you. We choose a neutral ground. Bring your weapons. We have ours." It was better than might have been. It was far too good an offer and she distrusted it. "We can deal here," she said. "Now." "This wants time discussing. You ask condition. Alive, but uncomfortable. How long a delay do you wish?" She slung the rifle marginally upward, out of direct line, and wrinkled up her nose. "All right," she said, ever so quietly, as if no hani had ever broken a kif's neck or no blood ever been shed at Gaohn. "All right. We'll add it up later, kif." It flourished a wide black sleeve: follow. It headed for its own ranks. Pyanfar started walking and heard a soft-footed whisper of pads on decking behind her as her crew followed, with the rattle of gunstrap rings. "Captain." A patter of non-retracting claws. The Voice caught her arm again. "No go—" "Keep the kif away from my ship. You want this station in one piece?" The Voice fell behind. "You crazy," the outcry pursued her, echoing off the dockside walls, the gray emptiness. "You crazy go that place!" Chapter 2 Kif fell in and walked as an escort about them, their black robes like a moving wall in the dockside twilight. A dry paper and ammonia smell rose about them, mingled with the; scent of pungent incense and oil. Weapons rattled as they went, rifles and sidearms as illegal as their own. They had docked in the same section as Harukk, without a section door to pass. The twilit deck stretched out in the upward-tending horizon of all station docks, up to a towering section seal that blinked red lights: hazard, hazard, hazard—precaution against riot and catastrophe. Mkks braced itself. On the rows opposite the docks, in that space usual for services and bars such as spacers used, doorways filled with kif who lounged there with hateful eyes and whispers. Windows glowered with neon, with sodium-and argon-light; the girders overhead were palled with smoke no ventilation coped with, a haze about the glaring suns of the dock's floodlamps. "Gods-rotted mahen hell," Haral muttered, striding along at Pyanfar's side. "The place is all kif." The kif cluttered and clicked among themselves in some obscure accent. Not main—kifish. Pyanfar knew words enough of that, and lost this entire. They passed other doors from which came different, grass-eater smells; and strange moans and wailings: animals, kept and pent here. Hunter-kind that hani were, it turned Pyanfar's stomach. Kif fed on live food. While it lived. Even on their own kind, in defeat. So rumor had it. The kif in the lead tended toward the inner wall and a side corridor; they followed into that narrower passage, among armed kif who loitered in small clusters along the wall and stood away from it as they passed. "Kk-kk-kk," one said, insulting them. Khym broke step: "No," Pyanfar hissed; and Geran grabbed his arm. They went further, with kif closing in at their backs and in front of them. The safeties were already off the guns and had been off, since the airlock. But there was nothing to win here. Not even for the kif. Doors opened for them, on a room sodium-lit and reeking of kif-stink. The distinctive chatter and. clicking of kif came out to them; and a high wail that was not kif died in a sudden squeak. "Here," their hooded guide said, beside that open door, extending a wide-sleeved arm. "The hakkikt will welcome you." "Huh," Pyanfar said, and stepped inside, into the murk, slid sideways of the door and sideways still as Haral and the rest followed, in amongst a crowd of kif, in amongst deeper shadows and that old-paper scent and scent of ammonia and incense so strong they blinded the nose to other cues. There were chairs, tables: seated kif, standing kif. And standing at the far end of the long room, amid the hellish glare and drift of incense, two paler figures, one pale-skinned, one red-brown. Abruptly Pyanfar's rifle tumbled from carry to her hands and rifles and guns moved with one rattle that sounded round the room in rapid sequence, a hundred-fold. Five of them were hers. The ready-lights on rifle stocks glowed like a scatter of bloody stars. Nothing moved after that. Their backs were at the wall; and Hilfy and Tully were thrust back amid a ring of kif with rifles all about them. "Sikkukkut!" Pyanfar yelled. "You here, hakkikt?" One kif had remained seated in a many-legged chair. That one unfolded upward and stepped from among its legs, one hand lifted. "You amaze me, Chanur. Now what will you do? Ask me to let them go?" "Oh, no. I'm going to stand here. We're all going to stand here like this, and no one moves, until my friends get here." "Your friends." "Couple of hunter-ships. Just to keep the odds even while we trade." The kif lowered his hand very slowly. He was utter shadow as he moved before the orange glaring lamp. The hands spread themselves, light streaming past the sleeves. A dry sniffing reached her ears. Kifish laughter. "So that was your request for an open berth. Good, hani. Very good." He gestured toward his prisoners. "Do you want to take them now? Pyanfar did not look, refusing the distraction. She kept the gun aimed at the hakkikt's chest. "We can have a real good bloodbath, hakkikt. Let me put it in kifish terms: we've got a sfik item here. It's my ego in question. So we'll just stand here. Hours maybe. We're patient. You want to send a message? Head my friends off from docks? Fine. Or come at us. It's all over in here, then." The kif gave a flourish of his hands and sat down in his insect-legged chair, a black lump amid the black pillars of his folk, beside the solitary wisp of white and color that was the prize. In the tail of her eye she saw a shifting there among the prisoners, and heard a sharp, hurt gasp. "I'd stop that back there," Pyanfar said, "hakkikt. One my people over there yells, might distract me, huh?" Sikkukkut lifted a hand. "Hunter Pyanfar, you should have been a kif. I tell you, I will deal with you." They could die, they could all die, of this kif's embarrassment. Of failing him. Or of trusting him. But it was an offer. She drew a long, even breath. "Fine. Let's wait on my friends." "There truly are such?" "Truly, there are." "You have a fast ship, hunter Pyanfar." A kif—gave points away and halfway admitted to surprise. It was, gods help them, conciliatory. Or mockery. Or some obscurely kifish thing. "What do you want?" she asked. It had to be the right question. Or there might none of them leave the room alive. "You wanted me here. Why? What trade?" There was long silence. "Skokitk," the kif said. Cease. "Skokitk!" The pale figure hit the floor, a thudding tumble to its knees. The red-brown moved and crouched low beside it. Pyanfar never turned her head. "Hilfy," Haral said. "Very carefully. Get up and get him over here." "No," said Sikkukkut. "This would not be wise." "Then we'll wait," said Pyanfar. "He all right, Hilfy?" "So far," Hilfy said, a hard, thin voice. She heard the spasms of breathing, saw the paler figure rise again, assisted to his feet. "So far." "Let us," said Sikkukkut, leaning an elbow on the high arch of a chair leg, and resting his long jaw on his hand, "—let us settle this matter. Let us dismiss this inconsequence and talk like allies." "Allies in a mahen hell." "Mkks is neutral ground. Let us welcome your friends when they come." "We'll wait." "They really are coming." "Absolutely. And your ships still have their noses set to station. Still sitting targets." "If you had meant to die you would have killed your kin first." "Maybe." "So these allies will not fire on our ships, no more than you did. You intend to get out of here. So do I. Therefore your prizes are intact. And mine is." Kif-thought. It made mazes. "What prize, kif?" "You," said Sikkukkut. He leaned toward the upright and rose from his chair ever so slowly, a smoky drift against the glaring lights. "You are here. And your allies are. I am no merchant. Trade—does not interest me. I make other transactions. Young Chanur—you may cross the room. Do so slowly." "Tully—" Pyanfar heard Hilfy say. "Come on." "No," said Sikkukkut. "He is ours. You may go, young Chanur." Silence then. "Hilfy," said Pyanfar. Her eyes never strayed from Sikkukkut; the gun barrel never moved. "Get over here. Now." "He—" "Now." There was slow and careful movement. The kif stirred and eclipsed Tully's white shape. Pyanfar never let her eyes stray, trusting Haral and the others to watch the other kif. She had her own target all picked out. She heard the quiet movement reach her side, heard Hilfy's harsh breathing. "Give me a gun." Hilfy's voice, hoarse and strained, with mayhem in it. "Stand fast," Pyanfar muttered. "Just stand still, imp—Don't get in front of anyone." "Get Tully out of here." "In time," said Sikkukkut. "Perhaps." "What perhaps?" asked Pyanfar. "How soon," asked Sikkukkut, "these friends of yours?" "Inbound now," Pyanfar said. Sikkukkut made a flourish of his sleeve, a sweep of his robe, an acceleration of small moves. "Stand still, hakkikt." "Ah." "I advise you. Stay put." The shot she fired would take out Sikkukkut. The returning barrage would do for her, her crew, and the wall behind them. "Not a convenient time leave dock, even if you could get to your ships. Hilfy, get. Get out." "With your allies," Sikkukkut said, "I will also deal. There is no need for haste." He paced aside, the only moving figure in the room. "After all." He moved again. Closer. Spread his arms in a dark flourish. "Fire, hunter Pyanfar. Or admit I have judged what you will do." "Don't push me, kif." "Civilization. Is that not your word for it? Friendship? The mahendo'sat who will die of your rashness are your allies. Your own life is still more precious. I shall be your ally, hunter Pyanfar, as I was at Kshshti. Is it not true? Others aimed at this young hani and this human. I took them. Therefore they were safe. Is this not a friendly act?" "You want us out of here before the rest of us reach station. Is that it?" "I will deal with you, hunter Pyanfar. Nankhit! Skki sukkutkut shik'hani skkunnokkt. Hsshtk!" Rifles lowered, one by reluctant one, among the kif. A tremor came to her muscles, a long, long shiver; her heart thudded against her ribs. But the rifle stayed steady. "You may go," said Sikkukkut. "Haral. Get them out. Get everybody out." "Captain—" "Move it!" She heard a low rumbling. "Khym. Out." "Come on," she heard from Haral. She drew in her breath, heard the sibilance of cloth and quiet hani feet, the slight rattle of arms. She was alone then. Herself. A roomful of kif. Tully and Sikkukkut. "You plan to die like this?" the hakkikt asked. Her nose rumpled into a hani grin. "Scare you, kif?" Sikkukkut walked again, laid a hand on Tully's shoulder, where he stood in the others' grip. Gently. "One last prize. I shall keep this one for a while, and give you another, perhaps, for your sfik. Your crew is still outside. Do they pick and choose your orders?" "They understand me." The kif stared at her within the shadow of the hood, faceless against the glare. And laughed his dry laughter then. The hand fell from Tully's shoulder. "Hunter-ships." "They'll come." "Skhi nokkthi." Sikkukkut retreated again to his chair, the while a rustling of cloth told her of movement at her side. The kif reached to the table beside the many-legged chair, where a meshwork bowl stood. Something in it raced and scrabbled madly; squealed as the hakkikt's hand closed. The squeal ceased abruptly. He popped it in his mouth, the jaws worked rapidly a moment. Then he took an ornate cup and spat into it. She laid her ears back. "Would you join me at table?" asked Sikkukkut. "No, I thought not." A bony-knuckled hand gestured Tully's way. "You know he has not spoken since the day we took him. Not a word. He utters sounds, sometimes. I cherish such sfik. His words are precious. Perhaps he will give them up." Take him from me, the kif meant, do something about it, if you can. "The mahe gave you this passenger at Meetpoint," Sikkukkut went on. "Was that all? Was that all Mahijiru brought you? Goldtooth. Is that not what you call that mahe? Ismehanan-min is his name. We are old acquaintances. I spoke to him about alliance. He was doubtful." Again Sikkukkut raised the cup and thrust his snout inside. He lifted his face after. "I think this bigotry." "Think what you like. Let's talk about Tully, shall we?" "I was skku to Akkukkak. Vassal, you would say. And potential heir—to use hani terms, which mislead. You did me a service." "Killing Akkukkak, you mean." "Even so. Often our interests have been mutual. This human, for one. And have you noticed the stsho here? Uncommon. Stsho send emissaries about. Even here to Mkks. When the grass-eaters raise such dust, expect fire. And there is fire, hani. From Llyene to Akkt to Mkks. Even Anuurn. A fool would reject my offer. You are not a fool." "No. I'm not." He set the cup aside. "Is Mahijiru one of these ships?" "No. Lost, I thought you told me." "Perhaps. Ismehanan-min is full of surprises." "And Tully's folk? What happened to them?" A kifish shrug. "You had a ring, gods rot it. It came from Ijir. What's your part in that?" "I have my agents. Even among Akkhtimakt's spawn. That ring has traveled, hasn't it? Like Tully himself. you'll give it back to him." "Did you take that ship?" "I? No. That was Akkhtimakt. He has that prize. I have mine. Go back to your ship. I'd hate to have a misunderstanding with your allies coming in. If my ships should be damaged at dock—you understand. It would be a great mistake." "So would harming him. You want talk. All right. Return him now. You'll get talk. You'll get something more. I'll tell you we won't fire." There was long, long silence. "Ah. Promises. Another hani term. Some hani put sfik-value on a promise. Mahendo'sat are another matter. I will keep this human. To assure good behavior. But for your promise I will give you one of mine." "I get him back. Alive. And well." "There's no kif word for promise. When your allies are here. I promise." Wrinkles chained up and down the kif's dark snout, limned in light. "I do tell you truth. You should thank me, hani. Someone else might have gathered up your people, there on Kshshti dock. I found them in an alleyway But it was not I who aimed at them." "Akkhtimakt." "His agents. If he had taken them, there would be no hope for them. I've protected them. Comparatively." "Tully." Still she did not look at him. She did not want to see that look, that blue-eyed trusting look that confounded and knotted up her gut. "Tully. They want me to go. hours more. I get you back, Tully." "Fine," he said, a faint, slurred voice. "Py-anfar. Go." "Kkkt. It does talk." She stood very still. Points, gods: Tully scored on the hakkikt and maybe did not know it. She held the gun constantly toward Sikkukkut, not daring look Tully's way. "Promises," she said. "Your ships are safe. Safe as Tully is." The silence hung there. "We will talk," Sikkukkut said then. "He and I. While we wait on your agreement. Go back to your ship. You have no choice, hani. See that nothing happens." "Likewise." She backed for the door, reached the archway where the brighter light of the twilit hall fell on the corners of her eyes. There was light to one side of that vision, hani red and blue and brown. There was kif black to the right. She kept the gun trained on the hakkikt inside the room. "You want a deal, kif," she said into the murk. "An alliance. I'll ask my allies. Don't foul it up, huh?" Silence from the room. Perhaps the majority expected her to fire and scour the room. Most kif would, losing points by it, in Tully's case. Destroying all, both gain and loss. A very arrogant kif might not. Or a hani with a friend in there. In his own arrogance, Sikkukkut was confident he knew hani. She stared constantly at that single seated shadow beneath the lights. At the hakkikt's right, among the guards, she saw Tully's pale face and never focused on it. About the room the LED ready-lights of a hundred rifles glowed a wicked, unblinking red. She dived aside, rolled her shoulders against the wall and bounced off it, headed at a trot for her own crew while they covered the kif down the hall. "Tully—" Hilfy said. "We can't get him yet." "Give me a gun." Hilfy caught at Geran's wrist. "For the gods' sakes—" "Gods rot it, move." Pyanfar tore Hilfy away one-handed and dragged her along the hall. Hilfy dug her claws in, roundhoused a swipe at her and Khym caught her by that arm. Hilfy fought without a sound. Her feet went from under her in their haste and Khym hugged her against his side and kept her moving, down the hall, round the corner. Further still, as they reached the open docks. Hilfy still struggled, but more weakly now, as Khym maintained his grip. Pyanfar never let them slow. There were kif, kif everywhere, in the doorways off the dock, standing about by the gantries of the ships. Up ahead—far distant—blue lights blinked on the wall above two shipberths: incoming ships, one on either side of The Pride. "We'll get him," she premised Hilfy, herself hard-breathing as they strode toward that goal. "We'll get him out." Hilfy's rage sank away to gasps. She thrust away from Khym's side as he let her, staggered free, weaving in her steps ahead of them. Rage; and grief. It was not the youngster she had lost and found. It was all too profound for lighthearted Hilfy. Pyanfar's gut hurt, seeing it, seeing the bowed shoulders, the hurt no one could hold and cure. She had grown too old for comforting, the niece who used to swing upon her belt-ends and laugh and beg for tales, where the ship went, where she fared, what the stars were like. Hilfy strode on ahead of them, staggering now and again. There was bloodstain on her trousers and her fur, across her shoulders: Her mane was tangled and matted with it. And the ships were coming in. "Chur," Pyanfar called on pocket com, there at the foot of the ramp. "Chur—We're coming in." She cast a glance back; Tirun was still behind them, gun live, covering them against the chance of attack from the shop-lined far side of the docks, over among the shadows and the kif. The mahendo'sat and stsho had gone, hidden, abandoning them. "You get 'em?" The voice coming back from the bridge was faint and full of breath." "Hilfy's with us," said Pyanfar, Hilfy's ears had come up as they started up the ramp pricked forward with the first liveliness she had shown. Had a little problem getting Tully loose. We're working on it." The ears went down. "Hhhuh," Chur said, of the com lost something. "Hatch is open. Vigilance and Aja Jin are headed in; they haven't dumped down yet. They want our instructions." "Huh." From her side. "Confirm as agreed." An unshielded pocket-corn was not the way to talk that out. She strode up the chill ramp plates with one glance back to every three steps forward. Tirun had stationed herself in the cover the start of the ramp afforded, there by the gantry control console, rifle slowly sweeping the dock. They entered the covered access way and Pyanfar glanced back yet again, Haral standing by her side with AP in hand. "Tirun!" she called out, and Tirun ducked about and pelted up the echoing metal plates. Inside, then, Tirun still out of breath as they hurried through the lock into The Pride's safe inner corridors. Geran swore in relief. Tirun clicked the safety back on her rifle and used it for a stick as she walked: "Not good for sprints anymore," Tirun muttered as they bolstered the APs and slung the rifles back to carry-straps. Hilfy went on through the corridors ahead of them, ears down; got into the lift first and held the door for them, tempers past. But no one touched her. Welcome home, kid. Welcome back. Glad you're all right, at least. No one ventured it. Neither back nor right, Pyanfar thought, with profile view of that young face as the lift went up: ears back, mouth tight on silences. Gods rot it, niece, I got everything I could. The lift let them out on bridge level. They trudged out in no particular order. Khym stayed with them, past his cabin and baths and all such allurements. They were filthy, cold from the docks, and stank of kif. They brought that smell onto The Pride along with them. Chur powered the copilot's chair about when they came in, inexorable move of machinery cradling a bandaged hani who lay shrunken and feeble against the cushions. But her ears came up and she lifted her head. "Good to see you, kid." Hilfy crossed the bridge and bent down to clasp Chur's arm. "Good to see you," Hilfy said hoarsely. "I thought they'd got you. Gods, I thought you were dead." "Huh. No." Chur laid her head back as they gathered around her. She shut her eyes and opened them refocused on Pyanfar. "Captain. I sent the confirm-message. Not a rotted bit of help from the mahendo'sat on-station. 'Cept traffic control. Central's staying real quiet. They've been real upset ever since our friends dropped into system. Scared. Not saying a thing but necessities." "Huh." Pyanfar laid her hand on the chairback. "Best you get to bed, right now." "Food," Chur said. "Lousy c-stuff. Want a cup of gfi." "I'll get it," Khym said, and set the rifle down (gods, on the counter, loose) and headed off. "Secure that!" Pyanfar snapped. He jerked to a stop and looked about, looking for what he had done. But Tirun took the gun along with Chur's. "Got it, captain. He gave it to me." Pyanfar nodded and collapsed onto her rump on the console edge as Khym headed off. She gave him no mercy. None. Crew covered for him; and they did it not because he was male, or hers, but because he had just earned it out there if he had the sense to know it. That warmed some of the cold at her gut. Some. That beaten weariness in the slump of Hilfy's shoulders, that bleak, all-business stare—that was out of reach. "How close are our friends to final dump?" she asked Chur, and handed her rifle on to Haral. "We got anything trustable out of Central?" "I marked the first alarm," Chur said, gestured loosely toward comp, a ticking chronometer on the number two monitor. "Figure—figure our ships'll be dumping down about now, but Jik may freehand it. Don't trust the kif to tell us huh?" Understatement. Complicated comp operations from a crewwoman doing well to be sitting upright. "You're going off-duty. Shift's Haral and Tirun. Rest of us clean up, then turn about. Move it. We've got company coming." There were minute delays, a quick dart of Haral's eyes. Questioning. What do we do? Sit here?—because sitting here at dock was not altogether sane. Think there's a chance of pulling the rest of this off? "Send," Pyanfar said. "Us to both those ships. Tell them we're back aboard. Tell them we've talked to the kif and we've got half the job done. Kif wants to go on talking." "Tully's left there," Hilfy said, of a sudden turning about and leaning toward her on the counter edge. Hilfy's voice cracked and spat. "Four days, aunt—four days they worked on him . . . ." "Then we made good time," Pyanfar said, cold, very cold, because Hilfy wanted heat. "I'd have figured five. We'll get him out." "They're taking him apart." Hilfy stood up and back. "That bastard kif has got time to do it in." "We got what we could." Hilfy drew one long breath. "Yes," she said, and was all quiet, all the way through. "Send that message," Pyanfar said to Tirun, and unbuckled her AP and passed it to Haral to put in the locker with the rest. She turned back to Hilfy. "Go wash up. We're not through yet, niece." "Aye," Hilfy said, and turned and walked off. "You too," she said to Chur. "Geran, get her out of here." "Want the gfi," Chur protested. "Fine. It'll come back there where you are, just fine." She stood there while Geran helped her sister up from Haral's chair and supported her toward the door. "Stay to Khym's cabin, huh? I want to keep you near controls. Might need you to sit watch." "Aye," Geran said on Chur's behalf, a departing glance. The situation was not what they had feared, in all: hostages murdered, Mkks with major damage—that was what could have happened even before they made dock. It was little short of a miracle they had worked, getting in and getting Hilfy free. But it was not good enough. Haral slid into the chair that Chur had left, powered it about again and got to work in Haral's own unflappable fashion, mind going instantly from dockside to those boards with no glitch-ups likely. Pyanfar tested the weapons-locker door and heard the electric tick of the resisting latch. "That access camera and the motion-sensor better stay on. We don't control those gates down there." "Right," Haral said, and reached and keyed mode and number without a beat missed, while the numbers ticked by on comp's other sections. "Got a confirmation on that final dump," Tirun said, holding the complug to her ear. "Captain, just got the confirm from Aja Jin. Captain's compliments and he'll see you here soon as he gets in." Pyanfar looked at the chronometer. They were down to two minutes Light on response—time between themselves and the incoming ships. "Understood," she said. Two minutes as light moved. A good deal longer for a ship that had blown off its c-fractional energy to move into station's slow-going frame of reference, and longer still to dock. "I'm going for that bath." Mayhem and chaos might erupt. There might be attack. There were wobbles in her knees, deprivations coming due. There was still time for a bath, a cup to drink; in the meanwhile it was The Pride's seniormost crew at controls. No flap, no emotional decisions, no foulups. Thank the gods. She dumped it all into their laps and headed down the corridor untying belt-cords as she went. Hilfy had gone below, to the empty crewquarters. Alone. She would not have had that. But there was nothing else to do, nothing else to offer. So we throw the party later, kid. When it's due. Gods help us all. She thumbed the door open and headed straight for the bath, shed trousers into the bin, hung the com on the bathroom wall within reach of the shower cabinet and turned on the warm mist with a melting sigh. Fur by the fistful swirled into the drain at her feet—gods, only half of it was left from jump: the kif business had scared the rest off. And the while she lathered and rinsed under the warm flood she tried to collect her jump-scattered wits, plotting and replotting how to bet the next dice-throw. The kif would have a trick or two. She knew. And the com beeper went off as she reached to cut in the drying-cycle. "Gods, what?" she asked, snatching the com, shedding water on the floor. Her heart thudded. Showers—any offduty indulgence—had begun to make her paranoid. They knew; somehow the whole universe knew the moment her guard went down. "Got a kif outside in the access way," Haral's voice came back. "Captain, it swears it's yours." Chapter 3 "You. Kif." Pyanfar leaned above the com console, and saw the intruder on the camera they had rigged back at Kefk, a huddled black-robed silhouette in the yellow glare of their access tube. It was cold out there, no place for standing. The kif's breath frosted against its own darkness. "Kif, this is Pyanfar Chanur. You can talk back from there. You got some news for me?" "Skkukuk is my name. Let me in, Chanur. The hakkikt an'nikktukktin has sent me." "In a mahen hell." "I must freeze then." "Get your freezing carcass out of my accessway!" The kif stood still. Lifted its arms. The sleeves of the black robes fell back, disclosing black, hairless arms and long, retractable-clawed hands. "Chanur's safety is mine. I offer it my weapons." "Library," she muttered to Haral; and Haral dived for the comp, looking to see what Linguistics made of that as a formula. Meanwhile she stalled; and the hair on her backbone stood up. "Kif. Skkukuk. What do you expect from me?" "I wait to discover." "Captain," Haral muttered, "library's blank on that idiom." "Fine. Gods rot. Kif you take my orders, do you?" "I am Chanur's." She killed the sound. Straightened. "Gods know what that means either. We've got a Situation," she said; and as the number four screen carrying the routine output from station central and traffic control suddenly went all to kifish letters, her jaw dropped. "Gods fry them—" Tirun snatched at controls. Nothing better happened. "That's the station nav output," Tirun said, hitting keys as fast as her fingers could move. Translation came up: Transmission difficulty. Lights started flashing elsewhere on the com board, urgent communication arriving from incoming Vigilance and Aja Jin, which had just seen their navigation monitors go totally kif. Things went chaotic for the moment: Haral swore and started switching systems. Images flickered on the monitors in rapid sequence. "Gods!" Pyanfar hissed, putting kif and airlocks out of her mind in the press of worse disasters. She rang the general alert to bring the crew up. "We got anything to give them?" "Station's not jamming us," Haral said. "We can output our own scan to our friends out there, but it's not much, in our position. We can beacon them in to dock right enough." Aft, the lift was working, crew on the way from lowerdecks to the bridge as fast as feet and The Pride's, lift mechanism could carry them. The alarm bell rang in spurts, drowning other sound at intervals. "Message from central," Tirun said. "Kif say—say: compliments of the hakkikt and they won't interfere with the docking of our ships. This is relayed . . . we've got another call: stsho—that's a protest. Mahendo'sat—a group is protesting to the kif and wanting rescue. They're stuck in some shops down the way and they're afraid to go outside. They want police. Meanwhile the kif are saying mahen crew will handle docking for Aja Jin and Vigilance—The hakkikt's compliments again." There was a soft noise, a wheeze of leather upholstery: Chur made it back alone and took a post. There were running steps in the corridor behind. "What we got?" Chur asked straightway. "Got a kifish takeover of the whole gods-forsaken station," Pyanfar muttered. "Got a gods-be kif in our gods-be access—Get back to bed!" "Give me that," Chur murmured to Tirun, all business; and business went on in mutters and com-chatter. A thunder of steps, scrape of claws on decking; more bodies hit the cushions, one, two, three: Haral delivered a terse briefing to late-arriving crew and Pyanfar let it go, finding more and more information popping up on her screens as stations came alive. Vigilance and Aja Jin were still proceeding on their approach toward docking: "Negative. No fire," she answered the query from the inbound mahendo'sat. "Brief them on it, Tirun." She spun her chair half about and saw The Pride's bridge more crowded than it had been since Kshshti: Hilfy and Khym were both at posts. "Kif are counting on us to calm it down," she muttered to the lot of them. "Gods rot it, they're pushing us hard as they can push. Gods-cursed kif bastard knows we won't fire cold." Hilfy swiveled her head half-about. "He's got Tully," she said, once and tautly. So it was said. The line was drawn. And gods be feathered if she wanted to be put under pressure to do what she already told herself she was crazy for doing on her own. Like sitting pat at dock instead of tearing loose and running with what she had. "So we've got our own detainee," Pyanfar said, puzzling Hilfy: she saw the ears cant in bewilderment. She opened a channel below to the accessway com. "Skkukuk. What do we do with you?" The kif had tucked down in a ball. It stood up and straightened. "I am freezing, hunter Pyanfar." "Good. What if I blow your head off? Would the hakkikt like that? You offend him somehow?" "I lack all status with him." "Hope to gain it, do you?" "I am hopeless, unless your sfik is greater than it seems." She laid her ears back. "Kif, you want to live?" "Naturally." "Strip and get inside that lock. Leave the robes in the lock. Walk into the main corridor. And wait there." It bowed, hands tucked away again. She leaned and keyed the outer hatch open, powered the chair around and met Hilfy's quick, flat-eared stare. "Got ourselves a sfik item down there. Tully it isn't. We'll see what we've just been handed. Tell Vigilance and Aja Jin we're playing this business out and staying at dock; they can do what they like about it." "We've got scan image going out," Haral said. "Jik says affirmative, he's still coming in." "Gods hope he isn't kidding," Geran said. "Gods hope," Pyanfar muttered. Visions of attack assailed her. One swift blast at the dock from either of her two incoming allies and it was ail over. But she trusted Jik. She hoped. "Khym. Come on." "You going down there?" Hilfy asked, turning her chair about. "Nose to that board, youngster. Stay put. Come on, Khym. This one's yours." Khym's ears came up. He had not looked so cheerful since they took him into fire on the docks in the Kshshti mess. She had her pocket gun in one hand, a com unit at her belt with the gain turned up full as the two of them rode the lift down. Khym had his bare hands; and those were not bad odds—unless, she thought, the kif down in their airlock had a knife or worse: gods witness, they were not a warship, to have security precautions and detectors. They went on guess-work, took the gamble— —lunatic, a small voice said. For a bedraggled, half-crazed human's sake, to risk The Pride. "Don't push it," she said to Khym while the lift was on the way down. She thumbed the safety off the pistol. "Gods forbid it's called our bluff and brought us a grenade." "What do you do then?" Khym asked. "Throw it back, for godssakes! How should I know?" The thought ruffled her nape-hairs. And punching the button on the in-lift com: "Haral—stand by that inside hatch release!" The lift door whisked open. She walked out after Khym with her gun ready in her hand. "Now, captain?" Haral asked. "Now." A corridor and a half away the airlock's inner hatch opened. Pyanfar grabbed Khym by the arm and jerked him over to the side of the corridor where there was vantage. Like a black slither of freefall oil, the kif rounded the corner and stood there a good distance down the longest corridor The Pride had—stood there, all gangling gray-black nakedness, hands out to show that they were empty. "All right," she said, never taking the gun off the kif's middle. "You keep those palms out, kif, and keep them in plain sight." "The air stinks." "It stinks out there too, kif. Just come a bit forward. Stop right there. Khym, go to the lock and get its clothes. Search them for weapons." "There is my knife and my pistol," the kif said. "Fine. Move it, Khym." Khym went—not without queasiness, that passing in the corridor. Khym flattened his ears as he went by the kif. The kif half turned its head, the hunched shoulders, the forward thrust of the long jaw become something strangely serpentine and graceful. The kif continued the motion in reverse, swinging back to her. The hands lifted, showing empty palms. "You're mine, huh?" Pyanfar said sourly. "What's Sikkukkut got in mind in this exchange? I don't trade my claim on the human. Hear?" It made a slow move of its hands. "I hear." "So answer, you earless bastard. What are you doing here?" "Waiting," it said. "For what?" It gave a kifish shrug. "I don't know." "You hand me puzzles, kif, I'll skin you." Khym reappeared in the corridor behind the kif with his hands full of black cloth and leather. "Knife and gun," he called out. "Nothing else." "Bring its robes. Give them to it." He brought them. Dropped them at the kif's side. "May I?" the kif asked. She motioned with the gun. It bowed its head and moved very slowly, gathered its belongings and held them to its chest with that hunch of shoulders and lowering of head peculiar to kif. It looked sinister in one instant, beaten and pathetic in the next, in each shifting shadow on the gray-black, wrinkled skin. The hairs rose on her back. "Khym. Open up that washroom. Skkukuk. Inside with you." The head lifted. "It is a waste," Skkukuk said. "Give me my weapons and I shall give you your rivals." "Inside." "I serve a fool." "Not a great enough fool to turn my back on you, kif. Either Sikkukkut sent you or Sikkukkut threw you out; and in either case I don't want you." Skkukuk's head drew down between his shoulders. With that same serpentine grace he turned away and passed the open washroom door. But she thought that she had scored. "Tully's old quarters," Pyanfar said to Khym, who lingered outside. "Toss it the rest of its garb." "We keeping this thing?" "Heave it." Khym tossed boots and belt through the door. The pistol and knife he kept. And shut the door and locked it. "It'll probably wreck the room," he said. "That's the least of our troubles." "What's it want, for the gods' own sakes?" "You guess, you tell me." She thumbed the safety back on her pistol, discovering her knees had gone to jelly. "Gods rot, I got a kif on my ship, and he wants to know what for. How should I know? I got ships incoming, I got a station in kif hands, and the kif are playing tag." She turned and stalked back toward the lift, turned again. "Stand guard down here. Doublecheck that gods-rotted lock that it's closed, put that stuff away, and for the gods' own sake you open that washroom door—I don't care if the kif blows up, you open that door I'll space you first, then the kif! Hear me?" His ears went down. His jaw dropped. She walked back into the lift. "And next time," she yelled back down the corridor, "when I say give a thing you don't drop it, hear?" The door closed. He was still staring. She leaned on the lift wall as the car slammed up. She was shaking, gods, and food occurred to her. Desperately. But there was no time for that. "Haral. What's going on?" "They're entering critical approach." "Both of them?" "Aye, captain. Both incoming." So it was not attack. Vigilance and Aja Jin were both committing themselves to dock and there was nothing left to defend their vulnerable backsides. The car stopped; the doors opened. She stalked down the corridor toward the bridge. "They're on our beacon," Haral's voice continued from the com, tracking her on speakers down the corridor. "Kif are outputting guidance now. It jibes with ours. So far. Captain, we got another problem. Station-folk. We got our boards jammed with queries. We got panic out there." She muttered oaths and quickened her pace. Station riot. It was enough to coagulate any spacer's blood. "We've got to hold this dock," she said, arriving through corridor's end onto the bridge; and not a harried head turned when her voice acquired a body. "Hilfy. Be polite. Tell the station-folk we got a sniper problem on this particular stretch of dock and keep off it." She flung herself into her own chair and sent it whining about into position. Screens showed her what information The Pride could gather with station output reduced. "Kif might agree to damp those station calls down," Haral said. "Better they get through. Less panic that way. Ten thousand citizens pouring down here after news is the last thing we need." "Uhnn." Haral sent another list her way. "Messages you might want to see." She scanned it. —Compliments of the hakkikt: system scan transmission is resumed for incoming ships. It will be accurate. —The Personage urgently requests information— —We make protests this insane and irresponsible action. Protest will be filed stsho authority— —Compliments of the hakkikt, docking crews are ordered into position— Thank the gods. Jik of Aja Jin entered the bridge, Jik—alone: he wandered in like some bewildered spacer hunting a proper bar, his black face doleful and worried as ever. He wore a gold collar and half a dozen bracelets; a broad gold and bronze belt above a kilt of purple and bronze stripes; carried an AP gun in its black holster over all of this, weapon enough to take out half the bridge; two knives—Jik rarely underequipped himself, and the condition of the docks out there did not encourage optimism. "About time, Jik," Pyanfar said to him. "See? Tell you that new engine hold, a? You number one sharp, Pyanfar, handle this ship good. Ker Hilfy, good see you 'live." "Na Jik." Formal and self-contained. "Good to see you." Not when do we go in, how soon? Give me a gun. Hilfy kept to drill, part of crew. But if she had smiled since her rescue, it was perfunctory, tightly measured. Through the several waiting hours. Everyone waited. They waited still, disposed about the bridge, even Chur, who sat propped up in bandages—"You damn tough," Jik vouchsafed, nodding Chur's way. Chur flicked her ears. "I pass na Khym, a, say he got stand guard down in lower corridor. Ehrran clan all same got you airlock secure." Jik leaned this rattling magnificence against the nearest counter edge, bit at a hangnail of one non-retracting claw. He looked weary as the rest of them. His eyes had wrinkles about their edges. There were deep creases by the corners of his mouth. "Also got hani guard take position on dockside. That Ehrran, she got 'nough security both us, a? Same got quick trigger. Make me worry." "Gods rot it, Jik—you had a look at this dock?" He shrugged. His brow rumpled as he glanced up. "Got trouble, sure. Got lot calls, station folk lot panic. Kif" Back down the hall the lift worked. "You do number one fine job get in here, hani. Number one fine job get ker Hilfy out." "We're not through yet. And we've got to get out of here again." She canted her ears toward the recent noise of the lift, turned a glance in that direction. Khym was striding down the corridor with a dark look on his face. She matched the scowl as he walked onto the bridge: he had left his post unasked. But the lift had gone down again, on call. She heard that too. "Begging pardon," Khym said tautly. "Ehrran's headed topside. I locked up." She took that in the coded way he meant it: he had left the washroom unremarkable to outsiders. Politics and intrigue: he was no fool in that department. Jik did not ask further, in his own indolently gracious way, and bit another hangnail. The lift worked again. Tirun and Geran got to their feet; Hilfy was already standing. Haral stayed by her board. "She fine captain," Jik murmured, of their arriving guests. "Come in right on mark; good ship, Vigilance. Also damn fool. I like maybe leave one ship undock, little way out—scare these kif. But this hani scare me, a? Same like have chi for ally: crazy. So I got make her come in dock too. Keep eye on her. She hate you, Pyanfar. Maybe want you have accident." Pyanfar's ears went down. Ears all round the bridge flattened, excepting the minuscule ears of the gold-glittering mane. "She's a bastard," Pyanfar said, "but that far, no. She'd like the kif to settle it." And down the hall the lift let out a red-gold, black-breeched crowd of armed hani. "Sure brought crew enough," Tirun muttered. "How many's she got on that ship, anyhow?" "I checked library back at Kshshti," Haral muttered, "Vigilance runs a good hundred fifty crew. All those offices, you know." "Funny," Geran said, "when we were short-handed they never had crew to spare." "Funny," Pyanfar said. "I'd have enjoyed turning them down." The Eyes of the han walked onto the bridge, immaculate, her silken mane and beard in bronze ringlets; her black silk breeches, Immune clan uniform, were crisp and new; the AP gun hung at her hip in well-polished black leather. Elegance. Wealth—trying to do what? Pyanfar wondered. Attract bandits and kif? Her ears refused to prick up. Her pulse refused to stay at level. Gods rot the Immune and all her ilk. Government officials. Note-takers. "Best if we could have avoided this," Rhif Ehrran said: You botched it, that meant. "Our transmissions from central are all kif. Do we propose to negotiate under these conditions?" And Rhif Ehrran looked at Jik, deliberately and exclusively at Jik, past Pyanfar. "We'll manage," Pyanfar said in Jik's silence, and Rhif Ehrran turned her head with just enough slowness. "I hope so." There was no profit in argument. The Immune was only collecting complaints on Chanur clan dealings. Even yet. The list was already long. "We go," Jik said. "Maybe time we talk be already long! time the way this human reckon, a? Want him back. Val-u-able, a?" "We just walk in there." "Won't be a problem," Pyanfar said. Deliberately she settled on the arm of Tirun's vacant chair, informal as Jik, leaving the Immune and her crew standing. "We just walked in, walked out. Kif's real friendly." The han deputy turned, her be-ringed ears flattening. "You want to walk in and do it again, Chanur? Maybe you can finish the job this time." "Fine. It'll be just fine. You're delegating to Chanur, are you?" Jik stood up, abruptly, with a rattle of his weaponry. "No joke," he said, moving into the midst. "Got number one serious problem. Not got time hani quarrel. Got one human got bad trouble. Got damn bad mess, kif got station, got plenty scared people, got long time not hear from mahen authority this station. You got way get in there, a, friend Pyanfar?" "Sure. Ask. That kif let us in number one quick. It's getting out again I can't vouch for." "How many kif?" "Last time, maybe a hundred, maybe more. That I saw in that room. Up and down that dock, you're talking—oh, maybe four, five thousand. Maybe worse. You got current stats on Mkks?" "It's crazy to go in there," Rhif Ehrran said. "Got idea?" Jik asked. "I had the idea," Rhif Ehrran said, "that coming into dock with all three ships was crazy in the first place, but you had other opinions." "What you want? Shoot up dock? Got cit-i-zen here." "Captain." Haral spun her chair about. "I got a blip." Pyanfar's eye was already moving, already taking in the scan-image that flashed to main-screen above all the seats. Every eye was. Crew dived for posts without an order. Pyanfar did, abandoning Jik and Rhif Ehrran and her lot to their own devices. "Get ID, gods rot it, what's the output?" She spun her chair about and felt the press of a large weight on the shoulder of her chair. Jik, getting view of the screens: she made no objection, too busy to take account of distractions. "That's stsho output!" Hilfy exclaimed. "We gods-blasted hope it is," Tirun said. "Kif could've—" "Send to station," Pyanfar said. "Query." A light on com-output lit: confirmation of the outgoing message. "This is The Pride of Chanur," Khym's deep voice rumbled, while other lights signaled activity from other crew. "What's that ship doing out there?" Not proper com-etiquette, gods knew, but direct. "Khym, give me the response," Pyanfar said, and as Rhif Ehrran moved up close and offered some advice: "Get clear. We're working, rot it." "—of the hakkikt, Pride of Chanur, this information is private." "Give me output!" Pyanfar said; and it arrived. "Kif compliments of Pyanfar Chanur, you by the gods lay a hand on that stsho we'll yank loose and take your wall out! What's going on over there?" Prolonged silence. "Give me that contact," Rhif Ehrran said, and leaned on her chair back. "Not on my bridge." "Stsho's pulling out," Haral said. "That's outbound, vectored nadir . . ." Better news. "—the hakkikt, Pride of Chanur, the stsho undocked without clearance or docking assist. This is not an attack. This was not authorized. It was unprovoked." "Got station damage, central?" Silence a moment. "We are authorized to report so." "Got a problem, don't you, kif?" Silence. "Don't provoke it," Rhif Ehrran said. "Chanur, give me that." "Hhhhuh." From Jik. "Let be. Get ship code. No contact." "That's Nsthenishi," Hilfy reported. "Comp says Rlen Nle's its home port." "When rain falls up," Ehrran said. "Stsho never give ports further in than that. Eggs'll get you pearls it's Llyene. That ship is straight from the capital." "Stsho personnel was on the dock," Pyanfar said, "when we came in. I don't know where it came from." "Message from the hakkikt," the voice from central said. "The situation on this station is already conducive to incidents. Your allies have been permitted contact with you. Are you prepared now to meet and negotiate face to face, or do we expect more delays?" "No more delays. We'll come with our weapons, kif." Silence. "The hakkikt says: All sides will be armed, hunter Pyanfar." "We'll be there," Pyanfar said. "About a quarter hour." Rhif Ehrran leaned forward. Pyanfar brushed her aside with a forearm and stayed over the directional mike. "Rot you—" Ehrran said. "This is acceptable." From the kif. Pyanfar cut it off. "That stsho still headed?" she asked rightward. "Still," Haral said. "Monitor that output." She swung the chair about, looked up at Jik. "So we try for Tully this time. We ready?" "You have no authority to negotiate," Rhif Ehrran said. "Leave this to us from here on. You got as much as you can get easily. You'd serve us better staying here." "Easily, huh?" At the boards the tracking and translating went on. Pyanfar stood up and stared at the backs of her crew. "Shut down to Hilfy and Chur's posts. Shunt command to Chur, Haral. We're going on a walk down the docks, we are." And when Hilfy turned her chair about, mouth open. "Hilfy, niece—you're a provocation to them, and I think you know it. You're staying here." "Aunt—" Hilfy got to her feet. "Sfik, niece. You're a prize in this, like it or not, and bringing you back into the hakkikt's reach is asking for more kifish tricks. Sit tight. And let Chur do the talking to central. Let's try to get Tully out of there, huh? Efficiently and quietly. For his sake." Hilfy's jaw clamped. Her ears were back, her claws dug into the seatback. But: "Aye," she said. Everyone but Chur was getting to her feet. Khym too. And the Ehrran crowd stood there aftward on the bridge, blackbreeches among whom ker Rhif took her stance, still scowling, while Jik leaned his rump against a cabinet and rubbed behind one ear. "Is she running this?" Rhif Ehrran asked indignantly. "Captain Nomesteturjai, I undertook this business on your government's request, understanding you personally requested—" "My government same request you go with," Jik said. "Same request you got patience, honorable. Chanur got thing organized, a?" "Come on," Pyanfar said. "Guns, Tirun. Let's get this moving." "Aye," Tirun said, and brushed Ehrran crewwomen out of the way of the locker door. "Got positive ID on that stsho freighter," Chur said. "And they're not stopping for anything." "It go home," Jik said, "got plenty disturb." "Gods rot," Ehrran said, "what more did it need? We've got a stsho in the middle of this incident, tc'a and chi—." "Got also mahendo'sat cit-i-zen on this station," Jik said pointedly. His smallish ears were flat. "Maybe same got mahen agent, a?" "Yours?" Jik shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. I got check files. But I got other bet: when Sikkukkut come in here, some damn kif escape tell kif authority at Harak system. Four, five day ago. Maybe 'nother go Kshshti. We got move, get thing fix right, a, Pyanfar? Soon maybe got whole damn lot kif here." "Let's go," she said. She took the rifle Geran passed to her, while Haral buckled on an AP. Khym took his rifle from Geran's hand and checked the safety in rapid order. "Wait a minute," Rhif Ehrran said. "Chanur. You're not taking him out there, are you?" "I'm not taking him anywhere. He goes on his own." "Chanur, that's the limit. I've got a file on you that goes—" "I'm sure you do." "Look here, Chanur." Ehrran's ears were back and pricked up with a twitching effort. She lifted a hand, one carefully controlled foreclaw crooked. "Practice your cockeyed social theories on your own ship; that's your business. But when you plan to bring him into a sensitive negotiation and hand him a rifle into the bargain—" Rot it, speak up, she wished Khym. But he would not. His ears were down in outrage. It was all dammed up in him: and the temper it deserved if it came from him—would only confirm all the old prejudices Rhif Ehrran served. Unstable males. Hysteria. Berserker rages. He just kept his head down and threw the safety on again. And looked her way. He was a lousy shot. But kif were afraid of anything his size. Justifiably, if he got into it hand to hand. "I'd rather have him at my back," Pyanfar said studiedly, "than some." She slung the rifle into carry, deliberately looking elsewhere, finding it convenient to throw a glance in Hilfy's direction. "Stay topside, will you?" Because, o gods, they had a kifish guest below; and the last thing she wanted on her mind was worry over Hilfy and Chur with a kif loose on the ship. "Get him out," Hilfy said. "I'll do that." "Chanur," Rhif Ehrran said, "for the record, his presence and your insistence is going in the report." "Fine. Maybe you'll be able to deliver it to the han in person. Or maybe none of us will ever have to worry about it, huh?" She waved her left hand. "Out!" "You don't give the orders on this." "We go," Jik said, bestirring himself from his cabinet-edge. "That quarter-hour's getting short," Pyanfar said. She lagged behind, seeing Ehrran's blackbreeched lot out the door, and Jik, and her own crew. She paused for a backward look, then strode through the others to overtake Jik halfway down the hall. "Got few my crew wait outside," Jik said as she came even with him. "They watch the ship." "Maybe," Pyanfar said reluctantly, "Chanur and Ehrran ought to go in there solo and let you and yours hold the dockside. Kif know you, Jik. Know you real well. You stay here, back me and Ehrran up; that's all we need." Jik rubbed his nose. "Long time I hunt kif. Sure thing they want me. Same want you, Pyanfar. Want bad. Maybe even want han deputy, a? But kif mind, that be crazy thing: we kill kif, no matter: that give us lot sfik with them. We not got sfik, they eat our heart number one sure. We got sfik, they want eat our heart—but same time think maybe they get sfik off us 'nother way. Like deal with us. Like they hope maybe we make more trouble on their rivals, a, than we make on them? We all go talk to Sikkukkut. We lose sfik else." "You know what you're doing," Pyanfar said. "Sure," Jik said cheerfully. "Number one sure." It gave her no reassurance. Neither that nor that washroom door they passed in the lower corridor on their way to the lock: she glanced that direction, and the hair bristled on her nape. Kill it, instinct said. Kill the kif hostage outright, let it vanish without a trace. Keep Sikkukkut guessing. But where was the sfik in that, and what was she supposed to do with such a gift? Be a fool and let it loose? One stsho merchant was already loose and running, bolting dock. If one shot went off on that dock and panicked the traders, more ships might break loose from Mkks dock . . . ships lacking the stsho's obsessively pacifist tendencies. There were the methane-breathers, for one large instance. It was a trap, of course. They had suddenly lost the rhythm of things and kept the kif's schedule, for a prize the kif still held. No kif ever yielded anything without gain. Chapter 4 An eerie quiet persisted on the docks. A few blackbreeched Ehrran clan personnel were visible in vantage points, armed with rifles; doubtless a few such were not visible at all; and there were two more Ehrran crewwomen stationed up inside the ramp, guarding The Pride's airlock and accessway. Less ominous and more, a solitary, AP-wearing mahendo'sat slouched her way up to her captain in specific. Sleekly black, gold glittering as Jik himself, she had half an ear missing and a bald streak on a burn scar down her jaw. Jik spoke to his crewwoman rapidly in some language they both shared, of Iji's great multitude. "A," the woman said, and with her hand on the AP gun's butt, moved off again into shadows near the gantry. "Khury," Rhif Ehrran muttered to her aide, "get back to the ship; take charge. And if we don't get back, get home directly and make a thorough report to the han." It was Enaury hani the Ehrran spoke; Pyanfar caught it: so would Geran, but not likely anyone else. And Pyanfar ducked her head and rubbed her nose—better say less than one knew than more, she reckoned. With the han deputy it was certainly the case. There were already mounds and mountains of reports aboard that ship, to the delight of Chanur's enemies when Ehrran got back to Anuurn and that collection of complaints got to the han debating floor— And a certain stsho check was on its way to a mahen bank at Maing Tol, if it had not gotten there already. When that hit the desk of a certain Personage— The han's deputy had not discovered that small matter yet. Nor had Jik. Pyanfar lifted her head and the oncoming kif welcoming committee looked almost friendly in that light. They did not turn in at the same corridor as before. The half-dozen kifish guides brought them further and further down the open dock, and the paper and ammonia smell even surmounted the cold in this sector. The light was dim and murkish orange-gold, the only visual warmth in the gray and black of their surroundings. The signs were kifish, in crawling, dotted script. Kifish ships were docked along the row at their left; kifish dens lined the right hand, deserted and quiet, which lent no reassurance at all. The hair prickled down Pyanfar's back as more and more of the horizon unfurled; it went all bristled as all the missing kif suddenly showed up past the curtaining overhead girders of the station's curve—a dark mass ahead, a gathering of thousands on the docks. O gods, she thought. Her legs wanted to stop right there; but Jik had not even hesitated, nor had Ehrran—perhaps they waited on her, on Chanur, who they thought had been this route before. "More of them than last time," Pyanfar said, breaking the spell of caution. "Gods-rotted lot more of them." Jik made some sound in his throat. A noise grew ahead, like nothing she had ever heard—clicking and talking all at once, the roar of kifish speech from thousands of kifish mouths together. And they were obliged to walk through this congregation. She was conscious of Khym at her back, hair-triggered; of Haral and Tirun and Geran, steady as they came, And Rhif Ehrran and her handful; Jik striding along with legs that could match a kifish stride and instead kept pace with theirs, holding their guides to a hani pace. She slipped the safety off her rifle as the scene came down off the upcurved floor and straightened itself out in the crazy tilting of things on station docks. It became flat, became distinct as hooded, robed kif standing about, became kif on all sides of them, close at hand, turning to stare at them as they passed with their escort. A clicking rose—"Kk-kk-kk. Kk-kk-kk." Everywhere, that soft, mocking sound. Kif territory for sure. Outnumbered, out-gunned a thousand times and three. If it got to shooting here—gods help them. Nothing else would. And if they had to enter one of the ships at dock to do their bargaining—they were in no position to protest the matter. The kif guiding them brushed other black-robed, hooded kif from their path like parting a field of nightbound grass; and indicated a double-doored passage into a dark like that other dark hole, into a place thicker with kif stench and the reek of drink. Kokitikk, the flowing sign above the door proclaimed—at least the symbols looked like that. Entry prohibited, mahen letters said. Kifish service only. Gods, that would keep the tourists out. "Meeting-hall," Jik said. Kifish noise rose about them as they entered, noise from tables at either hand. There was a clatter of glasses—the smell of alcohol. And of blood. "Gods save us," Geran muttered. "Drunk kif. That's the last." Pyanfar walked ahead, rifle at carry, keeping close by Jik's side. Rhif Ehrran caught up with a lengthening of her stride. There were chairs all about of the sort Sikkukkut had used; there were lamps and smoking bowls of incense that offended the nose and sent smoke curling up against the orange, dirty light. Kif shadows, kif shapes—kkkt, they whispered. In mockery. Kkkt. And their half-dozen kifish guides drifted ahead like black specters, clearing them a way. The muttering grew raucous. Jaws clicked. Glasses rattled with ice. There were red LED gleams about the fringes of the hall, rifle ready-lights. "It's a gods-cursed bar," Rhif Ehrran said. The crowd opened out, creating a little open space. In the midst were kifish chairs, a floor-hugging table. A kif sat alone at that table, beneath a hanging light. Its robed arm lifted and beckoned. There was a stirring all about the room as kif rose from chairs for vantage. "Sit down," the kif at the table said. "Keia." It was Jik's first name, his true one. "Pyanfar. My friends—" "Where's Tully?" Pyanfar asked. "Tully. Yes." Sikkukkut moved his hand, and kif about him stirred. There was a mahen shout, unmistakable; a yelp of something in pain. "But the human is no longer the only matter in contention." The dark crowd parted near doors to the rear; and those doors opened. Dark shapes not kif were thrust forward and held fast—mahendo'sat prisoners, some in kilts, several the robes of station officials. One had badges of religious; importance. And a solitary stsho, pale, its gossamer robe smudged, its pearly skin stained with kifish light and smeared with dark patches. Its state was dreadful; it swayed and kif held it on its feet. "A," Jik said. "So the stsho leave Mkks got reason." "Mkks station," Sikkukkut said, "is mine. Its officials have formally ceded it to me in all its operations. Sit and talk, my friends." It was Jik who moved first, walking forward to settle himself on one of the several black, insect-legged chairs that ringed that table. Pyanfar went to Sikkukkut's other side, and set a foot on the chair seat, crouched down seated with the rifle over her raised knee and canted easily at Sikkukkut. There was one seat left. Rhif Ehrran filled it. Haral and Tirun moved up at Pyanfar's back; Khym and Geran and the rest of the Ehrran hani close about the table, with a wall of kif behind. "You let folk go," Jik said. He opened a pouch one-handed, took out a smoke and fished up a small lighter. It flared briefly. Jik drew on the stick and let out a gray breath of smoke. "Old friend." "Do you propose a trade?" Sikkukkut said. "I not merchant." "No," the kif said. "Neither am I." He made a negligent move of his hand, and Pyanfar caught a whiff of something else, something strange and hers and scared, half a breath before another white thing was shoved into view through the wall of kif. Tully crashed down with arms on the table-edge between her and Sikkukkut. "There. Take him as a gift." Pyanfar did not stir. Hunter-vision was centered only on the kif, the trigger under her finger, with the rifle against her knee. If Tully raised up too far, Tully would be in the line of fire. It was intended. She knew it was. She adjusted the knee and the rifle into a higher line. Sikkukkut's face, this time. "You want your hostage back?" "Skkukuk? No. That one is for your entertainment. Let's talk about things of consequence." Rhif Ehrran's ears had pricked. Jik let out a great cloud of smoke that drifted up and mingled with kifish incense. "We got time." "Excellent. Hokki." Sikkukkut picked up his cup from the table and filled it with something that reeked like petroleum and looked rotten green. He drank and set the cup down, looking toward Pyanfar. "You?" "I've got plenty of time." "Even before Kshshti," Sikkukkut said, "even before that, at Meetpoint, I had converse with Ismehanan-min. Goldtooth, hunter Pyanfar calls him. I advised him to avoid certain points and certain contacts. You'll have noticed that the stsho vessel has deserted us now." "Same notice," Jik said dryly. "You'll have noticed a certain distress on the part of this stsho who remains with us—kkkt, perhaps you would care to question this one. A negotiator, gtst claims to be—" "You tell," Jik said, puffing a cloud of smoke. "You got something drink, friend kif?" "Indeed. Koskkit. Hikekkti ktotok kkok." A wave of his hand. A kif departed. "Were you always at Chanur's back?" "No, not. Crazy accident I come Kshshti. Friend Pyanfar say she got trouble. So I come. Bring this fine hani." A nod Ehrran's way. "You remember, a?" "Meetpoint," Sikkukkut said. The long-jawed face lifted. There was no readable expression. "Yes. This hani was dealing with the grass-eaters." Rhif Ehrran coughed. "By treaty, let me remind you—" Sikkukkut waved his hand. "I have no desire for treaties. Operations interest me. Chanur interests me." "Hunter Sikkukkut, there's been a persistent misunderstanding of hani channels of authority." O gods, Pyanfar thought, and felt sick at the stomach. Hunter, indeed. Rhif Ehrran demoted the kif in a word, in front of his subordinates. "It seems mutual," Sikkukkut said, with equanimity and heavy irony, and pointedly turned his attention from Ehrran. "Hunter Pyanfar, I will speak with you. And my old friend Keia. When did we last trade shots? Kita, was it?" "You at Mirkti?" Jik asked. "Not I." "Kita, then." Another puff at the stick. Jik flicked ash onto the floor. "We got shoot here?" "Mahen bluntness. That thing is a foul habit, Keia." Jik laughed, replaced the smokestick in his mouth. "True." He glanced aside as a kif approached him with a glass. He sniffed it and drank. "Mahen. Nice stuff." "Ssskkt. I appreciate it now and again." "What got?" "My business? Very serious business. Mahen interference. Stsho connivance with hani. This humanity—" Sikkukkut reached down and lifted Tully's chin. "How are you faring." Are you well, kkkt? Understanding this?" He let go and Tully kept his head up, white-faced and sweating and incidentally in the line of fire till he slumped and rested his arms on the table. "This humanity is a problem. Not alone has their presence disrupted trade: we do not, ourselves, depend so much on trade . . . kkkt? But stsho do. Stsho fear any thing that comes near them. So the balance of the Compact is upset. And when that balance tilts, so agreements fall; and when agreements fall, so authorities give way—so there is disarrangement. This is our perspective. And our opportunity. Akkukkak first brought this creature into Compact space. Had it been my doing, of course, I would have fared better, kkkt?" "Akkukkak dead. Lot dis-arrangement, a?" "We trust that he is dead. The knnn are unpredictable. Perhaps he will turn up in a bazaar in some trade—but let us assume he is out. Presently there is Akkhtimakt. Akkhtimakt styles himself hakkikt, holds Kita, disrupting traffic—" "—make lousy big trouble," Jik said. "Have you dislodged him?" "I maybe do. Maybe not. Why you raid Kshshti dock?" "Ah. Now, there you are mistaken. The Kshshti Personage has a traitor on the staff—" "Not got now." "Kkkt. You redeem my opinion of you. But this spy was Akkhtimakt's operative, not mine." "Ummmn. You same got spy at Kshshti?" "Not now. But then I did. When the human was crossing the docks—Akkhtimakt's agents moved to seize him. And I, fortunately, foreknew it. So I was on the hunt as well. Kkkt. Would Kshshti have fared so well in that firefight if kif had not fought kif on that dock? Mahendo'sat have me to thank; I believe thank is the expression—at any rate I stepped in and gathered up the prize before Akkhtimakt's agents could seize it. There was no negotiating there, at Kshshti, with everything astir, with every probability Akkhtimakt's agents would presently report all this—I am discreet no longer. By this intervention at Kshshti I have challenged my rival openly. Now I contend with him. And I surmised correctly that you would follow me, hunter Pyanfar, as soon as your ship could move." "What's the deal?" Pyanfar asked. "You might, you know, put the safety on that thing." "Huh. Might. But I'm comfortable, hakkikt." The snout wrinkled in what might be humor. "You don't trust my word." "The deal, hakkikt." "Ah. Kkkt. Yes. In simplicity: I have chosen Mkks as my temporary base. And my motives and yours coincide." "Do they?" "Kkkt. There are fools at large. Many fools. Stsho seek a way to prevent humankind from going through their space. Stsho connive with hani—am I right, deputy—against mahendo'sat, who would wish to bring humans through at our backs, for reasons not lost to us. How quickly Keia distracted me when I mentioned stsho negotiators! But we know. To gain a foothold at Meetpoint, mahendo'sat route humans through tc'a space. Unwise. Vastly unwise. Stsho will not tolerate this any more than the other—and the very possibility of a human route approaching their territory or even their neighbor and ally tc'a—agitates them beyond rationality. Akkhtimakt operates with the fist. I, with the knife. Akkhtimakt wishes humans barred. But I am, among kif, your friend. Our motives frequently coincide. Is this not a better definition of alliance than friendship?" Jik let out a puff of smoke. "You wrong, friend. Human got own idea. Damn stupid. But they want come through." "They have urging. Do they not?" "Who know? Tell you got number one serious thing, methane-breather upset. We got trouble. Kif got trouble. Not all profit, either side. A?" "You are willing to deal." "Maybe." Another puff of smoke. "What you got I want?" "Mkks." Jik flicked ash. "A. Now we talk kif logic." "You understand." "Sure thing. You no trade. Maybe give gift. You give me Mkks. I then got plenty sfik. I make good ally, a? Maybe do something more." "Take Kefk." Jik's heavy brow shot up. The stick hesitated on its way to his mouth. Arrived. "So. Maybe." Take Kefk. Only take the only kifish gateway to Meetpoint, the one kifish channel to the biggest trading point in the Compact—a major station and probably the most sensitive spot in kifish space outside Akkht itself. Pyanfar kept her ears erect with the greatest of efforts, kept a bland look on her face; and counted the kif and her ally stark mad. "You think it possible," Sikkukkut said. "I got allies. You got same. We go take Kefk." Jik took a final drag on the stick and drowned it in the dregs of the drink. "Personnel this station take back jobs. Then I take Kefk. You want?" "Wait a minute," said Rhif Ehrran. "Wait a minute." "I talk to her," Jik said without a look in that direction. "Got same good friend Pyanfar, one tough bastard hani. You want Kefk, fine. You get." "Alliance," Sikkukkut said. "Myself and your Personage." "You got." "It's more than talk we've got to do," Rhif Ehrran said. "The han deputy wants to know her advantage in this," Sikkukkut said. "But hani have allied with kif before. The deputy knows whereof I speak. Hani have formed various associations." Pyanfar slid a glance Ehrran's way; the deputy's ears were down. "What," Ehrran asked, "does the hakkikt know about hani allied with kif?" "One word. Tahar. Does that interest you?" "Where is Tahar?" "In service to Akkhtimakt. Moon Rising is one of his ships and Tahar one of his skkukun. Not high in his estimation—but of some use to him." "Gods rot," Pyanfar muttered, and looked at Sikkukkut herself. "A hani famed for treason—treason, is that not the word?" "It's close enough. Where is she?" The kif shrugged, smooth as oiled silk. "Where is Akkhtimakt? Now does confrontation interest you?" "She do fine," Jik said, studying the ice in the glass, in Rhif Ehrran's silence. "What say, hakkikt?" "Ssko kjiokhkt nokthokkti ksho mhankhti akt." Sikkukkut waved a hand. "The station personnel are free to go." "A." Jik twisted half about in his chair, leaned back within view of the mahendo'sat and stsho. "Shio! Ta hamhensi nanshe sphisoto shanti-shasti no." There was babble. The stsho shrilled; and the mahendo'sat left the kif's hands and headed for the door, walking at first, then moving with increasing speed. The stsho ran, fell, scrambled up and fled through the chittering crowd even before the mahendo'sat. Jik turned around again when the jam in the doorway had cleared. He pulled another stick from his belt and lit it. "How many ship you got?" he asked. "Here? All kif here are mine but one. And that one is disabled; its crew—is presently rearranging its loyalties." "Fourteen ship. We got three. No problem. Akkhtimakt maybe come Kshshti; maybe come Mkks. Not good you stay here, all same. Advice come free, a?" "So Mkks will fall again—if Akkhtimakt comes here." "He not stay. Got no reason stay." Another expansive puff of smoke. "He quick learn we go Kefk, a? So he come. He leave Mkks, come Kefk number one quick, pay you visit." Wrinkles chained up Sikkukkut's snout. "So by aiding me you aid Mkks." "You right, friend." "Hunter Pyanfar, where are your loyalties in this?" "Myself. My crew. My friends. Jik wants us there, I don't doubt we'll talk about it." "So. And a promise. Will you keep it?" "Thought kif didn't have the word." "You do." She scowled. "I do." "Then take your human as a gift. Join us. I will give the orders in this attack. I will personally provide you information on Kefk defenses." "Jik?" "You promise. Got no problem." She shot Jik one long, burning look. But he did not look her way, studying instead the contents of his glass. She looked back over the rifle barrel balanced on her knee. "Jik and I will talk about it." "You go," Jik said. "Huh," she said. "She promise." "Excellent." Sikkukkut unfolded upward from his chair. There was a stir among the kif. "You are all free. Take that as my gift." He drew back. Blackrobed kif surrounded them. "Tully." Pyanfar reached out and nudged Tully with her foot, her rifle in both hands. "Tully. Up. We get you out of here. You walk, Tully." He gathered himself up, holding to Sikkukkut's vacated chair, and stood wobbling on his feet. No one said anything. Likely Rhif Ehrran was choking on what she wanted to say about the situation, but it was not the time or place for it. Pyanfar stood up and let her rifle hang at carry, laid her hand on Tully's bare, claw-streaked shoulder. It was icy cold. There was a deep and healing wound on his arm. Come on," she said. "With us." He walked. Geran took his arm with her left hand, her right on the butt of her pistol. Jik was up—he had the stick still in his mouth, and drew yet another puff on the foul thing. Rhif Ehrran was on her feet and drew her own crew into retreat. It was a long walk through the silent kifish crowd to the door, a slow one, at Tully's pace. But they made it out into the comparatively bright light of the docks, the atmosphere laden with oils and volatiles that hit like a gust of fresh air after the closeness of the meeting hall. Khym walked along with them, Haral out in front. Tirun carried her rifle left-handed to keep Tully on his feet, with Jik and Rhif Ehrran bringing up the rear. Pyanfar cast a look back: gods, Jik was puffing on that filthy thing all the way and scattering ashes as he went. But kif kept hands off them. There were stares from the crowd outside, and there was muttering, but nothing worse. "You get quick you ship," Jik said, as Pyanfar fell back to walk beside him. "Got lot work, hani, lot work." "It's your intention to go through with this," Rhif Ehrran said. "Number one sure. You want wait here, say hello Akkhtimakt? Got also other big trouble. That stsho go out from here. Maybe go Kshshti—maybe instead go Kefk, a, on way to Meetpoint. Maybe talk too much. Stsho lot talk. Not good thing we get compli-cation. Stsho make same, a? Go." "There's a limit to what treaty makes me liable to. We'll discuss this, na Jik." "Fine. Same time you lay course. We do same. I tell you, I bet some kif leave here, go Kshshti. They tell Akkhtimakt what happen here at Mkks, we got small time. Akkhtimakt got fast ship. Same got trouble with kif maybe go Harak. Same trouble stsho go Kefk—lot smart, stsho: maybe got rumor already Akkhtimakt come Kshshti, so run damn quick go Kefk, go Meetpoint—maybe Tt'v'va'o, maybe Llyene—bet Sikkukkut lot unhappy not stop that ship." "You've stopped coinciding with han interests." "A. Then maybe wish you goodbye, lot luck. Akkhtimakt eat you heart." "You foul this up—" "—he eat mine. Number one sure, hani. Akkhtimakt want me, long time." He put his hand amid Rhif Ehrran's back and hastened them along. "Best we move, a?" "Kefk, for the gods' sake," Pyanfar muttered. "Easy stuff." "Then why for the gods' sake hasn't Sikkukkut done it?" "Sfik." Jik took the stick from his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke. "Need sfik, make convince other kif, a? Now he got us. We all got lot sfik, le-gi-ti-macy, a?" "Lunacy," she muttered. "You run, good friend?" "Gods rot it, you'd find some reason why not." Jik grinned and put the stick back in his mouth. "You owe me. When Chanur ever default on debt, a?" "Gods rot your hide." She strode along by him, cast occasional looks back, as Ehrran's crew did. Gods, get us off this dock. More and more kif appeared along the way, all chittering and chattering among themselves. Our allies. Gods! And Tully limped along at his own pace, doing the best he could. There was the safe area ahead, that portion of the dock under surveillance from their own guns. They reached it, and Pyanfar looked back. The kif had not followed them across that imaginary line . . . thank the gods. "We're safe," an Ehrran crewwoman said. Ehrran crew stood out from cover on the docks; a few of Jik's were visible. "We're all right," Haral said by pocket com, now that they came in range of The Pride's dockside pickup. "Haral speaking. We got him. He's all right." Some answer came back. Pyanfar did not hear. She saw Rhif Ehrran sweep a signal to her own crew as they passed the dockage of Ehrran's Vigilance,—not a signal to turn in there, but to come with her. Rhif Ehrran lengthened stride; and stopped Tirun and Tully and Geran at the foot of The Pride's docking area, with a grip on Tully's arm. "The human's safer in our keeping," Rhif said. "We'll take him." "No," Pyanfar said, overtaking. "Gods rot it, Ehrran, we'll discuss it somewhere else. Get out of the way. We got kif back there—let go of him. He's had enough! Gods fry you, that's crew you've got your hands on." She launched a blow of her own and it brought up short on Jik's out-thrust arm. "I take," Jik said. "I take, hear." "By the gods you don't. No! He's listed crew of mine. Gods rot you, let him go—"—as Haral decked an Ehrran crewwoman and mayhem broke loose, one brawling knot with Tully in the midst. Pyanfar elbowed Jik and shoved her way in as Khym did. "Out!" Khym yelled, a male hani voice, that shocked echoes off the overhead; he dived amid the mess and snatched Tully to himself. He grinned at Ehrran, ears flat, with Tully crushed against his chest. It stopped, it all stopped. "I'm crazy," Khym said. "Remember?" And it was in Pyanfar's own head that he truly might go berserk. She opened her mouth, shut it. Tully was not struggling. He held on, fists clenched in the fur of Khym's shoulders. And Ehrran waited for the bloody bits and pieces to start flying. Male and male. Tully hanging in Khym's grip like an unstrung toy. "He's Chanur crew, isn't he?" Khym rumbled. "Like me." He swung Tully up into both arms, the rifle swinging loose from his elbow—good gods, the safety off on a gun fit to hole armor plate. Tully's head lolled back, his limbs suddenly gone loose. "We going inside, captain?" "Move it," Pyanfar said. Her heart started beating again. "Hnhunnh. Excuse me." Khym walked deliberately through Ehrran's ranks, swinging to clear Tully's legs. "Chanur," Rhif Ehrran said. "I know. You'll file a protest. Get your crew out of my crew's way, or they'll be picking fur out of the filters all over Mkks." "Damn fool," Jik muttered. He pinched out his stick and dropped it into a pouch. "Move! You think we got no witness?" He jerked a hand toward the watching kif, far off down the dock. "What want? Entertain them?" Rhif Ehrran made an abrupt gesture upward. Rifles clattered out of the way. Her eyes were amber rings around black. Her rumpled mane stood out in curling wisps as if charged with static. "We'll settle it later, Chanur." "Fine." Pyanfar led her own crew through, lingered at the rail of the upward ramp and turned her head to see nothing happened behind her. The Ehrran crewwomen stood stock still. Ker Rhif herself stared with ears flat, promise in that look. Geran came last, not without a backward glance on her own. "Get in," Pyanfar said in Geran's slight hesitation: Need help? that delay implied. Geran went; she followed, and as they came into the accessway she remembered the Ehrran guards in lowerdeck. "Gods," she muttered, and started running, sweeping the crew with her. Khym had gotten to the airlock with Tully in his arms. The hatch stood open; and two Ehrran guards stood there with rifles uncertainly in their hands and panic in their eyes. "That's all right," Pyanfar said equably, taking her breath. She pursed her mouth into a cheerful smile for the guards, all innocent of the fracas outside. "Hold your post. Come on, Khym. Need help with him?" "He doesn't weigh much." Khym shifted his arm to roll Tully's head up against his chest as they went on through the lock and into the inner corridor. Tully moved, a limp wave of his hand. "Py-an-far." "We've got you," Haral said, gently disengaging Khym's rifle from his arm, taking the weapon to herself before it blew a hole in the overhead. "No more worry, Tully, we got you." The lift worked as they walked on into main corridor. Hilfy came out and headed for them at a run. "He's all right," Geran said. Hilfy slid to a worried halt in the face of Khym and an evident Situation; but Tully reached out his hand and she took his arm, Khym or no. "Hil-fy—" Tully tried to grasp her arm, awkwardly, with Khym's holding him and walking again. "Hilfy—"—over and over again. "Huh," Pyanfar said. It was good to see Hilfy's ears up, her eyes bright like that. As if something was repaired. "Gods, get him to bed. We got other problems." She leaned back against the corridor wall when Khym had taken the whole Tully-business away. Across from her Tirun sagged, standing on one foot. The wound Tirun had gotten at Meetpoint two years ago, the wound they had never had time on that voyage properly to treat—gods, they ran scared again. She thought of Chur, patched together at Kshshti. Like The Pride itself. "Kefk," Haral said, going to lean against the wall beside her sister. "That's going to be one bitch, captain." She listened. Geran overtook them and joined the lineup, the several of them. She felt numb. Her gut hurt from long walking, and from the earnest desire to break Rhif Ehrran's neck. "Gods rotted right one bitch." She shoved off from the wall and walked along the corridor toward the lift, alone. Gods, the worry and the trust in Haral's eyes. Oldest of her friends and truest, Tirun next by a year; Geran and Chur after that by two. Five hani, with a few gray hairs round the nose mid aches when they ran; a young fool kid. A stray human and a hani male past his prime—there had been a time, when she had gotten into this, that she had had ambitions—trading deals with mahendo'sat and humans, to repair Chanur's financial damages; get the ship up to standard—well, that much she had done. And The Pride had altered outlines, wider vanes, alien systems that would put a kink in Chanur's enemies for sure—if it came to a conflict in space. But there were other kinds of enemies—like on the debating floor of the han, when the Rhif Ehrran stood up to declare charges and bring Chanur down. Khym, gods, Khym—she hugged the moment to herself, his defiance of Rhif Ehrran on the docks. But it cost. It would cost plenty when Ehrran and Vigilance got home. Chanur had staked much on this dealing with outsiders; risked too much. Chanur had become like The Pride itself, half-hani, with alien outlines. Foreign wealth bought those changes. —but go home again? See her clan-home again? Deal again as hani and not some mahen agent bought and paid for? She pushed the lift button. Turned. The crew had stayed where they were down the corridor, not following. Maybe they sensed her mood. She beckoned and Haral saw and brought the others. Another hani ship had gotten cut off from hani kind two years ago: Tahar's Moon Rising. Moon Rising served the kif nowadays; and time was when she would have gone for Tahar on dock or in open space and known that she was right. The lift arrived; her crew did. Another thought occurred to her and sent the wind up her back. "We've still got that kif aboard," she said. "We can throw it out," Tirun said. "We've got what we want." Pyanfar thought about it, her claw hooked into the lift-switch. But small alarms went off in everything she knew about the kif. "Sfik," she said. She let them into the lift and got in after. "If we turn it out, we lose a sfik-item, don't we, whatever by the gods that means. Status. Face." "What's that kif want we do with it?" Geran asked in disgust. "What he did with Tully," Haral surmised in the general silence as the lift went up. "Maybe worse. What's a kif care? It's to salve our pride, that's what." A chill spread through Pyanfar. "Gods." "Captain?" "He talked about a kifish ship not his," The lift stopped and the door opened. "Rearranging its loyalties. He said." "That kif's one of Akkhtimakt's?" Haral guessed, right down her own track. "Bet you." "Good gods, what do we do with the son?" Pyanfar walked out and threw a glance over her shoulder on the way to the bridge, to Chur. "If you figure out what a kif's mind's like, let me know. It says it belongs to Chanur. If we let it go we lose sfik. And we got a stationful of kif at our throats if we do." "We could space it," Tirun muttered longingly. "We could give it to Ehrran," Geran said. Pyanfar looked back, short of the bridge door. "That's the best idea I've heard yet." "We do it?" She bit at her mustaches, gnawed and gnawed. "Huh," she said, storing that thought up. "Huh." And walked into the bridge. "Kefk?" Chur asked, turning her chair about. "I got him for you," Khym said, huge, disheveled, hands hooked into the waistband of a tatty and snagged pair of brown breeches. His much scarred ears were slanted halfback, his scarred nose ducked in embarrassment. Hilfy came and fussed his mane into order, and the ears came up, there, in that room with another male, with Tully lying still on the bed and witnessing all of this. "You were marvelous," Hilfy said. "Huh," Khym muttered. "Huh. He smells awful. So do I." And with one shrug of his great shoulders he meandered out into the corridor. Hilfy shivered then. And she thought of killing kif, which had become a constant, burning thought with her. "Hilfy." Tully made an attempt to get up from where Khym had disposed him, on his own bed in his own quarters, on a coverlet soiled with blood from his poor back. She looked his way and he made a face and tried to stand. He sat down again, hard, and caught himself on one elbow. "Gods." She snatched at the pocket com she had and punched the translator channel through. "Tully. Lie still." She came and put the com into his hands, so that he could speak and understand, with that unit to relay to the computer on the bridge. But he let it fall and grabbed her about the shoulders and held on, just held, the way he had done when he had been hurt; or she had; or the kif threatened to separate them. "It's all right," Hilfy said. She held to him, which she had done in their dark cell when he could understand little more than that. "It's all right. We got you. No more kif." He lifted his face finally and looked at her, alien and awful-smelling and his mane and beard, his handsomest feature—all wispy gold when it was clean; but it was all tangled. His strange eyes were reddened and spilled water down his face—kif-stink hurt her eyes too, and his rags of clothes were full of that and kifish incense. "Pyanfar," he said, "Pyanfar—friend these kif?" "Gods, no." Tully shivered, a shudder apt to tear his joints apart. She held him tight, talisman of her own safety. She was aware of his maleness as she had been aware of it in their prison on Harukk, in a vague, disturbing way; but Anuurn and home and men were very far away—excepting Khym, who was enough to remind her of such things though he was Pyanfar's, and far too old. As for Tully, whatever humans felt, it was complex and alien and gods knew whether he even thought of her as female. But someone should defend him. Hilfy had known all her life that men were precious things; and their sanity precarious; and their tempers vast as their vanity. Na Khym was—well, exceptional; and gray-nosed and sedate in age, whatever Pyanfar believed. Young men were another kind. One made a place for them and kept all unpleasantness away; and they wore silks and hunted and made a woman proud. They fought only when their wives and sisters had failed, when disaster came. And they were brave with the bravery of last resort, no craft—no one expected slyness of males. Not when the madness took them. Not when they were young. Her Tully was clever. And brave. There had been a time kif had laid hands on her and Tully had thrown himself at them, clawless as he was. They had batted him aside, but he had tried to defend her till they knocked him senseless. And she could not reach him then. That hurt with more than the pain of the bruises it had cost. They had drugged her. And she had been helpless when they took him to question. "Chur's all right," she said—remembered to say, for he had not gone up topside yet to learn it. "Tully, she got out." He looked at her and blinked. "Chur safe." "Everyone." He made a sound, wiped his face and ran his blunt fingers through the tangles of his mane. "# # #," he said, something the translator mangled. He edged one foot and the other over the side. "I # crew. I crew, Hilfy, go work—want work—understand." He got himself on his feet. He wobbled in the process, caught his balance on her offered hand, then: "Bath," he said. And headed that direction. She understood that. "I'll wait for you," she said. So they were all a little crazed. She felt like collapse herself and felt the dizziness a lump on her skull had left. But The Pride was close to moving. They would be pulling out and getting out of this; and she had undergone one long nightmare of jump in kifish hands— —shut below, trapped belowdecks, with no sense of where they went or where they were or when they would die. They were at Mkks, Chur had told her. And a host of other things—like a deal struck at Kshshti station, that had sent Banny Ayhar hellbent for Maing Tol with messages; and brought Jik and Vigilance with them—improbable alliance, but a useful one. Jik's got some piece of Ehrran's hide, Chur had said, in the long waiting for results. He flashed some paper at her at Kshshti and she caved right fast. He's no hunter-captain, that Jik, no way that's all he is. He's got connections—got us out of port, used that fancy computer on Aja Jin and laid us a course that put us straight into Mkks, all three, neat as you please. We went out on our mark and by the gods we were on when we came in. Got that new engine pack back there— Chur had showed her that, working the cameras aft; and the sight of their tail assembly on the vid had sent a shiver up Hilfy's back. The Pride had changed. Had become something else since they pulled into Kshshti. Like her. And she would have wished to see the old outlines back there and to have felt she had come home to something known and never changed. Pyanfar friend these kif? Hilfy conjured scenes—things Tully had seen and she had not when Pyanfar had stayed alone in that room of kif; and again when Pyanfar had gone in after Tully with Jik and Ehrran and all the crew but herself and Chur. So, gods, why would he even ask? True, they had a kif aboard. Tully did not know that. The presence set twitches in Hilfy's lip, and a shudder in her bones. The thing was down the corridor. Just a few doors down and around the bend. She sat on Tully's bed and hugged her arms about herself, wishing as she had not wished since she begged to go to space and got a doting father's leave—she wanted her home again, and safety, and not to see what she wanted now to do. Better hunting in the hills, that kind of killing. A clean kind. Find a mate. She was due that in her life. Have the grass under her feet again and the sun on her back where no hani she might meet would understand what kif were or the things that she had seen. Tully staggered out again, naked. There were wounds on him that seeped blood; bruises, bruises and burns and every sort of abuse. She carried like scars. He hunted a drawer for another pair of Haral's cast-off breeches and came up with what must be the last. "Need help?" she asked. He shook his head, a human no. He sat down and tried with several attempts to get his leg in. He rested a bit, waved her off, hanging on the chair edge; and finally succeeded one leg at least. The door opened, unannounced. Chur stood there, all bandaged as she was. Her eyes widened; her voyages-ringed flicked back. "Chur," Tully said, and got the other leg; and contrived to stand up and pull the breeches on and pull the drawstring in with now and then a grasp at the chair back. "Gods-rotted little we haven't seen of each other," Hilfy muttered with a little shrug at Tully and a heat about her ears "Him or me. It's all right, Chur." "You all right," Tully said. He left the chair and reached out both hands for Chur. Chur winced instinctively; but did not grab, only took her hands and clasped them in his own. "Chur, good to see you. Good to see you—" "Same," Chur said. Her mouth pursed in a gaunt smile and Hilfy got to her feet. "We're some sight, aren't we?" "We fine," Tully said, with simplicity that ached He grinned, tried to stop himself, got his face into a hani pleasantness. "Chur, I think you got dead." "Got dead, no—" Chur cuffed his cheek ever so gently "Gods, they chewed you up and spat you out, didn't they?" Hilfy flinched, leaning on the chair, "Let him sit down for the gods' sakes. You too. What are you doing here?" "Got a small break. They've got data coming in up there' Tirun's on it—thought I'd take the chance to come down and see you while I had it." "We're going out, are we?" Chur's ears went down. "Aren't we?" "Got some little deal going," Chur said. "What deal?" "Jik. We got this—well, we got this pay-off we got to make. Jik's asked us to go to Kefk. He's talked Ehrran into it." "Gods-be." Hilfy's claws dug into the upholstery and she retracted them. Fear. Stark fear. She knew it in herself, that flinchings had been set into her, bone and nerve, forever. "What's at Kefk but kif? We still following this willy-wisp of human trade?" "Some other kind of deal," Chur said. Her ears stayed at halfmast. The white showed at the corners of her eyes. "I don't know clearly what. Captain's back and forth with Jik." "Go Kefk?" Tully asked. He wobbled over against the wall and stood there holding himself on his feet. "Kif? Go kif?" "What deal?" "Jik's deal," Chur said. "Hilfy—we bribed you out. I don't know what's up, but it's certain we've got trouble on our tail and we're clearing out of here to lead Akkhtimakt off Mkks in the likely case he comes this way. We got two kif headed for a showdown at Kefk and Jik's taking sides. Mahen politics. And we're in it." "Gods, no!" The room went black-tunneled. She thrust the chair skidding on its track and headed doorward, dodged Chur's hand. "Hilfy—" Chur's voice pursued her. "Hilfy!"—Tully's, that cracked and broke. "In a mahen hell," Hilfy said to everything in reach, and headed for the lift. Chapter 5 "We got Ehrran agree," Jik's terse message had said, scantly after Jik could have gotten back to his ship and put the call through. ("Good gods," Haral muttered then. "What kind of blackmail's he using?") ("Must be good—"—from Tirun.) And straightway from Jik: "We got hakkikt send comp feed, lot interesting stuff. We run through library. You take, we make check." And arriving with that feed from Sikkukkut's Harukk: "I Sikkukkut send a gift. Kefk is not Mkks. You will discover this. We leave port in twelve hours or less." "Aja Jin," Pyanfar protested at once, "that's a short turnaround. I know we're pushing, but gods rot it, we haven't got relief." "Sorry," Jik said. "Got do. Try, friend. We got problem." "What problem?" "Like vector on that stsho." "Went to Kefk, huh?" "Damn right." "Gods be." She raked a hand through her mane, leaned both elbows on the console, feeling the tension behind her eyes. The com kept up a steady crackle of kifish chatter and mahendo'sat, the station central offices still in kifish control, but with a few mahendo'sat speaking now from dock offices. The boards rippled systems-lights with the feed from Jik's Aja Jin, which was filtering Harukk data through its own computer and checking it against records before sending it on. "I'd like to have a look at that comp system over there," Tirun said. "One gods-rotted complicated son, I'm betting, the way it put us in here." "Better do it twice," Haral said, "that's all I say. Khym—get that thing, will you? Help him, Geran. He's got it fouled somehow." "It's gone. I'm sorry. I lost it out of records." "What's one more bill?" Geran said. Two crew down. Chur was not up to more work and Hilfy was R&R with Tully belowdecks, while the accessible universe wanted through the com system with individual complaints. "We sue," was a frequent note. "You gods-rotted optimist," Pyanfar yelled at one mahe more persistent than the rest. "Send your lawsuit to Maing Tol and I by the gods hope it gets through!" Then she wished she had held her peace. Her hands shook and there was a hollow feeling at her gut that going hyper-ac after jump was guaranteed to do to a body. She ate concentrates, drank, and it did no good. They had to sleep, no matter what; they all had to go off-shift and get some rest, and Jik's communications streamed in without letup. "Gods-rotted mahe's got no nerves," she muttered. "He had a relief crew while he was inbound. Probably had a five-course dinner. What's he think we are?" No one answered that. And: "Gods," Geran muttered when the course plan and the Kefk information began to take shape. "That son's mean." "That's before we even get there," Haral said. "I'm betting there's more surprises in that system that kif doesn't want to show us." "Not taking that bet," Geran said. There was no jump-point on their way to Kefk, no point of mass where three ships up to no good could come in, go dead silent and rest and sleep a while. The route was just two stars in each other's gravitational influence; The Pride would ride its own jump field and Kefk's pull directly in with a vengeance. Three stars, counting Mkks and Kefk and Kefk 2: Kefk was a close binary; and that made for difficult navigation at best. "Six ships go in with Sikkukkut, Jik, and our friend Rhif," Tirun said. "We get the tailguard post." "Alone with seven kif," Geran said. "Gods, what a party." "Beats going first." "How much interval we got?" "Not by the gods enough." Haral took furious notes and Pyanfar's comp slot spat out a paper. All she could think of was sleep, the chance to lay her aching bones on a mattress and let her mind go . . . while they sat on a kifish dockside with a kifish strike force likely inbound at their backs from either of two enemies . . . kifish authorities at Harak or Akkhtimakt's ships off by Kshshti. They hoped Akkhtimakt was no closer than Kshshti. Gods only knew. If an attack caught them like this, if Akkhtimakt came to Mkks before they left or got up to speed, they were sitting targets with their nose to station and no way to get up to v in time-the same thing they had done to Harukk and all its allies. It took no mindreading to know the practical reason why Jik wanted out of Mkks in a hurry. But other things occurred to her: like the chance Jik knew things he was not saying, about operations in progress elsewhere; the absolute surety that Sikkukkut did. There is fire, hani. From Llyene to Akkt to Mkks. Even Anuurn. Even Anuurn. And Vigilance agreed to join in an act of unvarnished piracy. I surmised correctly that you would follow me, hunter Pyanfar, as soon as your ship could move. So why us? Gods and thunders, what have we got either side wants but Tully? And Sikkukkut gave him back. Jik could have laid claim to him. And Jik backed off. Why did Sikkukkut want us in this? Kif in the washroom. Kif all about. Threatened lawsuits pouring in, because a hani merchant was easier to sue than a han deputy or a mahen hunter ship; and, gods knew, the kif. "We just got a transmission from Vigilance," Haral said. "Official notice we got a complaint filed." "Tell 'em eat it." "Captain." "No, don't tell them that. Acknowledge." She shifted her attention to another board where a systems check had just blinked clear. "Number two vane is clean." She verified Tirun's check, punched the test of number three and got back to the Kefk system data. The schematic showed armed guard stations. Three of them at Kefk. And the robot navigation beacon in the jumprange gave no inner-lanes data to incoming ships until it got a ship ID; and if it disliked what it got, it would blank out entirely. That meant dumping speed early to avoid collision, and risking collision even at that reduced velocity. And without that incoming v they were sitting targets for anything those guard stations decided to throw at them. Gods, it was lunacy. "It's sure something to run with clean equipment," Tirun said. "I'd gotten used to alarms." "Huh." Pyanfar read an incoming schedule on screen two, blinked it clear, rubbed her right ear. The letters separated in a green haze and came back again. Not a complaint from the crew. A hani male sat over there bone-tired and working keys and grumbling in his throat in a kind of mindless reflex moan that occasionally became a mutter: poor Khym, too well-bred to swear like the rest of them, and doing a crewwoman's job with a woman's steady concentration, side by side with Geran. "Give me your information," his litany ran, impeccably delivered. "I'll get it to the appropriate officer." And: "I'm sorry, that's not quite possible." The lift worked—Pyanfar turned the chair half about to glance down the corridor, nervous reflex with a kif aboard and Ehrran crew on guard in The Pride's airlock. Hilfy was coming bridgeward in some haste. Ears back. Eyes dark, when she had gotten past the door. "Aunt. What's this Kefk business?" Pyanfar swung the chair all the way about in Hilfy's direction and leaned her head back on the cushions. Nobody came onto The Pride's bridge and used that tone to her. But Hilfy—Hilfy wanted latitude lately, Pyanfar gave it. "We're going there, yes. Got a bit of business to take care of." "Kif business?" Her own ears went down. She saw the fracture-lines in Hilfy, the unreason. And said nothing for a breath. "Well, is it?" "Jik's business. Look, we got a bill to pay, niece. A godsrotted big bill." "To whom?" "Jik, for one." In spite of herself her heart raced, her ears lay back, her claws jerked half out of sheaths and gouged the upholstery. "Jik. You think I got the influence to pull a mahen hunter-ship and a han deputy in here to help us bail you out without some tradeoff? You're expensive, niece." That slapped young Hilfy in the face. The whites showed her eyes' corners. Her nostrils dilated. "What do we do, then?" "What we do—" Pyanfar's voice cracked, utter weariness. She waved a hand. Hilfy wavered there on her feet in no better condition. It was madness. All of them were that tired. "What we do, niece, is what we're set to do, whatever we're set to do. Yes, we go into Kefk. I don't see we have much choice. Debts are being called in. We don't doublecross Jik. Even Ehrran's going on this one. Don't ask me why. To spy, that's gods-rotted sure. For us, it's what I said. Debts. We got you out. Best I could do." "We've got a kif on this ship." "Not my choice." "What is, lately?" She did not believe for a moment she had heard that; and then her muscles moved, one convulsion that took her from the chair. And Hilfy backed up, stood there with her ears flattened and dismay on her face, as if she did not believe she had said it either. Khym climbed from his chair; his ears were back; and that was trouble on two feet. "How much territory do I give you?" Pyanfar asked. "What are you due, huh?" Down the corridor the lift doors had opened again. Chur and—gods—Tully both were on their way to the bridge, faster than either of them ought; while all about the bridge there was a dire silence, whisper of leather as crew turned in their chairs. "You got some particular recommendation, niece?" "No." The word got out, finally. Chur and Tully arrived on the bridge, all but carrying each other at the last. "Maybe you better go back on break," Pyanfar said. "We've got work to do." "Gods rot it, aunt—" "I got you out! Gods and thunders, Hilfy Chanur, you want to argue method with me?" Tully pushed off from the counter edge—feckless, fever-crazy, wandering between two mad hani. But he stopped there wobbling back and forth with panic in his eyes. So she understood then; and had a look at the way things had been among the kif. So all the crew did. Further things she did not want to surmise. Hilfy took Tully by the shoulders and carefully set him to the vacant side, where Khym was not, back in Chur's keeping. There was deathly silence after that, with only the beep and flash of unliving things. "Hilfy," Pyanfar said, and sank into her chair. "Hilfy—" —hearing those beeps and the chatter of incoming printout. "We're all tired. We're not up to this. Other ships have got other shifts, crew to spare—Geran, put a call over to Jik. Tell him fry his gods-rotted schedule; we're going offline. Hilfy: when we picked up Jik, he'd had a skirmish with the kif somewhere. He'd twisted Akkhtimakt's tail, right well. We don't know where Akkhtimakt is right now, but he wants our hides, no question of it. Sikkukkut swears it was Akkhtimakt's agents blew Kshshti docks to blazes and made a grab for you and Tully—" "Does it matter which gods-rotted kif—" "Shut up and listen. Sikkukkut grabbed you instead, for his own reasons. And it doesn't call for gratitude. Just common sense. Akkhtimakt's agents ran from Kshshti. They'll have gotten back to him; and that means we've got precious little time. Chances are there's one of Akkhtimakt's spotters hovering about Kshshti system. It's hard to find those kind of things till they transmit. And if that's the case he'll find out where we went the minute he skims through Kshshti system, he'll get the whole story of what happened there before he dumps speed, and gods help them if he stays to settle things with them. We don't think he will. We think he'll come for us non-stop. But we can't bet on that. We also have a report that earless stsho that just ran out of here took the Kefk route home, to spill everything gtst knows in the process, don't doubt it. We've got problems here, niece." "We're within a one-jump of Maing Tol or Idunspol, for the gods' own sakes! What happened to getting Tully there? Where did that priority go?" "With Banny Ayhar, from Kshshti. Prosperity couriered Tully's packet on, with a human-language translation tape, updated. If Banny didn't run into something, that packet's already at Maing Tol. Or will be." Her mind had trouble with trans-light figures, tired as she was. "We're faster than we were. And think of this—if you're so concerned for Tully's welfare. If we do take him to the mahendo'sat at Maing Tol, they'll grab him sure. Why'd you think I wouldn't give him to Jik out there? They'd lock him up and go at him till he's spilled everything. You want that for him, huh? Maybe he still knows something. Maybe I'm crazy not to get him off my hands; but I'm not doing that to him. It'd kill him, after this. Hear? They'd never let him loose." "You were ready enough to turn him over at Kshshti!" Hilfy yelled, and over at her side there was a constant drone from the translating com-unit at Tully's side. His eyes were dark and wide. "That was before," Pyanfar said, "gods rot it, before the thing blew up, before we—" "—ended up in debt. Admit it. He's for sale. He's expendable if it gets us out of hock. That's what you're holding out for! A better gods-be deal!" "Mind your mouth, whelp!" "Well, isn't it the truth?" "Gods and thunders, no, it's not. Not—"-since that hall, she thought. Not since she went into a kifish stronghold after him. And had a look at how it was. "Not any more, it isn't." "So we ally with them? Risk all our lives when we're within a one-jump of mahen space?" "We got a debt. Like you said. And it's mahen space. Under mahen law. Mahen politics. You want to walk into it, throw ourselves on their charity? You want to gamble everything you got on someone else's priorities?" "I thought we were falling-down grateful to our allies here. I thought it was debt. Them to us. Now it's something else." "Maybe if I gods-be knew what it was, niece, I wouldn't be going along with this. Mahendo'sat go on status. You want Jik killed, do you? Want him to go—and what happens to his Personage then, and what happens to his friends, like Goldtooth and like us? We got interests in this. And they don't call for blind trust." "We're not a warship, aunt!" "No," she said. Her gut hurt. Missed meal? Missed sleep? Raw fear? "We're a trading ship without a cargo, in debt up to our noses, and the han deputy's got enough in her files to ruin us, the stsho at Meetpoint are bound to send their own complaint back to the han—I don't trust that bastard Stle stles stlen further than I can see him; and we got a kif loose who's got us down as number one target in the whole gods-forsaken universe. Akkhtimakt wants to be head kif over all the kif, and if he makes it you can make your own guess what our personal chances are. So you want to know why I take alliance with the mahendo'sat?" "You don't think they'll let us have fair chance at any human trade. They'll double-deal us, they will, all our precious allies, first chance." "I expect they'll try. They're good at that. But right now they're all the credit we've got. You want to go to Maing Tol, try to limp the long way back to Meetpoint to bail out our cargo—what with, niece? Go back to Anuurn and try to argue away all the charges in the han? When this gets back, your father's going to have challenges; every whelp with ambitions is going to try him, Ehrran's going to make double-sure of that—and Kohan's getting old, imp. He can't take everyone. That's the way it is." "So we risk The Pride?" "That's the way I choose." No one moved. Hilfy stood there trying to catch her breath. There was a persistent beep from com. "What we do," Pyanfar said, "we take the rest we're due. We back up this lunatic mission of Jik's and we guard the deputy's blackbreeched backside. And we hope to all the gods Goldtooth's in reach. The best we can do is keep the mahendo'sat well-disposed. Sikkukkut's only normal crazy. You got out alive. What I hear about Akkhtimakt I don't half like. That kif's got a real grudge against us. Sikkukkut's only half mean—that's the truth, niece. Listen to me. You want Akkhtimakt to be the great hakkikt, the one that unites the worlds, the leader the kif have been waiting for since they discovered piracy? Or you want Sikkukkut, who at least has limits? Maybe we have got a personal stake in this kif fight, huh?" "So we let Sikkukkut into bed?" The coarseness set her ears back. "We don't let the bastard anywhere. Yes, we made a deal. It benefits both sides." "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I've had that bastard's hands on me, I've had drugs and shocks and every lousy trick that kif could think of—gods know what all they did to Tully: he couldn't even tell me—you want me to approve this deal?" "No. I don't. I didn't ask." She rested her head back. "I just tried to let you know what happened. You want to ride this one out in quarters, go on. You're due the rest. I don't recommend you get off here at Mkks. It's going to be real hot here in a little while. Real hot, about the time the word gets Id Maing Tol and to Akkt. We're talking about the mahendo'sat losing a star station, hear? Or the kif taking one. And no one's just real happy. You're not alone in troubles. Gods know what the mahendo'sat will do or how good Jik's credit still is back home. We've lost any backing we might have had from the han. All we've got is Jik. And Goldtooth. And if they go, we've got nothing. Nothing. Chances are they'll double-deal us just the way you say. But if they go—chances are the Personage they work for goes down; and there'll be a new Personage. New deal. New policies. I'm not sure we'd like that. I'm not sure even Ehrran would." Hilfy's shoulders fell. She had a look of pain. The beep from com went on. It was her station. She waved a hand in defeat and went over and picked up the earplug, pushed the button. "Pride of Chanur," she said to someone. "Com officer speaking." Hilfy sat down. Back turned. Got to work. "Tully," Pyanfar said. She held out her hand and he came over to her chair. He gave her that blue-eyed, thinking stare. But he took her hand gently as he had learned; and she curled her claws round his hand, not enough to prick his soft skin. "Go below. Go rest. It's all right. It's all right, Tully. It's just a discussion. It's just talk. Go on below and rest." "I'm crew. Scan tech. I work," "You're mincemeat; and you can't read our boards, let alone work our controls without a probe. You want to work? Go get some sleep. You work later. Go." She freed her hand and gave him a swat on the rump to send him off, but Tully failed to move. Khym was standing there watching all of this. It set her teeth on edge. Her husband. This male. And an adolescent with a gut-deep hurt and gods knew what notions acquired in a kifish cell. "We all go off duty and get some rest. Sleep. Food. AH right?" A second swat, clawtips out. He did move, startled-like, and looked back at her in shock. "Get," she said in a no-nonsense way, ears back; and he backed up. "Aunt," Hilfy said. Business voice, sane and sensible. "It's Aja Jin. Captain's compliments and he's got a problem. He says he's got to talk to you direct. He won't take no. You want to talk to him?" "I'll take it." Anything—anything—to maintain Hilfy's quiet. "I can guess." She swung her chair about. "Tully; Khym; Chur, Geran; get out of here, get fed, get to bed. Now. Move it. Hilfy. You too. One other thing, Hilfy." "Aye?" Defensively. "Kif says Tahar's friendly with Akkhtimakt." "Moon Rising?" Hilfy's eyes widened. "Since Gaohn. Makes sense, doesn't it? She played close with Akkukkak; after Gaohn, where else could she go? Vigilance is real interested. Thought you'd like to know." "Gods rot. Aunt—" "Mind that language. You're back in civilization, niece." She punched the contact in as Haral switched it, a solid stream of mahen exigency in her ear. "Gods-be, Jik—" "—time. You got take comp feed. What you want, wait Akkhtimakt, wait Harak kif?" "What you want, my crew loses it in jump?" "Got no damn time this rest. I got same station authority my neck, got same want board ship. I got explain kif you want sleep, a?" She raked her mane back and flicked her ears. Rings chimed, light and constant. "Then I'll explain to the hakkikt, friend. You want that?" A moment of silence from the other end. "I talk hakkikt. Damn." "Thanks." "Before sign off, maybe get comp feed through. Deal, a?" "No! My crew's gone the limit, understand? No more!" "We got stsho run go Kefk." "We can't do it, Jik." "I send crew." "Not on my deck, you don't. No way." "You want I come over there explain? We got stationer trouble, got urgent request we clear dock, got big fear, Pyanfar. Got kif trouble. What I say to kif? Sorry, hani got take nap?" "Explain all you like. I got fall on my face, bastard. I'm out, through; whole crew's going offshift." "Got finish comp feed." "Twelve hours. Then we do it." "Nine." "Eleven." "Damn, hani, this not merchant deal. Nine. Nine all we possible got. We cover you tail that long. Listen." "Nine," she muttered. "Nine." She punched the contact out, turned the chair and got up. Hilfy and Chur had gone. Khym and Geran. But Tully lingered, alone against the bulkhead door frame, hands behind him. Looking at her. "Scared you, huh?" "Pyanfar." "I'm not mad at you. I give you an order, na Tully, you move, hear? Did I say get?" "Pyanfar." He stood his ground. His mouth was set, his eyes showed panic. But he stood away from his wall and came as far as the observer seat-came further suddenly and flung his arms about her. She hated that. But it spoke more than Tully could. She patted his head, pushed him back and looked at him. Trust. Gods knew he had no reason. "You're a gods-be fool, Tully." "Hilfy say you come." "Hilfy's another." But it touched her all the same. And what had he thought when she left him with Sikkukkut? What had he believed then-not being hani, not being kin or anything but trouble to them? "You go rest, huh? We take care of you." "I don't go kif." "No. You don't go to the kif. Not to anybody. We keep you with us." She thought things over and poked him with a foreclaw to get his attention. "We got a kif aboard. Hilfy tell you that?" "Kif—on The Pride?" "Prisoner. Name's Skkukuk. Know him?" A shake of his head. "No. # # prisoner?" "Missed some of that. Sikkukkut gave him to us. That's where we got him. You don't be afraid, huh?" A second shake of his head. "Hilfy—Hilfy—want # say—she # kif." "Missed that too. She's not happy. I know that. But we take care of her." "She's good. Good." "I know that too." She cuffed him gently on the arm. "They get some food for you?" "Not want." "Not want. Come on." She took Tully by the arm and led him across the bridge. Stopped and looked at Haral and Tirun, whose eyes wept dark streams from exhaustion. Her own watered. She wiped at them. "Get-off duty." "You," Haral said. "Me," she said. "I am." She held Tully by the wrist and headed up the gentle curve to the galley. Behind them, chairs hummed and there were sounds of switches thrown. There was activity in the galley: Geran and Khym had gone that way, and gods, she ought to have flinched at dragging Tully in there with Khym, but she was beyond it all. "Sit down," she said to Tully, and he did that, in the nearest spot, took the cup Geran put into his hands—Geran's own. He drank. "Going to have to take some food down to Hilfy," she said. "And Chur." "I will," Geran said, and dumped more into the brewer as Haral and Tirun showed up and went over to haunt the counter and rummage the supplies. "Here. You need it." Khym shoved a cup into Pyanfar's hands. "Sit down yourself." "Huh." She subsided onto the bench and drank the steaming cup from both hands, set it down and wiped her mane back from her face. Com beeped. "Gods rot," Haral said, and took it from pocket com. "Pride of Chanur: you got our recording; we're on shutdown. Is this an emergency?" "I have a personal message from the hakkikt. I am waiting at your dockside." "Gods and thunders," Pyanfar moaned. "Kif." "Don't go," Khym said. "Send it away." "You can end up regretting a thing like that." She swallowed a massive gulp of gfi. "Tell it come up. Tell Ehrran's guards let it pass. I'll deal with it below." "Kif," Tully said softly. His alien eyes shifted this way and that in evident alarm. "Kif come—" Pyanfar signed for quiet. Haral relayed the message. "It's coming up," Haral said. And with a lifting of her jaw. "You know those gods-be Ehrran are going to report this business. "I know." Pyanfar stood up. "You coming?" "I'll come," Khym said. "No sense all of us going. Just monitor from up .here. Wouldn't want to give the impression we were worried, would we?" "Maybe Sikkukkut's sent to get that kif back," Haral said, when they were riding the lift to lowerdeck. "It would solve a problem. I'd give it with ribbons on. But I don't have any hope." The door whisked open. They walked out. The kif was already in the corridor, a dark shadow against the lights, arms tucked out of sight in its capacious sleeves. So was Pyanfar's hand in her pocket, finger curled about the trigger of her pistol. Haral's too, she reckoned. The kif bowed as they approached. She neglected the courtesy. "Well?" Dark, thin hands came empty from the sleeves. It was a tall one, impressively tall. A silver medal glinted on its chest, multifaceted. "You come from the hakkikt?" "Hunter Pyanfar, you will never learn to tell us one from the other." She looked more sharply. "Sikkukkut?" The hakkikt spread his hands, palm outward. "Messengers are not to be trusted in this, hunter Pyanfar. And doubtless they would miss nuances. There will be a computer feed; are you getting it?" "Relayed from Aja Jin. Yes." Sikkukkut lifted his head to stare down a long, soft-skinned snout. Veins stood out about it. The eyes were bright. "You have confidence in your allies." "Let's say our interests coincide." "You have too much sfik to coincide with their interests." "Is this a deal of some kind?" "I have offered gold." "Doesn't interest me." "And you a merchant." "Not in every kind of goods." "Your human would not speak for me. Not a word." "Huh." She drew a deep breath, ignoring the ammonia smell. "I didn't try too hard. But doubtless his comrades on Ijir talked to Akkhtimakt when he took that ship. And what would they tell? That humans are determined on trade links . . . which will destroy the Compact? Annoy the methane breathers? Distress the stsho? Do you see the forces ranged against you, ker Pyanfar? Your own han is against you. You ally yourselves with mahendo'sat, and you know their motives." "Tell me them." "To diminish us. To bring in yet another species at our backs as they brought hani to shield their left hand. On Ninan Hol there are listening posts. Mahendo'sat turn their ears to space beyond Ninan Hol; they send out probes constantly hoping for some other contact they might use. They have their hands in everything. Like my old friend Keia." "Friend, huh?" "Our interests coincide. He wants me to defeat Akkhtimakt, disliking Akkhtimakt's immediate objectives. I want the same, of course. So should you." "Maybe I do." Sikkukkut's snout wrinkled and unwrinkled. "Kkkt. Let us assume we are allies. Remember this at Kefk. Should things no amiss, come to me." She stared at him a long, long moment. "That what you've come to say?" "I find you of interest." "Gods, thanks." More wrinkles. "You are ingenuous. You have enemies at home." Her ears sank. "What's that got to do with here and now?" "Much to do with the future. Will you sell me this human?" "No." "What will you do with him? Tell me. I confess to curiosity." "I don't know I'll do anything. He's crew." "Hani perplex me. But you've promised, haven't you? You'll give me Kefk." "Jik said as much. Does it take a private deal with me?" "I offer you pukkukkta on all our enemies." "Revenge I don't need." "Do you not? Tc'a sing your name. I have heard it." The hair stood up on her back. "Fine. I imagine they gossip a lot of things." "Pukkukkta." The dark lips drew back and exposed keen incisors with their v-form gap; one arm flourished outward, with a flare of dark sleeve. "Hani, there will be a day you want it." "What by the gods does that mean?" But Sikkukkut had turned and walked away, a diminishing blot on the light. He stopped and turned half about, always graceful. "You'll have to let me out, of course. Friend." "Tirun. We got a visitor leaving. Let him out." "Aye," the answer came back. Sikkukkut walked on in serene dignity and Pyanfar tautened the skin at her back to smooth the fur. Muscles resisted and turned the motion into a shiver. "Gods," Haral muttered. "See he gets off," Pyanfar said; and Haral strode off down the corridor in that direction, where the kif had disappeared around the corner, headed for the lock. Her hair did not unbristle until Haral reappeared and walked back to join her. "You record that, Tirun?" she asked of the empty air. "I got it," Khym's voice came back. "I wasn't Mahn's backroom lawyer for nothing." She drew a whole breath and spat out a laugh. It was as if some thunderstorm had blown through The Pride's corridor and the sun had come out again. But then Haral froze, looking down the corridor beyond her shoulder. Pyanfar turned abruptly. Hilfy stood there with a pistol in hand. "What do you think you're doing?" Pyanfar yelled. "I heard the hatch," Hilfy said. Too quietly. "We handled it. Get back to quarters, huh?" "Aye," Hilfy said. The safety clicked back on. Hilfy pocketed the gun and disappeared around the corner. "Why did I yell?" Pyanfar muttered to Haral, to no one in particular. "I didn't have to yell, gods rot it." "She's all right," Haral said. "Sure." But she did not get the cold of it out of her gut until she had gotten back to the bridge and into the galley. "What he want?" Tully asked, worried-looking, half-rising from the table; but Pyanfar pushed him down again, her hand on his shoulder. "Nothing but nuisance." "He give money. Want me." "He knows I wouldn't take it." She sank down onto the bench and reached for her abandoned cup. So what did he want? Khym took the cup before her hand got there and slid a hot one into her hand. "Good," Khym said. She looked up at her husband, puzzled. "Good," Khym said again, meaning just, she thought, good job. She doubted it. But she sipped the gfi and looked up at him. She saw patience in his amber eyes. Patience he had won the hard way. "Your cabin's taken," she said pointedly. "Huh." He looked embarrassed at the invitation when he had realized it. Geran was there. Another male was. Then he looked pleased in spite of himself. His ears flicked. Gods. Tc'a. Methane-breathers. She remembered the knnn that had paced them out of Meetpoint and the hair wanted to stand up on her back again. Something he said was important. Something was worth the trip here. Him. Would-be lord of all the kif. Visiting me. Let us assume we are allies. Remember this at Kefk. "Something wrong?" he asked. Revenge on all our enemies. Hani, there will be a day you want it. "Not yet," she said. She caught the plastic-wrapped confection Geran spun her way on the tabletop. Haral and Tirun blundered back in, hunting gfi and food. She tore the plastic and swallowed the mince in hunks, guaranteed to make for hiccups. She chased it with gfi. "Gods, tofi." The spice made her sneeze. "Slow down, for the gods' sake." "What, slow down? We've got eight and a half hours to sleep." She stood up and grabbed Khym's arm. "Come on, husband. Suddenly I'm in the mood." "Gods, Py." "Who notices? Finish the gfi. Come on." Chapter 6 Eight and a half hours was not enough. The alarm went off like attack and mayhem and universal doom. Pyanfar climbed over Khym to kill it, but there was nothing for it then but to remember where she was and what there was waiting, and to pull herself and her half-conscious husband out of bed and face it. She faced it in a plain twill pair of blue trousers, common-spacer-like, because they were headed out, and otherside of that jump was likely no time for washup or amenities. She saved her brightest silk pair for after-cleanup on the docks at Kefk. Healthiest to think in those terms, that there would be the need of red silk trousers and all the finery. But she did put on the ruby pendant earring, among the others, that winked and shone ferociously in the red-gold sweep of her tufted, many-ringed ear. It advised all who wanted to argue with a rather plainly dressed hani that she held a captaincy. On such a day she needed all the convincing it could lend. "Feed the gods-rotted kif," she ordered Tirun when she found her on the bridge. "Feed it what?" Tirun asked, and forthwith turned her stomach. "I don't know: thaw something. Throw a steak through the door. Don't get near it. And don't carry weapons." "Gods, it's just one kif. I can—" "Don't go near it. How much more trouble do we need on this ship?" "Aye," Tirun said, and swallowed all further argument. They were all up, all functioning: Chur came out from Khym's former cabin to sit check-out on the bridge; Haral and Hilfy and Geran arrived from below; and Tully came up too, stiff and sore and pottering about the galley with Khym (gods!) and Hilfy, getting breakfast. On the bridge the com-flow started and The Pride began to drink down the information Aja Jin and Vigilance had been awake through the down-watches composing. Haral and Geran and Chur were in Charge there, while Tirun went off to kif-feeding. "We got a request," Chur reported, "from Aja Jin. They want conference when you can." "Fine," Pyanfar said, martyred. "Fine. I'll get to it." "Checks are running fine. We just take Aja Jin's course the way it stands?" "We take whatever they give us. I'm not quarreling with their comp." She leaned over Chur's seat and took a look at station output. It was mahen language again. Mkks began to have the feel of normalcy in its operations. Any kif on Mkks who valued his Life, she reckoned, was headed for Sikkukkut's ships. She thought of others of the noninvolved, non-kif, wishing they could have evacuated the entire station. But that was impossible. Mahendo'sat and stsho had to stay and trust the few conventions of non-involvement and neutrality even kif observed in the Compact. Tc'a and chi were safe. Indisputably. And they protected the other, oxygen-breathing residents by their own immunity and their insanity. "What's our count?" "Hour three minutes to undock," Haral said. "Good gods, they're going with it, are they?" "That mahe's a stubborn bastard." "We on count?" "We're catching up." She put her own board live. Ran a survey of systems and recent com messages. From Aja Jin: You got no problem, you come in on coordinate number one good . . . . Another optimist, she thought. "Put in a call to Jik." "Aye," Geran said. And a moment later. "He's not answering." "What, not answering? We're in countdown. Remind him who's asking, huh?" Another delay. "Captain, his first is on if you want to talk to her." She punched it in. "This is Pyanfar Chanur. Have we got a problem?" "This Soje Kesurinan. Not got problem. Fix good." Unease ran up and down her spine. There was a don't ask implicit in the mahe's tone. (So what for godssakes is the matter?) "Want me to come over there?" "No need. All fine, honored captain." "Pride out." She punched it off. Gods, likely every kif on Mkks had access to that com transmission. She caught Haral's worried look. "He's not there," Pyanfar said. Haral's brow wrinkled. "I'm betting," Pyanfar said, "he's not aboard. Geran, get me Rhif Ehrran." "Aye." Geran made the call. "She's on, captain." That quick. So he's not there, and Rhif's at the boards. "Ker Rhif. Letting you know we're back online." "We have your count. We assume it's accurate." "It's accurate. Do we have a sequencing yet?" "Can't this be processed at some other level, Chanur? Or is this a social call?" "Just wondering, Ehrran." She broke the contact without the protocols. Looked at Haral. "He's with the kif or he's loose on the docks somewhere." "Gods-rotted lousy time to take a walk," "I figure he knows what he's doing." She got back to the messages. A Mkks consortium lodged protests. A mahen prophet babbled something about retribution and visions. A self-claimed psychic saw humans descending on Mkks in their thousands and bringing some invention that would make antimatter, obsolete—"Good gods, Geran, you screen this stuff?" "Sorry, captain. That's the good ones. We got crazier. Thought you'd like the local temperature, huh?" "They're scared. Can't blame them for that." She tried not to think about it. "Where's Vigilance's complaint about visiting kif?" "They never logged it with us." "Huh." That bothered her. She bit at a snagging underclaw and watched the readout run past. Khym arrived with gfi for everyone on the bridge, regulations fractured. But it was her rule, and she broke it with a grateful sigh. "I reckon," Geran said, "they expect us to take a lot of this data during system transit." "They better." She sipped the gfi and looked up again as breakfast arrived, Hilfy with a tray of rolled sandwiches. "Thanks, imp." Hilfy glanced at her in a strange, ears-back way as if the little-girl word had jarred. Perhaps it had. Pyanfar noted that as Hilfy turned away and served the rest, with Khym and Tully. Tully's moves this watch were full of winces. Besides the usual spacer's breeches he wore a white, stsho-made shirt, likely the last he had. It covered the wounds. His mane and beard were combed and neat. His eyes, always light arid unnerving-quick, darted and danced in a kind of desperate counterpoint to Hilfy's quiet. He smiled. He looked happy. It had the look of desperation. Fear of them? she wondered uncomfortably; and then caught Tully's look at Hilfy's back, that one glance in which the smile died and something else showed through until Hilfy pricked up her ears in a semblance of good humor— —for her, she thought; he wore the cheerfulness for Hilfy's sake; and the inside-out of it shivered through her nerves. He moved like a woman walking round some man on the edge of his control. Don't jostle, be pleasant, have your temper elsewhere. Hilfy might see it or might not. Human instinct? Or were they tied together, one holding onto sanity because of the other—and Hilfy further gone than she suspected? "Captain?" Pyanfar blinked and gulped down a large part of the sandwich, turning to the board. "Thanks." Data turned up. She swallowed the other half in two bites and punched a key. The nav-system engaged and ran the data. "Three quarters hour," Haral said. "We aren't getting checkout from our friends out there." "I'm—" Geran said; then: "We got a call from Aja Jin's first." "About gods-rotted time. What does she have to say?" There was a stir at her side. Hilfy slid into her seat and started checkout. Tully edged in next to Chur. "That's Khym's seat," Chur said sotto voce. "Take the one the other side of Tirun's." "Captain, Jik's on his way over here. So his bridge says." "Huh." Pyanfar's eyes went to the time ticking away in the corner of main-monitor. Small alarms went prickling up and down her spine. She sipped at the gfi. "Coming up on the half hour mark and Jik pays social calls. Are those Ehrran guards still on watch in our lock?" "Had a call from Vigilance a few minutes ago," Haral said. "They say they're going to pull them out at the half hour mark. I gave them thank-you and told them we'd take care of ourselves from then on out." "Gods-rotted pointless anyhow. Gods-rotted Ehrran priggish gods-be punctilious nonsense that keeps an Ehrran ear to Chanur business, that's what they're up to. Sealed lock and they've got to set guards in it." Pyanfar's lip twitched. A thought came through. "That blackbreeched bastard knows something's interesting in our downside corridor. Never mind what passes through our lock." "You think?" That rated a turn of Haral's head. "Khym was on guard down there when Ehrran first came aboard. That kif Skukkuk walked up to our ship and never came off; you want to bet no one on the dock saw that? And that Rhif Ehrran hasn't been sniffing round everyone she can interview on this station? If she missed any of that, she heard me ask Sikkukkut what to do with the bastard: by the gods she knows. Knows about Sikkukkut coming here to talk, And she's waiting on me to cave in and send some explanation what we're doing with the kif." "File's got to fill whole banks by this time." "Doesn't it? I swear I'll give that kif to her." She gulped the last of the gfi, looked around for someone free to carry it to the galley. Tully sat beside Tirun. Khym was rattling about in galley; latches snapped and thumped. Tully turned wide eyes on her, blue and holding that perpetual hint of panic. "Trouble?" he asked Chur, with a glance her way. "Explain it to him." Pyanfar shoved the empty cup down the security-bin. "I'm going down to talk to Jik when he comes in." "Want company?" Haral asked. "Sit on things here. Who's going to do that undock?" "Central says they've got crew moving up. Mahendo'sat." "Fine." Pyanfar headed for the door. "Fine. Get Tully's drugs for jump. Tully, hear?" "I got," Tully patted his pocket. "But kif—" "Thank the gods. Brains." "I work jump." "You work, huh? You work it flat on your back. You go to bed, hear? And, Chur, you're going to quarters on this, from undock out." "Captain—" Chur powered the chair about and opened her mouth to protest. "You heard me. You're still not sound. Haven't got time to take care of you. Don't make me problems." "I'm begging you this one. Captain. I'm going to be fit. It's a rough one. I want to be there." "Huh," Pyanfar said. Thought about it a moment too long and shook her head. "Gods rot it, all right, take duty." "I," Tully said. "I work." Another unanswerable stare, blue-eyed this time. His mouth trembled in that way he had when he had gone his limit. She remembered then she had put a thing in her pocket, transferred from yesterday's plain trousers. She had meant to give it to him. Now it took on a superstitious feel, like saying no to Chur. She fished it out between thumb and foreclaw and took his hand and laid it there, a small gold ring meant for human hands, not ears. He closed his fist on the small bit of gold that had belonged to some lost friend. It meant something profound to him. "Where get?" "Just keep it on your hand this time." He put it on his finger. Looked up again with fever in his eyes. Then he clasped her hand with a fierceness that disarranged joints and claws; she flexed claws out in self-protection, strength opposed to strength, and he let go. "You sit this chair, huh?" You sit here, stay steady, keep Hilfy—gods, keep her thinking. Shame her into it. Don't let her be a fool, Tully. "I work, captain," "Captain. Huh." Someone had taught him that. He managed it in hani, confounding the overworked translator, which sputtered through the com at his belt. "Takes orders, does he? Huh. Tully, you watch." She walked out. The lift opened and let her out on the lower main. Tirun was in the corridor. She expected that. That Tirun waited there with her back against the wall and that trouble-look on her face, she did not expect. She slowed down, distracted from one crisis for one that confronted her, and Tirun's ears sank further, tight-folded. "Captain." "Spill it." "Kif won't eat the frozen stuff. He wants to talk to you personally." She let go a long slow breath. "Wonderful. Tell him we'll have a long friendly talk at our next port of call." "I told him you're busy." "He said?" "That you were a fool. Captain." Staring straight ahead, not a twitch of a tightly-folded ear. "I asked who was sitting in the washroom of someone else's ship. It said hani humor is unsubtle." "You leave it the frozen stuff?" "I left it. Thawed. I could puree the stuff." "Kif's got teeth." She walked off. "Captain. I could—bribe a docker, maybe, well, get one of those small live things—" She looked back, at Tirun standing there with a revolted look. "Reason with it." "I tried." "Try again." She headed for the lock, jammed hands in pockets, past the butt of a gun in the righthand one. Gods. Live food. Raw was one thing. Raw and protesting was another. She entered the short lock corridor and hooked the, recessed button on the panel with a foreclaw. The inner hatch shot back unexpectedly and she glowered at the two Ehrran clanswomen on guard there, who faced her with an aborted leveling of rifles. "Who you planning on firing on from this side? Escaping crew?" "Captain." Politeness must have choked the Ehrran. And when Pyanfar walked through their midst and reached toward the com panel to tell Haral to open up the lock, an Ehrran arm shot into her way: "Captain, begging pardon, but it's a half hour—" Pyanfar turned and looked, nose to nose with the Ehrran crewwoman. The ears wilted first, the arm dropped next, and the body went third, a backstep that got the Ehrran not quite out of her reach. "Haral." "Aye, captain." "Open us up down here." The outer hatch shot back. Pyanfar heard it, felt the chill draft. She still glared at the Ehrran eye to eye. "You," she said to the Ehrran. "You want to walk out there into the access and see if captain Nomesteturjai's anywhere about?" "I'm not to leave my post." "What? Even if I cycle the airlock? You're a lunatic." "I don't think it's a case—" "—about the same. A lot the same." "What, captain?" "Arguing with me. Get!" They flinched, the pair of them; they both flinched, and then it was too late. Pyanfar took the ground they gave, backed them up against the threshold of the open hatch, and it was suddenly a case of resisting a captain on her own deck or moving from their post. "Out!" For a moment she thought they would actually stand fast, rifles and all; and her claws came out and her nose rumpled into a grin. But-then one Ehrran's foot hit the hatch-rim and threw her off-balance. The Ehrran caught herself and backed up; the other did, and then they were both in retreat down the chill yellow accessway. Pyanfar followed in long strides, one hand on the gun in her pocket—it was still a kifish dockside once around that bend and into the rampway. She heard the thunder of hastening feet on the plates; and when she had reached the right-hand turn she saw a tall mahen figure upward bound toward the black-breeched hani, a mahe garishly dressed in red-striped green and laden with gold chains and bracelets and a monstrous large sidearm slung at his hip. Mahen guards, far below, held the foot of the ramp. Jik strolled up the center, and the outbound hani caught-step to avoid him and passed him in great haste. Jik stared back over his shoulder, faced forward and came on with a shrug. "What they got?" he asked with a gesture backward, "Both ears," Pyanfar spat. She was shaking—gods, she had been in dockside brawls and barfights and a set-to with her son and never lost her head like that. The peripheries around Jik refused to come clear: hunter-vision had set in. Her ears were plastered tight against her skull and her muscles shuddered. Jik stopped—just stopped, dead still and quiet. Pyanfar sucked air. Spat in the access way. "You want something." "You got time?" Judiciously and from safe distance. A third spit. "I got time." The peripheries of her vision began to clear. She jerked a hand back toward the lock, led the way, and as they rounded the turn, she saw Tirun standing there with ears flat and a pistol in her fist. "Haral said there was trouble," Tirun said. "Over now. Get. Haral needs help up there. We got mahen guards outside." "Aye." Tirun went at a run. "Come on." Pyanfar brought Jik on through the airlock into the inner corridor, and punched the com panel. "Haral. It's all clear. Seal both hatches." "Aye—"—from the bridge, without comment. SSSShhhh-t. The door went. Sealed with an electric thunk. She looked at Jik. Her lip still twitched. She flicked her ears with a jingling of rings. "I tell you, Jik, the han's changed. It's changed. Hani used to go where they liked, do what they liked without some gods-rotted government note-taker stalking and lurking—" "You think you make mistake, a?" "I think I just made a gods-rotted big one. Mistake! When'd it get to be a mistake to throw two lousy insolent spies off my deck? When'd it happen, Jik?" "Maybe—" Jik cleared his throat. "Maybe you make, Pyanfar. You bring lot strangers to Anuurn. Anuurn hani—they not got used to outside. They scare. Lot scare, Pyanfar. They got hani renegade Tahar go work for kif. You know what think? I think this Ehrran got lot suspicion Chanur got too much power—" "Too much? We got debts, friend—we got debts up to our noses, my brother's not getting any younger—he'll go down one day, and gods even know if it'll be a Chanur that takes him. My nephews are all fools." It was too much to say. Far too much already. She shrugged and looked elsewhere down the corridor. "Chanur got space," Jik said. "Maybe Chanur bring back thing these world-hani not want, a?" She slanted an ear back and looked at him then, this hunter-captain who was way, way up in mahen councils. Mahendo'sat had brought hani into space. Given them ships. Created, if hani ever admitted it, the very concept of the han. And Jik understood that. He understood it very well indeed. "You longtime got your hands in every nest in the Compact, mahe—" She slipped deep into the pidgin, facing wrinkle-ringed brown eyes, a sober, too-wise stare. "You know this Rhif Ehrran?" She expected a shrug from Jik, denial, some glib answer. Instead: "Maybe Chanur enemy get organize, a? Maybe you watch you back, friend. I make big mistake at Kshshti, bring Ehrran in this thing. Big mistake." "I believe you," she said. "Now I believe you. What you want here, huh?" "Want say same thing. Want make sure you not come 'cross bow with Vigilance at Kefk. I like you one piece, hani." "Come here." "A?" She grabbed him by the arm. and brought him down the corridor, around the corner and down again, where the lowerdecks washroom was. She pushed the button and the door shot back. The kif sat on a folded stack of blankets on the tiles against the far wall. Its robes were tucked close about it. It had dropped its hood. Now its head came up and it rose in one muscular glide and bowed, showing empty hands, before it looked up again. Courtesy of a killer-kind. "Is it ker Pyanfar?" "It's me. This is the captain of Aja Jin." "Sssstk." A deep nod of the head. "I am impressed. Nomesteturjai." "Kif," Jik said, "His name is Skkukuk. He says he's mine. A gift, from Sikkukkut." "A. A noikkhe?" "Skku nik kktitik kuikkht kehtk tok nif fik pukkukk." —Why? Pyanfar followed threads of it. —Subordinate, weapon, for pride, revenge— "Nfkokkth shokku hakhoth nkki to skohut." "A," Jik said. "Well?" said Pyanfar. "You got kif," Jik said, and shrugged. "I am starving," it said. She shut the door, laid her ears back and looked at Jik. "What do I do with it, huh? Put it out the hatch?" "They kill him sure." "Well, gods rot it, do I run a charity for kif?" Another shrug. "Sikkukkut give you crewman. Not number one important. Maybe fellow make mistake—" "Maybe a crewman whose loyalty's in question? Maybe even one off that disabled ship?" Jik's eyes flickered. "Maybe so. All same, he belong you. You got deal, a?" "God's rot, you want him?" Jik rubbed at his nose. "Tell you truth. That give you sfik away. I friend, say no do." "You mean status with that gods-rotted kif? Sikkukkut?" "Best thing you kill this kif. Send same pieces to Sikkukkut." "Huh." "No do, a? Maybe you turn him out naked on dock." "So they kill him." "He same kill few, maybe." "I've traded up and down docks from Jininsai to Meetpoint, and I've never heard the like. You understand it? What's Sikkukkut up to?" "I fight kif long time. Long time, Pyanfar. Kif at Meetpoint, they quiet kif. This be border. Dis-pu-ted Zone. This space no one got. Where we go next, this be true kif space. You not see before. Not see before these thing. No hani see—'cept maybe Tahar. And she lot crazy." "You've seen Tahar?" "I talk with her, one time, two. She strange. Lot strange—" He touched his brow. "She was strange before she ditched us and turned tail at Gaohn; and took kif money—" "Hani law." "You gods-rotted right, hani law. A lot of hani'd like to get a piece of that ship." "Maybe do." "Maybe do. Rhif Ehrran was already headed for Kefk when we picked her up at Kshshti. You know why?" "Maybe you know." "I don't. That worries me, Jik." "Worry me too." "What's an honest hani doing going Kefk way? What's an honest hani know about a kifish system?" Jik ducked his head and rubbed his nose. "Tell you, hani, few ship I know sometime maybe got rig turn off ID squeal. Sure you not know such thing. Maybe ship also got rig make fake ID to beacon. Vigilance hunter-ship, a? Got lot stuff. Lot stuff. Also maybe know Kefk pretty good." "Been there?" "Stsho been there. Come, go. Stsho know lot stuff. Maybe sell in-for-mation." "I'll believe that. But what's she doing there?" "Kefk be Tahar port," Jik said. "She hunt Tahar. Also—maybe—maybe she got stsho interest. Stsho business. You think, hani: stsho don't fight. Stsho always hire guard. Who they hire?" "Mahendo'—" The suspicion got through. She looked up into mahen brown eyes, murkier and darker than any hani's. "Good gods, they count us barbarians. They wouldn't hire hani for anything but—" "Who else they got hire when got falling-out with mahendo'sat? Hire kif? They not fools. No, maybe all sudden they got idea hani not bad neighbor—maybe all sudden want make good friend with the han. Maybe one day there be hani guard at Meetpoint, not mahendo'sat. Big advantage to hani. To some hani. Lot money. Lot stsho money—and they plenty rich. I tell you truth, friend. I tell you truth. Ehrran want stop all hani make problem this deal. Moon Rising. You." "You put us in the same—" "Ehrran do." "Gods." She flung a gesture up, put distance between herself and Jik. Stared at him. "I tell you, you got lot enemy, hani." She stood there a long moment. Jik made his mouth a thin, inturned line, as if more might get out. "What you do?" he asked finally. "What do I do? What do I do? I ought to gods-be head out of here and leave you and Ehrran to the kif." "You not do." "Try me." "No, you not do. Where go? Maing Tol? Han got 'nough suspicion already. Also—you not stsho. Chanur don't go hide in fight, wait for thing be better, let friend die . . . ." "Friend!" "I save you neck." "For politics, for—" "—same good reason, a?" "Gods rot you, Jik." "I try save you now. Want you at Kefk. Need you. Need you stay 'live, hani." She looked off across the corridor. Anywhere else. Jik's voice was dim. Her ears lay flat against her skull. "So what do I do with the gods-be kif in my washroom, huh?" "You keep. I want you keep. He yours. He got nowhere to go, a? You got plenty sfik he fight like devil kill you enemy." "And if he decides I don't have?" "You kill him quick. He offer you weapons, a?" "Huh." "He tell truth. Kif truth." Jik laid a careful hand on her shoulder. "You keep him lock up tight. A? Later I take. I got reason." "I'm sure you do." Her nose wrinkled. She endured the hand, that was no small weight, and turned and stared up into his face. "So what's the game at Kefk? What's Sikkukkut want? He wanted me. Before you ever got into it. He got me to Mkks. What's he want, dragging me into this Kefk business?" "You got damn lot sfik." "You're crazy." She shook the hand off. "He's crazy." "You got think like kif." "I'm sure you're good at it." "You friend." "Friend, my—" "Maybe kif play same game like Ehrran." He shrugged, hands in the back of his belt. "He kif. Kif mind got twists. One, he hate Akkhtimakt. Two, he want take opposite from Akkhtimakt. Three, he got no heart. Got no way understand you not all time mad like kif. You add all up, think like kif. He give you kif advisor—he number one smart: you take kif advice, he hope know what you do. You got lot sfik with him. Also you got tame human." "What's that got to do with it?" "Kif all time got disadvantage, try predict what outsider do, Sikkukkut lot curious 'bout hu-man-ity. Same way stsho not understand kif: stsho want make deal with Akkhtimakt, want make same deal with Sikkukkut, same with Ehrran hani, a? Someone eat they heart someday. Maybe Sikkukkut. Meanwhile, Sikkukkut want get me, a? Want also get human. Human be big problem soon. Same tc'a. Stsho—they nothing without make alliance with hani, if they not more trust mahendo'sat. Anuurn hani damn fool get involve in this politic." "They're not the only ones." "You born involve, Pyanfar. You spacer hani. You too smart." "Then why am I here?" "You got stake. We all got stake." "Like what, like hani do all the fighting and mahendo'sat pick up all the eggs? Same as you and your partner did to me at Gaohn? Same as get me barred from Meetpoint—same as—" "Pyanfar. We all got stake. This Mkks be half mahen station, a? I go take walk, I talk few people. Learn thing." "Learned what?" An expansive shrug. "Like knnn be upset. Like tc'a big disturb. Chi crazy like always. Like big rumor on methane-side got lot human come. Lot human. Stsho damn upset." Mahen visionaries. Prophecies on the com. "Gods-be." It was there to have been read. She raked a hand through her mane. "Geran said." "What say?" "Rumor's all over Mkks. Thousands of humans coming. Where are they coming to?" "I think maybe Tt'a'va'o." "Good gods." Tc'a. Tc'a territory, right up to Meetpoint. "What fool set that up?" "Kif know. I think they know damn sure." "Then what are we getting into at Kefk? For godssakes, Jik—" "Big game. Number one big game, hani." "Game. Gods rot it, human ships have fired at knnn." Jik's jaw dropped. He closed it. "Tully told me. Now you trade me one, partner. Tell me the gods-be truth!" "What you know 'bout knnn business?" "Nothing else. Absolutely nothing. But a knnn ship was tracking me directly after Goldtooth gave me Tully; stayed with me when I left Meetpoint headed for Urtur. I lost it. I don't know where it went. But it was on me. It could have been at Urtur. It might even know I went to Kshshti. Hear? We did have tc'a activity there." "Damn," Jik said. "Damn." "Let me tell you something else. I don't trust that tc'a stationmaster at Kshshti. I don't know what it heard. I don't like it, hear?" "What tc'a do?" "Do? It was scared witless, that's what. Mention knnn near it and it went into gibbering lunacy. Avoid, it said. It talked about hani dying at Mkks. It, talked—talked about three sets of kif to watch out for, one of them the kifish home world." "I hear this. Not surprise. Homeworld kif wait see who win, a? They not stupid." "No, they're not stupid, just a lunatic mahe who thinks I'm going to play tag with the knnn and politics with the gods-be kif—" "You listen." Jik looked her in the eyes and jabbed her in the chest with a blunt-clawed finger. "I tell you truth, tell you truth, hani and mahendo'sat be longtime friend, a? Stsho friend only to stsho, same like kif. We got Sikkukkut, got same this fellow in the loo, a? We got lot sfik, this kif Sikkukkut get some from us; he go be number one kif. Safe kif." "I'm not so sure he is." "I tell you this: Sikkukkut got same interest we got. He want keep thing lot same like now. Want make quiet. Sure, he lot dangerous. But you respect him, he got sfik, not need kill you. This Akkhtimakt, he oppose Sikkukkut: he got kill all Sikkukkut deal with. That be long list, a? Sikkukkut enemy all—be kif; but I tell you, Pyanfar—lot people be Akkhtimakt enemy who not be kif. Whole damn Compact. Humanity. Where he stop, huh? And we already got knnn trouble. How much trouble we need?" "They're all crazy." "You hani, you like too much law. Kif, they got Personage. Sen-si-ble, like mahendo'sat. Make life more simple." He touched her shoulder again. "You see why I want you 'live? You don't cross Vigilance, a?" A clank sounded from outside, the noise of the line connections being withdrawn. "This fancy ID system I'm not supposed to ask if you got—any chance it can fool the beacon at Kefk?" He rubbed the bridge of his nose and gave her an anxious glance. "I not say got." ' "Can you?" "Maybe I run—little ahead main group. Maybe we get beacon. One good look all I need." "Maybe! Kite in there alone?" "A, got good kif friend, good friend Vigilance follow real close." "Sure, sure." "Hey, you no worry—you damn smart pilot, a?" "Sure. No worry. No worry. Gods rot it, that's a binary system, Jik, and that's a kif you've got to rely on!" "Got you come." "Gods, what do you think I am? You're crazy, you know that? This whole thing is crazy! You're going to trip that zenith guardpost all alone out there—" "Ana be right. You got nice eyes." "You—" "Hey, I got go," Jik said, holding up his hands. And with a lift of brows: "A." He reached into one of his belt-pockets and pulled out a small square packet. "Want give you this." "What?" Her ears went down flat. "Gods-be, Jik, no more tricks! No more—" "You take." He pulled her hand forward and slapped the packet into her palm. "Things go bad you take, run, go Meetpoint, find help." "What is this thing?" "Record. Got same microfiche. You don't worry." A blithe mahen grin. "All code." "Jik—" "I trust." The Pride's bow rang to a second thump; the ventilation fans died and started up with a different, more rapid sound. They were on their own. "I got hurry, Pyanfar. They take ramp soon." He started away down the corridor and looked back. "You be smart, Pyanfar." "Go on, you'll miss the ramp." She pocketed the microfiches and picked up the pocket com. "Haral. Stand by to let Jik out. His people still outside?" "Still there. I've been keeping an eye on them, captain. They're all right." "Huh. Good." She broke the contact and walked back the other way, not without a misgiving glance at the washroom door. More thumps from the bow. The dockers were working fast. Anxious to get them out, one guessed. Pyanfar headed for the lift. A cold lump had settled in her stomach, indigestible. Gods, gods, and Jik himself never told all the truth Not ever the part that told what he would do. Chapter 7 It was chaos, in the bridgeward corridor as Pyanfar headed out of the lift. Tully was there with Hilfy, doing final latch-check on doors, which meant Khym was busy somewhere and not doing that. Tirun came running to catch the lift door with a covered bowl in either hand. "Hurry it," Pyanfar yelled as Tirun darted past. "Aye," Tirun said. "And don't go in with it!" The door shut. Upship, Chur was at her cabin door, with Geran; she had a new and tightly wrapped bandage round her middle. There was a crash from lowerdecks, another seal in place. "You sure about this," Pyanfar said in passing. "Absolutely," said Chur. "Captain," Geran said in courtesy, and Pyanfar left them both behind, headed bridgeward in long strides. Haral was at her post, the only one as yet, but Chur and Geran were trailing in at Pyanfar's back. The boards were Sit and The Pride's initial systems were all up, with ready-lights on the rest. Pyanfar threw herself into her own chair and powered it about. "Captain." Haral acknowledged the command transfer with a dip of her many-ringed ears, never a turn of her head or a missed beat in the routine switch-flicking of power-up. Pyanfar shoved the com plug into her own left ear and leaned, fished the microfiche packet out of her pocket and shoved it in the security bin. "That it?" Haral said. "That's the latest bit of trouble. Gods, I'm tired of mail-carrying. Gods give that Ehrran—" Khym showed up, from the galleyward corridor, his hands full of food-packets, his face all cheerful. —sons, the ancient curse went. Pyanfar swallowed it and listened to the com. The voice out of central was mahendo'sat, likewise the docking chief talking to them on the outside line. One could believe the universe safe and sane; and then a kif spoke up from down the row, giving them its outbound time. Khym reached past her to clip the concentrates at her elbow. Three packets, one of water. 'Thanks," Pyanfar muttered. And to Haral: "You mark what Jik's trying?" "Uhhhn." "That's not on the plan. Something recent. Real recent. Didn't want to use that system in front of the kif, that's what, and Sikkukkut wasn't going to use his—eggs'll get pearls Harukk's got that equipment too and Sikkukkut won't use it." "That where Jik was, you think? Push-and-shove with the kif? Trying to get them to—" "Might've been. Gods know. Gods know if Ehrran knows what he's up to." "He's got to fill her in. If she comes in alone with the kif—" Clang-thunk! The accessway was loose. Crash! The grapples from Mkks station retracted. They had their own grip on Mkks and they were against the docking boom: that was all that held them now. "He didn't want to tell us," Pyanfar said. "He wasn't going to. You get all that business down there on tape?" "Hhhuun, yes. Want it logged?" Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches. "It's enough to give Ehrran our skins. No. But don't erase it either." She looked across the dividing console, met Haral's gold-eyed hani stare. Different than Jik's. Uncomplex in honor and greatly complex in loyalties. "Stow it in my personal file, huh? You don't need to be part of it." Haral's ears went back. Offended. "Aye. If you want it that way." "I do. Who heard?" "Me." "Huh." Pyanfar looked to the controls and brought her board up. A seat hissed under weight. She half-turned and saw Tully settle in next to Chur. "Tully." "Captain?" Tully turned his head, not using com and the translator. "You crew, huh?" "I—" Tully misunderstood the question and fished up a small syringe from the chairside pocket. "I sleep at jump, wake at Kefk. I work." It sounded chancy. Gods made humans and stsho that way, that jump made them crazy. So they ran ships in and out of jump unconscious. Lunatics. "No fear, huh?" A primate grin, quickly compressed to a hani smile. "I scared." "Huh. Us too." "Hurry it up!" Haral said over shipwide com. The voice echoed through the bridge and corridors. "Tirun, move it." "Vigilance lodge a protest?" Pyanfar asked, swinging round. "Aye," Haral said, and wrinkled her nose and laid her ears back. "I'd give this voyage's profits to've been in range of one of that pair in that lock." "Huh." Profits. She laughed. But humor died. "It was a stupid thing. Stupid, that's what it was. Like a gods-rotted—" Khym was on the bridge and Pyanfar swallowed that ancient comparison down too. Called up the outbound schedule, "Log that Ehrran business. Right down to the exit from the lock." A hesitation. A key pushed. "I already had it separated." "I'll lay it out for the rest of us—put Geran wise to it, huh?" (Gods, Khym back there, coming and going in all this business between her and Haral, between mahendo'sat in the lower corridor, and not a question out of him, not a What's going on? or a Why? The world was out of shape. But she and Khym had both said a lot of things in the dark. Last watch.) She glanced aside. Khym settled into observer one, between Hilfy's as yet vacant post and Geran's seat, flicking switches. He brought com live there, backup now to Hilfy. Geran would sit Chur's post at scan one; Tully observer two; Chur moved to second scan; and Tirun, with below-decks cargo ops and second-bridge shut down, was left observer three, when she got to it, as auxiliary switcher, comp operator, engineer, and if things went amiss, backup at armaments. When she got to it. Pyanfar punched in lowerdeck monitoring. "Tirun. You all right down there?" "I'm coming," said a breathless, moving source. The sound of running feet in main corridor below. Pyanfar broke the contact. Hilfy took her post. Pyanfar caught the reflection in the monitor, against the light from Khym's boards. Back in place. Home again. A ready light came on her board from Hilfy. A mahen voice sputtered in her ear: "Clear when ready. You got clear, Pride of Chanur." Hilfy acknowledged the station communication Khym had brought through, taking over. "Thank you, Mkks." Routine and cool. Thank you, Mkks. Pyanfar's blood went cold. Aft, the lift worked. That would be Tirun. "Geran," Haral said, "put Vigilance on the guard-it list right along with the kif." A moment's silence. "You serious, huh?" "Real serious. Jik says." "Uhhhhn." No further comment. That got done. Their scan operators were onto it. "Aja Jin to Pride, you got number one depart, go, go." Running footsteps in the topside corridor behind. "Gods rot," Haral said into the mike, "sister, we're going, move, move, move!" Footsteps reached the bridge, a body dropped into a chair and Haral hit the ungrapple program. Clank-bang. They were under power then, a little queasiness as The Pride came off station and gave herself that little bit of thrust that got her outbound. Nothing showy. The Pride could move. It was not a fact they cared to advertise to the kif or to any other watchers at Mkks. Haral brought The Pride about at leisure and took her time. They might have been hauling eggshells. "We got an update on the entry projections," Pyanfar said. "Jik's got a—" Then: "Priority," said Hilfy, that dreadful word from a post with bad news. It got switched. "—same advise you," from Mkks Central's ice-clear voice, "we got tc'a go outbound. Navigation caution." "Gods rot!" Pyanfar exclaimed. "—Tell it power down and wait," Hilfy was saying over com. "Mkks station—" Com transcripting was all over second monitor, kif protests, protests from Jik and Vigilance . . . . "Got a blip," said Geran. "Confirm something outbound from the methane-sector—" "That's a kif away," Haral said, overriding. "Scan two. Comp, get that tc'a figured." "I'm on it," Tirun said. "Stand by, Geran." Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and snatched helm function to her board while Haral sorted priorities. Thank gods for full crew: com was babble from three prime sources and a dozen unauthorized outputs; Geran was on station scan output and Chur tried to sort out blips exploding off Mkks station about them like seeds from a pod. Pyanfar kicked the rotation in, for The Pride's internal g; and rolled them up in a move that got to the pre-set course the hard way. Gods, they were on a hair-breadth schedule out to that jump-point, they had everything calculated down to the instant for that tandem jump, and the situation behind them looked like feathers in a windstorm. "Schedule's blown to a mahen hell," Haral said. "Gods blast that split-brained fool! We got a lunatic mess back there!" "Hilfy—" From Khym, urgently. "Priority," Hilfy said. "Station transmission, general to all ships." Image turned up on second monitor. Violet light: a writhing serpent-shape, gold-mottled, that dipped and wove before the lens. Methane-sector was talking to them: methane traffic control on visual output. The yellow, sticklike form of a chi raced up and down the tc'a's uplifted back, darted about its head in frenetic attentions to its—whatever a tc'a was to a chi: master; comrade; friend or pet. The tc'a wailed, the multipart harmonics of its segmented brain and speech apparatus, multiple minds, multiple viewpoints in matrix translated at the bottom of the screen. TC'A TC'A HANI HANI MAHE KIF KIF MKKS KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK GIVE GO GO GO GO GO FIGHT TELL CHI GO GO GO GO GO CHI TC'A GO GO GO GO GO KNNN KNNN KNNN KNNN KNNN KNNN KNNN A cold wind went up Pyanfar's back. "Hilfy: get comp on that. Tirun, go to com one." "Aye," Hilfy said. Not a word of criticism. No outcry from the crew. The tc'a ship was out ahead of them, likely to foul their schedule; a tc'a official onstation was talking about knnn, and no one sane wanted them involved. No one could talk to knnn but tc'a; and tc'a talked like that, in matrices that had to be read in all directions at once. It spoke of two tc'a presences, one at Mkks, going, perhaps—(give a chi?)—to tc'a at Kefk; while knnn were involved all across everyone's motivations, and of two kinds of kif (Kefk-bound?) and two kinds of hani (gods, did it pick that schism up?) only one lot of kif was going to fight? ". . . abort this lunacy!" a hani voice said, Rhif Ehrran from Vigilance, fairly yelling over com. "Aja Jin, pull us back!" "You want what," Jik's answer came back. "Give time Kefk know we come? Sure thing they blow us to hell, Vigilance. You stay on course, stay on course, you hear?" "Khoihktkt mahe kefkefkti—"—from the kif: The mahe's agreeing with us. "Aunt, comp's got nothing better. The tc'a's talking about notifying knnn and says that tc'a's going with us to Kefk. Comp's not sure about the rest, but it's got a conjecture—" "Vigilance is on," Geran said, "wanting the captain direct." "Refuse," said Haral. "Call on three," Khym said. "It's Harukk. Their com wants the captain." "Refuse: get Jik." "Belay that," Pyanfar said, biting her mustaches and reading comp's conjectures on the tc'a, not far off her own. "Jik'll talk when he can. Give me output. Compose a message to the tc'a and tell it we go and it waits." "Aye." From Hilfy, tautly. No ship talked to methane-breathers without filling out abundant official queries afterward. There were reasons. Like methane-breather logic, which could take something fatally amiss. They were different. Very. And went berserk very easily. Tc'a were the peaceful lot. Knnn—were something else. "Aunt—here's the set-up; approve it before it goes." HANI HANI MAHE KIF KIF TC'A TC'A SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP MKKS SHIP GO GO GO GO GO MKKS WAIT DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER "Makes sense to me," Pyanfar muttered as it came up on the screen. "Log and send it. Send to Aja Jin: quote: We're on schedule and proceeding. We've advised the tc'a of navigation hazard." "Jik's on already," Geran said. "He's saying go with it. Still go." "Fine." It was not the answer she had rather have had, but it was the one she expected. Go with it. Go ahead. Take the chance. Jump with a tc'a in their midst. Tc'a navigated like snakes. They were snakes. Come in at Kefk blind with a tc'a liable to pop out of hyperspace any gods-rotten-where off-mark and the faster hunter-ships plotting to overjump them in hyper-space . . . . It was asking for disaster. Collision. "We'll shine bright enough for Anuurn to see, if we kink this one," Pyanfar said. "Someone want to calculate the size of the fireball?" "Gods-rotted bright one," Haral said. "Vigilance advises us," said Khym, "she's filing a—" Hysterical laughter broke out in sneezes, short and wild. They were hair-triggered. Hani. Hell-bent on course for kifish zones. "What's that Ehrran think she is?" Hilfy cried over it all, as if there had never been kif, never been those awful days. Hilfy: youth and outrage. "What's been going on?" "Welcome back, kid," Haral said dryly, never turning around. "You want a list?" "Chanur's got trouble," Geran said, from Hilfy's right. "Ehrran's the name of it. She's after our hide. Any way she can get it. We don't cross her bows. That's the word on it. We take this jump, we thank the gods this time we're coming in a little slower than that ship of Ehrran's. She'll be in front of us at Kefk. Don't want her on our tail, no thanks." "Prefer the kif instead, huh?" A small shiver in the air. "Gods-rotted safer," Tirun said. "Temporarily." Silence then. "Niece," said Pyanfar. "We don't forget either." Silence still. "What after Kefk?" Hilfy asked then, finally, in a normal voice. "Where do we go? You got an idea—captain?" Respectfully. "Have I been left out of briefings?" Pyanfar flexed her fingers on controls, worked her elbow in the stress-brace. Drew a whole breath. "Some. You want it in a capsule? That engine-pack back there, this fancy new rig—nothing's free, is it? We're in hock, Hilfy Chanur. Nothing money pays for. And that Ehrran business—" Lines trued up. They were on, headed for their mark. The tc'a was out in front of them now, having gotten up to its speed: no more turns now, even for it. Nothing but a knnn played games with physics. "Gods-rotted tc'a's going to be in front all the way," Pyanfar said. "Gods only know where it'll be after jump. I can tell you this. Jik's got an idea he's going to fake an ID signal at Kefk—break through there a shade ahead of the rest and get that scan for us before it shuts down." "Gods," Tirun said. "How much ahead?" "He didn't say. No schema. Nothing. I tell you this, if he doesn't make it, we got trouble. Real trouble. We got a nest of kif for one thing. We got some other things too. What are we getting on com? We got some quiet out there?" "Nothing worth listening to," Haral said. "Lot of kif stuff." "Vigilance has stopped transmitting," Geran said. "So's Aja Jin," Hilfy said. "All right. Geran, I want you com backup right now; take number one scan after jump." "Got it." "Hilfy." "Aunt?" "You asked about Ehrran. I'll tell you what I've guessed so far in this business. Our troubles aren't just bad luck. They've been coordinated." "Ehrran?" "Oh, higher than that, imp. We settled that dustup at Gaohn, we busted our hani enemies out of Kohan's way, drove Tahar clan into near collapse, pushed Moon Rising into exile—we brought mahendo'sat to the homeworld, we brought humans and we brought knnn, which sets off the isolationists back home right proper, doesn't it? Naur. Her bunch. Llun clan got chewed up helping us at Gaohn; so'd others of our friends. Tahar, enemy that they were—we broke them and broke their power over their allies; and that left vacuum, and that let some other clans move up in the han." "Naur and Jimun and Schunan," Haral muttered. "Ehrran's precious patrons." "That's precisely the shape of it. We were better off with Tahar for enemies. They were bastards, but they were spacing bastards. What we got left is the worldbound old eggsuckers like Naur; and those fat old women'd just as soon see us all back in kilts and sofhyn." "It's me," Khym said. "Swallow it, Khym." "Look, if I'd stayed downworld—" "If not that, some other thing. We brought outworlders into Anuurn system—" "—and got a male offworld." "So we got every bigot in the han stirred up. The spacing clans got chewed up bad at Gaohn; among the Immunes, our Llun friends lost too gods-rotted many good women; and Ehrran's been itching after a piece of their rumps for years. Sure, Ehrran'll kiss-foot for the Naur; they got themselves that shiny ship, got themselves big ears and notebooks, and the stsho—those fluttering bastards have got their fingers in the stew. The mahendo'sat leaned on the stsho to get our papers reinstated because Goldtooth suddenly wanted our help—wanted spacing hani on his side. So the stsho bent, they always will—but straightway they ran and got Ehrran's ear and sucked that fool right in. Ehrran was out at Meetpoint hunting down Tahar and doing any other bit of business the han wanted with the stsho—like secret negotiations, maybe, for a whole lot of things—and then the stsho up and offered them our hides for a bonus." "Stle stles stlen," said Hilfy. "Stsho got humanity coming in at their backs. They waffled on Goldtooth at Meetpoint. Gods know what they spilled to Ehrran; and I think if Stle stles stlen were less corrupt and less scared of Goldtooth the old bastard would have sold Tully to the kif right off. But we were there, and Ehrran didn't bribe them, iron-spined fool that she is. Rotted stsho xenophobes are climbing all over each other, thinking about humans coming in at their backs and straight up against stsho territory. But Ehrran played politics and got outbid—I'm guessing. Stle sties stlen lost his nerve about doublecrossing Goldtooth when we turned up with a virtual blank check and high-level mahen authorizations. But I wouldn't be surprised if old Stle stles stlen worries a lot nowadays about the mahen guards at his door at night. And I've got to tell you something else. Something you'd better hear. Haral—you got that tape from down in the corridor?" "Aye." "Run it. That and the one with Sikkukkut. We've been getting a lot of offers, cousins. On all sides." It was a long, long silence on the bridge, except for that thread of sound. Operations interrupted it. Pyanfar listened with one ear and winced now and again, kept The Pride running, tried not to think what Hilfy was going to say. Or what the translator was doing with it in Tully's ear. Tc'a. Tc'a. Methane-breathers were upset, Jik had said. Jik had been out in the station at large. In secret. Conniving with gods knew what agencies; and tc'a were high on the list of possibilities. Right along with Sikkukkut. The tape finished. There was silence after, too. "I've got us into a mess," Pyanfar said. "One gods-be mess. I thought you'd like to know just what kind." "Sounds like—" Tirun said, "sounds like Jik's right. We were born involved. Being Chanur. When we get home—I'm betting we won't find the han what we left." "I'm betting we won't," Pyanfar said. "But what is, nowadays?" Another long silence. "Well, I'm with you," Tirun said. "Same," Chur said; and: "Same," her sister said. "Aunt, I—" "Maybe you want to think about it, niece." The beep and tick of instruments went on. Tc'a matrix came up as comp sorted it, but it was all the same. "Tully," Pyanfar said, "you understand even half of it?" "I hear some." Pyanfar could not see his face, saw only a shadowy reflection in a monitor, one un-hani silhouette. "I hani," he said. "I hani." She blinked, thinking that through. But it made a warm spot all the same. "Khym," she said. "My opinion?" he said. A great sigh gusted into com, a low rumbling. "Pity Ehrran's Immune." "But they are," Hilfy said. "They'll go at father. They'll go for him at home. We may not have Chanur any more." "I figure," said Pyanfar, "I figure Kohan Chanur's still no easy mark, niece. My brother and your father's no fool. Neither's any of our sisters, to let the bastards maneuver them out of the house. They'll be holding on. Long as we're in space, long as there's Chanur ships loose to worry about—Naur and her pets'll use some caution about dirty tricks. Kohan can still take anything that I know about, if the fight's fair." And she thought of Khym when she said it, and felt an old pang of guilt: If I'd been home when Kara challenged him, if I'd been there to prevent hangers-on from interfering— Khym might still be lord in Mahn if she had been home—if she had come blasting in for him the way Chanur clan had rallied for Kohan Chanur against her son Kara Mahn. Khym might not be in exile now if she had been there—even alone. Even when the rest of his wives and sisters and daughters deserted him. She might have stood by him against their son and their blackguard daughter. Chanur might then have had its best ally intact, in Khym lord Mahn. And the likes of Ehrran would not have risen and the world would not have changed. "Nav fix positive," said Haral. "Wonder if that tc'a up there understands the flight plan," Tirun said. "We'll find out, I guess," said Geran. "Want to lay bets against, na Khym?" "She's cheating again," Tirun said. "She always collects." "We got formation behind us," Haral said. "The kif are making mark. Looks like we're really going." "Looks like," Pyanfar said. Her nerves tingled. Her forearm shed fur on the panel-edge. Sheer terror. Doubtless the rest of them were flutter-nerved as well. "I'm with you," Hilfy said hoarsely. "Thanks, niece. Stand by, everybody. We're coming up on jump. Tully. You better use the drugs. Help him, Chur. Make sure he's out." "Aye," Chur said. She punched in all-ship. "Kif—Skkukuk. Get ready: we're going for jump." "I offer you your enemies. "Fine, that's real fine, kif." She broke the contact quickly. A vague guilt still gnawed at her. For a kif. As well talk to the walls. It talked good hani; they talked good hani back to it; and nothing intelligible got said to either mind. I offer you your enemies. There was stress in its voice. Maybe it was scared, alone on a hani ship. Maybe it was trying to bargain. Maybe it would starve, helpless and unattended in that washroom. Or break its bones in maneuver. It was, gods knew, as trapped in its fortunes as they were—their good luck talisman; or their personal jinx. "Jump plus ninety," Haral said. "Fixed on Kefk." "Get it in your heads," Pyanfar said, because the other side of jump, things fuzzed and habits took over. "Jik might not make it. If he doesn't, we've got to move fast: get position first. Locate Harukk next. Remember that, hear? We're going in with g. We'll make it that easy on ourselves. If it goes real sour we've got a few options. The second we come out, we lock reference on Tt'a'va'o; we run for Meetpoint if we have to. That's not Jik's plan; it's mine. We've got those three guardstations to keep track of at Kefk. We've got heavy debris in that system, it's a close binary stirring that stuff up, and kif made our map. Even if Jik gets us one. Remember that. Remember it, all the time." "We got those numbers," Tirun said, "I got 'em up. Gods send Jik's anywhere along his entry line and we'll track him." "Nasty place," Chur said. "Real nasty." "Set systems," Haral said in calm, cold tones, and switch-flicking went on apace, systems-check, line-up. Pyanfar coordinated with her, shed the anxieties and called up the computer prompt program, comparing plan against tc'a-problems and Jik's intentions. Shifted a priority in the prompts. Re-ran it. Fed it in with the press of a key. Other stations were doing similar things. Haral was running master-check, making sure all jobs were sequenced. There was most need of locating themselves on the passive-scan; getting absolute position to start with. Then find Jik, find Harukk and Vigilance and ride down their trail to Kefk's heart. "Sure one lunatic way to run a starsystem," Tirun said. "We can try telling them that." The numbers ticked away. "There goes the tc'a," Geran said. "Gods help us," Haral said. "Tully?" Pyanfar asked. "He's under," Chur said. "Minus five," Haral said. Gods, a tc'a loose in their pattern. And Jik had been out of pocket before undock. Talking about methane-breathers and visiting spies— Could Jik bribe a tc'a? Was that what he had been up to, in his furtive sortie onto Mkks station docks just before they left? Navigation help? Precision? Was that what Jik had been after—a way to cut it fine enough to keep Harukk on his tail—using tc'a computers and tc'a charts to get one critical spacetime calculation— —on a kifish system?—against Harukk's wishes and beyond what Harukk wanted to provide them? My gods— "Minus one." They were gone. —there again. —falling— —material and solid. Lights were blinking, the dopplered instruments gathering input and reading it— "Kefk," Haral said. "Spectrum-match." "Mark, where's our mark?" "Searching," Geran said. "It's—gods rot—that's—in tolerance." "Unnnh." The mind wanted to wander off at tangents and seek its former nowhere. The lights danced, hypnotic, led the eye in patterns: there was the sunlight on the hills— —home. "Aunt Pyanfar," the little girl cried, running breakneck down the hill, ears laid back and small limbs pumping with all their might, "aunt Pyanfar! you're home!" Wide eyes and all ears, was Hilfy Chanur, her father's darling daughter, her aunt's surrogate for her own faithless Tahy— —in Chanur's yard at night: "Aunt Pyanfar, name me that star—" "—That's Kjohi; it's a white, much, much too far and too hot anyway. We don't go there. See that little one below? That's a yellow. That's Tt'a'va'o." "Have you been there?" "No hani has, yet. That's a tc'a star. Tc'a have a whole hand of brains; they sing when they talk; they have seven voices all at once. I knew one once. Its name was So'o'ai'na'a'o." Hilfy laughed. "Say that again—" "Where's that gods-be tc'a? Geran! Chur! where's our own schema, we got any position on anybody?" "Negative, negative, I got the other map integrated almost—got it, got it, got it—It's coming through . . . ." The image turned up on Pyanfar's board. Kefk-system schematic, adjusted to their entry-point. Sikkukkut's best current map—at least of things like major rocks that could be long-term mapped and tracked in their chaotic orbits through Kefk system. A huge starstation—gods, she knew it must be big. The kif's only legitimate outlet to Compact trade, after all. Fifty ships in port and miner-craft scattered like red stars among the yellow ones of asteroids; and no one of those ships where a ship was indicated. It was only a for-instance of a map. Beware, hani: ships might exist. And they do. It showed kif and tc'a and chi in port. Likely. Again a for-instance. Gods knew what else. "Stand by dump. Haral, double-check me." "Aye." —Use the wits, remember, wake up. Aja Jin out front by now—gods, where? Harukk and half the kif and Vigilance, with more kif due in at any instant. —Down again. —"Aunt Pyanfar—teach me the stars—" Her own daughter, Tahy Mahn: "You're never here. You always come back too late. It's all over now. Kara's gone. I sent him to Hermitage—" Son and daughter gone. Each in different ways— "So. I've got things to do, Tahy. I'm sorry." "You'll always have them. You don't live in this world. It's that ship! It's that ship! I don't know you, I never will—" —And up. Back to realspace. Pyanfar's eyes rolled and centered on the lights, her fingers scantly aware of the controls; her elbow ached. Third dump. Come on, line us up, look alive back there—" "Got it—we got Jik, he's out there!" —"Pyanfar," Kohan said, his broad face, his golden eyes gone all gentle, unlike the scowl he wore for show. "Sister—for the gods' own sake—be careful this time." —She was selfish. He was not. He omitted to mention the real reason for his worry. Khym. Her private madness. His own public embarrassment. They had talked about it once. —"They'll go for you," Kohan said. "All our enemies. They'll be trying." —"Law out there's different, brother of mine. Safer. Folk accept what's strange." —"I hope so," Kohan said. "I do hope so." —And he walked away. "We're on, we're all right. Got signal, got signal—he's got us a beacon-image, he got it!" "Star-fix, get that star-fix, Haral." "Affirmative. Tt'a'va'o. We've acquired." "Uhhhnnn." She felt the drain of strength, the wobble in her hand. They were inertial. G pushed her decidedly down, not back. The arm ached in the brace. She freed it and pulled loose one of the concentrate packets from its clip, bit a hole in it and drank. The stuff hit bottom in her stomach and lay there like lead. Gods, gods—figures ripped past like lunacy. And coincided. "We're on," Haral said. "By the gods, we did it twice, and blind; and Jik and all of 'em—" "I'll believe it when we find that tc'a," Geran said. "Where is that lunatic? GOOD GODS!" Scan broke up. Lights went red. The siren howled. "Haaaa!" from Khym; and for a moment there was a nausea like dumpdown; but not— "V check," Pyanfar yelled into the mike. "Gods blast—" —dump, this time, with a sluggish awful nausea. The tc'a had come in close. Ripped past and dumped speed with two rapid flares of its field. And it was there, a large lump on scan matched with them in v. "We just found the tc'a," Tirun said. "Gods and thunders," said Pyanfar. Her blood ran hot and cold, her joints went weak; the concentrate fought to come up again. Someone was throwing up. On scan there were sane blips again, but one was far too close. Human babble. Tully had come to. "V plus point zero eight," Haral said. "That bastard gave us v!" "Let it ride; we burn it off later." Pyanfar swallowed hard and blinked her eyes and tried not to listen to the retching off over at com. "We got—while yet before Jik's AOS on Kefk—gods-rotted tc'a: it saying anything?" Someone over at com managed to get transmission to her screen. TC'A CHI HANI KIF KIF KIF KIF MKKS MKKS MKKS MKKS MKKS MKKS KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK "It's saying, I think—" Hilfy said hoarsely, "it's come from Mkks to Kefk with a hani and lots of kif. Hello." "They won't shoot," Pyanfar said, as the thought got through. Jik. That earless bastard, Jik's called in another debt and snagged us a tc'a. It knows our flight plan. It must. "Gods, that son's riding us close out there—they won't shoot. Kif wouldn't dare." She leaned back, turned her head. "Chur. You all right?" "Fine." The voice sounded weak. "I'm on-duty." "Khym?" He was the sick one. She had thought so. No answer but a moan. "We're nominal on equipment," Tirun said. "We still got the kif back there," Geran said. "Got another ship just blipped in behind us. Ikkiktk . . . I think . . . right on mark, five minutes Light." Everywhere about them the tick and blip of instruments went on, The Pride's ordinary functions, unflappable mechanical processes. "Tully?" Chur said. "Tully, you all right?" "What that?" A slurred, faint voice on com. "What?" "Tc'a got friendly. Gods-rotted closest we ever came to collision. Closest I ever want to hear about." "That's blip two: second kif in." "We just got a message from the lead kif back there," Hilfy said. "It's confirming it's behind us, that's all." "Acknowledge," Pyanfar said. Their realscan showed their own little packet of space; their passive-signal pickup, half a roundtrip quicker than bounce-signal scan, showed them the stars and the things that reflected light, and the lead ships' recent emission-trails. A lot of them. "We've got time-calc on that image," Tirun said. "Jik's doing fine. Jik, Ehrran, Sikkukkut and a flock of the hakkikt's best. Haaa—we got Harukk scan now—Clear, clear, clear!" "Good luck to 'em," Haral muttered. "Even the gods-be kif." "Hope those earless bastards at Kefk haven't moved any rocks," Geran said. "We're running into old chatter," Hilfy said. "Kefk isn't aware yet of anything, on this timeline. Geran, I'm going to feed you sequencing on this stuff. See if you can do a locator on it, get an update on these positions." "Lot of scatter," Geran said. "Chur, take scan one." Down the time line again, racing their own incoming wave-front to Kefk station. Waiting for the message to come back. But this time they had shed a lot of speed. Kif talked behind them and in another time-reference, station-kif talked, and that clicking chatter occupied com. More kif dropped in behind them. And the tc'a glided along beside. "We're getting reaction now," Hilfy said. "That's a guard-station talking, I think. They're challenging. That's minus twelve Light." Two guardstations, one at Kefk 1 nadir, to stop escapees; one at Kefk 1 zenith, not so far away. The third off in Kefk 2's ecliptic. And Kefk station itself was armed, by Sikkukkut's admission, which violated more Compact laws. "Harukk just answered," Hilfy said. "Harukk ordered Kefk system to surrender. Challenge goes on . . . I can't make out if they've launched anything. Translator, Khym; help; gods-be—" "Is that it?" "—Back it up. Geran." "Sorry," Khym said. "I'm sorry—" "I got it," Geran said. "That's affirmative on launch. Two interceptors away from Kefk on Jik's contact-moment." "Intercept vector for Jik," Hilfy said. "Kif behind us report—" Khym said, "they just heard that defense-engage." Pyanfar bit her mustaches, watched the steady rotation of images Haral shunted past her screens. "Unchanged," Hilfy said. "Tc'a's unchanged," Chur said. "Still by us." "Let's hope it stays put," Haral said. "Unchanged," Hilfy droned on. Then: "Wait, we're beginning to get some comment out of station now. They're real disturbed and they're speaking pidgin as well as main-kifish. We won't get the guardstation transmission to station or to Jik's bunch at their angle." "What's it doing?" Khym's first out-of-line question, in a careful, quiet voice. "What the gods-sakes is it up to?" "Easy." Haral's voice. "We're not skinned yet." "Kif," Tully said sharply. "Tully's right," Chur said from scan. "Another one of our party just came in." "Huh," Geran said, "By the gods all and sundry, we may just make it." "That's a hakkikt, five kif hunter ships, Aja Jin and a han deputy telling them there's a tc'a inbound at their tail," Tirun muttered. "And they don't know what more or how many. You think that won't shake them up? If I was kif with my nose to station or a desk-sitter in central I'd be real upset just now. They'll fold. Sikkukkut's not half crazy." "Huh," Pyanfar muttered. Crew talked themselves to confidence. Her stomach fought her again and she fought it back. Comp asked a question, offered choices. She kept her eyes focused, read comp's suggestion, scanned two other monitors and punched confirm. Another desperate swallow. Her hand shook, terror catching up to her in a chill when the moment was long past. The tc'a could have hit them. Gods. How much closer? How much closer before they got pulled apart? Or before they made one ball of fire, hani, tc'a and kif together? "They friend?" Tully asked and no one had time. "Tc'a insystem are upset," Hilfy said. "We're starting to get chatter out of our own tc'a. It identifies itself and us. They're sixteen minutes down the timeline." Camera image came up on the screens: Haral had gotten them image . . . at this range, a bright orange sun washing out the stars. There was a red dwarf companion, Kefk 2, invisible or inconspicuous. Everything else was still too far. Heavy debris orbited Kefk, by Sikkukkut's outdated charts. And four stations all told, with a lot of disturbed kif. "Transmission," Hilfy said. "It's them!"—forgetting protocols. "It's Jik!" "—Hold course," the message reached Pyanfar via Haral's switching. "You hold course. We go ahead in. Got no trouble yet—" "They know the guard ships are on their track?" Khym wondered. "Can't tell," Haral said. "They ought to. That's—ten minutes Light. We're still getting output . . . just chatter. Jik's bunch isn't upset, and they're further into the timeline than we are." "Looking good," Geran said. Pyanfar let out a breath. A chill went up her back. To cut it that fine, to do it, by the gods, to come in blind like that and pick up signal on the mark, with all the kif behind them. Navigation like that was a hunter-ship trick. Not for honest merchant-folk. But they did it. They had done it. They were alive so far. "Haral," Hilfy exclaimed, "we just got beacon!" Image flashed up on monitor. Full current system composite: it showed Sikkukkut's cluster of ships inbound for the main station; showed a skein of ships inbound where they themselves ought to be . . . the kif, the tc'a, The Pride. And the interceptors. Three guardstations; a belt full of miners; an outbound ship; a schema of the main station that show forty-six ships in dock, origin indeterminate. Same as Jik's initial snatch of image before beacon shut down. Give or take their own presence. And the interceptors. "We believe that thing?" Tirun asked. "Kefk's talking," Hilfy said. "It's a guardstation, I think. It's—welcoming us in." "Gods," Haral said. "Now it's really working I don't like it." Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches. "I don't either. Message. Relay Jik what it sent and put our wrap around it." "Aye." "Kif are talking," Khym said. Haral switched it. "Behind us." "—kkthos fikkthi kthtokkuri ktokkt Harukkur shokkuin." "They're querying Harukk," Pyanfar translated. "Sounds like they're confused as we are." "That's good news," Haral muttered. "Our tc'a's transmitting too," said Hilfy. "Same stuff as before. 'I'm coming in with hani and kif.' " "That's the reason for our welcome," Geran said. "That lunatic tc'a. They can't shoot." "Yet," said Pyanfar, and chewed her mustache-ends. She reached for another packet and drank it in one forced series of gulps. Put her head back and contemplated the situation while The Pride hurtled at c-residual v toward a kifish stronghold that wanted to let them in. Past a doubtless armed guard-station. Get them onto the docks, she could imagine the counsels in that chunk of fragile metal up ahead. We outnumber them. Lure them out of their ships if possible. Send poison through their ventilation tubes if not. Let the tc'a dock peacefully in the methane-sector and then destroy the intruders on the oxygen side. "We brought our own private kif along, didn't we?" Pyanfar said: "Tirun. Khym. We've got a little time inertial. I want you two to go down, get some flex, and bring our guest in the washroom up here. His name's Skkukuk. Be polite. Tell him I sent for him." "Aye," Tirun said. A moment later. "Aye," said Khym. Kif on The Pride's bridge. The other side of Mkks, she would have sooner died. Chapter 8 The lift worked, down-bound, two hani kif-hunting in the lowerdeck; and soon enough, one kif coming up topside, near sensitive controls. Unease crawled up and down Pyanfar's spine. She flicked switches at her board, taking some of The Pride's automatic reflexes under her own hand while Tirun and Khym, where that lift let out, entered corridors that could become a four story plunge straight down if The Pride's thrust cut in for some unexpected reason—like an avoid-alert. They were perhaps cavalier about such scramblings-about while The Pride was inbound at some commercial port, with safe lanes and the prospect of a long, sedate voyage under inertia. Kefk lacked all such guarantees. "You stay course." Jik's voice sputtered into the complug in Pyanfar's left ear: Haral had relayed it, on slight delay, Pyanfar flicked her ears back, looked at the time-differential ; of several situations ticking away on the upper margin of the number four monitor. Not enough time for her query to have gotten Jik's direct response: half that. He had anticipated the question, she reckoned, when he himself had acquired beacon image from some source, maybe one from Kefk station itself. "Sikkukkut's transmitting," Hilfy said. "Same sort of thing." If anything short-flashed between Harukk and Aja Jin or Vigilance, close as they were riding within their own little band of kif, Jik gave no clue to this. "We got system scan now, got Kefk output, they not want trouble, a? Nice friendly port." Gods. "We stay it," Pyanfar said to the crew about her. She twitched in misery; fatigue settled like a hot iron between her shoulderblades and into that shoulder and elbow locked into the brace above the control board. She sweated and stank and shed hair; crew were no better. The hunter-ships would likely have had a shift to backup crew now and again, all crew seated in a touchy situation like this, but taking the shunt to give main-crew a chance to stretch and eat and take the kinks out of their backs. The hunter-ships would have that luxury; so would the kif incoming at their backs and up ahead; and gods only knew if the multibrained tc'a even needed relief. She left shed fur on what she touched. And the aches—gods. "Jik says they've asked for a ship list over and over again. No response from station." "That's not good," Haral said. "Not at all friendly of them," Chur said. "Hope that tc'a stays real close," said Pyanfar. "The tc'a's still transmitting," Hilfy said. "Same stuff." "How are you doing, Chur?" Pyanfar asked. "Uhhhn. Lost a bit of weight. Gods-be concentrates . . . we got to get a hot-box on the bridge if we keep this up. Nice warm food." "Food?" Tully asked. "He has a hard time biting through the packets," Geran said. "Here . . . now. You got to have the teeth for it, friend . . . he's catching on with the equipment. Knows what he's looking at, just fine." "Math," Tully said. "Help if he could read," Pyanfar said. "Sure might." No knowing whether human instrumentation was anything like their own. And his blunt-nailed hands had no hope of hani recessed buttons. Thank the gods. There was nothing he could push. But a kif's retractable claws were quite another matter. She should, she thought, have gone down to the lower deck herself and left the ship in Haral's capable hands. Not called a kif to the bridge. It was too late to do otherwise. She saw the flash from the optional-telltale that was presently linked to lift operation and withdrew her arm from the brace. "Haral. You've got it." "Aye." "We got a kif coming up. All of you—" Pyanfar rotated her chair crew-ward. "All of you keep your minds on you work, huh? Is this going to be a problem for anyone?" Silence. "Even if it gets interesting." "Aye." From multiple throats. Tully turned a bewildered look her way. Hilfy never budged. "Geran, take over com for now. Hilfy wants a relief." "Aye, captain." Hilfy swung her chair half about. Her ears were back. "I didn't say—" "I know you didn't. I want you on guard. Something wrong with that?" "No, aunt," Hilfy said, a quiet voice. She spun back td the board and looked up as Geran released restraints and prepared to shift. Pyanfar spun her chair the other way and undid her own restraints. "Is this a test?" Hilfy asked. "No," Pyanfar said. "It isn't. It's the real thing. I figure you know the kif well enough. Don't you? Maybe your considered opinion's worth something." Hilfy's ears slanted back. Her adolescent mustaches drew down in a look of distress. "Putting it on me, are you?" "Yes." "Don't by-the-rods patronize me." "Don't by-the-gods foul up." Hilfy's mouth opened; she shut it definitively. The ears struggled erect. There was a nick in one. A gold ring swung from the sweep of the other. "All right?" Ears twitched. "All right." Hilfy's voice shed its edge. The eyes stayed black. Down the corridor the lift-door had opened. "We've got company." Silence then. Pyanfar stood up, facing that oncoming set, in the center of which was a tall, robed darkness that set her teeth on edge. So a kif arrived on the bridge, in the doorway, Tirun and Khym on either side. Hilfy stood up and Geran switched seats. "Tirun. Take scan one." Tirun took the indicated post without question. Khym stayed still at Skkukuk's side, tall as the kif, twice its size in other ways. Tirun could have cracked its bones barehanded. Khym could take it apart. Its hands were bound before it: kif limbs did not flex back conveniently. "Captain," Skkukuk said. Tully had turned in his seat, just once and briefly. Something had touched his face—wariness, surely. Maybe something else. But he was eyes-to-the-scope again, his back turned to the kif. Pyanfar noted it, and her estimation of the human went up another notch with that. "You all right, Skkukuk?" Politely posed. Skkukuk lifted his bound hands and let them fall. His dark, red-rimmed eyes wept tears of eyestrain in the light. "This is stupidity," Skkukuk said. "Behind the neck, hani, is far more effective. We can bite through wire." "Thanks. We'll remember that next time. Do you know where we are?" "Kefk, I suppose." "Why do you suppose that?" Yet another shrug. "It was the hakkikt's intent." "Sikkukkut's." "That hakkikt. Yes." "He took you into confidence, did he?" "It was well known among his ships." "Were you—among his ships?" Skkukuk ducked his head. "You were Akkhtimakt's, huh?" "I am yours now." The dark head lifted, the jaws worked. "I lend you my sfik. I am formidable, even now." "You lend me confidence. Tell me, Skkukuk. Do you know Kefk?" "Yes. Thoroughly." "Why do you suppose Kefk hasn't launched a defense?" "You want my assistance." "I'm asking you, kif." Skkukuk gave a kifish shrug and lifted his hands toward the scan posts, miming request. "Show me the situation." "Haral, put the scan image up on main." It arrived. The kif's face lifted to the overhead, where the big screen was. "What we've got here," Pyanfar said, "is Vigilance and Aja Jin and Harukk out in front, headed into Kefk with several other ships. Kefk guard ships've gone inertial now. No great hurry on them. Beyond that interval, ourselves. A tc'a beside us. The rest of the kif with a ship named Ikkiktk in charge of the rest." "A tc'a." "That ship's named So'oa'ai." Another small gesture of joined hands. "This is ominous." "Why?" Skkukuk's eyes went to her and Hilfy. The stink of unwashed hani and human was already on the bridge. Now there was a strong ammonia scent. "The methane folk are unpredictable." "Have you got reason to say that? They've been stirred up. Haven't they?" "Yes." The ammonia reek was very strong. Kif sweat. "I advise caution. Don't offend this thing. Don't speak to it. Let it dock." "That's what the station seems to be doing." "That's the wisest thing." "We conduct our little disagreement in a crowded house, is that it?" "Kkkt. That's adequate. Yes. We do. There are always the methane folk." "What were you—before you offended Sikkukkut?" "Skku to him. Subordinate." Her ears went back. She pricked them up again. "Friend of Akkhtimakt's, huh?" "Skku to him also." "You have one chance, kif, to tell all the truth in terms I understand. You play games with me and I'll serve you back to Sikkukkut for dinner. After I give you to the human and my niece for their amusement. Hear?" The kif's head drew subtly lower between his shoulders. The hands lifted and fell. "I hear, hani." "Then tell the gods-be truth!" "I've offered you my weapons. I will give you your enemies. Name them to me. Or let me hunt them out. I will lend you sfik. Hani can be fools." "So can kif, friend. What about that invitation from Kefk? Those ahead of us are going in. Sikkukkut says come in. Is it a trap, kif?" "Of course it's a trap!" "Whose?" "Sikkukkut's. And theirs. No one is to be trusted. Keep your speed, blast all and run." Thin hands spread as best they could. "Perhaps the station and its defenses would take out the rest. But strike Aja Jin and cripple him; Nomesteturjai would pursue you to the death. Harukk would be the lesser danger in those circumstances. Kif would desert the hakkikt in such an attack. But strike him if you have time, the same with Vigilance. Still—" The hands fell, the shoulders hunched. "Your ship lacks weapons; and hani would not respect your sfik. Do these things and go to the hakkikt Akkhtimakt. Bring him your weapons and he will welcome you." "Gods be," Pyanfar said. Her fur bristled down her back. Her ears had lain down. She got them up again. By the kif's shoulder, Khym stood with ears still flat. And Hilfy— "He would," Hilfy said. "Our kifish ally would do that. What's he waiting for?" "Shall I answer this person?" "Answer her," Pyanfar said, "and respect my crew, rot your guts. You belong to all of us." Again a hunch of the shoulders, a sinking of the hooded head. "I answer. Sikkukkut thinks he has sfik enough to lure Akkhtimakt to a place of his choosing. He thinks he has sfik enough that Kefk will offer him its weapons—" "—meaning what?" "—that. They will be part of his sfik. He will hold Kefk temporarily, beyond doubt. Possibly he will take it completely." "Make sense," said Khym. "It's truth." Skkukuk turned that way and theirs again, opening his narrow hands before him. "Am I to blame that Sikkukkut is a fool? And you lend him sfik. I nourish hope this is a stratagem." "You hate Sikkukkut, huh?" "I would spit him from my mouth." Her stomach turned. "How are we doing, Haral?" "Steady on. Transmission from our lead still says come ahead. Other situations unchanged." Maybe there was time to put this atrocity safely back in its confinement. Maybe not. "Get him to a seat," Pyanfar said to Khym and Hilfy: "Move. We don't know what we're into. Belt it in real tight." "There is no need. I tell you I could free myself." "See he doesn't." "Don't be a fool," Skkukuk said, straightening as Khym took him by one arm and Hilfy moved to take the other. "One moment," Pyanfar said. Motion stopped. "Question," Pyanfar said. "Is there a hani ship named Moon Rising with Akkhtimakt?" "I've met them. Several times. Kif know this ship. They are—kthok kakatk kthi nankkhi sfikun—of diminishing sfik. They brought some of the sfik of Akkukkak to Akkhtimakt, but it wasn't much by then. They've been of use. Ktoht-sfik. A good knife has that. But without ornateness. One values it. One can take another." Gods, the logic. "Go sit down. Trust me, kif." "The captain jokes. Further, I am hungry. I protest this treatment." Pyanfar hissed and sank into her chair. "I wish to tell the captain—" "Sit it down. And hurry it up." Her back was still bristled; she looked back again, to see Hilfy and Khym drop the kif into observer four and jerk the restraints tight over his arms. Tully looked her way. There was stark fear in his eyes. Observer four was a non-working post one seat removed from him—much too close, by Tully's evident reckoning. "I don't blame you," Pyanfar muttered. "Me too—" And louder: "You've got a job, Tully. Do it, huh? Work." "Aye," Tully said, and swung about and glued himself to the scope. Chur muttered something to him. He muttered something back. Pyanfar spun her chair about. "Kif says it's a trap," Haral said. "Figured that," Pyanfar said. "From the start, didn't we?" "Sounded like good kifish advice." "I'm sure it is." A moment's silence. "Wonder what Jik's got in mind," Haral said. And after a moment more: "Captain—that business about Vigilance I've got no trouble believing. I know Jik's saved our necks before." "But?" "But coming in here like this—captain, you ever remotely wonder if Jik's been working the dark spots—a bit too long?" "It occurs to me." Pyanfar drew a deep, deep breath. "Occurs to me real strong lately. It's going to be a lot stronger feeling on that dock." There was quiet on the bridge, except for the occasional beep from a system needing the crew's attention. "Revert to posts?" Tirun queried. "When you're covered," Haral said. Seats whispered and hummed, Hilfy and Khym settling in. Ready-lights came live in the sorting-out of crew. "Kkkk-kkt." From the kif. "Shut it down." (Tirun's voice.) "Jik's response," Hilfy said. "He says to our query, just stay it. Vigilance says, quote: Follow orders." "No reply," Pyanfar said. So what's Vigilance up to, huh? Ehrran was still going along with it—at this range. And Jik with that ship at his side— Strike first, the kif advised, knowing his own kind. Kif would. A dire, ugly thought offered itself in the wake of that musing: that all chaos might break out just about the time those ships came in; among all those kif, with projectiles loosed, accidents might happen, ships losing track of where fire had been laid down— —if things went wrong, if they were betrayed and shooting started— A very easy accident. Like one hani ship running into the other's fire. —blast Vigilance's vanes and leave them for the kif. Take out the witnesses and all those records— It was not Chanur's style. It was, gods help them, Sikkukkut's own simple way. —want make sure you not come 'cross bow with Vigilance at Kefk Take out the witnesses. With The Pride lost—there were piles of evidence and charges in Vigilance's databanks. And Vigilance could go back to the han and offer it all uncontested, how Chanur betrayed hani and the han. Take The Pride out and accuse Chanur, and let Kohan Chanur fall; then the carrion-lovers moved in and homeworld took the course Ehrran and her ilk longed for. But accidents could go either direction—if the shooting started. A gods-cursed kif put such thoughts into her head. Vigilance had no kif to advise them: could an Anuurn hani ever think of such a vile thing unhelped? Out in the dark spots too long, Haral said of Jik. Maybe, she thought, it described an aging hani captain all too well. "We're getting dock assignment," Haral said at last, as if they were approaching any port in all the Compact. "Number 12. That's Jik beyond Ehrran, Harukk way down the row." "Methane-side's transmitting," Tirun said, "docking for the tc'a." "Looks like a Compact standard setup," Haral said while Pyanfar kept her attention on business. "Give or take the guns and the guardstations. No ship-names, rot their eyes. But we got a knnn in there, along with six tc'a." "I don't like that," Pyanfar said. "Gods, I don't like that." A handful of tc'a in port and two more insystem, busy, doubtless, with tc'a/chi affairs, which was mostly mining and some cultivation, in their side of the station, of the cultures which methane-breathers relished, part furniture, part food. No threat there. But anomalous behavior around a knnn—drew attention. Undoubtedly they had its notice. It was sitting still. Minding its own business. Watching, maybe, the curious madness of oxygen breathers. "Acknowledge the instruction," Pyanfar said. "Kkkkt." From the kif. They were far past the mark when they should have started realspace braking in any friendly system. Lagtime between themselves and Jik stayed constant. Between them and station collectively it had decreased. Suddenly Jik's number started ticking down. "Jik's group is braking," Chur said in the same moment. "We get a confirm on com," Tirun said. "Looks like here we go." "Transmission from Harukk," Tirun said. "They want—get that!—orders to the kif to brake." "Priority: Aja Jin: Quote: Stay with the tc'a." " 'Stay with the tc'a'," Haral muttered, switch-flicking. "Match moves with a polybrained gods-be snake—good gods. What's he think we are?" "A prime target," Pyanfar said. "That's what. He's next to Sikkukkut. He wants us in the old snake's shadow, right up to station. Like we were real cozy. I'm willing if it is." She reached and snapped the restraints in place, chest-belt and arm-brace. "Snug in. Gods, Chur—you fit for this? Straight answer." "I'm fit. Soon be in this chair as walking that corridor back to quarters, I'll tell you." "You play hero I'll send you for a walk." The tc'a-blip stayed steady on, ghosting along inertial as if it knew it served as shield. She reached for another concentrates packet, solids, this time. It tasted horrid. Her stomach rebelled and she shuddered. Beside her, Haral took the same opportunity, trying to keep reactions quick and brain functioning. By this time the hunter-ships were surely on their second shift of well-rested crews. "The tc'a's being real reasonable so far," Haral said. "Does it understand?" Khym asked from com. "Are those things ever friendly?" "Those things do what they want and gods forbid it zigs or zags. It will when it gets to approach v." "Knnn, now," Haral said, "have fewer rules." Vid came up on last-monitor, a collection of spheres and drivepack with five vanes irregularly spaced about it. "That tc'a?" Tully asked. "Closest you'll ever want to see one in motion," Haral said. "Yes, it's tc'a." "Kkkt." From Skkukuk. "Kkkkt. Kkkkt," a soft droning, talking to himself. Gods-rotted kif. Skkukuk's advice was what Skkukuk would do. If he had the guts. The sfik. The self-assurance. Shoot anything that moved. Loyalty was measured on that status-scale. Skku, the kifish word was . . . which meant vassal. What's Skkukuk mean, then? Faithful servant? Slave? "Skkukuk. Were you born with that name?" A silence. "Kkkkt. No." From across the bridge, out of its furthest corner. "I've had it seven years." "How old are you?" "Thirty-six. Captain, I am in discomfort." Mysteries and mysteries. Doubtless hani puzzled Skkukuk too. "Kkkkt," it said. "Kkkkt." "Kif, shut up." There was silence then. "Tc'a," Khym said in distress. "Hilfy, tc'a—" Communications matrix came up on-screen. "Priority. It's going to—" The Pride yawed, and power slammed in. "Gods and thunders!" Pyanfar swore. "—maneuver," Hilfy said. Stable again. Gods-be earless gods-be lunatic—a stream of profanity, holding the concentrates that wanted to crawl back up her throat. Pyanfar shook. Steadied her arm. Heard Khym's deep gasp. The Pride kept up the braking thrust. Clang! "Rock," Haral said. "No alarms," Tirun said. Two more rang off the hull. Ping. Boom. "Daughter of a—!" Pyanfar kicked in the braking full. "We're sound," Tirun said. "Kif back there aren't happy," Geran said. "Neither am I," Pyanfar muttered. "Gods rot—" The tc'a left them, rolled and slewed off in an approach maneuver that made sense to a multibrained snake. She held course. "No following that. We're on our own." "The tc'a's transmitting," Hilfy said. "We're getting Aja Jin—" Scan image crossed to main monitor. The lead ships were moving in on docking approach. "Guard ship's braking," Haral said. "Message from Harukk: Sikkukkut's compliments and he invites our docking. Says Kefk has surrendered." "Tc'a—" said Khym. "I've got it—" Hilfy's voice, weak and strained. "That's station, docking instructions for the tc'a." "Kkkkt." "Skkukuk." Pyanfar shifted her eyes to look up at a reflection of the bridge. "What's your opinion, huh?" "The station has surrendered." "Where's the trap now?" "Kkkt. They will let you dock. Beware Sikkukkut. Beware your allies. Return my weapons, hani. Arm me with the best you have. I will be an advantage." "To which side?" "Kkkt. To the side of advantage. Sikkukkut has none for me. Kkkotok kto ufikki Sikkukkutik nifikekk nok Akkhtimaktok kektkhikt nok nokktokme—kkkkt." Something about Akkhtimakt and meals and unique objects. Her screen lit with a transcription, mute, from Hilfy's post: Sikkukkut having derived service from me would find it a twice unique treasure to feast on me in the face of Akkhtimakt. "Sounds like he's got a problem," Haral muttered, "if one could believe the son. Which I don't, not half." "That's confirmed from Jik," Hilfy said. "Jik's committing himself to dock. Harukk's transmitting." "Gods rot it." Pyanfar flexed her hand in the brace and laid her ears back. The pulse kept on hammering in her ears. "We're fools. Gods-be kif station, gods-be lunatic mane—" Where's our shiplist, Jik? "What's he up to?" Haral asked. So Haral had thought much the same, in the secrecy of her old and wily heart, that at the last moment Jik might pull something. "I don't know. Hilfy; feed the schema down to Skkukuk's screen." "Aye." "Does that look normal, kif?" "The traffic is heavy here, but it often is. They give you no ship names." "No." "That is alarming." "Vigilance going in," Khym said. "That's the one," Haral said, "I wonder about." "Sure thought that son would bolt," Tirun said. "Skkukuk. What will they do?" "They will surrender. Slowly. Testing sfik against sfik. Withholding the shiplist may be the station's test of the hakkikt." "Or Sikkukkut's order?" "He has no motive to withhold it. The ships about us obey him. No, it's a test of him. It will be an expensive test if they are not careful. Kukottki-skki pukkuk. Sikkukkut may interest himself to find the one who withstood him. Do you wish to gain sfik at Sikkukkut's expense? Discover this fool on tin station and kill him before Sikkukkut does. Captain, I tell you, it is a waste—'" "Priority!" Chur yelled, simultaneously with Tully. "System entry, ecliptic 23-45, v z-70-aught factor 9—" Pyanfar's heart stopped. A lurking ship was on a nine-g startup and headed in; a kifish beacon carried its image to them, and relayed as it came—"Relay on!" she ordered, and Hilfy already had the system set: the message went, calmly: "This is The Pride. We've got an incoming, Aja Jin. Take—" And over-riding her own message: "Priority," Hilfy said "Aunt, it's Mahijiru! That's Goldtooth coming in! The kif—Harukk's sending. Don't fire, he's telling his ships, don't fire, it's allied." Keep your speed, blast all and run, the kif advised. No one is to be trusted. They were hani. Not kif. "Send," Pyanfar said past the nausea in her throat. "Pride to Mahijiru. Gods fry you, Goldtooth, it's about time you showed up!" Chapter 9 Harukk went into dock; Aja Jin; Vigilance and the advance kif guard followed in final approach: "The hakkikt take dock now," word came from Aja Jin then; and shortly after that docking a voice from Kefk central: "Oxygen-side traffic control will shut down briefly," first in main-kifish and then in hani. "Pride of Chanur, this is Kefk central: oxygen-side traffic control will shut down transmission briefly and resume with Harukk personnel, compliments of the hakkikt Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin; methane-side operations will continue. Please stand by." "Skkukuk?" Pyanfar asked. "The hakkikt Sikkukkut has secured the dock around his ship," the kif said from his seat across the bridge. "His force is on its way to take station central; central indicates no resistance. Hani, I am suffering. Kkkt. I am—" "So are all of us. Shut up." "Beware traps. Beware—Sikkukkut knows them. Beware hidden resistance. There will be—kkkt. Hidden resistance." "Where?" "Hidden. Hidden." "Lot of help, kif." "Kkkt. Ktkot kifik kifai . . ." "Well, we're not kif. Thank gods." "Fool. Kkkt. Fool." "Shut him up!" (From Hilfy, harsh and desperate.) "Quiet. Kif, shut it down." "Kkkkt." (Subdued.) "Kkk—kt." "Shut it down." (Tirun.) "Or I'll break your gods-be arm." Quiet then, excepting a few clicks. Profound silence, around Hilfy's station. You lost it, kid, everyone knows it, the kif knows it. Pick it up again, huh, niece? Let's pick it up, mind on business, you're doing all right, kid. And a little later: "Aunt," Hilfy said; and from com: "—This is Kefk traffic control, compliments of the hakkikt resuming transmission. Ikkiktk, continue as instructed. Pride of Chanur, compliments of the hakkikt, continue as instructed. This is Tikkukka, skku to Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin akki-hakkikt pakkuk Kefktoki. Compliments of the hakkikt your docking will be berth 12 as assigned.—Ikkiktk, honor to the hakkikt you will occupy berth 14; Makkurik, honor to the hakkikt, you will occupy berth 25—" "Politeness," Chur muttered. "Politeness. Listen to 'em." "Skkukuk?" Pyanfar asked. "You hear that?" "It seems straightforward," Skkukuk said from his post the rear of the bridge. "The hakkikt has secured station central control. Hani, I am weary of this chair; the wire cuts my wrists. I need food—kkkt. Kkkt. I warn you my services will be wasted—" "Just shut up about it, kif. Answer me straight. What's likely up there?" "What will the mahendo'sat do? Kkkt. Kkkt. What does your incoming ally intend? Kkkt. If the mahendo'sat try treachery against the hakkikt we will not be wise to dock." Goldtooth's Mahijiru was still coming, inertial now. Not hurrying as much as he might. But decidedly on his way. "Aunt," Hilfy said, "Aja Jin advises we dock and take no connections but shielded line and personnel access." "Affirm and acknowledge." "Kkkt. Most of all beware your allies. Beware—" "Shut it down, kif." "Fools, I have been given to fools." They kept coming. Ahead of them their lone tc'a escort underwent its lunatic evolutions on its way to docking on Kefk's methane side. Kefk's methane-side control sent out data matrices in tc'a communication. And camera image came up now on monitor 4, Haral's sending. Kefk station shone in its own floods like a baleful star, lit in orange and red. "Gods-be mahen hell," Chur said. "Kif have a hell?" Tirun wondered. "How about it, Skkukuk?" No answer. "They don't swear, either," Hilfy said. "Kif don't swear, do they, kif?" "Mind on your business," Pyanfar said shortly. "Kefk," Haral said, and switched a call through—likeliest from Khym's board. Kefk stats started up, and Tirun sorted them on comp, searching for anomalies and trouble. "All clear, all clear," Tirun said, "we got a normal approach at this v, all standard for Kefk's size." More numbers started rolling in. "Auto this?" Haral wondered. "Affirm," Pyanfar said. There was no reason not to. The Pride took the numbers in as Haral punched into the auto-approach: tired, gods, they were all tired. A red light blinked urgently, comp's advisement that armament was live and it was being asked to violate the law. Pyanfar overrode with a triple keypunch and logged that decision with another press of a key. "Approach under hostile conditions," she muttered into the recorder. "Armaments will stay live until dock." The vid screen caught her eye. There was a tone-difference in the slowly rotating station, a few ships not taking the floods in the same way as others docked at Kefk, three, not two bright spots in Kefk's as yet indistinguishable row of oxygen-breather ships, beside the methane-sector rim. She keyed in a tighter shot. Tighter still. "I'm not picking up any heat," Haral said, "except on the ships I think are ours." Meaning no hostile ship's engines were hot and no one unanticipated was lately come or about to bolt dock. Yet. "We got more than kif at this station," Pyanfar said. "Haral, have a look at vid one. We've got more bright spots on that rim than we ought to have." "I see it. Maybe the spare's our fugitive stsho. Maybe it docked here. Maybe it had to." "Might be." "Or more of Jik's gods-be conniving?" "Or Goldtooth's." The Pride trimmed up and lines trued on: Kefk station kept talking, realtime now for all practical consideration. The system schematic indicated a scatter of miner craft, all insystem and hardly more maneuverable than the asteroids themselves. There were the guard ships, which had shed their v and began a sedate return to their base. And Mahijiru advancing with the only speed in the system besides their own that still warranted a flashing red line on the course-plot. "Aja Jin says they've got the dock secure," Hilfy said. "Mahijiru's requesting docking instructions." "Huh," Haral said, and: "thank the gods," from Geran. Not going to attack then. Once the braking started in earnest—Goldtooth meant to come in. Why? for the gods' sakes, when he was safe and secret out where he was? Why leave cover, Goldtooth? What are you up to—friend of mine? Another doublecross? Or did Jik always know you were here? "Captain," Haral said, and gave her station-image. "Vid one. That anomaly looks mahen-type." Pyanfar looked. The brightness among the dull grim shapes of kifish vessels resolved itself. It was indeed another ship of mahendo'sat design. That meant an unanticipated mahen ship at Kefk dock—or a hani. Closer and closer. Pyanfar wiped her eyes. Fool, stay awake, stay alert, or you won't have to worry. Kif-taint had permeated the bridge. Her nose twitched in the promise of a sneeze. She restrained it, and it crept up again and erupted. She wiped her nose. Another revolution. Aja Jin and Vigilance and one bright-shining ship too many. "That's about berth 8 or 20," Haral said. "I'd sure like to know what it is." "So would I," said Pyanfar. Ask Jik, Haral meant. But Jik was not saying anything about the discrepancy. No one was talking. Neither Jik nor Vigilance. "Put in a call to Vigilance. Ask them to confirm status dockside." "Aye," Hilfy said, and it went. Pyanfar bit at a hangnail and watched Kefk station in its slow turning at the highest magnification The Pride could use. Definitely mahen-type craft. Definitely. Not their stsho. That stsho had to have gotten through unscathed: it would take phenomenal luck for even hair-triggered kif guardstations to stop a through-bound starship that meant to jump out again without pausing. There was small chance a sedentary force could fire anything that could intercept a high-v transit—unless they were virtually in its path. That was the nature of stations. That was their vulnerability. And the vulnerability of ships that shed v and went to dock. "Message from Vigilance," Hilfy said. "They confirm. Central's secured. They indicate we're to come ahead with caution." "Thank them," Pyanfar muttered absently. They haven't noticed? Ehrran came into a kif station denied a shiplist and never tried the vid? Jik didn't? In a mahen hell. Jik knows there's a ship here that doesn't belong. And Rhif Ehrran can't be that much of a fool. What are they together on? Do they know that ship? She fired retros. Hard. "Huhhh!" Haral said. Hearts must have leapt all across the bridge. "We're off-pattern," Tirun said calmly then; and Hilfy: "Message from Kefk, from our escort, they query—" "We just missed a rock," Pyanfar said. "Tell them sweep their lousy lanes, huh?" "We going to take a look at that ship?" Haral asked, having figured it out for herself. "Gods-be right we are." She had just thrown The Pride off the auto-approach timing with the station's revolutions. Now they had to revise their figures and fuss about with revised lane-assignment and approach. A few judicious pulses might put them closer to station on a timing that would swing that surplus ship under the camera's scrutiny. "Gods," Haral said, "priority, priority—we show that knnn's engines live on the rim." "Gods be." Pyanfar scanned a ripple of new information across her screens, heard Khym talking urgently on one channel while Hilfy queried the other—"We've got that information," Khym said. "—Py, Jik says—" —a new image came up. Scan. "—it's moving out from dock, gods, gods, look at that thing travel." "Get it, get it—Chur, help, I've fouled it!" "Kkkt, Kkkkt." "Priority, priority—it's transmitting—Tc'a's answering." Knnn-song wailed over com. Tc'a-matrix flashed up, totally numerical. "What's that?" From Khym. "I've got translator on it," Hilfy said. "Our tc'a escort's talking to the knnn." "Kefk transmission," Tirun said. "Methane-side's talking on several wavelengths." "Keep going," Pyanfar said and gnawed her mustaches. "We keep on approach until they try to stop us." "—Priority: Translation: query, query, query, from the knnn. Tc'a response: indeterminate. Translator can't get it. Shall we query?" "Negative, negative on the query. Steady as we go." More matrix came up. TC'A KNNN KIF KIF HANI MAHE MAHE MKKS KEFK MKKS KEFK MKKS KEFK MKKS KEFK GO KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK KEFK "Sounds like it's just talking to the knnn," Haral muttered. "Tc'a's holding course, on the average. Gods—knnn's shifting to match—o good gods—" "—Priority," Hilfy said. "Kefk's giving us a new lane assignment. They're scheduling us on in." "Knnn?" Tully asked. "What do, what do?" "Hush," said Chur. "Quiet. It's not . . . not . . . doing anything, it's just out there." "We're just going on in, Tully. Quiet." "Kkkkt. Kkkkkt. Kkkkkt." "Shut up." From Tirun. "Or we give you to it." "Easy, easy," Pyanfar muttered. "Chur—you all right?" "Priority—Jik's advising us come on." "Knnn's close—close to our line; intercept with the tc'a, looks like—" "There—it's not on our numbers—" Geran said. "That's match with the—Tc'a's moving. There's the knnn—" "Track it. Get vid." "Trying," Haral said. "Gods-be—" Image came up, magnified in a series of jolts, the tc'a's jumbled planes in its running lights and floods: the flare of fire where the knnn was—no running lights, no numbers, no names: the knnn took no care in navigation at all and obeyed no lanes. It was out there, that was all—it showed on scan. Fire showed. Braking. "That's intercept with the tc'a," Geran reported. "Minus 23, 22, 21—" Goldtooth was back there—minutes outside the timeline and taking cues from what old information got to him. He might have spotted the knnn by now. Might be doing anything. Or he might be waiting on cues from them. Slowing down—continuing at v—anything was potential provocation with a knnn. Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and spat them out again, her heart pounding against her ribs. ". . . . 3, 2—Priority." Scan image came up. The knnn was moving into pattern with the tc'a. Was matching v with it—that quickly, that easily. Dead stop to course-reverse: metal could never stand it. Bodies would flatten. Tully muttered to himself. It sounded like oaths, a steady drone of them. The tc'a and knnn began to accelerate together, the joint blip moving faster and faster away from the station vicinity. "Gods," Geran muttered, "they're going, they're going. Plus 10, 25—look at that!" The other way. The knnn was heading outsystem, nadir with the tc'a either grappled or close in pattern. Colors shifted on the scope, incredible acceleration. "Ah!" Tully said. "It's jumped!" "Kkkt. Kkkkt." "Minds on business!" Pyanfar snapped. Nothing had stopped, least of all The Pride hurtling inbound to station and the chrono flicking numbers down. It was over. The tc'a was gone. Lost. And Nav-comp was flashing red lines on second monitor. "Off the mark, off the mark, gods rot it, Haral—I want that flyby. Get that equipment up, get it, hear?" "Aye, aye, up and coming." "We are observed," Skkukuk said faintly. "Kkkkt. The methane folk, I warned you. Pull us out of here. Kkkt. Fools." "Shut up," Tirun said. "There is no profit to this!" "Skkukuk," Pyanfar snarled, "shut it up." Silence then. The beep and click from instruments went on. Kif ships talked to each other. "—Honor to the hakkikt," the station took up the refrain again, "there is no damage. We are secure. Continue in pattern. Please acknowledge." And from Mahijiru, incoming, silence, while the knnn business unfolded on Goldtooth's timeline. "Stand by," Pyanfar said, "Tirun, I want that approach calc. Take stats and set me up again." "Got it, got it, I'm working." And a little later, when station handed revised schedules down the line: "Bastards! I just had that!" "They're not going to bump us down-schedule," Haral said. "They're going to revise the whole list of ships behind us. They want us in before the kif just real bad, don't they?" No one answered. "Run that schedule," Pyanfar said. "Can we do it? Are they going to route us blind to that ship again?" "We got it, we got it," Tirun said after a moment, and a course plot came up. Closer then and closer. Vid clarified. One full revolution of Kefk station. Two. "Come on, Haral, I want that ship," Pyanfar muttered. "Digital-record. If we miss it on sight we'll try that." The station revolved slowly past The Pride's dome cameras. No need of amplification. The serial numbers showed plain on the next station revolution, on a bright vane column. Hani ship. 656 YAAV. "Moon Rising," Haral muttered. "That's Moon Rising. Tahar!" Oaths went through com all over the bridge. Pyanfar sat silent. Not surprised, no. It fit. It fit very well. So how large does this party get? How did Goldtooth know to meet us here? Gods, what have I got us into? It was the red trousers, a dash of perfume enough to mask the sweating she was likely to do in hours ahead—Pyanfar took time for that, with The Pride only tentatively in dock. Shielded com line and personnel accessway connections were still all that any of their ships took from station, and station dockers made weak protest about safety and undue strain on the grapples, but they swallowed it. Sikkukkut's ships stayed ready to move; and so did they. It was not vanity, this scrub-down: one of them ought to look and smell presentable to kifish hosts, and she made feverish haste about it. Three of them were off-shift at the moment. She had gotten Chur to rest, over protests she should go on sitting duty while her captain took showers; "Up," Pyanfar had said, and Chur disengaged herself and headed down the corridor from the bridge to Khym's cabin, wobbling as she walked. The wrapped bandage about Chur's side had gone looser, her drawstringed trousers tending perilously low on the hips. "Get her bedded down and fed," Pyanfar ordered Geran, laying a hand on Geran's chair-back. "See she's all right, huh? Khym—" She paused for more assignments, reviewing what useable crew she had: the personnel-combination worked out wrong, but she took what there was. "Khym, you get the galley up, Tully, you help him, hear?" And: "Aye," Tully said with never a flinching on his part and only an unreadable look from Khym as he got out of his chair and headed galley ward. Pyanfar came pattering out of her quarters still damp, still putting on her bracelets as she headed down the main corridor bridgeward. Tully was coming out of Chur's cabin, having brought food in, she supposed. "She all right?" Pyanfar asked. Tully laid a hand on his side. "Hurt," he said in hani, and by his look had more to say he did not trust the translator for. He blocked her path. Gestured at the door. "See. Go see, captain." "Huh." She lowered her ears. Tully tended to anxieties deaf to most that went on, he got the wrong of most crises. There was no time at present for them or him. But the worry was quiet this time, anguished; and Chur—"Get," she said. "Go bathe." He was the worst of them save the kif. "I'll see about Chur. Go." "Chur—" He refused to be moved. "Bad hurt." "Get!" She waved a half-hearted blow to be rid of him, turned and punched the door control. Geran turned from Chur's bedside as the door hissed back, quick and quick about getting her ears up and her face composed. Chur lay there with one arm on the covers. Indeed things were not right—not right, Chur's listlessness. Not right, the tray sitting on the table, untouched by a spacer just out of jump. "How's she doing?" Pyanfar asked and let the door shut. "She's pretty tired," Geran said. "Fine," Chur said, "Sure. Sure, you are. You're not working next jump." Pyanfar caught Geran's eyes with a glance. I'll talk to you later. And to herself: Gods, gods, gods. "You get food down her. Huh? I don't care if she doesn't want it." "Right," Chur said, and stirred in bed. She propped herself up on her arms. "My side's doing a lot better. I'm a lot better, swear I am." Pyanfar walked up to her bedside and swiped a hand across Chur's shoulder. Dead fur came away. Too much of it. "I'll see to her," Geran said. "Captain, she's all right. She's doing all right. Just a little drained." Pyanfar laid her ears back and wiped the hand on her trousers. "Take care of her," she said. "Chur, you stay put, hear me?" "I'll be fine, captain." Pyanfar stood there a moment. It was a conspiracy of silence. Chur and Geran—Chur always the busier one of the sisters, the cheerfullest, quickest wit. —the ancient hall in the house of Chanur, in the days of na Dothon Chanur. The day the cousins had come down from their mountain home to apply to Chanur for domicile— —Chur answering always, laughing, dissembling a rage at fate and the fall of Anify to its new lord. Geran dour and grim; and letting Chur do the talking, letting Chur make light of the awful decision to desert their own new lord to his folly. "Lord Chanur, that man's a fool," Chur had said. "And worse, he's boring." While Geran sat silent as a grave-wraith and tongue-tied in her wrath. —Geran looking to Chur when Pyanfar spoke to her now; brief answer and a reflexive glance Chur's way— Cover for me, sister, talk for me, deal with them— Geran had come out of her reticence once she took to space and freedom: she had found her own competence, learned to laugh, learned to deal with strangers, swaggered with rings in her ear and a spacer's easy grace. But suddenly it was Chanur's hall again. Two sisters arrived homeless and self-exiled from the far hills; Chur doing the thinking and Geran with the knife. Conspiracy. And it was clear again who in that pair ran it all. "Huh," Pyanfar said. "Huh." Chur beckoned for the tray on the table. Her ears were up. Geran moved the tray to Chur's lap. "She's all right," Geran said. Pyanfar walked out and closed the door. She punched the pocket com. "Hilfy—are we still all right up there?" "We're all right," Hilfy's voice came back from the bridge, even while Pyanfar walked. "We got a call from Jik, just told us take it easy, he's handling what needs be; Goldtooth's on a leisurely approach and he's in no great hurry to make dock as long as things are the least bit unsettled. No one's doing much right now, they've got a little set-to in the methane side—got a couple of tc'a/chi locals in some kind of upset and the chi are running wild over there. The kif aren't talking about it. At least there aren't any more knnn in port, and things are getting calmed down over there on methane-side, it sounds as if. Gods hope." Pyanfar overtook the voice, walking onto the bridge, and wrinkled up her nose with the pungent aroma of the kif. Skkukuk lay listless and neglected in his chair, still secured, a mere heap of black, while Hilfy and Tirun fended calls and Haral ran ops. At least his chatter had stopped. The kif was one more problem on her mind. One more neglected and suffering piece of protoplasm. She paused by the kif, her hand on the chairback. Skkukuk turned his long jawed head and gazed at her with red-rimmed eyes. "Kkkkt. Captain. I protest this treatment." "Fine, fine." The ammonia reek was overwhelming. She felt pity and loathing at once. And a desire to sneeze. "Hilfy, Tirun, go offshift—get this kif down below, get him fed, let him wash up." She let go the buckle of Skkukuk's restraints herself and hauled on the kif's bound arm. "Up." Skkukuk cooperated, as far as the edge of the seat. "Captain," he said. And plummeted through her hands. Pyanfar recoiled as Skkukuk hit her legs and folded the rest of the way down onto his face in a black-robed, ammonia-smelling heap. Hilfy and Tirun rose from their chairs and Haral looked and quickly swung back to business. "Gods," Pyanfar muttered, between dismay and disgust, and squatted down as the kif began to stir and Tirun moved to help. —Chur. Chur lying abed, the hair peeling from her skin, Chur, of the red-gold coat, the shining mane that got second looks from every man she met—fading out. Wasting under their eyes— She grasped the kif's thin, robed shoulder and remembered jaws that could bite wire in two. It was a shoulder hard as stone. "Watch it," she said as Tirun tried to pull him over by the hip, but Skkukuk levered himself up on one elbow and his bound hands. His hood had fallen back. He lifted his bare head in a dazed way, blinking and looking from her to Tirun. "Get him water," Pyanfar said. Hilfy stood there. It was Tirun who got up and went. "Get your hands back from it, aunt," Hilfy said. It was, reckoning those jaws, only sensible advice. "Help me," Pyanfar said, got a grip on the shoulders of Skkukuk's robe and hauled the kif upright. "Get his feet." Hilfy grimaced and gathered the knees up; the two of them heaved the kif into the chair he had fallen from. Tirun came back across the bridge in haste, bringing a cup of water. Pyanfar took it and held it under Skkukuk's mouth. His tongue darted and the water level dropped to a last soft gurgle as the cup emptied. Then he leaned his head back against the headrest and blinked listlessly. "So he warned us," Pyanfar muttered. "Get to galley—get something thawed." Tirun left again in haste; and she put an unwilling hand up Skkukuk's sleeve and felt the abnormal chill of his arm, "He's gone into shock, that's what. Gods rot, I don't want to lose him." Hilfy looked at her in a guarded, hostile way. "You want him?" Hilfy asked coldly. "I by the gods don't want him dying like this. Come out of it, niece. Is that my teaching—or something you learned in other company?" Hilfy's ears went back. Nostrils flared and pinched. And Hilfy turned and walked away to the corridor with businesslike dispatch. "Where do you think you're going?" "To fix your gods-be kif," Hilfy snapped. "Captain. By your leave, ker Pyanfar." "Niece—" Pyanfar muttered. But what she had was Hilfy's back as Hilfy headed away down main corridor; and an all-but-limp kif in her custody. "Gods. Gods be." She unwound the flex which had bitten into the kif's wrists. His hands were cold and limp, and he regarded her hazily, unresponsive to a fight among hani that, might have greatly amused him on a better day. "Kkkkkt. Kkkkt," was all the sound he made in his misery. Shut up, they had told him when he had begun to make that noise. Khym came in from the galley and stood there with his ears back. Tully came in after him, and stood observing the situation with one of those inscrutable expressions that evidenced something going on in his blond-maned head. Perhaps, like Hilfy, he wanted the kif's death. Perhaps he was afraid, or wanted to warn them of the danger in this creature, and lacked words to do it. "Get cleaned up," Pyanfar snapped at them both. "You think we got time to stare? Gods-be kif's wilted on us, that's all. Move it. The rest of us want their break. Go. Get to it. The rest of us are waiting on you." "Food—" Tully said lamely, and pointed back at the galley. "Come on," Khym said, and caught him by the arm and took him on through the bridge to the corridor. Tully went, with a backward look from the bulkhead doorway. "Get!" Pyanfar said. "Captain," Haral said from her post. "Harukk calling. The hakkikt advises us the guardstations have officially surrendered." "Thank the gods for that. Acknowledge." "Aye." Tirun came back from the galley, carrying a cup of chopped raw meat that reeked of thawing and chill even at arm's length. "Kkkkt," Skkukuk moaned, and averted his face when Tirun offered it. Pyanfar scowled. "Shut up and eat it, hear me, kif? I haven't got time for your stupid preferences." "Kkkkt. Kkkkt. Kkkkt." "Gods fry you." She took the cup from Tirun's hand and held it under Skkukuk's mouth. "Eat it. I don't care what you don't like. I haven't got time for this." "Kkkkt." And the jaws clamped together with a swelling of muscle down their long length. The nostrils drew inward. Skkukuk gave a long shiver, and kept his face averted, his eyes shut, his throat spasming. Pyanfar took the cup back. "He eat anything we gave him before jump?" "I'm not sure," Tirun said. "A lot of it had dried up." "Captain," Haral said, "We got a definitive whereabouts on that stsho that went out from Mkks: kited through here this morning and never stopped for hellos." "Gods rot. Naturally it did. What's happened to Tahar? Any word on Moon Rising?" "Make inquiry?" Haral said. "Has anyone else?" "Negative." "Gods, Now you'd expect that question out of Vigilance, wouldn't you? No. Don't ask. Just go on listening." "Maybe we ought to ask the hakkikt advice in kif-feeding," Tirun muttered at her side. "Captain—maybe if we ask the kif to get something—" Pyanfar turned a flat-eared look on her and Tirun tucked the stinking cup back into her hands and covered it and shut up. And Hilfy came back from down the hall. With another cup in hand. "He eat anything?" "No." Hilfy offered hers. It smelled of blood. It was. Pyanfar drew in her nostrils as Hilfy extended it past her face. "Where in the gods' good sense did you get this?" "Med stores," Hilfy said, ears back, jaw set. There was already a twitch of kifish nostrils. The. head turned, the eyes opened and a desperate tongue investigated the air. Skkukuk lifted his own hands to cup Hilfy's holding the vessel; and the darkish red contents disappeared in an energetic palpitation of the kif's long jaw-muscles. "Good gods," Tirun said. "Just selective," Hilfy said. "A real delicate appetite. Freezerstuff's just too far gone for him." "Get him cleaned up," Pyanfar said. "Feed him again if you have to. But don't by the gods get generous. We need those supplies. And you—" Reprimand died in her mouth and left a bad taste after. Hilfy was on the edge. She saw it in the look in Hilfy's eyes, the set of her jaw. "Get some rest," she said to Hilfy; and that brought Hilfy's ears down as quickly as a blow to the face would have. "I'm fit." "Are you?" Hilfy said nothing. The ears stayed down. The eyes stayed dark. Get him off this ship, off my deck, send him back to Sikkukkut. Gods, gods, gods, the med supplies. How often do we have to bleed to feed this thing? "Kkk-t," Skkukuk breathed. Pyanfar looked at the kif, and saw already a focus to the eyes as Tirun made shift to move him out of the chair. "Kkkkt," he said softly, "kkkkt—" —trying to get his booted feet under him. His head came up and the reddened eyes looked at Pyanfar. He knew what he had drunk. After the rest of it, are you, kif? Tirun got him on his feet. Hilfy took an arm and they led him away, slowly, holding onto him and holding him up at the same time. Ought to bind those jaws when we handle him. There was a patch on her left arm where the fur grew wrong: plastic surgery, once and long ago, in her wilder youth. Wonder if he'd smother—the nostrils run close to the surface. Gods, get him off my ship, that's all! And get Hilfy away from him. "Going to give that bastard to Jik," Pyanfar muttered, settling into her own seat up by Haral's side. And before Haral could venture comment into a family situation: "Go on. Get yourself cleaned up. I can handle things solo a while. We've got enough gods-be problems. I don't know how long we're going to be in this port. Not long, I'll guess. Hours, maybe. Maybe a day or so. With luck." "Aye," Haral said, no demur, no comment, and no delay in shunting things to her board and bailing out of her seat. "Anything you need below?" "Negative. Just hurry at it. Send Hilfy and Tirun to the same when you see them." "Aye." Haral headed off at all deliberate speed. Throw water and soap on herself, pull on fresh trousers, stagger back to the galley if there was time and get food in her belly. None of them carried any spare fat nowadays. A gaunt and haunted look hung about all the crew, standing watch and watch without meals or sleep except in snatches, while jump after jump burned them up from inside. There was a physiological penalty for every jump. The kif paid it. They did. She found herself eating from knowledge that she had to, not because food appealed to her, when she should have been ravenous. Only the wobbles signaled need for food: no appetite. Another jump—gods, another jump and we'll begin to feel it for sure. No one can stand this schedule. Chur—can't. I was a fool to listen to her at Kshshti. She's in serious trouble, thinner and thinner. Bone and hair goes next. Bowel junction. Kidneys. Heart. It's not only kifish fire that can kill us. We can't run now. If anything goes wrong here we can't pull out. Chur needs those hours. Needs days here. Get a med? Whose? No. No. Chur's on the mend. The side's healed. The jump took a lot of minerals out of her system. Healing leached everything. Feed her vitamins. Lots of red meat. She'll make it now. She's past the crisis and she's still got reserves. But I shed a lot. The kif collapsed. Pyanfar tongued a sore spot in her mouth, a tooth that promised soreness after brushing. So we've been running hard. Gods-be kif wilted after one jump. We've been—gods, how many jumps on short rations and short sleep?—and we're still holding on. We need a hani med, gods rot it. Not mahendo'sat, someone who knows what the margin is. And hani medical personnel are scarce out here. If I ask Vigilance— In a mahen hell. But her hand punched through to ship-to-ship while her mind was still arguing the matter. "Vigilance. This is The Pride of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur speaking. Put me through to your med staff." (Gods, Chur's going to chew sticks if we call over a Vigilance med. But by the gods, let her. I don't like this. I don't like that look in her.) "Pride of Chanur, this is Vigilance watch. Captain, we have operations in progress. Our boards are busy. I'll put your request through and call you back." She read between the lines, a big lazy ship with personnel to spare, crew on rest, backup crew on duty, Rhif Ehrran was offshift along with her high officers to shower and sleep and eat at leisure. And not wanting advertisement of their status. Telling their ships' internal schedules and habits to the kif did none of them any good. "All right, Vigilance." She shifted to Jik's channel. "Aja Jin, this is The Pride." "Aja Jin here, got all personnel busy. This emergency?" It's Pyanfar Chanur, rot your hide, get me Jik! But that was panic. Jik was in communication with Mahijiru, likely, Aja Jin's crew up to its noses in running codes and communications with Goldtooth as he continued on approach. Aja Jin was trying to keep track of that situation and take the whole operations load off Vigilance because they had no trust for that ship, and off The Pride because The Pride had no crew available to carry it. "No," Pyanfar told Aja Jin's com officer. "Put it through when things settle down." There was a delicate question—how to get in touch with Jik and get Jik to twist Ehrran's ear for that medic without being too evident about it. They had made light of the stack of charges Ehrran accumulated. But they needed no more of them. Nothing to complete the pattern and damn them with the han. Follow channels. Do it the safe way. Keep to protocols. There had to be time. Even if that stsho had run for Meetpoint and babbled all gtst knew; even if knnn were stirring about. Goldtooth and Jik acted as if there were time. They laid plans. Goldtooth was still coming in to dock, which meant he expected at least a number of hours before trouble hit, at least personal business here to make the trip worthwhile. But Chur— Geran's covering for her, that's what. And Geran's scared. So am I. Gods rot it, I never should have let her come past Kshshti. But we needed her. We still need her. Gods, she's not getting better. She's worse. Com chatter kept up, Kefk adjusting to the reality of its occupation. Methane-sector was settling down at last—only a small portion of Kefk's territory, but a precinct with which kif did not trifle and out of which little coherent information came: the chaos at least seemed less. And there were no more knnn involved. Geran came back to the bridge. Came and leaned on Pyanfar's chair, and Pyanfar turned it about to face her. "She all right?" Pyanfar asked Geran. No. Not all right, Pyanfar thought with a sudden chill. Geran's mouth was clamped tight, jaw clenched. Tongue-tied again. Like in the hall. Like things that touched on resisting Chur. She watched Geran's mouth twist, the strain of her throat, just to get words out. "She couldn't keep it down, captain." "Listen, cousin, I've already got a call in for a med." "Aye," Geran said, and to her surprise made no argument. Then with a look more naked and more wretched: "I really think you'd better. Captain, she choked pretty bad trying to eat. She's that weak. She couldn't get her breath." No words for a moment or so. Mortal equations. Points of no return. Healing in jump cost and cost. And if the wound drew too profoundly on Chur's resources and the jump-stretch went on— There was another jump beyond this; it might come in a day—or hours; and if things went really wrong here, there might be jump and jump and jump with kif on their track and somewhere, somewhen down that course—having to send The Pride into jump knowing of a certainty Chur would die in it. That was what they faced. "All right," Pyanfar said quietly. "All right, we do it. We get that med in here right now. A hani med. Vigilance has got staff. I'll get one. I don't care what it takes." Another convulsive effort to speak. "Let me. Captain, let me." And quietly, the dam broken: "Begging your pardon—but maybe I can talk to staff, go the quiet route, huh? Kin-right." Without the arrogance of captains involved, Geran meant. "Do it," Pyanfar said without rancor. "They've got a com-hold on. You'll have to get past it." "Aye." Geran took com one post, sat down and went on the com, quietly, urgently. It was not a thing Pyanfar cared to listen to—Geran pleading Chur's case with an Ehrran crewwoman who wanted to argue channels in the matter of a Chanur life. I should have done it before now. Begged them. Gods, I don't care, we've got to get a hurry-up on this. But it was more likely Geran could win it. Doubtless it would come to captains and her having to plead with Ehrran personally before all was done; but something still had to be sacred among hani—like kin-right and the bond between sisters. A ship incoming with family crisis on Anuurn outranked all oilier traffic. A woman homebound in such events could hoard any plane, commandeer any conveyance without stopping for formalities like fares till later. Kin-right could unsnarl red tape, overcome barriers, silence opposition and objections. There was law higher than han law. There had always been. Vigilance had to respect that. "Captain. They want your request on file." Pyanfar turned the chair and met an anguished stare with a quiet one before she took the call. "This is Pyanfar Chanur," she said to com. "Chanur." It was Rhif Ehrran in person. "You want your crewwoman transferred to our facilities?" "Treated here, if you can do it." Gods, to put Chur in Ehrran hands. "I've got a next-of-kin request, ker Rhif." Humbly. Quietly. With as much of Chanur dignity as she could save. "Geran Anify par Pyruun: she's got the right to go with her sister if she has to be taken off." You'll have an able Chanur loose on your ship if you take them, you eggsucking Ehrran bastard, no luck getting your hands on one of us helpless and undefended—and we'll be two crewwomen down, blast your eyes, and you'll have two hostages and you know it. "I'd take it kindly, captain, if you could get a little speed on this. She's pretty sick." A long delay. "Dispatch the case records. Such as you have. My medical staff doesn't work on suppositions." "You know I haven't got a medical staff, Ehrran." "You expect me to take on the liability without adequate records. I'll want a release from Geran Anify as next of kin and from you as clan senior here before my staff touches her." "You'll get it." Cover your backside, you gods-be parasite. Protect yourself. You give me the chance and it won't be a lawsuit when I go for you. "With respect, can we get this underway? We don't know how long we've got in this port." "It's waiting on that release, Chanur. Or if you'd rather have the mahendo'sat or the kif see to your problem—" "We'll get your release. Thank you, ker Rhif. I owe you one." The contact went discourteously dead. "Gods fry her," Geran muttered. "By the gods," Pyanfar said, turning and matching Geran's look with one of her own, "we owe her one, Chanur owes her one for this." "Aye," Geran rasped. The breath came from the depths of her gut, as if it strangled on its way. "Hearth and blood, captain. When we get a chance." "When." Pyanfar flicked her ears. Rings chimed, reminder of voyages and experience. They dealt with an Immune. Unchallengeable, by every principle of civilized law. But Chanur was older than any Immune clan. Older than Ehrran in all senses. "Get that release. Get Khym in here. And get the automed and relay Chur's vital signs over to Vigilance; let's give the meds all the help we can and save the Ehrran for our own time, not Chur's." Khym came onto the bridge and got to legal files; Tully strayed through the door: "Here," Pyanfar said, called Tully over and leaned aside in her chair to fish a size three probe out of the under-console toolkit. She extended one claw in demonstration, punched a harmless button with the probe while Tully watched, and turned and slapped the probe into his palm. His blue eyes lighted with sudden understanding and he clenched his hand on the tool. "We get Chur help," she said. "Meanwhile we need crewman, huh? Understand? Buttons. Controls. Gods, you can't read. Use your imagination. Go to Khym, tell him you do what he says, can you?" "I understand," he said. "I do. I work, I help." "Good for you." She patted an available leg and sent him off, the halt to help the inexperienced, and both to do what they could. Gods, gods. She dropped her head against her hands and wiped her mane back. She was shaking with fatigue. She heard someone else come onto the bridge. Geran had come back with stats from the little medical equipment they had, and she flung herself into Haral's vacant seat to put the data through to Vigilance, no motion wasted. Gods know how long we'll be here. Geran guesses the risk we're at—if we have to run for it on the sudden. Chur—gods know if she's thinking straight at all now. Or thinks she's living anyway and won't burden us with helping her. Gods-be stubborn hillwomen. We go to space. We never get home out of the blood. Gods, gods—there had been a look on Geran's face for a moment in the dealings with Vigilance, a look such us she had seen on Hilfy's with the kif, and neither expression looked much toward personal survival. Her own heart beat hard when she thought on Ehrran, when she reflected on herself, on a fool who had gotten a little ship and a merchant crew involved in the affairs of Personages and hakkiktun and gods forbid, the knnn. There was nowhere left to run but home, nothing but charges and challenge there, and no way with a sick woman aboard to do that running without killing her. They could get back to Mkks from here. Or reach Tt'a'va'o, in space no hani had ever visited and where no hani was welcome; or run for Meetpoint—where The Pride had no welcome either and no few agencies wanted their hides. Chur might not live to get to any of those places and The Pride itself might not last much longer than their arrival. She gave her mane a second wipe, flicked the rings on her ears into order and listened to Geran getting the data through and insisting on an acknowledgement from the Ehrran medical staff. Haral came back onto the bridge, still wet from her bath, as Khym got up from his board and quietly handed Geran the legal release for fax-transmission to Vigilance. "What's underway?" Haral asked. "Getting a Vigilance med over here," Pyanfar said quietly; and Haral's damp ears went back in quiet acknowledgement. Haral knew who; why; was relieved, and avowed she had not been worried it would get done, all in that one twitch. It comforted her, such friendly familiarity, close as her own mind. There had been times in their youth when she and Haral had come to blows. Never on The Pride's deck. Never since they took to sitting side by side at The Pride's controls. "Chur's not so good, huh?" Haral asked. "Not critical," Pyanfar said, "but none too good. It's not now that worries me." Haral added up other unspoken things right too, with a scowl for their luck and Chur's and for allies they had to rely on. "Goldtooth's on—"—insertion approach, Pyanfar started lo say, and com started flashing an attention-light. She reached and leaned over the mike. "Pride of Chanur. You've reached the captain." It was neither Ehrran nor Jik. It was the tinny putter of the shielded dockside line, "—kokkitta ktogotki, Chanur-hakto. Kgoto naktki tkki skthokkikt." "Gods rot it, I'm not opening that hatch." "—kohogot kakkti hakkiktu." "Not even for him." "—Khotakku. Sphitktit ikkti ktoghogot." "Speak pidgin!" "—Gift. From the hakkikt." Pyanfar drew in a long breath and looked up at Haral. Haral's ears were back. Don't ask me, that look meant. You know what choice we've got. "I'm coming," Pyanfar said into the com. "Kgakki tkki, skku-hakkiktu." Politeness grated. And when the contact was broken: "Gods, what else did we need? Khym. Tully. Haral and I are headed for the lock. Get on the com and tell Tirun and Hilfy meet us down in lowerdecks—armed, and hurry it. Geran: get that camera on." She flung herself to her feet as Haral headed for the weapons-locker. "And, Khym, when you've done that get on shortrange and advise Jik we've got kif arriving with presents at our lock. Don't use the station lines! Hear?" "Aye," Khym said, and shifted himself into Hilfy's vacant place, already throwing com switches. No argument. Gods, the menfolk had settled in and become useful—somewhere something had happened, and the uphill weight she had been shoving against since Anuurn port began to move on its own impulse. She took the light pistol Haral handed her, checked the safety in haste and headed out of the bridge a step in front of Haral. "Gifts," Pyanfar muttered as Haral overtook her in the main corridor. "Gifts! That's how-we got into this gods-forsaken mess in the first place. Knnn. Chur sick. Vigilance playing games. And a gods-be kif wants to give us presents." With Goldtooth in the last stages of his docking approach, they were losing their free-space shield; and from here on, it was stand prepped for a hasty undock and a mad scramble for defense at any moment. They had caught station with its defenses low. It was an easy trick to take a starstation out—a few c-charged rocks carried through jump and let fly—if an attacker had no scruples. And, she kept recalling, Akkhtimakt's reputation included none, even among kif. Chapter 10 Tirun and Hilfy met them in front of the lift lowerdecks, armed with pistols from the downside locker, ears laid back and both of them wetter than Haral had been. "What have we got?" Tirun asked as they headed down the corridor to the lock. "We got a present coming from Sikkukkut," Pyanfar muttered, and gave a look Hilfy's direction; Hilfy showed nothing now but a clear-eyed attention to business. "That's what they say out there, at least; I didn't like the last present much; and b'gods, if Sikkukkut gives me another earless hanger-on I'll feed it to Skkukuk and solve two problems." "I don't like this," Haral said. "I don't like it at all. Captain, let Tirun and me sort this out in the lock. We might get more kif than we bargained for and they could sabotage that hatch—" "Airlock gives them advantage of position," Pyanfar said. "Geran, you got image on them?" "No, captain—one's in sight at the bend; there's more, but they're staying back and that accessway light's lousy." "Gods-be mess," Pyanfar muttered. "Stand by, Geran." A single shot from their airlock toward the accessway might blow them to hard vacuum, even with light pistols; and Kefk was rife with potential suicides willing to bet their lives hani would hesitate one necessary instant to take the opposition with them. "We could take it from lowerdeck ops," Haral said. "Sfik," Pyanfar said, and took her gun from her pocket and threw the safety off. "Besides, sabotage at that hatch we don't need. Airlock it is. You and I go in, cousin. Hilfy and Tirun hold the, rear and keep your hand on that close-switch. And, Geran, you look sharp up there." "I'm on it," Geran said. Tirun's ears were back. Tirun had the clear ruthless sense to throw the emergency seal, backup to Geran; Hilfy was there because Hilfy happened to be belowdecks, and sending her topside would say something Pyanfar had no wish to say. "Huh," Tirun said, commentary on it all. They rounded the corner toward the lock. "Geran. Inner hatch only, Geran." Ssssnnk. The big inner hatch went back on the instant, and the lock glared white with lights. Tirun took up position where the hatch rim gave some cover from fire and a split-second longer survival in an explosive decompression, her left hand set on the emergency switch. Hilfy stood armed on the opposite side of the hatchway. "Easy," Pyanfar said; and walked into the airlock with Haral behind her. "Geran, open her up." The outer hatch whisked back. A single kif who stood there a distance down the orange-lighted access, its hands in plain sight. It looked not at all startled at the pair of guns it faced; and it wisely refrained from all sudden movement. Sikkukkut himself? Pyanfar wondered. But it was not so tall as Sikkukkut. It smelled different. She caught the different smell of Kefk station, musty and ammoniac, that came wafting in with it, fit to raise the hairs on a hani's back. Her nose twitched. Gods, I'm allergic to the bastards— "The hakkikt sends," it said. "Will you accept the gift?" "What gift?" The kif made a slow turn. "—Kktanankki!" he called out. Bring it—a word that implied other things beyond bring, like a present that was able to walk under its own power. A faint sound came from further down, around the corner of the accessway. More kif arrived, a massed drift of shadow with the red-gold of a hani in their midst, a hani in torn blue silk breeches. Pyanfar's heart lurched, first in statement and then in recognition of that face, the tangled mane with the bronze tone of Anuurn's southlands; left ear ripped, a black scar that raked mouth and chin. "Dur Tahar," Pyanfar said. The captain of Moon Rising raised her eyes as the kif brought her to the threshold of the lock. She blinked and the ears came up and flattened as the first kif and two more took her inside, under the white light. Her eyes were the same bronze as her mane, wild and hard and crazed-looking. "Pyanfar Chanur," Tahar said, in a distant, hoarse voice. "The hakkikt gives you your enemy," the foremost kif said. "His compliments, Chanur." "Mine to him," Pyanfar muttered. "Kkt," the kif said, and turned with a sweep of its robes and left, taking its dark companions with it, in kifish economy of courtesy. "My crew," Dur Tahar said. Her voice struggled for composure and failed. "For the gods' own sake, Chanur—go after them! Ask for them; get them out of there!" Pyanfar expelled one breath, sucked in a new one and strode out into the accessway in pursuit of the departing kif. "Captain!" Haral called after her; but Pyanfar went only as far as the bend, where she had view of the down-bound knot of kif on the ramp. "Skku-hakkiktu!" she yelled after the collective shadow. "I want the rest of the hani! Hear?" The kif came to a leisurely halt, and gazed up at her as his band halted around him. "Tell the hakkikt," Pyanfar called down the icy chute of the ramp, "I appreciate his gift. Tell the hakkikt I want the rest of the hani. I set importance on that. Tell him so!" "Kkt. Chanur-hakto. Akktut okkukkun nakth hakti-hak-kikta." Something about passing the message on. Modes eluded her, the subtleties of when or how fast, woven into the words kif used with each other like fine-edged knives. "See to it!" she yelled back. The kif bowed like a slide of oil, turned and walked on down the ramp with his companions around him. Pyanfar scowled, snicked the safety onto the pistol, then turned and hastened back into the airlock. "Shut it, Geran!" Pyanfar yelled up at com. "And lock her up good!" The door hissed behind her, and the electronic seals clashed and thumped. "Where are your crew?" Pyanfar asked Tahar. "Station Central. Last I knew." Tahar staggered as Haral took her by one bound arm and pulled her through into the warm corridor outside. As she passed, Tahar looked from Hilfy at her left to Tirun at her right; and with Hilfy whose mother was Faha-clan there was a feud as grievous as Chanur's own. But Dur Tahar showed not a spark of defiance, only weary acquiescence as Pyanfar pushed her over to stand against the corridor wall. "Get them out!" Tahar said hoarsely. "Chanur, anything you want, just get them out. Fast." "Tirun, you got a knife?" "I got it." Tirun drew her folding-knife from her pocket, turned Tahar's face to the wall and sawed through the binding cords that held her hands, turned her about again and cut the one that circled her throat—stuffed the cut cord into her pocket, spacer's neatness, while Dur Tahar leaned against the wall, rubbing the blood back into her hands, her eyes glassy with shock. "I sure didn't fancy to meet you under these circumstances," Pyanfar said. "We were off our ship when you came in. They held us in the offices—gods, I don't care what you do to me, just get them away from the kif." "I'm going to try. I sent Sikkukkut a message out there in the accessway. I'm not sure I've got enough credit the hakkikt's going to listen, but I think I've got enough it'll get to him." Dur Tahar pushed away from the wall. "You can do better than that, Chanur!" "Listen, you make me trouble, Tahar, you'll die earless. Hear me?" "I hear. Just get on it. Talk to them. You know what they'll do—" "I know. But that message has to get there before I can do anything. You should know that well as any. I'm going to call Harukk on com. Suppose you tell me what you're doing in port; where Akkhtimakt is. Maybe you can give me some coin to bargain with, huh?" Tahar's mouth tightened. She gestured vaguely outward, elsewhere, anywhere, with a lifting of her eyes. "There. Out there. Kshshti, likeliest." It was the ghost of a voice. "You want our word, you have it from me. Anything. Just for the gods' sakes don't let them die like that." Pyanfar stood staring at her. Old-fashioned words meant something on Anuurn; like our word, like clan and law and other things alien to the far dark place they had gotten to, in the modern age of Vigilance and stsho connivance. "It's a long way from home. A long way, Tahar." Dur Tahar leaned her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. "They'll turn on you. Mahendo'sat same as kif. They will. Take my example—get out of here. Shed all of them and run, Chanur." "You know a place to run to?" Dur Tahar opened her eyes and looked at her, such a look as ached with exhaustion and terror and months and years of running. "No. Not ultimately. Not if you're like me. And you're getting there real fast, aren't you, Chanur?" It was not a sight any of them would ever have looked for—Moon Rising's captain sitting at The Pride's galley table up by the bridge, taking a cup of gfi Geran pressed on her. Dur Tahar drank, and Pyanfar sat across the table with a cup in her own hands and more of the crew lounging against the cabinets with whatever bits of food Tully had scrounged: two males in the galley—so beaten Dur Tahar was that she hardly spared more than a misgiving glance at Tully and less than that at Khym. She knew Tully was with us, Pyanfar noted. Or at least knew he might be. So the rumor's got to Akkhtimakt. Tirun was back on duty, trying to query Vigilance on the medical assistance and get Jik's attention to the Tahar matter—("Let me take this round," Tirun had offered, while Geran was back seeing to Chur. "Do it," Pyanfar said. And between the two of them: "Put the fire under Vigilance, huh? Discreetly. Gods rot them. Get some hurry out of them.") Khym and Haral and Hilfy and Tully—they lounged about the walls, guns on hips, all of them armed but Tully; and Tahar drank her gfi in silence, eyes at infinity. "I want it straight," Pyanfar said to her. "I want the whole story, ker Dur. And fast. Tell it to me." Focus came back. "My crew—" "Mahijiru's in dock; Goldtooth's hooking up the com lines right now. We'll begin to get some movement out of the kif soon now. Ships are on short crew, same as us. Even the kif. Your cousins'll be safe enough for the time being—the kif'll hold off till they've got some direct order from Sikkukkut, or until Sikkukkut's free to see to them; and Sikkukkut's real occupied just now. Depend on it. Drink that down. My watch officer's sending to Aja Jin. We're doing more than it looks like we are. But you play me for a fool, Dur, and I'll—" "No." Tahar took a swallow. The cup trembled in her hands. "You run in rough company. This hakkikt of yours—" "Not mine." "—he's winning, do you understand that? The kif think Akkhtimakt's already lost. The word's spreading—how well do you know the kif?" "About as well as serves, and better than I want to." "I know them, gods, believe me that I do. Sfik. Gods-forsaken kif change sides quick as stsho in a situation like this, two kif at the top of the heap and both of them near-matched: Sikkukkut and Akkhtimakt—they both served Akkukkak in different capacities till he went, and now the two of them have all kif space in chaos. Every wind, every whisper that comes along, ordinary kif sniff it and change their politics. And all of a sudden Akkhtimakt's small stuff. His move against Kita was a big threat; gods, he's from Akkht, he's big stuff there—got powerful skkukun hunting down all his rivals on homeworld, while Sikkukkut's just a jumped-up provincial boss from Mirkti, for the gods' sake. But the mahendo'sat know him. Sikkukkut's a longtime neighbor of theirs, someone they're used to dealing with; and they're dealing with him. Do you see? All of a sudden Akkhtimakt looks like a kif a long way from his power base and losing it. Sikkukkut's operating in his own home territory, using old connections, and Sikkukkut's cut Akkhtimakt bad—thanks to you and the mahendo'sat. Real bad." Pyanfar leaned her elbows on the table. "Where's humanity fit into this, huh?" The whites showed around Tahar's eyes, a slight tic in Tully's direction, but Tahar did not turn her head, not even when Geran drifted quietly into the room and stood there with arms folded and her face like boding storm. "Humans," Tahar said, "are coming in. They're moving slowly—but your ally ought to be able to tell you that." "Sikkukkut, you mean?". "This human. Or the mahendo'sat. Akkhtimakt's program was to stop the human ships; keep them out of Compact space. Or prey on them one by one on the fringes. Humans are mahen allies, the way the kif read it. But Sikkukkut's got the mahendo'sat working with him. He's got you, got himself the Eyes of the han, for the gods' sweet sake. Got a pet human of his own. How do you fight a combination like that? Kefk took one look at that situation and all of Akkhtimakt's partisans here started looking at their neighbors and refiguring every tie they had—I've been through it before. A kif looks at a situation, adds up his own sfik and whether he's got any advantage to the other side, and if he doesn't, he'll know his neighbors are adding it up too, and one of them may try to get more sfik by killing him. If he kills his attacker he's got more sfik for the moment, but if he suddenly gets too much, he may look like a threat and lose all the benefit of it. It's a bloody game, Chanur. I've played it for two years." "Looks like you missed a step, doesn't it?" "Oh, I tried. Kif don't understand hani, that's all; they don't know how our minds work, not in crises—but they do know we're different and the way we choose sides isn't predictable or sensible by their lights. So that's what happened to us. We didn't get a chance to switch sides. We were in an office—the staff just turned without warning and killed one kif who was too high up—too much sfik to trust; and they rounded up others to hand over to Sikkukkut for—o gods." Tahar shuddered and set the cup down with both hands. "My crew, Chanur, my crew—Sikkukkut handed me on for a gift. I've got sfik enough. The situation has. But my cousins—if you don't get them out of there—Chanur, I've seen what happens when a kif wants to throw a celebration. I've seen it." "I'm working on it. My word on it, Tahar. Gods know I'd cheerfully break your neck if things were different. But not here and not now and not that way. I'm applying every leverage I've got. Want a warm-up on that?" "No." "Take it anyway. You can use it." She retrieved Dur Tahar's cup, held it for Tirun to fill and set it back in front of Tahar's hands. "You get news from home?" Tahar raised her eyes with apprehension. "Short and straight," Pyanfar said. Gods, it had a bad taste in her mouth when delivering the news once would have been revenge in itself. "Tahar's in deep trouble—but you'd figure that. I don't know how bad or how much internally, or what's going on at Anuurn at the moment, but you could figure it. Tahar was having trouble getting cargoes last year. Victory, Sunfire and Golden Ring are all working over farside, last that I know about it, as far from kif as they can get. If they haul their own cargo, someone raises a question whether it might be pirated goods being dumped; if they haul someone else's they have to post a bond of guarantee in the case they should decide to pirate it themselves." "Cut it, Chanur!" "I'm telling you the truth. What do you expect you've done for Tahar's reputation? Gods rot it, you knew it when you bolted with the rest of the kif at Gaohn! You might as well listen to it." Tahar's ears were back, she set the cup down hard and looked as if she were coming over the tabletop in the next breath; but then the wind went out of her in a long shuddering sigh, and she bowed her head and flexed her claws out, points on the hard table surface. "You gave me gods-be little choice. Do what? Come home and face my brother? Go on running Tahar cargoes after what the kif did to hani at Gaohn?" "You knew they were kif when you bedded down with them." "So do you know it." Tahar's head came up, red-bronze eyes dark-centered and burning. "Remember that. Remember that, Pyanfar Chanur. You can't shed your clan. You never can. What you do comes back on your kin at home. And kif are kif and hani are hani, and one can't trust the other in the end. Get us out of here. Get my crew out and let's go home, Chanur, for the gods' sake, I'm begging you, let's both of us go home!" "Captain." Tirun's voice came over the com on the wall. "Vigilance is sending: Quote: 'You've boarded Tahar personnel.' I'm reading it exact, captain. 'We require you stand by to transfer this person to Immune custody.' " "Gods rot them," Pyanfar muttered, and slid out of the bench. "Ehrran," Dur Tahar murmured darkly, and started to her feet in a move that brought Chanur out of their leisured poses all about the galley. Tahar's ears went flat in alarm and she subsided back into the seat. "The law," Pyanfar said. "They're here, Tahar. Han law. They've been hunting you for two years." "Chanur—take my parole!" Take custody, Tahar meant; clan to clan. Take her back to Anuurn justice in Chanur custody. It might even one-up Chanur enemies; and humiliate Rhif Ehrran. That was what Tahar offered, knowing what she offered. It also might backfire. Pyanfar stared at Dur Tahar eye to eye within the half-ring of Chanur crew and the hair bristled down her back. Gods, that I have to be afraid. That one hani has to look at another like this, and worry about the han. She brushed past and headed for the bridge. "Chanur!" Pyanfar looked back, at Tahar with Haral's hand clamped in a firm grip on her arm. Pyanfar jerked her chin up in a gesture that freed the Tahar captain, turned and walked the narrow, curve-floored corridor to the bridge. "They still on?" she asked Tirun, at com one, as she settled into her own chair. "Your two," Tirun said, and Pyanfar spun her chair about, and punched that channel in on speaker, along with the recorder. "Pyanfar Chanur speaking." "Rhif Ehrran," the answer came back, delivered over speaker from the board, as others gathered on the bridge to hear it. "We understand the kif have turned one of the Tahar over to you." "That's correct, ker Rhif. Dur Tahar. She's advised us that her kin are still in the custody of the hakkikt's forces, and that they're in imminent danger. We made immediate application through all channels for their release. We're holding her pending a quieter situation on the docks—" "You undertook this without notifying us." "The notification to the hakkikt was a matter of emergency. Hani lives are in danger. Regarding the general situation, Tahar showed up at my lock in kif custody without advance warning. And let me remind the deputy this is not a secure communication." "You're obstructing a han order, Chanur." "As a matter of record, Tahar has appealed to us to take her parole." Dead silence on the other end for a moment. Then: "Cooperation, Chanur. You don't take that parole. Hear me? Hear me? You want ours, we get yours. You'll turn her over. Pyanfar's pulse skipped. She flicked a glance at the recorder light's green glow. It was being logged on Vigilance and assuredly she wanted it on The Pride's tapes. "You're implying, are you, that our request for medical assistance to injured personnel hinges on our rejecting Tahar's appeal?" More silence. The trap was too obvious. Rhif Ehrran was too wary to confirm that with any chance of it being logged verbatim. "Nothing of the kind, Chanur. But I don't send my crew into a situation I don't trust. And pending resolution of this matter, I'm putting that request on hold." "Gods rot you, you're talking about a critically ill woman and a gods-be short schedule! You're—" Click. "Gods blast you!" Tirun's voice quietly: "Log it?" "Log it. Log that cut-off, to the minute." Pyanfar cut the recorder off. She was shaking when she spun the chair about, and her heart hurt her when she looked at the faces about her; Geran's face; and Tahar's. "Geran," Pyanfar said quietly, to the killing-rage she saw in Geran's eyes. And with profoundest shame: "Tahar. I'm still trying." "What are they doing?" Tahar asked in a hollow voice. "Chanur, what's going on?" "The law. The law that wants you is telling me they'll by the gods let Chur Anify die if we don't hand you over on the spot. That's what's happened on Anuurn since Gaohn. That's what the han's come to nowadays, spies and note-takers out to prove their case at any cost. Law by innuendo, by threat, by payoff and profit and political gain. That's what we've got. Deals with the stsho. Buy-outs and sell-outs. Hani so gods-be anxious to get the advantage of their rivals they don't see anything else—like you and me, Tahar. Like both us gods-be fools. I watched you and you watched me and we fought each other, and our menfolk did, and all the while the old women in Naur and Schunan licked their whiskers and planned how to skin us both. They sent Ehrran out. The stsho found a chink and they're using it—stsho money; and hani gods-be stupidity. Incarnate in Ehrran. By the gods, Tahar, I'll help your crew, I swear to you. But they're demanding I turn you and them over to Ehrran. And I don't see a way out of it. I've got a sick woman aboard with another jump to go, gods know when. They've got the medic that can help her; and they're going to play dirty." "My sister," Geran said quietly. Her voice achieved a pitch of deep hoarseness it had never reached. And stopped though it was clear Geran had more to say than that. Shame, shame to have a transaction like that to Chanur's account and Anify's, and there was nothing else to do. "Chanur," Tahar said, hands clenched on the co-pilot's cushion till the claws gouged. "Chanur, I'm a gift. A kifish gift, hear? You want the hakkikt to think Chanur can't hold what they give you?" "Gods, you argue like a kif." "You're dealing with kif, Chanur. You're in their station. This is their game. Not the han's. Not yours. You give me to the han you lose sfik. And you can lose your life for it. You can lose all you've got." "Shut it down, Tahar!" "Don't send me yet! Gods, Chanur, if you're going to throw it all away, at least get my crew out first, while you still have the sfik to bargain with!" "I've got a woman sick, I've got gods-be little time to bargain in." "They'll kill you. The kif will kill you if you slip. You hear me? Where's Chur Anify or any of you then, huh? You think Tahar's the only lives at stake at this gods-forsaken station?" More silence, profound and dreadful. The crew listened; Tully's face was set and pale, for what small amount he followed. "Maybe—" Geran's voice came softly, hoarse and hollow. "Maybe a mahen doctor—captain, maybe Chur'd be better off with someone not Rhif Ehrran's pick in the first place. I trust her that little. And I know how Chur feels about it." What for godssakes has gotten into us? A darkness closed about Pyanfar's vision, a narrowing tunnel in which one course leapt out with white-edged clarity. "By the gods, no! We're not taking this from that blackbreeched foot-licker. Tirun! Get me Jik." Pyanfar spun her chair about to the board and hit the recorder and the com. "Priority—" The com came live. "The Pride of Chanur to Aja Jin, priority, priority; this is Pyanfar Chanur. Get the captain on—" And as a mahen voice droned back: "Move it, crewman—Tirun, gods rot it, give me those med stats." She punched buttons, hunting in two banks. "Where in a mahen hell'd you put that gods-be file?" "Four, captain, it's your comp four, I'm getting it—" "Stand by comp transmission, Aja Jin, priority—Where's Jik, gods blast your eyes!" "I got," a deeper voice came back. "Jik, get our comp-send and get a med over here, priority, priority one! Mahen, hani, I don't care what, just hurry, code one, hear? Hurry it, Jik!" "You got. Ready you send." She sent, two keystrokes. "Got. We go, go." "Go!" She broke the contact and spun the chair about. "Tirun. Log a medical emergency. Log the call." She leaned buck in the cushions and stared at her crew and at Tahar, darkly smug. "There's more than one way to get something done around here. Now let Ehrran play politics with an emergency call." It was not safe. Sudden moves in a stationful of nervous kif might open something else up. No move at all was unthinkable. She looked at Geran, whose ears were canted back, whose eyes were white-edged about the amber and black. "So we get Jik in on it," Pyanfar said. "And by the gods he can get blackbreeches to Kefk he can gods-be sure get a hani medic over here whether Rhif Ehrran likes it or not, and by the gods she'll do her job." Geran gave a smile far from pleasant, prim pursing of her mouth. No smile at all from the rest of the crew; a wary look from Khym; a warier one yet from Tahar; and from Tully a lost and worried stare. He laid a hand on Haral's arm, questioned her with a look. "We get help for Chur," Pyanfar said in simplicity, for turn, and got up from her chair. "Tahar, your crew gets my help nonconditional. I'm not Rhif Ehrran. If you doublecross me or get in my way I'll just break your neck right off and send the remains to the kif. And let me make one thing more clear: my crew's not in any state to be patient with your mouth. We're short on sleep and gods-be mad, and I don't know if I'd save you if you cross one of us again. Hear it?" Tahar's ears went back, a visible flinching. It was the truth, at least the first part. And maybe the second. And Tahar gave no sign of doubting it. "Better be ready on that access," Pyanfar said, and turned a look toward Haral. "Tirun, stay your post. You know who you've talked to. Hilfy, Khym, put Tahar in Tully's room a while." It was one of the few places on the ship relatively damage-proof, and it at least had a bed. "Move it. Geran—see to Chur, that's all." Crew scattered, except Tully. He still had that lost look- anxious, frightened. Chur. That was all he could likely make out. Next to Hilfy, the closest friend he had. Pyanfar walked over to him and set a hand on his arm. Claws half out. He had that disconnected look of hysteria, and she gripped his arm to wake him up. "Hey," Pyanfar said, "it's all right, huh?" "Tahar," he said. "Kif. Kefk. What do, Pyanfar? What do, what do?" What are you up to? What kind of game are you playing? I trusted you. What's going on, Pyanfar? "Captain," Tirun said, "Jik's lot're headed up the dock. Estimate three minutes. Mahijiru queries: assistance wanted?" "Affirmative." She left Tully, walked over to Tirun's side and leaned there. "Kif query," Tirun said. "It's Harukk." Then the minuses of the trick came home to nest. "Respond: medical emergency. Injured crew." Tirun relayed it. "We have a call already in—" Tirun added, reminder to the kif on the other end. And: "We understand that. Will you go on trying?" Another incoming-light lit. Haral snatched the call. ". . . Right. We got you. We'll open for you. Captain, it's the meds." "Tell Hilfy intercept them as they come in. Tully—go help Geran. Go to Chur. Take Geran's orders." Tully went without question. It was off the bridge, it kept him from underfoot and he could fetch and carry if someone could get it through to him what was wanted. Loyal, she thought; he was that. Friend. And alien and dangerous as the mahendo'sat when matters got beneath his skin. There was a coming and going belowdecks, grim mahen personnel bristling with weapons taking up station in the accessway, along the lowerdeck main corridor and at the lift. And on the upperdeck main, where a frowning Ehrran medic worked with a tall black Ksota mahendo'sat, and Chanur's off-duty and motley assortment standing grim and glowering round the walls of Chur's sickroom—two males, either one of whom might have raised the Ehrran's hackles for completely different reasons; Geran Anify and Hilfy Chanur, Hilfy standing there with her hand consciously or unconsciously on the butt of a pistol. They went armed, with the airlock standing open under mahen guard; and it was not only the kif that concerned them. Pyanfar hovered by the door, with a complug in one ear, listening to operations as Tirun sorted them past. The medics exchanged surly technicalities. "No gods-rotted good," the hani said; and Geran moved closer, hands in her belt and a frown clenching her jaw. "What isn't good?" "Captain," the medic protested, not for the first time. "I'd like this room cleared." "That's all right," Pyanfar said from the doorway. "We're all friends. I'm sure Chur doesn't mind." "Get them out of here—" With a look at The Pride's two menfolk. "Why?" Pyanfar said. "You going to object to your professional colleague too?"—who was male, and mahendo'sat. The hani medic gave a bleak hard stare and turned and laid out supplies. Plainly she did object to males in medicine, whatever the species, and swallowed it. "Better be good," Geran said. The medic hesitated with a bottle in her hand. "Mistake might damage your career real bad," Hilfy said, hand still on the gunbutt. "I didn't come here to take abuse and threats from junior crew." "Better be right," Chur said for herself, rousing herself to tilt her head back on the pillow and look at the drip stand the medic-assistants were setting up by her side. "Mahe, haosti." Check it, will you? "Shishti," the mahe agreed. The hani medic glared, and handed the bottles and the bags over to the mahe one by one. "Seals," the hani said, pointing out the tops. "This woman never should have left Kshshti. By the gods she never should have sat a post—" "You going to quote us another regulation?" Khym asked in his deep rumble. "I'll quote you laws. Like criminal negligence, malpractice, and kin-right." "Get him out of here." "Huh," Pyanfar said, and leaned on the doorframe and turned with it at her back until she was in the hall. "Captain," the voice came from com. "Medic down with Skkukuk says he's fit enough. Says we got a diet problem with him, they want to send some stuff over." "Live?" "They say—well, the things are real dumb and they breed fast." Pyanfar grimaced. The skin between her shoulders drew tight. "Vermin, huh? What's it eat?" A moment of silence. "I'll ask." She rolled back around the corner and looked into the room. Looked askance again when the lift door opened down the corridor and let in another band of mahendo'sat. For one moment the grim look of them sent Pyanfar's hand instinctively to the gunbutt. Then recognition took over, and she flung herself from the doorframe and strode down the dead middle of the corridor. "Goldtooth!" she spat. "Ha, Pyanfar—" He was a black mahendo'sat, and he came in the somber black of his companions, not a flash of gold except when he smiled wide and glittery. He towered there in that dark company on whom the only metal was the black sheen of AP guns and belts and buckles. And the grin died a fast death. "Say Chur she all right, huh?" "No thanks to you, you rag-eared bastard!" She jerked the com-plug from her ear and looked up at his black, worried face. "I got my tail wrecked at Urtur, got my crew shot up at Kshshti—" "Message go." "Yes, rot you, your gods-be message went. Banny Ayhar and Prosperity took it on, if she got through alive." She recalled the open door and the Ehrran medic, snagged Goldtooth by a lanky, powerful arm and dragged .him toward her own cabin. "Stay out!" she snapped at his gun-bearing escort as she opened the door and pulled Goldtooth inside. She closed it in the faces of his guards and turned and glared at him in the privacy and soundproofing of her own quarters. "So no more merchant. No more play-acting. This is your real face, huh, hunter-captain? Leave us a message at Urtur—head us at Jik and never tell us. You play games, you earless bastard, and we do the bleeding, all over Kshshti docks. You good-humor me right now and I'll break your gods-be neck. Where have you been?" Goldtooth's small ears were back. He had a different look than he was wont, no humor at all. "You want list?" His voice was hoarse and quiet, unlike himself. "Jik number one fool, Pyanfar, he fool listen to this kif." A cold feeling settled into her, worse than before. "He's your friend, gods rot it! You sent him after me at Kshshti. Didn't you?" "I send. He friend. He same time number one fool. Maybe work, this thing. Maybe I fool, same." Goldtooth sought a place to sit down and sank down on her rumpled bed, leaning back on one arm to look at her. "We got trouble, Pyanfar. Fool Jik talk tc'a. Knnn take tc'a. We got lot human ship, come Tt'a'va'o 'bout now. We got human come in, got knnn disturb, got stsho disturb, got kif make fight—Jik know this Sikkukkut. He say—got beat Akkhtimakt. Sikkukkut do. Jik say this kif he be poor pro-vin-cial, going make big lousy mess deal with homeworld, lot longtime trouble. I think Jik wrong. I think he big wrong. This kif not small problem. Got number one hakkikt want be real friendly with mahendo'sat, with you—You watch, you watch, Pyanfar. Sikkukkut be no dumb kif." "I don't think he is." "Fool. Big fool, Jik." "So what are you doing here?" Goldtooth's ears went up and back again. "Maybe try make kif lot busy. I come, go, hit here, there. I close kif route to Meetpoint. They lot upset." A flash of gilded teeth. "Keep Akkhtimakt lot busy, a? That kif want my heart number one urgent, three time try." "What's Sikkukkut going to do now you're here? Answer me that, huh?" "He got no grudge on me. I bring him lot sfik. Same you, hani. Same Jik. Same Vigilance. We give that kif so damn much sfik he eat whole Compact." It made sense. It made an uncomfortable lot of sense. "So why did you come in?" The ears flicked. Dark mahen eyes half-lidded. "Maybe I got no more choice. Maybe Jik got whole thing." A fist closed about her heart. "You're lying to me, Goldtooth. I've had enough of it." Long silence. "Maybe good thing one smart mahe come stand real close this kif, huh?" "You're planning to kill him?" "A. You maybe got idea, hani." "You think other kif haven't tried?" "Kif no do. Kif no try. They kif, they want live, Pyanfar. We mahendo'sat, we little crazy, a? I tell you truth, Pyanfar. You talk that kif I die real slow. You know same, a?" "Gods, I don't want to hear this! Don't make me your co-conspirator!" "Old friend." "Friend!" She strode over to her dressing table, unlatched the drawer and searched inside it for a small presentation box. Goldtooth had sat up straight; she tossed it and he caught it. "What this?" "Expensive present. From Stle sties stlen, your precious friend at Meetpoint. The stsho you told me to trust. A note. Go on. Read it. It's short." He opened the lid, unfolded the paper and his ears tightened against his skull. "Bastard!" "Gtst nearly Phased on me. Maybe he had a bad attack of treachery. Don't trust Goldtooth. That piece of advice cost your government plenty. And that stsho bastard's been dealing with Rhif Ehrran and the kif and the tc'a, I don't doubt. And you. And me. And every landless daughter in the Compact's been sniffing round for advantage. That son was real help, oh, yes! So was your stationmaster at Kshshti. Same gods-rotted kind of help as Stle stles stlen. Gods fry you, you sent me across the Compact like a gods-be lightning rod for every piece of doubledealing for forty lightyears round!" Goldtooth got to his feet. Tossed the case back. Pyanfar caught it, threw it in the drawer, slammed and latched it. "You got lot reason be upset, Pyanfar. But you got lot smart. You never 'preciate same. You best damn captain Anuurn got. I got lot confidence you. You almost same good like me. Maybe better pilot, a?" "Oh, no. No you don't. No more favors. Gods rot it, I got no more crew, I got a gods-be zoo! I got a human scan tech, a kif who neglected to present his papers, and they want to feed him little live vermin—" "You want mahe? Lend you number one fine fellow. Two, three guard." On my ship? Fine fellow to report every move I make? "No thanks. I got enough on file with Vigilance. Taking on mahen crew would about do it, friend." "You take. You got need. They take you order. Swear. I give you five." "No. No way! I can handle it." "We got lot trouble come. Akkhtimakt—he go Meetpoint." "Oh, good gods—" It was credible. It was all too credible. The matter spread itself out like a piece of whole cloth. "He's going to sell himself to Stle stles stlen." "You right." "Hani are allied with the other side!" " 'Cept you; 'cept maybe Tahar. Friend." Oaths failed her. She stood there staring up at Goldtooth; breath hung in her throat and the dark was all about them both. She coughed her throat clear and a shiver gathered in her gut and ran outward. "You," she said finally, "you—" "You no fool, Pyanfar. You got brain. You, me, Jik—not matter look right; matter what we do. Akkhtimakt got hani, got stsho ally, he make them fool. Where hani guns, a? Two, three ship. Stsho got none. Got proverb, hani—you go bed with some people half hour you got hundred year kid, and he got kids and they got in-laws. Same make deal with kif when you got no gun. She stood there silent, staring up at this mahe, this somber self Goldtooth never showed on docksides. I kill this kif, he had said. Deal and double-deal. He could do it. Strike at Sikkukkut after the whole fragile structure was built and it would all tumble into chaos again. More lives and ships. More years of hazard. And knnn with their black legs into it, weaving gods-knew-what about the fringes of the Compact, with humans trying to come and go. Mahendo'sat. He's fighting for mahen survival. His whole species is in danger. And where's hani survival? Not, for sure, with Akkhtimakt. She drew a deep breath and folded her arms. "So. So you got me listening, mahe. But you'd better know this: that tc'a the knnn snatched wasn't the only thing we lost out of here. A stsho craft bolted Mkks, and it came this way, full sail for Meetpoint." "Ah, no. Not Meetpoint. Go out Tt'a'va'o vector." A small flash of gilt teeth. "Try maybe take short cut, a? to Llyene?" "Into the human ships?" "Xenophobe stsho got big surprise, a?" "The gods-rotted stsho are cozy with the tc'a, friend." "Maybe we fix." "O gods, gods, human lunacy's catching—you're playing tag with the knnn, you rag-eared bastard!" "That do be problem, true." She stared into his dark eyes and had another cold moment of doubt. "More secrets? Where are the humans going, friend? Where next? Here? Meetpoint?" Goldtooth's humor had fallen away like a shed cloak. He gazed at her long and thoughtfully. "Maybe we make deal with knnn. Maybe e-qui-librium. Tape you got, tape I give you at Meetpoint, you say Banny Ayhar take on—one thing in this tape be knnn record; hani, we got hope this thing get to Maing Tol. You courier knnn message." "Good gods." "Tully—he be cover for message. He know. And I know you take good care this human. He got paper say he crew of The Pride. You fight save him if you not fight for me." "You bastard. You son of a—" "You listen." He held up a hand and with the other reached into his belt-pouch. "What's that?" "From Jik. You got fine new comp unit downstair, a? You feed this. Got code sort. You process our private message real good, you get talk to us. Ehrran not got." "Best present I've had in a while." She took it and tucked the envelope into her pocket. "Also," Goldtooth said, "my medic get look stats on Chur Anify; we got piece equipment we bring aboard. Number one fine she go through jump. Same like be in hospital, give her all she need." "Gods rot it, why didn't Jik give us that at Mkks?" "He not got. This from Mahijiru. We big ship—got zonal command post. Big hospital. Aja Jin, he maybe more fast, Mahijiru got more crew—got need have this thing. Save few lives. Now you got need, a?" He set his hands on her shoulders, hard and heavy. "We settle detail later. I got go, not like be longtime off my ship. Damn lousy place, Kefk. But one thing more I give—" He reached into his belt pouch and took some other small thing from it, took her hand and hooked over her finger an earring, with one great perfect pearl. "Best I find. I owe you long time for welders, a? Come from Llyene oceans, number one most beau-ti-ful." "Goldtooth—Ismehanan-min—" But for the second time words failed her, and Goldtooth laid his hand on the door switch, "You fine woman," he said. "Beau-ti-ful thing belong you." "Where are they going? Gods rot it, what's their route?" "Always want talk business," he sighed, and opened the door and walked out into the corridor. "Goldtooth, gods rot you—" She pursued to the doorway, stopped abruptly as a pair of mahendo'sat came dollying a large polystyrene crate past the door. Goldtooth pressed himself against the wall on the other side of the corridor till it passed, waved his hand cheerfully toward the crate that headed for Chur's room. "There, see, we move quick. I promise. It be done." He gave an engaging grin. "You trust. You trust, Pyanfar." "Ismehanan-min—" "Chur do fine now," Goldtooth said definitely, and walked off toward the lift, with a nod of his head gathering up his darkclad crew that hulked along on all sides of him, formidable and irresistible. She stood alone in the doorway with the pearl clenched in her hand. And felt entirely numb. Chapter 11 "She's not to get out of that bed," the hani medic said. The Ehrran's ears were back, her nose drawn taut about the nostrils as she stood in the corridor prepared to leave. She looked up at Pyanfar the half-hand of difference in their height. "Whatever you imply about my ethics, captain, I did the best for her I could do, and the mahendo'sat have moved in a gods-rotted expensive piece of equipment she'll stay hooked up to during jump. It'll take the load off her heart and kidneys and prevent any more deterioration. With luck—" Geran had showed up in the corridor and stood there with a face like thunder. "With luck she even may build back a little on the trip. Depends on a lot of things. You're lucky this far. So is she. We don't have that kind of resources. We can't buy it." There was bitterness in the woman, a tight jawed hani anger at outsider wealth, and the laws and agreements between mahendo'sat and stsho that forever shut hani out. And that was an old story Pyanfar well understood. "I appreciate your professional effort," Pyanfar said quietly. And could not forbear adding: "And I do understand you, Ehrran." "Thanks," Geran said for her part. The word all but: strangled on its way out. The hani medic nodded curtly and hitched the strap of her carry-sack higher on her shoulder as the mahen medic came out of the room. "She explain?" the mahe asked. "I hook up machine, she stay connect. No take off. You get list procedure. I leave supply in cabinet." "She explained it. Yes. Thank you. Mashini-to, a?" "A." The mane grinned and bowed and swung off down main corridor with the hani slogging along beside, an unlikely pair headed for the lift. Mahen guards peeled them selves out of the corridor in their wake and followed, Goldtooth's remaining intrusion withdrawing itself. Geran looked drawn and shaken. Silent even yet. Pyanfar put her hand on Geran's shoulder. "Hey, she's going to be all right. Best new-fangled stuff Iji's come out with. Good as hospital. And more good news. I don't think we're pulling out of here real soon, not like we were afraid we might. Day or so, maybe. Maybe more. We know where Akkhtimakt is; I just got word from Goldtooth, and it looks like we're going to have a little chance to breathe. There's more to it than that, but for Chur's sake it's the best news we could come up with on short notice." Geran said nothing. But her face went defenseless and ordinary as if she had come back to them finally. Pyanfar pressed with her hand and Geran drew a deep breath. "What did Goldtooth have to say?" "A lot of stuff that takes explaining." Pyanfar looked in on Chur, leaned there in the doorway of a room which had a great lot of machinery sitting over against the wall; and a crowd of visitors: Hilfy and Tully and Khym still lingered "Hey, you," Pyanfar said, "out of there and let Chur rest, will you?" And as the file passed her in the doorway: "Chur, Cousin, you hear me?" "Uh?" Chur lifted her head from the pillow. "We just got a present, a little while to rest. We got a message where Akkhtimakt is and we've got time for a little R&R. You don't be getting out of that bed or you walk back to Kshshti." "Gods-be needles," Chur said. "I hate needles." "Got more news for you. You get more of them on the way. Get some sleep, huh?" "Trying," Chur said, and shifted in the bed and settled as far as the tubes and one arm strapped outward let her. Pyanfar shut the door and looked at the somber gathering in the hall. "So what is it, captain?" Geran asked. "Not something I much want to dump on you right now," Pyanfar said. "But I'd better." "Chur—" "Not about her. Us. Bridge. Everyone." The four of them followed her. Tirun and Haral turned their chairs about as they walked in. Pyanfar went to her own seat near Haral and leaned on the back of it while the rest of the crew settled on chair-arms and against cabinets. "Haral, Tirun, you catch that business in the corridor?" "Aye," Haral said. "Both of us. Good news on Chur. Thank the gods." "Thank the gods and friends where, we have 'em. Such as they are. We got anything essential running now?" "No." "All right." She took Goldtooth's code-strip packet from her pocket and put that down on the counter by her seat, powered her chair about to face the crew and sat down. "Humans are moving out from Tt'a'va'o. I don't know what route they took; maybe you do, Tully, but the choices from there are real limited. I've talked to Goldtooth. I know a lot of things." She watched Tully's face, saw anxiety—the least little flicker of his strange eyes. "Humans on the move. And that's not the worst of it. Goldtooth's been lurking about Kefk regions keeping the Meetpoint route closed and creating a real difficulty for Akkhtimakt—Jik said sometime back that Goldtooth might be up to something hereabouts. But it turns out they don't check things out with each other real well. It seems Jik took off on his own and made the deal with Sikkukkut. Unauthorized, as it were. Or at least without-consulting. Forced Goldtooth's hand. Tully, I'll try to use small words. Goldtooth had come in from deep space—at least from outside the Compact—with Tully aboard, off Ijir. He left Ijir to go its way—but he had a duplicate of the message packet Ijir carried. He had Tully. And he had gotten something else—some kind of message from the knnn. From the knnn, gods help us. At least that's what Goldtooth hints. Meanwhile Akkhtimakt aimed to take Kita Point, while his agents were busy eliminating all opposition on the kifish homeworld—setting himself up as hakkikt of all the kif, that's what he was after. And back at that stage, a few months ago, Sikkukkut was no more than a provincial boss from Mirkti—with ambitions. Sikkukkut courted his old mahen connections at Meetpoint, approached Goldtooth trying to outflank Akkhtimakt, probing for every weakness he could get—Meetpoint's always a good place for intrigues. A real good place to pick up rumors. And right around that time rumors were running heavy—like hani deals with the stsho; mahen deals—everybody who was high up enough to get advance warnings was trying to get the best advantage against this new kifish hakkikt. Against Akkhtimakt. "But Sikkukkut had a spy with Akkhtimakt, gods know how or where. Undoubtedly he had some stsho on the take at Meetpoint. He knew about the courier-ship falling into Akkhtimakt's hands. He knew—I suspect from his spy with Akkhtimakt, the same way he probably got the ring—that Goldtooth had Tully aboard. And it wasn't too hard to figure Goldtooth had handed Tully to us at Meetpoint, when we showed up with our papers cleared with a gods-awful monstrous bribe from the mahendo'sat. Which we didn't know about. But Sikkukkut may have. "Sikkukkut set us up, deliberately put us in a bind at Meetpoint. He snagged us into his reach, he snagged Ehrran, and Ayhar; and he steered us out of Akkhtimakt's trap at Kita. Steered us right for his own front yard, step by step. And snagged Jik by having us in his net, while he was at it. By that business at Kshshti he gathered himself enough sfik to take Mkks on his own; and now he's got Kefk. So all of a sudden momentum's on his side and deserting Akkhtimakt. Akkhtimakt's supporters are beginning to desert him. Fast. Kifish logic: shoot your former allies in the back and run for the winning side. Akkhtimakt's got to be worried. "Part two: Jik. Jik's got this idea mahendo'sat are a lot better off with their old familiar neighbor from Mirkti as hakkikt over all the kif. And Jik got Ehrran in on it; and he got us. Never mind Mkks' safety. That wasn't all he was after in those negotiations at Mkks. And Ehrran's on a lot more than Tahar's track now if she's got half sense—she's up at the top of this little information pyramid. She's got access to highlevel strategy—and if she's not a total fool, and if she knows anything about this, it's a lot more than Tahar got her to come to Kefk. Treaty law, yes. Jik's got credentials clear from the top, I'm sure he has. And what he specifically said to her that got her out of Mkks and headed this way—gods know. I have an idea the whole urgency behind Ehrran's search for Tahar has a whole lot to do with the han's negotiations with the stsho and the fear of the kif getting a leader. I think they wanted Tahar dead. Wanted to eliminate any possibility of her advising and helping a hakkikt predict what hani would do. Xenophobia again. But in this case, xenophobia with a real good reason. I'm guessing Ehrran's real and immediate motive in going along with this lunatic expedition, because she knew she hadn't a spit in a hurricane of getting back to Meetpoint and hani lanes in one piece if she didn't stay close by Jik—and learn what he was up to. Meanwhile Akkhtimakt supposedly held Kita, remember." "Supposedly?" Haral said. "I think Jik gods-be knew where Goldtooth went when he left Meetpoint: straight for deep stsho-tc'a space; right for a rendezvous with someone who was going to guide the humans in. And then he was supposed to go—probably from Tt'a'va'o (the tc'a connection again!) to Kefk—harassing Akkhtimakt, making him divide his efforts between holding Kita and trying to keep the Kefk lane open, while Goldtooth set himself to keep it shut. So Meetpoint's had a two-way stranglehold on it, trade cut off by the kif at Kita; and-by Goldtooth at Kefk. Goldtooth's plan was to bring Akkhtimakt down by weakening him—lessening his credibility—all the while playing another game designed to soften up this whole gods-be zone from Kefk to Meetpoint because he knew humans were going to come through in this vicinity. If he could link up a mahen-human trade route right past kifish borders, he'd ruin Akkhtimakt's credibility once and for all. Devastate him. "Meanwhile the kifish homeworld is in complete chaos with hunter-squads and assassinations, trying to handle Goldtooth and hunt humans and balance its attentions between two rival hakkiktun. And the kif get information what's going on at Kefk; and some of that information goes to Mkks . . . to kif, but not to mahen authorities—unless the tc'a talked, and they may not have, to unauthorized mahendo'sat. No, Sikkukkut knew exactly where Goldtooth was all the time. But I'm not sure Jik did, when he accepted Sikkukkut's deal to move on Kefk. I don't think Jik even knew for sure whether Goldtooth was alive. So when he was offered a deal that might provide a hakkikt that mahendo'sat could deal with—he took it. It'd take him to Kefk. It would let him link up with Goldtooth, if Goldtooth was still alive. I think mahen information broke down at that one really critical point; and now Goldtooth's in danger—because I think Sikkukkut sees a lot more of Goldtooth's thinking than Goldtooth thinks he sees—a lot more even than Jik may be aware of. Sikkukkut's drawn Goldtooth into the open now. Sikkukkut's got him accessible; and Goldtooth's come in, on his own, real close to Sikkukkut. Not playing coy at all. You see?" "We got trouble," Haral said. "Gods, we got trouble." "Oh, it gets worse, cousin. Jik used some kind of credit at Mkks to get that tc'a to go with us. The knnn are definitely into it. They've already sent one message to Maing Tol—that packet that we sent on with Banny Ayhar, if you can believe Goldtooth that far. I don't know what else Jik did at Mkks but I'm betting he gave the tc'a stationmaster our navigation data and got a tc'a to run cover for us and make sure Kefk fell without a shot. The knnn may consent to it. Or the knnn may have taken exception to it. Gods-rotted sure they took the tc'a. We don't know how they think. Or what they want. But humanity, remember, is cutting real close to the knnn's territory in getting here, if they haven't cut right through it; gods know where the knnn think their zones extend—if they even understand borders. And Tully says humans have fired at knnn ships." Eyes dilated all round the bridge. Ears flattened. "So here we are," Pyanfar said. "We moved into Kefk and caught Kefk by surprise and a high dice roll, and Kefk did the kifish thing and bellied down to the deck fast as they could spit. Sikkukkut takes everything on the table. "Except for one thing. Akkhtimakt's got one recourse. The stsho hire mahen guards for top security, right? The stsho don't trust hani for anything but the lowest level guard jobs, and they trust kif for bully jobs. But. But. Mahendo'sat are trying to get the humans into the Compact, same way they bullied the stsho into admitting hani once upon a time. Now we have a common border with mahendo'sat that kept us satisfied with trade in that direction for a long time; and we've got a natural barrier on the stsho side, with a gulf our ships can't jump. Hani haven't been bad neighbors for the stsho. It's a lot different with humanity. Humanity wants through stsho space. Wants through tc'a and knnn space. Through kif space, if it can't get the other routes. That's got the stsho worried. Real worried. And meanwhile, on Anuurn, we've got a division: we've got hani who took to space and we've got hani who're gods-be near as xenophobic as the stsho. Old-fashioned hani who don't know the stsho. They aren't capable of knowing the stsho—gods, they aren't capable of imagining the stsho. But stsho money gets to them and buys votes in the han. Sets up new hani authorities of a mindset the stsho approve. That takes care of one border problem. Hire hani guards, then. Displace the mahendo'sat from every security post they hold on stsho property. Get them out. That takes care of the in-office stuff and gets rid of the mahen stranglehold; and gets mahen fingers out of stsho lines of communication. But there's one more thing the stsho need to stop the humans, something the nonspacing faction of the han can't provide them and no stsho can possibly handle gtstself. Armed ships. In numbers." "O my gods," Tirun said. "You've got it, cousin. The humans are headed either for Meetpoint or for Kefk. Goldtooth planned it that way. Put pressure on the stsho to get closer to the mahendo'sat. Make 'em deal with humanity. Bring Akkhtimakt down hard when he can't stop the human advance right under kifish noses. But the plan's backfired, partially thanks to Jik and thanks to us. By taking Kefk, Sikkukkut just piled a pressure on Akkhtimakt that's forcing Akkhtimakt to do something he'd never ordinarily do—he can't handle Sikkukkut and the mahendo'sat and the humans without more help than he's got. So Akkhtimakt's headed to Meetpoint to deal with the stsho. Same as the han is. The han's just ended up on Akkhtimakt's side." There was profound silence. Sound whispered from a loose complug; the ducts hissed. "Well, we got a real problem, don't we?" Haral said. "Well, it's the han!" Geran said. "It's the likes of Ehrran, it's the likes of Naur and all of them back home, the gods-be fools!" "We end up," Pyanfar said, "alone on this side with the mahendo'sat. And the kif. We're headed for Meetpoint. That's where the hakkikt will take this party for sure. If he's sure humanity's going there and not coming here to take Kefk. That's the one thing he's got to be scared of—the one thing that could sink him, destroy everything he's built—and Goldtooth might do it to him. He wants to know that. He desperately, wants to know that, and Goldtooth isn't talking. If you want other possible motives for Goldtooth coming tamely in to dock—try the possibility that he's got help coming. A lot of it. That has to worry Sikkukkut. He daren't move til he has some way to cover himself and he daren't stay here and lose his momentum with his own followers. Goldtooth's got him worried bad, and Goldtooth wants to keep it that way. One other thing you can figure: Ehrran. Ehrran'll turn on us the moment we hit Meetpoint space. At the least, she'll run for home—straight for the han to try to get a policy decision. And she'll take them everything in those records. Everything. Our troubles may come to a head at home before we can possibly get there; if we can get there at all. And there's no way we can get word to the House and Kohan what's coming. No way we can warn them—unless we break and run for home ourselves. I'm not about to tell Chur what's up: she can't stand this right now. But the rest of you had better know. You'd better think about it real hard. We can tear out of here at first excuse and go home. We can lay course straight from Meetpoint, run for all we're worth the second we hit that system, while everyone else is busy. And we can face whatever we have to back at Anuurn. We can't outrun Vigilance. But we might get there in time to meet charges. Tie it up in the han. Organize a fight—when, gods help us—it may have already been lost out here. "Or we can stay and fight with the mahendo'sat, when it comes, against Akkhtimakt and whatever force the han may have set to assist the stsho at Meetpoint. You can guess what captains they might have talked into it. And where that ends then, I don't know. But I do know this beyond a doubt: if Akkhtimakt should win—he'll own Meetpoint, he'll move in on the stsho with no one to stop him, once he's past their security systems; and gods know what the knnn and the humans and the han will do in their separate craziness. But I don't decide this one. On this one you tell me." "What do you think we ought to do?" Haral asked. "I've told you." "Tell us plain." "Aye," Tirun muttered. "You've seen through this much of it—how much else do you see?" Pyanfar drew a deep breath, pressed her hands against her eyes. Time went in loops. Anuurn sunset. The old vine on the estate wall. Hilfy playing in the dirt. A ship at Meetpoint, dying because it happened to be hani, and in the wrong place— Tully, crouching naked on her deck, writing numbers in his own blood— Chur, handing them a white plastic packet, as she lay bleeding on a Kshshti dock—a kifish den. Jik's ridiculous smoke—playing sfik-games with the kif. "I'd go with the mahendo'sat. Maybe I'm a fool. Maybe it's the worst kind of a fool—but being a fool hasn't stopped Ehrran from dealing left and right, has it? We can't do worse. We can't do worse than the han's done. Maybe that's a fool's arrogance too. Maybe, maybe, and maybe. Maybe it's Anuurn's last chance. Last chance for hani to do anything independent in the universe—sounds funny, too gods-rotted high for us; but that's the plain truth. I'm not sure where we'll end up, or what we'll do to Chanur back at home, or how they'll survive this. Or what we'll be even if we win—on Sikkukkut's side. But I don't want to see what happens when Akkhtimakt laps up the stsho like an appetizer. That's what I think. If you think the same, we get our minds on short-term business and we ride the waves the best we can. If it's go home, you tell me and we go that way long and hard as we can, while we can." "I'm on your side," Haral muttered. "The stsho go down—we haven't seen trouble yet." "Same," Tirun said; and: "Same," said Geran. "No question." "Same with me," said Hilfy quietly. "No choice, is there?" Pyanfar found her claws clenched on the upholstery and carefully drew them in. "I owe you an apology for this," she said. Understatement. But her voice threatened not to work. She bestirred herself to the side and picked up the code-packet from the counter and handed it to Haral. "Mahen codes. We just got made official. As of now, we're guilty of everything in Vigilance's files. I just don't want to spook Vigilance out of our company too fast. So we go on doing what we've been doing and we don't give any hints, if by some wild chance Ehrran hasn't guessed what Goldtooth's up to, and what Jik's done. Gods help us, if we were really lucky, Ehrran would catch some common sense and side with us, and drag the han over to our side, out of the mess it's in. But that's about the last hope I entertain." "She's snake enough to twist two ways at once," Tirun said. "Inside out if I had my choice," Geran said. "Meanwhile," Pyanfar said, "while we've got some time, we don't have much, and work goes on. Hilfy, Tully, Khym, they're sending over some stuff for the kif. I'd like to get rid of him, but I don't see a way to do it without creating a problem with Sikkukkut, and we don't need that. On the other hand, whatever he is, he's stood about what he can. I want him transferred to a regular cabin, I want the room safed, understand. We're going to have some sort of live stuff to take care of. Skkukuk can do his own vermin-herding. I want it decontaminated. Never mind the docking-check on this watch, except the filters, the ops and the lifesupport; we'll catch the little things next. Someone looks in on Chur now and again in Geran's off-watch; you arrange that, Geran. Don't wear yourself out. Tirun, call down to Tahar and tell her we're still working on the problem. She's probably chewing sticks down there. I haven't got time to talk to her. Tirun and Geran, Hilfy and Haral when you've got time, I want this code-strip fed in and checked against the translator. And when you get all that done, I want a regular dinner set up, none of those gods-be sandwiches." There was dismay in tired faces until the matter of the dinner. "We'll go off-shift," Pyanfar said, "at need. When there's a lull, sleep. Feel free to trade off jobs and watches—I don't care who does it, just so it gets done before watch-end, and it gets done with due precautions: no one visits Skkukuk or Tahar alone. Sorry about the schedule. Goldtooth offered a full crew but I turned him down. Trust is fine; but I'm not handing over The Pride's codes to anybody. Not these days." "Gods-rotted right," Haral said, and, "Aye," from the rest, with a flick of ears and a tautness of jaws. "So get it done, huh?" She nodded a dismissal. Hilfy got up and walked out with Geran, down the corridor. Tirun turned back to com and Haral turned to the main board and systems-checks again. The menfolk were last on their way out, separately. And—"Khym," Pyanfar said before he could go: "You all right in this? Tully?" Khym stopped and stuck his hands in his belt, glanced at the deck with a deference natural in Chanur matters. "You pick the fight, I'll settle the bastards, wasn't it something like that we promised each other fifty years ago?" It was their marriage vow, less elegantly phrased. But then he looked up, and a curious quirk came and went she had not seen in years. "But I think you'll have to help, though, wife." She laughed despite it all and he grinned as if pleased to have pleased her. She watched the straightening of his shoulders as he walked off the bridge. Somewhere he had got a swagger in his step. The ache in her own bones felt less, for that. "Py-anfar?" "Tully." She rose from her chair. Walked over near him as he stood there with confusion on his face. "Tully. Did you follow what I was saying to the crew? You understood?" He nodded his head energetically—yes, that peculiar gesture meant. "I work," he said. "I work." And he turned his shoulder to her, there by the scan panel, his hands busy with some printout which he could no more read than he could breathe vacuum. Avoidance. "Tully," she said. "Tully." "I work," he said. "Put those ridiculous papers down." She snatched them from his hand and flung them onto the counter. He backed up, hit the chair and caught himself with an arm against the seat-back, eyes wide and flickering. He smelled of human sweat and Anuurn flowers. And sudden terror. Tirun half-turned her chair, and kept staring in distress. Tully stayed frozen, stsho-pale. Fear. Indeed, fear. It set her heart to pounding and touched off her aggressive reflexes; but child she made herself think, dismissing hunter-mind; and alien and friend and hair-triggered male. It was not her move that had frightened him. He was beyond that. He knew she. would never lay hands on him; she knew that he knew. It was a deeper thing. "You worried about something, Tully?" "Not understand lot you say—" He waved a vague gesture at the room. At the scan panel. "I work. I don't need any understand." "Tully, old friend." Pyanfar laid a hand on his shoulder and felt the slight shift of muscles as if he had rather not have it resting there; she smelled his sweat despite that their air was cool for a human. "Listen—I know you doublecrossed me." The translator sputtered through the com Tully wore at his belt. She wore no earplug: she needed none at this range. "You and Goldtooth worked together. He told me. Gods rot you, Tully, you did set me up—" The translator rendered something in its flat, Tully-voiced way, and he sank down on the chair arm to evade her hand, out of room to retreat. "You tell me the truth, huh, Tully. What's got the wind up your back? Something I said?" "Not understand." "Sure. Let's talk about things. Like things maybe I might like to know—what's the humans' course?" "Ta-va—" "Tt'a'va'o. You heard that from me just now. Maybe you know more than that. Maybe you know what Goldtooth's not saying. Truth, Tully, gods blast you!" He flinched violently. "Truth," he said. The translator gave him a woman's voice in the return, but the pitch was not far from his own. "I don't lie, I don't lie." "Where before that?" "Not sure. Ta-vik. Think Tavik." "Tvk. At least one kifish port. Tvk. I'll guess they didn't stop to say hello. Skimmed in and out. And then to Chchchcho, not Akkti, not likely. Chchchcho. The chi homeworld. That's a real fine route, Tully. Real great. Who planned it?" "I come—Ijir." "You mean you don't know." "Not know." "Tully. That packet. Packet. Understand? What did it say?" "Make offer trade." "To whom? Who to, Tully?" A desperate wave of the hand. "All. All Compact." "Kif too, huh?" "Mahe. Hani." "Tully, what else was in there? A knnn message, for instance. Knnn. You know that?" A shake of the head. That was no. The eyes were wide and blue and anxious. "Not. Not know knnn thing. Py-anfar—I tell you, I tell you all thing. # # I don't lie to you." "Funny thing how that translator always spits on sentences I'd really like not to doubt." "I'm friend, I'm your friend, Py-anfar!" "Yeah. I know." "You think I lie." "Didn't say you lied. Just wish you'd tell the truth before things get hot, huh? I just don't like the feeling there's something still rattling round back of those pretty blue eyes of yours. Something's been there since a long while back." She raked his mane back from his face with a judicious claw—let the hand rest on his shoulder again, gently. "Look, Tully—you're not scared of me, are you?" "No." "Then why don't you tell me the truth? Why'd you keep things from me when we started this voyage?" "I tell." "About the ships, yes. You did try. Why not the rest of it?" "I try—try tell—You all time # busy not #—" "Knnn's a word would get my attention real fast, Tully. You ever talk about the knnn with Goldtooth, huh? You tell him about firing on the knnn?" A blink, a shake of the head, a shift of the eyes. Evasion. "Well, you've been real helpful to a lot of people, haven't you? You tell me the truth about him taking you off that courier ship?" "Truth." "He personally?" "Goldtooth." "Ever hear anything about another ship? Another hunter-ship out there—someone with the rest of the humans?" "No." "You mean these human ships are just careening about Compact space on their own. No charts, no guide? No one watching them? Come on, Tully. How many?" "I don't know." "Two. Ten?" "Not know. Ten. Maybe ten. Maybe more." "More." "I don't know!" "Where'd these ships come from, Tully? Who's bringing them? Who told them to? You know about that?" "Not know." "Goldtooth knew. Truth, Tully. What do you know about these other humans?" A darting of the eyes aside, elsewhere, back, away again. "Huh?" she asked. "What do you know, Tully?" "Come fight kif. They come fight kif." "Uhhnnn." She caught his stare and held it. His eyes darted and jerked and stayed centered, dilated wide in the bright light of the bridge. "How do they sort out which kif, huh, Tully? Who tells them?" "Kif is kif." "Think so? What kind of plan is that? Take on the whole by the gods kif species? You're crazy, Tully. No. The mahendo'sat don't deal with crazy people. And you're dealing with the mahendo'sat, aren't you?" "I ask go to bring you, bring you, Pyanfar, I don't # the mahendo'sat." "Say again." "Mahendo'sat don't speak all truth. I'm scared. I don't know what they do. I think maybe they want help us but I—I!" He laid a hand on his chest and said it in hani, sending the translator into sputters. "I Tully—I scare, Py-anfar." "Of what? What scares you?" "I think the mahendo'sat more want help self. Maybe hani have want help self. I don't know. I don't understand too much. The translator makes wrong words. I scare—I don't know—" "You're talking real clear now. Tully. You understand me. And I don't want any more evasions. You don't tell me you don't understand, hear? You know what kind of mess we're in." "I don't understand." "Oh, yes, you do. Who's with the ships, Tully? What's the arrangement they made? Where are they going next?" "I don't understand." "I told you I don't want to hear that. I want to know what you know. Tell me this, Tully—what questions did Sikkukkut ask you? What did he ask you, all alone?" "Not—not—" His eyes widened. He twisted suddenly and looked behind him. Pyanfar glanced beyond, where Hilfy stood. Reflection and movement in the dead monitor screen. That had caught Tully's eye; and he seized on the chance. "Hilfy," Tully said, pleaded. "Hilfy—" "Something wrong?" Hilfy asked. "We're just talking," Pyanfar said. Gods rot the timing. "Go see how Chur's doing, huh?" "Geran's with her. Was just there." Blind to hints. Or ignoring them. "Fine. Go see about the filters. You want to walk through, walk." Hilfy's ears went down. She stood there. "I go help," Tully offered, making to get up. "You stay put." She shoved him back down on the chair? arm. "I'm not through with you. Hilfy. Get." "What's the matter? What's going on?" Fear. Human sweat. It was distinct and general in the air. The quiet on the bridge despite two stations working, the look on Tully's face— "We're discussing routes," Pyanfar said evenly, quietly, and laid a quiet hand on Tully's shoulder. He flinched from under it and glanced round in panic. "Discussing what things he may still know. What he might have told without realizing it, to the mahendo'sat. To the kif in particular." "I don't talk, Hilfy, I don't." "Didn't say you were a liar, Tully. I asked you what Sikkukkut asked you. I want to know what Sikkukkut wanted to know." "For gods-sakes, aunt—" There was sweat on Tully's face. His skin had gone white. He looked up at her. "Let him alone, gods rot it, aunt, he's had enough." "I know he's had enough. I know what he went through—" "You don't know! Keep your hands off him!" Panic. Killing rage. O gods. Gods, Hilfy. Whoever wore that look was not a child, had never been a child. "Tully. All right. Get." She gave him a shove to move him. "Go on, I'll talk to you later." "We send out ships," Tully said, suddenly, perversely clinging to his place. He poured the words out, clutched her wrist when she made a gesture of dismissal, and he looked from Hilfy to her, to Tirun and Haral and back, his alien eyes flickering and distracted. "It long time—long time—I try—they leave the Earth, understand. They make # self a #—" And when she shifted in the pain of his grip, he held the harder. "You listen, listen, Pyanfar, I tell you—" "Make sense, gods rot it, the translator's frying half you say." "We send ships—" He let go her bruised wrist to make a vague and desperate gesture of displacement, of going away. "Ships go from Earth, from homeworld, they make # self # law, make # self # Compact. They don't like Earth. We fight # long with these human. Now we get no trade # be # to Earth. There be two human Compacts. They # want #. Want Earth. We want be free. We want make our # law. We want go—out in space—not the same direction like before. We find new direction, new trade. We find your Compact, find you. We want trade. This is the truth. If we get trade we make three Compact. Earth # be the third. Earth # be the # friend to hani, to mahendo'sat." "Two human compacts." Pyanfar blinked and wiped her mane back with a sore hand and looked at Hilfy, who looked confused. "Three," Tully said. "Also Earth. My homeworld. We got trouble # two humanities. We want trade. We the home of humanity we need this #. We want make way into Compact space, come and go ###." "You know about this?" Pyanfar asked Hilfy. "No," Hilfy said, "No, I don't know what he's talking about." "##. Human be three kind." Tully held up as many digits. "#. #. Earth. I be Earth-man." "Politics," Pyanfar muttered. "We got gods-be human politics, that's what. Well, who's telling the human ships where to go?" "Earth. Earth tell." "And what are you, Tully?" "I spacer." "You're so gods-be quick with that." "Aunt." "You want to ask him?" "Gods blast it, take it easy on him!" Pyanfar drew a deep breath. "Look, maybe he never talked to the kif. I'll take that on his say-so. Maybe he never spoke a word. But he doesn't lie real good. He never did." "Not to us." "He speaks the language, niece. Watch the eyes when you ask him questions, never mind the ears, watch the eyes. He's a lousy liar. He was alone with Sikkukkut. With drugs. With questions. All right, you know what and I don't. Even if he didn't talk—he may have spilled something he doesn't know he spilled. You think of that?" "You ever ask me what I gave them?" Pyanfar blinked in shock. Shook her head at the thought. "A cracked skull and nothing else," Hilfy said. "I didn't give them anything. And they tried, aunt, that precious kifish friend of yours did try. You take my word, take his. I know he didn't." "They had him quite a few hours to themselves, Hilfy. With all the pieces to this fractured mess starting to fit in Sikkukkut's brain, with us in port and leaving Sikkukkut a lust few precious hours to try for what he could get out of Tully—along with what he learned from other kif living at Mkks. So you want to be some help here and let Tully for godssakes answer for himself?" "He's told you. No! He didn't talk! I know him." "Sure you do," Pyanfar drawled, and the inside of Hilfy's ears went suddenly deep rose; and they folded. Eyes reacted. Everything shouted reaction and shame. It was not what she had meant. Pyanfar felt her own ears go hot; the flinch was unavoidable, the instantaneous glance aside from the matter they had skirted round and skirted round. She covered it with a cough and a wave of her hand. "Look, niece—" "I know him real well," Hilfy said with cold deliberation. "Maybe you take my word for something, huh, aunt? Maybe you trust I got out of there with my wits about me, huh? And I'm telling you how he was, and how he handled himself, and I'm telling you, he's not a boy and he's not the fool you take him for. Don't talk to him like that." Pyanfar looked at her. Saw no child, no petulance. "I never said he was a fool. I'm saying you and he may be a little out of your territory—and smart, niece, smart is knowing when you are. If you're not as clever as your enemy, you by the gods hope he's over-confident: you sure as rain falls don't need to make a mistake in that department. That kif's not a dockfront tough; that kif's smart enough to put the han's tail in a vise; and con Jik; and outwit Akkhtimakt down the line; and by all the gods near take over the Compact. You want to tell me he couldn't just ask you questions and watch your reactions? You don't want to remember that time. Fine. You don't want to think. All right. But that cripples you. And if you're number two in wit, you don't need another handicap. We're in it up to our noses. Remember what I said a while ago—what the stakes are right now? We've got a problem, Hilfy Chanur. I need a straight answer out of our friend here. I need to know what that gods-be kif's onto and what he's not; and I need to. know whether humans are going to be here or Meetpoint, which is what Sikkukkut would give a whole lot to learn right now. You think the Compact's a tangled mess of ambitions? I'm betting what drives humanity is the same thing—politics we don't understand. Three Compacts, good gods! I'll tell you something else. It's a good bet Tully doesn't know the answers I'd really want. You think they'd let him know everything and send him off with the mahendo'sat? No. That kind of thing gets known by long-toothed old women in high councils. Politics is politics, at least in the oxygen-breathing kinds we can talk to. I don't take anything for granted. I think any thought that needs thinking. Like what deals Goldtooth's made. Or Jik. Or—" She looked at Tully. "—what Sikkukkut and you could have talked about in those few hours when he knew by the gods for certain you speak hani. What about it, Tully? What'd he ask? What'd he say?" Tully's pupils dilated and contracted and dilated again. He tried to speak and his voice failed him. "He say—say he know my friends die, he tell me—tell me ### they #. Say I talk to him, what be human deal with mahendo'sat. What deal with you. Lot time ask. He want know route. Same you. He know human come. Not know where. ###." "Lost that." Tully's lips trembled. "Lot time. Lot time. Hurt me. ##. You make deal # this kif?" "I'm not his friend, Tully." , "I know this kif." "Know him." Pyanfar looked from him to a sudden shift of Hilfy's stance. "Sikkukkut said—" Hilfy's voice was quiet, subdued. "Said he knew Tully from before." "On Akkukkak's ship." Tully nodded. Emphatic. His eyes focussed elsewhere, on something ugly. Came back to them. "He be Akkukkak ###. Long time he ask me, my friend question." "Gods. Akkukkak's interrogator. Is that what? Is that where you know him from?" "He kill my friend," Tully said. "He kill my friend, Py-anfar. With his hands." "O good gods." She sat down against the counter edge, hands on knees. "Tully—" "Tully asked me when we got back," Hilfy said, "just how close you're friends with Sikkukkut. Now I know why." "Gods," Pyanfar said. "I'm not, Tully. I'm trying to save our lives, you understand me? Did you tell him anything, did you give him anything?" Tully shook his head. It was not the naive look, not the clear blue stare he generally had. It was a different Tully. Tully-inside, calm and cold and thinking. She knew it when she saw it, long as it had been. "I say nothing, don't look at him. I go far away. I wait. I not be. You say you come to get me. So I wait for you." Pyanfar let go a long, long breath. The silence stayed there a moment. "Politics," she said. "All politics. You understand politics, Tully? Kif aren't anyone's friends. Not mine. Not anyone's. But there's kif and there's worse kif. You know why I'm dealing with him? You understand? Can you understand?" "Politics," Tully said. Not naive, no. "I know you come take me from kif. That be your politics." "I'm not any friend of Sikkukkut's. Believe that." "Bad thing happen. I don't understand. You lot scare. Where we go? What we fight? We got enemy be friend, hani and stssts—" "Stsho." "—be enemy. You don't trust Goldtooth, don't trust Jik. Don't trust hani. Don't trust kif." "Goldtooth and Jik are friends. We just can't trust them much. Not where it crosses mahendo'sat interests." "Where be hani?" Pyanfar glanced Hilfy's way, felt Tirun's stare at her side. She slouched against the console. "Good question." "What I do?" Tully asked. "What I do, Py-anfar?" "What did you do? What are you going to do? I wish I had an answer for either one. Friend, Tully. That's all I can tell you. Same's Goldtooth's my friend; and yours. Gods know what it counts for. Wish I had an answer for you. Wish you had one for me." "I fight," he said. "I crewman on The Pride. You want fight #, hani, kif, I don't # to die with #." "Gods rot that translator. Do you understand me at all? Have we got it fouled up again?" "You be my friend. You. Hilfy. All. I die with you." "Gods, thanks," Pyanfar murmured bedazedly. A superstitious chill went down her spine. "Translator again. I hope." Hilfy's ears had flagged. "I sure hope you come up with a better idea." Perhaps he did not take the humor. His face stayed void of it. Of everything but anxiety. "Friend," he said. "You've got duties. Get. Hilfy. Get." "Aye," Hilfy said. And touched the seat-back. "Tully." He rose from the chair arm. At the other side Tirun had just turned attention to something from the com-plug in her ear and turned half about again with a flick of the ears and a tilt of the head. Some new difficulty. An incoming call. Pyanfar gave Tully room to get up, laid a hand on his back as; he passed, a slight pat of consolation. "Friend. Go help Hilfy, huh? She wanted you for something. Uhhhnnn. Tully." He looked back at her, all unprepared and trying to collect t again. "Is there anything you know that we don't?" Flicker. "Uhhhn," she said again, eyes half-lidded. "Py-anfar—" "You think of something, huh, you come to me. You come and tell me. All right?" The kif had used shocks with him and got nothing. The mahendo'sat used wit; and achieved something. She stared him in the eyes without any mercy at all. And tried for a piece of him. "Don't trust," he said suddenly, miserably. "Don't trust humanity, Py-anfar." And he fled out the door—walked out, but it was flight, all the same. Hilfy delayed at his back with one anguished look toward her. And turned and went after him. Pyanfar was unamazed, except by Tully's unequivocal thoroughness. It was doublecross. Goldtooth's. Jik's. Hers. Humanity's. Everyone's but Tully's—who, along with Chanur, had just betrayed his own kind. Gods knew his reasons. What drove him? Anything hani-like? Where was family, clan, House? What was he? He. Male. Houseless. Sisterless. Wifeless. Renegade. Nau hauruun. But not hani. There was no analogy in Tully to that kind of destructive orphan, who killed and stalked at random. Nau hauruun. Not Tully their friend. Tully no-name. Tully from distant Earth, of the ships and the strangers. "Captain," Tirun said quietly. "Captain—Ehrran's on. 'Fraid they've been on hold a while. They're getting pretty hot." "Good," Pyanfar said flatly; and went and flung herself into her well-worn chair and powered it about to the boards. Mind on business, Pyanfar Chanur; Wake up. Smell the wind and watch the branches overhead. "I'll take it. You got any movement out of Harukk on the Tahar business?" "Not a thing," Tirun said. "I keep calling; keep getting the same answer. Sikkukkut's still not available. Business, they say." "Gods-be sfik games. I begin to get the feel of it. And I don't like what's going on. Put that call through again as soon as I finish with Ehrran. Have them tell Sikkukkut I'm personally interested in the Tahar crew. Tell him we've got sfik involved here." That got a look from Haral, beside her. "Captain. Begging your pardon—" Haral left it unfinished. It was hani lives at stake, feud with Tahar or no feud. A miscalculation with the kif might touch something off and get the Tahar crew killed outright. Jik might even be working near to success on the matter. All these things she thought of, and thought of again under that worried glance from Haral, and a like one from Tirun past Haral's back. A twitch of many-ringed ears. A deep frown. "Send it," Pyanfar said. "Be tactful, that's all." "Tactful," Tirun muttered, and turned to execute the first order. Pyanfar turned her chair again and touched the button to bring the long-waiting call through from Rhif Ehrran; listened to Tirun address the Vigilance com officer. More games of politics and captainly protocols. The com officer insisted on getting response from The Pride's captain before putting her own on. "I'll take it," Pyanfar said—curiously, pride with Ehrran had just diminished in importance. She failed even to feel a twinge of temper with the Ehrran officer who tried to provoke her and put it on record. "This is Pyanfar Chanur." Keep Ehrran quiet. Get the essentials done. Tahar was the emergency. Chur was safe. Tully assured her nothing critical had spilled into kif hands. There were things Sikkukkut still needed. And that meant at once a safer and a less predictable kif. "Vigilance. Com officer speaking. One more moment, captain. I'm afraid the captain's gone off line a moment." Cold arid calculatedly insolent. Games of provocation. Three human compacts? Fights between them? One human Compact, Earth, the human home world, trying to counter two rival human powers with new trading routes? Or was it trade they were interested in? That was a big section of space, if it had room for three starfaring economies . . . correction: two. And one that just wanted to be bigger. Did Goldtooth know the situation inside human space? Mahendo'sat with their scientists and their mad delving into oddities—always poking and prodding at things, hoping—hoping what? For new species? New alliances? New situations they could use to deal with their old neighbors the kif? Beware of Goldtooth. Thus the stsho, who had double-dealing down to an art. "Ker Pyanfar, this is Rhif Ehrran. I trust whatever emergency kept you wasn't serious." "No. It's all handled. No further problem. Unless you have one." "No. I'm going to relieve you of one. I'm sending a detail over to pick up Tahar." "Afraid not. I've accepted her appeal for parole. Sorry, Ehrran. She's under a Chanur roof, so to speak. And I'm head of house—out here." "This isn't Anuurn and we're not in the age of sofhyn and spears, you hear me, Chanur?" "No. We play with bigger toys nowadays, don't we? You're fond of quoting the law. Me, I like the old laws right fine: like kinright. The kind of law you can't quote by the book, Ehrran." "Put Tahar on." "Maybe you ought to concentrate on her crew. They've got a real problem. They might appreciate your intervention. But Dur Tahar's comfortable enough where she is. Is that all you want?" Click. "Log that," Pyanfar said. "Put the other call through." "Aye," Tirun said. "Good shot," Haral said with a dip of her ears. Meaning Rhif Ehrran and a genteel stroll to the brink. "Huh," Pyanfar said. "Why couldn't the kif grab her, huh? Do us a favor." "Make a trade?" Haral suggested brightly. "Gods, that's a—" "Captain." Tirun lifted a hand, signaling quiet. "Harukk's going through real procedures this time—I think they're going to try to put the call through. Maybe—yes. The captain's waiting, Harukk-com, if you can do that. Yes . . . . Right. Captain, Harukk-com's compliments, and they'll try to reach the hakkikt if you'll put the request yourself." Protocols. Sfik games again. Pyanfar flicked her ears and made an affirmative handsign. Immediately the ready light came on and Pyanfar keyed it. Her claws flexed. She drew in a deep breath and killed all the anxieties, banished them to a cold, far place without a future. "Harukk," she said calmly, "this is Pyanfar Chanur. I have an urgent message for the hakkikt, praise to him." "Honor to the hakkikt, he may give you his attention, hunter." So we come up from our obscure beginnings, do we, kif? Provincial boss and chief torturer—to prince? And we by the gods set you there. She waited. Coldly, calmly. Long. Eventually: "This is Sikkukkut, ker Pyanfar. What is this urgency?" "Hakkikt. I appreciate the courtesy. And the gift you sent me. I'd like to talk with you further. I understand you have Moon Rising's crew in your custody . . ." "Hunter Pyanfar, your forwardness would daunt a chi. Is my gift too scant for your appreciation?" "Hakkikt, I see a way to use it to your benefit and mine. There's some urgency in it. If you'll send a courier I can be more specific." Pause. "Hunter Pyanfar, you interest me. But I see no reason why one of my skkukun should come from my ship to yours and back again, when your own look to be in good health. And I have nothing to say to your crew. I made you a proposition at Meetpoint, you may recall, which you declined. I make it again—a rare offer. Come to my deck this time. If this offer has the merit you say. I trust it does. I'll expect you—within the hour." Click. She leaned back in the chair. "Captain," Haral said, beside her, "good gods—" She turned a look in Haral's direction. "That didn't go right." "Now what? We call Jik?" "Call Jik to mop up? We just got a challenge, cousin. I got it. Sfik. The bet just got taken and doubled." "They want to get their hands on you, good ,gods, they can't get Goldtooth in reach—they want you! You just heard Tully say what that son is and you said yourself what Sikkukkut wants most—Goldtooth was just here, talking to you. The kif have to know that. They know he could have passed us what they want to know—" "They'll kill the prisoners. They'll kill them sure now if I fail that appointment, and they'll let us know about it. If that weren't enough, our credit with the kif hits bottom. Hard." "You can't do it!" "I can't duck it either. No. Sure that earless bastard is going to try us. One way or the other. And I think I'm starting to think in kifish; I think I read him. I'm perfectly safe to walk in there—if I can keep him wondering. I'm going to need company out there. Want to take a walk?" "Oh, sure," Haral said with a despairing shrug. "Gods, why not?" Chapter 12 The air of Kefk hit like an ammonia-tainted wall. Haral coughed even on the ramp; Pyanfar sneezed and felt the sting of her eyes in spite of the antiallergents. Haral had put on her portside finery, dark spacer blue with a collection of gold earrings, a set of bracelets, an anklet with a bangle, a belt with silver and gold chains that rattled right along with a monstrous black AP gun and a belt-knife. Pyanfar wore the red silk trousers, gold bracelets and belt and gold-earrings aplenty; a knife and a pocket-gun besides the AP slung low on her hip. "We look a right set of pirates," Haral had said before the lock sealed them out. "It's the pirates outside worry me," Tirun had retorted to them both, there in the lock. And Khym had said other things, while Geran and Hilfy fretted and gnawed their mustaches sparse—"Huh," Geran had said, with exhaustion and worry in her eyes. "I'll go with you—" Haral: "My job." And Tully later: "Where she go—where go, Py-anfar?" She avoided answers with Tully. "Out," she had told him in that unwanted encounter in the downside corridor. "I got business, Tully. I'm in a hurry." "Careful," he had said, anxious-looking. Frightened, doubtless from the time he heard that inner lock open, preparing to expose The Pride to the kifish docks. She reckoned the crew would tell him where they had gone after she was well on her way. Or better yet, when she and Haral got back. When. They walked the dockside, she and Haral, in a sodium-light hell of clinging smokes and ammonia-reek and a moist chill like a swamp at sundown. Kif moved, black wisps in the dimmer shadow along the far wall of this section of warehouses and factory fronts. There was no color anywhere about Kefk docks but the sickly sodium-glow, no brightness but the stark white of some argon spotlight on a round steel doorway. "Kkkkt. Kkkkt," the sound came to them, as they walked past kifish ships. Kif, doubtless some of their erstwhile companions-had seen them walk outside and gathered in clusters to whisper—and perhaps, Pyanfar thought, to wonder whether the two hani walking down the docks of Kefk had lost their collective minds. ("Look at you," Khym had cried in dismay while she dressed for this foray. "Wear that into a den of thieves? Py, for godssakes!") Crazy to wear that much gold into a kifish den if one had not the sfik to hold onto it. "So we look like trouble," Pyanfar had said to Haral when they laid their plan. "A lot of trouble, by kifish lights. That's the idea." Advertise their presence and hold it under kifish noses till they smelled it and looked at the gold and the weapons and remembered that The Pride's crew had no general reputation for being fools. Therefore they must be the other kind. Dangerous. They were also the hakkikt's invited guests. At least on the way to the meeting. "Marvelous thing about kif," Pyanfar muttered in a moment when she and Haral were well out of earshot of kif, between one gloomy ship-berth and another. "It occurs to me that these types out here on the dock aren't any more secure than we are. We're high on the wave and so are they and kif sail a rotted choppy sea. Always wondering when the wind's going to shift." "They're different, that's a fact," Haral muttered in her turn. "No lasting grudges—and, gods be feathered, nothing they won't trade. Flighty folk. I don't think hani ever have got the right of them. Maybe we should have brought our friend Skkukuk on this trip, huh?" "I did think about it. But I've got an uneasy feeling that one's a little crazy even for a kif. I don't want him near guns and knives." "Huh. Me either, now I think on it." A waft of something reached them down the dock. Blood. Even through the ammonia. Pyanfar hissed and cleared her throat. "Good gods," Haral swore in disgust. "That's enough to kill your appetite." "We're nearly—"—there, Pyanfar started to say and suddenly lost the thread of her thought as she caught sight of the kifish numerals for 28: Harukk's berth. Kif traffic was thick hereabouts and the blood-smell grew stronger. It worsened rapidly, the closer they walked. The steel rampway rail had a series of metal poles chained to its stanchions, and a dark object sat atop each. "Gods and thunders," Pyanfar muttered, "Haral, don't flinch." The heads were kif. Kif came and went on that number 28 ramp, past the awful watchers; she and Haral headed that way among the rest, waiting for challenge from some guard or other. None came. They passed the first stanchion up and Pyanfar gave the gory object atop it a cold and curious glance. "So much for the opposition," Haral said. "Sure ought to keep the new converts in line," Pyanfar muttered. Every kif that came into Harukk had to see it, victory for some, grim warning for the others. At least, she thought in profoundest relief, none of the heads was hani. Kif turned and stared at them as they passed, upward-bound like all the rest who had business aboard Harukk. A knot of kif who stood at the accessway clicked and hissed as they passed but made no offer to delay them. There were, finally, guards inside the large airlock. "Hakktan," one said in kifish. Captain? "Ukt," Haral answered with a nod at Pyanfar. Yes. Pyanfar stood by with her arms folded, arrogant to the slant of her ears, and let Haral do the talking. Two of the three kif kept their hands tucked within their sleeves, doubtless concealing weapons besides the guns they wore openly. They stood blocking other traffic into the lock from either direction, while the third reported their presence to the monitor above. The answer came, orders for their admittance. The guard at the inner hatch stepped aside; and the third guard bowed with that hands-empty gesture: "Inside," that one said. "Huh," said Pyanfar; bowed and slanted her ears back when she did it. Haral stayed close as they passed the hatch to Harukk's ammonia-smelling interior. More kif waited in the inside corridor—one who turned out to be merely delayed traffic, who stalked on; and four tall kif rattling with weapons. "Follow," one said, and stalked off in the lead without looking back. Three walked behind, while two stayed. And not a word of objection about the array of weapons their visitors brought aboard. Not a word of any kind. They passed kif in these dim corridors that stank of ammonia and machinery and blood and other, unidentifiable things, and no one gave them a second glance. Kifish manners, Pyanfar thought. Don't notice the hakkikt's odd guests, don't stare, don't give offense. The aura of fear and fierceness throughout the place was infectious. It bristled the back, set the pulse beating faster, sent fight-flight impulses coursing the nerves. Hilfy knows this place, Pyanfar thought at sight after sight, with an involuntary tightening of her gut. Hilfy was in this awful place. Hilfy had stood silent by Khym's side when she had broken the news to them where she and Haral proposed to go. Khym had had his opinion of it all. Like Geran. But Hilfy's ears just went flat and her nostrils drew taut; and: "Huh," Hilfy had said. "Why?" With a darkness of memory in her eyes; and an estimation, and nothing else readable. 'You know it's a trap." "I know," Pyanfar had said. "At this point there isn't a better choice." Hilfy knew the ways of kif better than any. And gave her no argument. No offer to come either. The situation wanted cold steadiness and as little as possible chance of provoking the kif. And that put the job, by seniority and by disposition, on Haral Araun. Haral walked along beside her now as warily easy as on a trek down one of the Compact's rougher docksides—kept her ears up and her face serene during the ride pent in a lift with the pair of kifish guards. The lift stopped; one guard exited and the rest hung back as they had done below. And it was one more long walk down the dimly lit corridor aft from the lift; then an open doorway, and a dim chamber where a handful of kif waited attendance on one seated on an insect-legged chair, a kif who wore a silver medallion, whose black robe and hood were edged in silver that shone dimly in sodium-light. "Hakkikt," Pyanfar said, approaching this grim magnificence. And bowed with a carefully rationed measure of respect and self-importance. "Kkkt." Sikkukkut flourished his thin, dark-gray hand. "Ksithikki." Kif scurried to the corners of the room and carried back two chairs and a low table, all at a virtual run. "Ksithti." Pyanfar nodded and sat down in one, feet tucked. Haral took the other. More orders from Sikkukkut, and a wave of his hand in a silver-bordered sleeve. Kif scurried after pitcher and cups with as great haste; and hurried to put a cup into Sikkukkut's outstretched hand before it had had time to tire of waiting. A cup went to Pyanfar; a third to Haral. A kif had poured for Sikkukkut; and came quickly to pour for them from the same pitcher. It was, thank the gods, parini. Liquor. Strong and straight and likely to go straight to the head; but it was nothing objectionable. Pyanfar sipped gingerly and tried not to think of obvious things like whether the off-taste was the ammonia in her nostrils or something in the drink. But they were sitting in Sikkukkut's hall, on Sikkukkut's deck; in his starstation; in kif space; and drugged drinks here seemed as superfluous as removing their weapons, which no one had offered yet to do. Haral followed her lead and drank: Haral, whose stomach was redoubtable in station bars from Anuurn to Meetpoint and who always made her duty schedules without a hangover. For the second time she was glad it was Haral by her and not Khym. "You turned down this invitation once at Meetpoint," Sikkukkut said. "I remember." A sneeze threatened her dignity. And their lives. She fought it back with an effort that made her eyes water. It was psychological, this aversion to kif. She had taken the pills. And gods, those pills made a hazardous combination with the liquor, dried her mouth, dulled her perceptions. And her nose still prickled. "I told you then I looked for a change of mind someday." Sikkukkut dipped his nose into the ornate cup and drank. "And here it is. Kkkt. After an emergency on your ship. What sort of emergency, do you mind?" Wits, get your mind working, Pyanfar Chanur. "There was a medical difficulty; but the emergency call to the mahendo'sat was a matter of convenience." She looked straight at the hakkikt and prayed the gods greater and lesser for no sudden sneezes. Attack the matter straight on. Rob the bastard of all his carefully laid traps and surprises. "Actually it was an excuse for consultation with two of my allies—without the nuisance of a third, speaking plainly. On several matters. Your gift, hakkikt—gives me options to deal with that nuisance. That's why I came. It may rid you of one too—since I think my annoyance and yours has one source." "Kkkkt." Another sip, and a shadowed glance within the shadowing, silver-edged hood, black eyes reflecting the glare of sodium-light. "I take it then you don't intend to kill this Tahar hani." "No. I don't." "So you have asked for the crew as well as the captain. This would be a rather large gift on my part. They are unusual—kkt. Ikkthokktin. A mild rarity. Amusing. I don't say I'm personally interested, but certain of my skkukun would be pleased to have one or another of them. Is it perhaps a certain—ethical reluctance—on your part? Should your desires mass more than others of my captains?" Think. "I have reasons more than amusement." Kifish logic. Pukkukkta. Let him lead himself astray. When outclassed in wit, create plausible complications and let the enemy think himself to death. "You have to understand, hakkikt, I'm sure you do—that Rhif Ehrran is no particular friend of mine. I don't doubt you've heard from her, wanting them released to her." "And from Keia and even from Ismehanan-min. These Tahar hani seem to be a matter of some excitement in your faction. A sfik-item, you say. But why should I give the whole prize to you?" "Tahar interests quite a few people, particularly hani. They're a big family, they've got wide holdings in the same continent as Chanur, as well as being spacer-hani, which also makes them valuable in some quarters. No. I'm going to ask an even larger favor of you, hakkikt—trusting Moon Rising got through the station takeover undamaged. I want that crew handed over to me—and I want their ship." "Kkkt. Pyanfar Chanur, your audacity grows larger by the hour. First Tahar, then the crew, now the ship. Next will you ask me for Kefk? Akkht, perhaps?" There was a hush in the room. Not a kif stirred. "You have Kefk." Pyanfar assumed her most charming smile. "Myself, hakkikt, my ambitions are different. I want this one small ship. And its crew. For my own reasons." "Where are the mahendo'sat? Where is Keia? He could surely make hani reasonable to me. Kkkt. I make no assumptions when dealing with such a suicidal species. And—kkt—the emergency call and the consultation. Kkkt. Kkkt. Who is injured?" "One of my crew. A minor business. It gave me the chance to talk with Goldtooth. Ismehanan-min. It has to do with the ship." (Back to the trail, hakkikt!) "Goldtooth delivered me some information that makes me surer than ever where my interests lie, Rhif Ehrran and I are about to come to severe difference; it's possible she'll attack us directly, but I doubt it—she wants to survive. She has the means to create difficulties for me on Anuurn. When we get to Meetpoint we'll have her to reckon with." "To Meetpoint." Pyanfar blinked. "Meetpoint. Definitely Meetpoint." "You assume this." "Where Akkhtimakt is headed. Where a certain treaty with the stsho could bring the han and all their ships in on Akkhtimakt's side. You don't act surprised, hakkikt. I didn't think you'd be." "Only in your forthrightness. I know about the stsho treaty." "Then explain a kif motive for me. Why haven't you taken Ehrran out, since her liability is about to outweigh her use?" "Kkkt. She is attached to Kefk at the moment. Inconvenient and dangerous. Let's wait till she goes outbound. Explain in return: why did Keia acquire this double-edged person in the first place?" "To keep her from going anywhere else. And for the same reason you've used her: the sfik of the han. Roughly speaking. Hakkikt, honor to you, I don't know how often you've monitored our communications, but Ehrran has quite a collection of reports she trusts will damage Chanur's sfik on Anuurn—I'm translating this as best I can—so thoroughly that the pro-stsho party can destroy us. I don't intend to let that happen. Now is my motive clear?" "Labyrinthine as I expected. Kkkt. Once away from dock I can solve everyone's difficulty at a stroke." "Ah, but that's another favor I ask you: leave the Ehrran ship to me. Destroying it outright might be a present convenience to me, but a difficulty in the long run, when the tale got around, and it would get around. Among this many ships, even among your own, some would talk, to damage me and advance themselves, I have no doubt. If that rumor got out, those records of Ehrran's wouldn't even need to get to Anuurn. The pro-stsho party would have all the ammunition it needs to do me harm. Martyr. You know that concept?" "I haven't heard that word, no." "It's a kind of sfik you get by dying in a way that makes a point, hakkikt. Double sfik because you're dead and you can't be discredited. People will die following you forever. And that makes more martyrs. Destroy Ehrran and she'll cause us twice the trouble." "Kkkkkt. Kkkkkkt. Kkkkt." Sikkukkut's snout drew down as if something offended his nostrils. He sipped at his cup and the tongue lapped delicately around his lips. "What a concept. Kkkkkt. I think, hunter Pyanfar, the straightest course is simply to blow up the Ehrran ship in the next action, when matters are suitably confused." "Ah, but then I'm still left with Tahar for company, which would ruin my sfik—unless I can first discredit Ehrran. And you can't discredit a dead hero. Bad taste. Martyrdom. No, I can put this simple hani concept in kifish without any difficulty at all: pukkukkta. Revenge. I have to deal with Ehrran in a hani way, in a way that shows other hani what we both know she is—an utter fool. And to do that, I need Tahar." "Why should I risk my ships for the sake of your pukkukkta?" "Sfik. I'm your ally. I can put a stop to a problem. Balance, hakkikt. Equilibrium in the Compact. It's one thing to climb a mountain, it's quite another thing to build a house there." Kif stirred about the room. Sikkukkut was frozen still with the cup in his hand. Too far, gods, one step too far with him. But: "For a hani, you have a fine grasp of politics," Sikkukkut said, and sipped at his parini, a delicate lapping of a long, black tongue. "Hakkikt, hani may be new in space, but politics is the air we breathe." Sikkukkut's snout wrinkled. "So you want the small matter of seven more hani and a well-armed ship, the behavior of which in our midst you guarantee. And you want the Ehrran ship to deal with too. Kkkt, hani, you amuse me. You may have the Tahar crew and Moon Rising. Kgotok skkukun nankkafkt nok takkif hani skkukunikkt ukku kakt tokt kiffik sikku nokkuunu kokkakkt taktakti, kkkt?" Something about turning over a thousand kif as well. There was the sniffle of kifish laughter about the room. "So," said Sikkukkut. "What else did Ismehanan-min have to say when he met with you?" Gods. To the flank and in. "Beyond the warning about affairs at home, the business about Akkhtimakt moving on Meetpoint. That, mostly. And warned me about the stsho treaty with the han. Which I'd suspected." Turning over that much truth made a knot of foreboding in her gut, but some coin had to go on the table, and it was the thing most likely Sikkukkut already knew—with former partisans of Akkhtimakt in his hands. "Kkkt. Yes. And the humans are coming in. Did he say that?" "He said they were headed this way." Another lapping at the cup. A flicker of dark eyes. "Be more specific." "He wasn't specific." "Tt'a'va'o," Sikkukkut said. "Go on." Pyanfar blinked again. Surprise took no acting. Dissembling outright fright did. The little she had drunk reacted with the medicines and hummed in her blood. "Tt'a'va'o," she said. "I know the stsho are panicking. The mahendo'sat can't restrain them. This alliance with Akkhtimakt is the worst thing they could do for themselves, but it's the stsho's only hope of getting armed ships, which the han can't provide in numbers. The kif are a known quantity. The stsho are most afraid of what they least understand. And they think—mistakenly, I think—that they know how to cheat a kif, playing one against the other." There was a whisper, a stirring of robes. "Kkkkt. This place is a mine of information. All sorts of things pour into my ears. Where will the humans come next?" "The stsho think Meetpoint. They would. I don't know." She took the slightest of sips. And took a risk that chilled the blood. "The tc'a may have some part in that decision." Sikkukkut's snout moved. Score one. Fear. "Your estimation? Or the mahendo'sat's?" "I got the impression that's the case. I don't like it, hakkikt." "You say you don't know the human's course. Kkkt. You do have one resource." "My human crewman? Hakkikt, the mahendo'sat might know. Tully doesn't. I get the impression the human ships are improvising their course—going where they can go. And Tully left humanity—months back. He hasn't got any more idea than I do where the humans are going—less, in fact, I've talked to Goldtooth." "Kkkt." Sikkukkut gazed at her long and thoughtfully. "Interesting. Interesting, this human. Friend of yours. Friend of mine. I would not take a gift amiss—since you expect my generosity." "I'm still hani, hakkikt. We have our differences. I can't give up a crewman. But pukkukkta's a fit gift to give a hakkikt, isn't it? Pukkukkta's something we have in common. And if I win—Chanur's going to do some re-arranging back home. Pukkukkta for certain. You want no more hani-stsho treaties, hakkikt, I'll give you that with my compliments. Common motives. Wasn't that the way you described a good alliance?" "You have aspirations on Anuurn." "Oh, yes. On Anuurn and in space." Another long silence. A dry sniffing. "The prisoners are inconsequence." Sikkukkut waved his left hand and set the cup aside into a hand that appeared to take it on the instant. "Go. I have taken time enough with this." Pyanfar stood up, bowed; Haral did the same. "And the ship," Pyanfar said. "Details." Sikkukkut waved his hand again. "See to them. Skktotik." Kif arrived at the lock. With deliveries. "They can by the gods wait," Tirun said; and Hilfy turned and looked at her, her heart pounding. Tirun was senior; Tirun called the decisions now on The Pride and sat in Haral's chair. And Hilfy only looked at her, having known Tirun Araun long enough to know with Tirun there was impulse and there was what Tirun had the sense to do in spite of impulse. Don't back up, don't show fear— "Gods be," Tirun muttered with fury in her eyes. "Hilfy—they're pushing, these kif are: I don't like their timing; but it's a real soft push right now. We got to take that delivery." "Sure as rain falls we can't back up from them," Hilfy said. "I'll go down there." "Take Khym with you." "Rather have Geran." "I want a second pair of eyes up here at the boards. Take Khym." "Right." Hilfy punched the all-ship, on low volume. "Geran. Tully. You're needed on the bridge. Na Khym, go to lower main." And she felt a quiver in her stomach as she got up from the board. Raw terror. Pyanfar was out with Haral and the kif wanted in at the lock with an innocuous delivery of a cage full of stinking vermin and a mini-can of grain. Compliments of the hakkikt. From Sikkukkut, who had kept Pyanfar and Haral aboard a worrisome long time. Geran reached the bridge before she had gotten across the deck to the weapons locker. "Kif below," Tirun said at her back, talking to Geran. "We got visitors." A chair sighed with Geran's weight as Hilfy heaved the weight of an AP about her hips and gathered up a light pistol for herself and one for Khym. Her hands were shaking. She looked up as Tully arrived on the bridge. "Sit scan," Hilfy said as he looked her way. "Help Geran." "Py-anfar got trouble?" Tully asked. There was panic in his eyes. Raw nightmare. "What do?" "Sit down! Don't ask me questions!" She had not meant to snarl. Instinct delivered it; terror; vexation. Men. It was not a man's kind of fight—yet. And all she had for help down there in lowerdeck was a man not hers. Pyanfar could handle Khym. Pyanfar could knock reason into his thick skull, and Pyanfar was off with the kif in gods knew what trouble— —and na Khym knew that. Gods, gods. She snapped the locker shut as across the bridge Tully slipped into the chair by Geran's side, an extra pair of eyes and hands in crisis—that, at least. Skilled and illiterate. And mortally scared. "Stay put!" Geran was saying to someone on com; and Hilfy guessed who. Chur had surely heard that bridge-call. Hilfy hit the topside-main at a run, the heavy gun knocking at her leg, the light pistols in either hand as she headed for the lift downside. "This way," their guide said, deep in the gut of the kifish ship, down reeking halls, down sodium-lighted corridors and through one and the other ominously scalable door. On the far side of this last doorway were cross-barred cells. "Wait outside, captain?" Haral said. "Aye," Pyanfar said, and Haral stepped to the side by the outside of that door and set her hand on her gun—fast; and firm; and she blessed her first officer's good sense as Haral got away with it. But the kif performed a like maneuver: one of their dark guides went in and beckoned her on; while the others lingered to take up guard with Haral outside. Move and countermove. A species old in assassinations and treachery; and the hani species recent from the age of walled estates and bright banners and yes, by the gods, treachery of its own, House and House, with never poison in the cup but connivance and betrayal and duel aplenty. Pyanfar drew a deep breath of the tainted air as she walked in, searching it for information; and saw a touch of color in this black and gray hell, behind crossed bars. Huddled in a corner, the merest glimmer of rust-brown, a lump of hani bodies rested together in their misery. —Hilfy— In this place. Here. No sane hani ever built a place like this, this cage for thinking creatures, this place of horrors and torment. She was supposed to be daunted by this place. Sikkukkut arranged it. No word of explanation—just guides who came to take them down to see what happened to hani here. "—orders of the hakkikt," the guides had said in the corridor outside the hakkikt's hall, and showed them into a lift and down and further astern in Harukk's huge ring. To recover the prisoners, they promised. And the message was clear: dare my hospitality to the depth, hani; or tell me you're afraid. Tell me that in front of my captains and my sycophants, and we'll know where hani fit in our ranks and in our future plans. We'll know how we have to deal with you—how much you can take and how much you can hold onto. Are you like Ehrran, hunter Pyanfar? Where is yow flinching-point?" Useful to know that—when we meet in space, when your nerve and mine guide ships and time their reflexes— Where are your reactions, hunter Pyanfar—so that I can predict them? She walked halfway to the bars and stood there. There was a small movement from the knot of hani in the corner of their cell. A tension and then a furtive fix of slitted eyes: if they had been resting at all, the opening of the outer door had gotten their attention. And now her presence did. Chanur, their enemy, resplendent with silk and gold and weapons, standing beside their kifish guard in the heart of this prison. "Stand behind me," Hilfy said when she and Khym got to the lock-she turned and looked up at him, great towering hulk that he was. "Cover me. Don't shoot toward the access; you can blow us all to vacuum. You hearing me, na Khym?" "Yes," he said, and the ears flicked, so she knew he heard. But the eyes were dark. And that was trouble. So was his silence on the way down the corridor. "You make a mistake you can kill her—hear? This is probably a little thing, the stuff we were supposed to get for that gods-be kif—" "I'm not crazy," Khym said, and bristled about the shoulders. "But they're from Sikkukkut. He's trying something." He was thinking. "I'm sure of it," Hilfy said, and hit the com button by the lock. "Open her up, Geran." "I'm on monitor," Tirun's voice came back. "Careful, cousin. And don't take any stuff either." The Tahar gathered themselves up. Blood had caked on their fur, in their manes. The senior—Gilan, her name was—had taken a kifish bite on the left shoulder and the awful wound glistened under plasm that had kept her from bleeding to death. It was not the only such wound. Canfy Maurn had a hand wrapped up in a rag and by the blood on it, it was a bad one. "Get them out," Pyanfar said to the kif, with no doubt the kif was going to do that, and fast. "You've got your orders." "Kkkt." The kif lifted his long jawed face, contemplating mayhem. "I take no orders from you, hani." "Captain, you earless bastard, and I'm sure the hakkikt won't miss you much." "Ssss. My orders are only the hakkikt's. Don't push, hani." The airlock opened. A group of kif stood there, black knot against the orange-lit accessway, the foremost two holding a large metal cage in which dark things darted and squealed. Hilfy sucked a deep breath of the cold air that wafted in. It tasted of something obnoxious, beyond the expected ammonia-taint. "You can set it down right there," Hilfy said, with the pistol in her fist aimed at the kif in general. "We'll take it aboard." "But we are ordered to observe courtesy," said the leftmost kif, stepping over the threshold with his end of the cage. "Hold it!" Hilfy brought the gun to both hands and remembered the danger of firing. Angle them against the wall. Make the shots true. Panic wobbled her hands. A living red-brown wall shifted into Hilfy's way, brushing the gun aside. "She said stop," Khym rumbled, and faster than seemed likely made a grab for the kif. "Look out!" Hilfy cried. The cage went flying up into Khym's way, clanged and hit the floor in a multiple squealing as Khym smashed it underfoot. Khym swung a fistful of robes and a live kif into the airlock wall as the rest surged forward. "Khym, get out of the way!" Khym just lifted another kif onehanded and threw him at the corner, and grabbed a third. Hilfy uptilted the pistol and used the butt on a kifish snout. Escaping vermin squealed and screamed underfoot. She trod on something tough that threw her off-balance as the kif grappled for her gun. Suddenly her attacker vanished backward as Khym got it by the scruff and flung it for the hatch—not a true throw. The kif hit the wall and sprawled out, fell on a second cage on the accessway floor and drew squeals and panic from the contents as it collapsed. A kif down the accessway leveled a gun. "Khym!" Hilfy howled. "Gun!" He froze in the lock dead center. And the hatch shut as fire hit it from both sides. Hilfy wilted against the inner wall, and Khym still stood there. "You all right?" Tirun asked them over com. "Hilfy, Khym, you all right?" "Good gods," Hilfy breathed. Tirun had heard—the veteran spacer had hit the hatch control from the main board. Khym still stood there with his ears flat. He turned with an appalled look on his face. "It's a trap," Hilfy said hoarsely to Khym and Tirun both. "They meant to take the ship. The captain and Haral are over there in Harukk and they're trying to take The Pride." The kif glared and moved to the barred door, reaching inside its black robes to find a small key-tab. "You," it said to the Tahar crew, "file out. You go into this hani's custody. If there should be difficulty—I will shoot one of you. I'll choose at random." It inserted the key. The door went back. "Chanur's taking you out," Pyanfar said. "Captain's here," Gilan said hoarsely, the other side of the open door. "She's on my ship. Come on, Tahar." Gilan Tahar blinked dully, laid one hand on the doorframe and walked out, the wounded arm dangling, her step unsteady. Her crewmates followed: Naun and Vihan Tahar; Nif Angfylas; Canfy Maurn and Tav and Haury Savuun; Haury looking as if she were doing well to walk at all, holding her ribs and limping on a bloodstained leg. Ears were torn; skin had been gashed. Haury wobbled against the bars and Tav steadied her, keeping her own body between her sister and the kif. "Come on," Pyanfar said, low and harsh—Fast, move it—don't hold us up and don't try anything fancy, Gilan Tahar. She gestured toward the door that led out; and a sense of overwhelming oppression closed about her. Haral was out of sight, beyond the door. The metal bars, the cruelty of the place afflicted her to the soul, infectious and bewildering. Kill occurred to her and hunt, and her claws flexed out on reflex. It was the fear-smell, everywhere about the ship, endemic among the kif. The guide-guard turned and walked to the door, silently directing her, out of this place with the prize she had gained. A handful of hani lives,. A promise—a kifish promise. "The hakkikt will get my report," she said, not to let the chance pass. "He'll ask, kif." She walked out, relieved to find Haral still there, hand on gunbutt, at a standoff with the kifish guards. "Come on. We're leaving." Hilfy came panting onto the bridge and leaned on Tirun's chair back as Khym arrived, as Geran and Tully turned at their places. "We lose any of that accessway?" she asked Tirun. "It's still sound," Tirun said. "Pressure checks up. We're in contact with Jik and Goldtooth on open channels—captain'd skin us if we used that code—" "What do they say?" "They're not happy. Jik says he's getting some people out onto that dock—" "Gods rot it, Tirun, Pyanfar's with the kif—we've got to get in there—" "Hilfy—" Tirun turned around, flat-eared and dark-eyed. "For godssake you're talking about the gods-be hakkikt! What do you want, raid Harukk? They've pushed, we got 'em. What more do you want us to do? Go in shooting and get 'em both killed?" Hilfy let her breath flow out, leaning there on Tirun's seat back and being the fool and knowing it. Her joints were loose, either the run topside or outright panic. "Get Tahar up here. It's her crew the captain's risking her hide for—and Tahar knows those kif out there." Tirun's ears lifted and nicked back and forth in indecision. "Well, we can use the extra hands up here. Do it, Geran." Another wide flick of the ears, a rumpling of her broad nose and lift of her lip. "And it occurs to me we've got one other mind on this ship knows those kif." "Skkukuk," Hilfy said. A falling feeling hit her gut. She knew her own unreason on the matter; and it was Tirun's command. Tirun's say. Not hers to argue in any case. "If we need him," Tirun added, with another twitch of the ring-laden ears—veteran of a hundred crises, Tirun Araun, cagy and hard to take. And all the while her sister Haral was out there in trouble with Pyanfar—one forgot that the two of them had that desperately close personal bond. Tirun made one forget—doing what wanted doing with no hesitation, no self-interest between her and the ship. Hilfy looked at the old spacer and at Geran Anify, whose efficiency covered com and scan, trading functions back and forth with Tirun like a smoothly functioning machine while the world came apart about them; and for the first time in her adolescent life she truly knew the measure of her seniors, and knew what she had yet to reach—It hit like a blow to the gut, what she was, what they were; and she was not likely to live long enough to get there. But even that thought was a selfishness Tirun would never take the time for in a crisis. She saw it all in a flash like a shellburst, a moment of panic; and then she found the wobble in her knees had gone away and she discovered some scrap of something Tirun-like in a place she had never known she had it stored, down where she kept her temper. To a mahen hell with yourself, Hilfy Chanur, and your fears and your precious wants—the ship's got a problem. "—Tahar's on her way topside," Geran said; another light flared on the com pane!, another call; Hilfy itched to reach out and intercept it, taking her station back, but Geran had it, Geran occupied her seat, Tully positioned next to her where Geran could assist him, with his eyes firmly on the scan, watching for any move out of Kefk: even something as small as a construction pusher could take them out, if it went crashing into their vanes; or if some saboteur eva'd out through a service access and limpeted some explosive to The Pride's big vane panels, or to the yoke. It would cripple them at the least. Make any jump out of Kefk uncertain, enough to kill them if they tried it. Enough— —o gods, to force them to negotiate— "Tirun," Hilfy said, leaning on Tirun's chairback. "If they damage us—they've got Pyanfar and Haral in reach. That may be what they're trying. Take us if they can; cripple us if they can't—Nothing personal on the kif's side: if you get a chance to put an uppity ally down and subordinate 'em, you do it." Tirun's ears moved. She heard. Hilfy flung herself the few paces across the deck to take the seat next to Tully, to take over scan function with eyes that could read and hands that could use the buttons. And: "—They were about eight kif," Geran was saying to someone on the com. "No. No. No, captain. Let me ask my—let me—let me ask our duty officer, captain—Tirun, it's Vigilance. Ehrran's sending crew out there to secure the docks." "Gods rot it—give me that." "She's just broken contact." Chapter 13 They rode the lift in Harukk, nine hani and two armed kif, and the door let them out onto the access level of the ship, into the dim light and colder air of that final passageway that was open to the docks. We're going to make it, Pyanfar thought, which she had doubted down below, in the prison-hold. She had doubted everything until the kif got them to the lift and two got inside the lift car with them, outnumbered at least at that range and within that car; and she believed it almost entirely when she saw that door open and let them out onto the right level of the ship, in a corridor with no ambushes and no waiting contingent of kifish guards just a way out. She glanced once at Haral in the course of a look over her shoulder at the kif and the Tahar crew, and caught a flicker of Haral's ears and eyes that worked like telepathy: same thought: We're near, captain, maybe we got a chance of getting away with this after all. Pyanfar turned and kept walking at the pace their guide set. This time there were stares from passers-by, curiosity at last—recalculation what kind of game was being played here, she reckoned. What kind and by whom. "That damn fool," Jik said over com. "She no do, she no do—" And broke contact abruptly. That was Jik's comment on Rhif Ehrran's decision to go out on Kefk docks. Hilfy heard it along with the rest, and looked to her right as captain Dur Tahar arrived on the bridge at a fast pace. "What's this about my crew?" Tahar said forthwith, out of breath. "We're working on it," Hilfy said, and got out of her seat, scan set to alarm. Dur Tahar on The Pride's bridge deserved at least one crew member on her feet to fend her off Tirun's neck, and Khym had just risen to appoint himself—not the best situation. "So what's going on?" Tahar asked, casting a look toward Command, where Tirun, in urgent communication with Goldtooth, had no time for talking. "What's the trouble?" "—Well, what do they say?" the gist of that conversation ran from Tirun's side. "The hakkikt got any good reason why we just got our airlock shot up? Why we got gods-be vermin running loose all over our lowerdeck? Where's our captain, huh? They know?" What Mahijiru command had to say to that was inaudible. "Captain's out trying to get your crew released," Hilfy said to Tahar. "Meanwhile we just got shot at. You want to take a crew post, captain? We're up to our noses in problems. Scan would be real helpful just now. Tully doesn't read real good." She expected objection of rank. Tahar lowered her ears and started for the indicated post with never an objection. But Tirun swung her chair about before Tahar could get to it. "Belay that. Goldtooth says he can't reach Sikkukkut. Kif are being obstinate. They're stalling. It wasn't any accident." Tirun got out of Haral's chair and with a wave at Dur Tahar, hurled herself into Pyanfar's instead. "Sit," she said, hitting the seat's turn-control. "Take number two, Tahar. I'll fill you in. Hilfy—Khym. Get that by the gods kif up here. I want to talk to him right now." Hilfy caught Khym by the arm and moved. No one sat in Pyanfar's place. But it was being done. No foreign clan sat in The Pride's seats. But they did that too—they did anything that gave them a better chance. They pelted down the main corridor; and of a sudden there was the electric thump of the generators coming up, a vibration all down The Pride's steel spine. Khym skidded on one foot and stopped, turning back before Hilfy grabbed him by the arm. "That's power-up!" Khym cried. "That's precaution," Hilfy said, and hauled him about again into a run for the lift. "We're not pulling out. Tirun wouldn't do that. For godssakes follow orders." So our systems are all the way hot. So the kif know we can move. Or shoot. They can take us out. We can take Kefk Out with us, if it comes to that. That's what Tirun's letting them know. "Kkkt," the kif said, on guard at Harukk's lock—"kkkkt:" when it saw what it faced, softly and with an edge a hani could read. Pyanfar kept her hand near her gun and flattened her ears as it looked like challenge. Then the guard waved them on with the dark flourish of a sleeve. Pyanfar strode out into the chill of the access and turned abruptly, with a scowl for the kif and a concern that all their party made it out clear. The Tahar crewwomen walked as best they could, Gilan on her own, Naun and Vihan doing the best they could to support Haury between them. Nif and Canfy with Tav. Haral came last, dour and grim—no bending, no show of weakness. Sikkukkut had not forgotten them; Sikkukkut would be curious what they would do, would be suspicious of connivance— —would cut their throats at the first hint things were not as represented to him; or at the first suspicion hani motives had confounded him. Come on, keep it moving—Pyanfar put impatience into a scowl at Gilan Tahar and spun on her heel the instant Haral cleared the lock, outbound and down bound for the docks. "Kkkkt," the kif Skkukuk said, lifting his hooded head from his nesting-spot on a clean bed in a clean cabin. "Kkkt. Young Chanur—" "Up," Hilfy said. She kept her gun in holster and made no move to threaten. Khym was behind her, and that was more than sufficient. "I am weak with hunger. Hani, it is a waste—" "Get up, kif. Move. We've had a little problem with' your dinner. It's all over the ship. Our hatch has a nice new burn-scar on it. That's what we want to ask you about." "Treachery," Skkukuk said. He stirred himself and came off the bed, using a hand to catch his balance. "Kkkt. Treachery." "You understand it real well," Hilfy said. "Come on. Let's go topside and discuss it with the crew." "Not my doing," Skkukuk said, "hani, it was not my—" "Out!" she said. Skkukuk came out toward them. Khym grabbed himself a handful of kifish robe at Skkukuk's nape, and Skkukuk twisted and rolled his eyes in alarm. The jaws clicked alarmingly. "I offer no resistance, I want to go to your bridge, there is no need—" "I'll bet you do," Hilfy muttered, and grabbed his arm while Khym took the other side, hauling the kif along clicking and protesting. Something black and small fled down the hall and scuttled around the corner into a lesser-used corridor. "I have given you my weapons," Skkukuk hissed, struggling to free his arms. "Let me go! Let me go, hani fools! I am yours, I am loyal to the captain—" "In a mahen hell," Hilfy muttered. They reached the bottom of the ramp, down by the gory row of heads, and Pyanfar looked back yet again with her hand laid on the AP gun she wore. The Tahar crew women did the best they could, keeping Haury Savuun on her feet and keeping moving; and Haral brought up the rear—clear enough that Haral would gladly have gone faster on this stretch, but there was a limit to what the Tahar kin could do; and there were several watching clutches of kif, down by the dockside and up above them on the ramp. "Kkkkt," the sound came to them from above and below. "Kkkkt." Well, look at those fools, Pyanfar translated it to herself, and her hair bristled. She glanced a second time at the Tahar, at Moon Rising's first officer in particular, the moment that they passed out of earshot from either end of the ramp. "Ker Dur's safe," she said quickly. "That's the truth. And I got your ship back. You're free. How are you doing?" Gilan's eyes seemed to pass in and out of focus, a widening and narrowing of the dark-in-amber as what she had said got through. "Captain's with you—and Moon Rising?" "Both in my keeping. You're safe. We're getting you back into safe territory fast as we can, going to turn you loose—Don't you wilt on me, gods rot you, look alive!—We've got a long way to walk, Gilan Tahar. No transport on this dock I want to use." "Aye, captain." Gilan's voice was hoarse and earnest. "We're with you." Kif were to either side of them. Kif clicked and muttered, in mirth at the sight they saw— Sfik, Pyanfar thought with a sinking heart. This ragged crew of hani demonstrated—gods help them all—hani vulnerability. Not enemies, the kif don't see Tahar as enemies to us. We're treating them wrong. It's a trap, by the gods, Sikkukkut's own sense of humor, not to send them with a kifish escort. To make us take them ourselves. Hoping one of them will faint on the way and make a scene. "Captain—" Haral said from a few paces behind. Kif were taking up a stance along the dockside ahead, across their path. It was walk through or detour round. "We don't bluff," Pyanfar said, and put an exaggerated swagger in her step, her hand on the gunbutt. On a second thought she took the AP from the holster and flicked the safety off, carrying it barrel-down and swinging as she walked. "Out!" she yelled down the way, and gestured at the kif with a wave of the gunbarrel. "Praise to the hakkikt, you scum, we're on his business with these prisoners and you'll keep your noses out of it!" There was slow movement, timed, she reckoned, just to brush against them in retreat—pushing it. But they were going to move. She kept the gun free and her finger on the trigger, reckoning Haral behind her was taking a similar attitude and backing her up. "Hani!" A kifish shout behind them. She stopped at once and braced wide-legged with the gun aimed two-handed at the crowd in front; and knowing Haral was turning similarly braced toward trouble behind them. "Three of 'em," Haral's voice reached her backturned ears; back brushing against her back. "Migods—! A kif's been hit! Someone shot a—" Pyanfar let off a warning shot over the leading kif's heads as she spun to Haral's side and saw one kif on the dockside deck and a second and a third in the act of falling. Sniper-fire. Her other foot hit the deck and she shouldered Gilan Tahar in a move toward the tangle of gantries and lines along the ship-berths. "Cover," she yelled. "Rot it, out of the open, move it!" The Tahar crew ran. She stopped and spun again to see Haral covering their retreat, with fire coming from somewhere, with kif falling and kif firing back and a chittering of kifish voices in tumult. "Get cover!" Pyanfar yelled at Haral, and Haral fell back in haste. Fire popped across the deck and exploded off something behind them with a deafening shock and a sting of particles. "Go!" Pyanfar yelled, turning and waving the Tahar vehemently to move—to gain what ground they could; and: "Move!" Gilan Tahar echoed the order, and lent her good arm to drag at Canfy Maurn. "Come on! Let's get out of here!" Kif firing at kif. Akkhtimakt's partisans, rising against Sikkukkut. "We got a revolution on our hands," Haral gasped, coming up beside her with her arm about Haury Savuun and Tav and Naun panting up behind. "Captain—we got—" A shot exploded near, and Haral flung up her gunhand to shield her eyes, staggering. Pyanfar spun about and pasted a shot in the general direction of fire. "By the gods, they fire this way, they get it—" A volley came back, a clanging thunder, an impact that flung her backward and cracked her head against the deck. She rolled and scrambled for cover, blind. "Captain!" Haral cried. "Hold it, hold it," Geran said as chaos erupted out of The Pride's com, "I got it—Tirun, I got Jik on one and a kif on two—" "Give me the kif," Tirun said; and listened while Hilfy and Khym held their own kif immobilized and furious between them. "Shut up!" Hilfy said to Skkukuk; and maybe it was that or maybe it was the news pouring out over the console speaker that hushed him. "—Honor to the hakkikt Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin," the voice said. "A suicide attack by rash elements has endangered your captain and her subordinate. We are presently moving in reprisal. We advise all ships in this command to exercise extreme watchfulness for external attack during this crisis. Pride of Chanur, refrain from rash action. The hakkikt will deal harshly with these adventurers." "Watch him," Hilfy muttered, and dived for com. "Tully. shift down. Take number one scan—Tahar captain's got monitor up there—" Tully bailed out. She hit the seat and snatched up a complug, coming into the tail of Geran's few seconds delayed retransmission of the kifish message down the mahendo'sat link. "Jik's got that," Geran muttered, as the kif finished and Aja Jin acknowledged on that channel. "This is The Pride of Chanur," Hilfy sent back on the kifish link, unauthorized and in haste. "Harukk-com—where's our personnel? What location?" "I will ask authorization for that information, Chanur-com." "They fear," Skkukuk hissed at her back, "The hakkikt Sikkukkut is in distress—he does not have them prisoner . . . ." Hilfy twisted round in her chair and stared full into the kif's red-rimmed eyes. "Why?" "Because, young Chanur, he says they are in danger. He admits a weakness. He promises retaliation. This is not control of the situation. It is not his doing. He would not claim weakness even in subterfuge." And on the Jik-channel, suddenly over general speaker: "We got personnel out on dock, we got Mahijiru move—Where be Pyanfar, Pride of Chanur? You got contact?" "Against what?" Hilfy asked Skkukuk. "What's going on out there?" "They will be Akkhtimakt's partisans, young fool. They hope for a coup. There is likely fighting even within Harukk. The hakkikt will be dealing with that personally. He will be occupied." "Likely truth," Dur Tahar said, swinging her chair around from monitor. Hilfy rose to her feet with her pocket pistol in hand and aimed at Tahar. "That's your recent side, Tahar, isn't it—Akkhtimakt's?" Tahar laid her ears back. Her eyes showed white and she froze in the chair. "Shoot or listen to me, Hilfy Chanur. The kif's telling the truth. But it's local stuff—nothing's coming in coordinated with this. Nothing I know about, leastwise. And I might have. No. It's a local thing. We got my crew and your captain out there on the docks. The kif's guessing but he's guessing straight—they're not where the hakkikt can lay hands on them right now or he would have. No, this goes right along with that assault on the lock down there. Kefk station is counterattacking—Akkhtimakt's partisans are making their move and your captain and my crew is caught in the middle, for godssakes—listen to me and put that gods-be gun down—" Tirun spun her chair about, still listening to something, the complug pressed hard in one ear. Her eyes flicked. "Ehrran's just engaged the kif—gods rot it, they're shooting up the docks out there—" "I'm going out there," Khym said flatly. "You go with the rest of us," Tirun said, and hurled herself to her feet. "Gods be, the captain's going to skin us, but when we get 'em back she can skin me first. We seal The Pride up tight and we get ourselves out there. Move it! Geran—shut her down. Put the lock on autoseal." Tirun crossed the deck at speed and opened up the weapons locker, handed a pistol toward Dur Tahar. "I," Tully said, on his feet, holding out his hand. "I!" Tirun slapped her pocket gun into his hand. "Use it." "Come on," Hilfy said to Skkukuk, and grabbed him ungently by the arm, claws out. "We put you back below." "Leave him one of two on this ship?" Tirun said. "No thanks. This son goes. First. First out. You lead the way, kif." Skkukuk's wiry body straightened. His head lifted to his full, gangling height. "Give me my gun back, hani." "Suppose you take one," Tirun said, nose rumpling. "From the other side." "Captain—" Haral leaned over her in the shelter they had reached along a towering gantry, in the red tracery of fire that speared the smoke and popped off the wall and the gantry structure. Haral had a piece of cloth from somewhere and was daubing away at her face with a rough earnestness while her ears rang and the fire went back and forth. It was all far away; and then it came clear, Haral's anguished face and the pain in the back of her head. "Gods be," Pyanfar muttered, struck the ministering hand away and tried to move. Her skin hurt. She put a hand to her middle and wiped away a dew of blood. Metal fragments. Splinters. She was peppered with them. She felt their prickling. Felt the slickness on her fur. She blinked at the Tahar crew's frightened faces—saw Haral looking white around the nose, and panic in Haral Araun was so out of character it shook the world. A second shaking: this time an AP blast against the station wall over their heads, and another spatter of particles. A five-hundred-weight of severed hose plummeted to the deck close enough to kick up the wind. "Gods!" Pyanfar cried, and got over onto her knees, searching after her gun in an empty holster. "Here." Gilan Tahar slapped the heavy butt into her hand, and she looked from the Tahar first officer to her own, saw Haral take a careful look out from their cover, and turn a dour face back toward her. "Pretty thick out there," Haral said. "A weather report, for godssakes—we got any cover further on?" "We got ourselves pretty well set here—" BANG! Another thunderclap, another shower of metal from overhead. "They're hitting the gods-be wall!" Pyanfar yelled. "The gods-be fools are going to take this whole gods-be dock for a spacewalk—" "That's volatiles down the dock," Haral yelled back over the sudden thunder of fire, pointing at the cans down the way, cans with the deadly yellow combustibles sticker. "If we run that way we can draw fire on that and get fried real good, captain!" "We sit here we got our choices too! How long's that sister of yours going to wait, huh?" "I'm expecting Jik," Haral yelled. "Well, he's late! And we got a fool lot of crew's going to be out here on this dock after us if they don't get assurance out of Sikkukkut, and I don't think he's in any position to give them any! We got to move, cousin, cans or no cans." She turned a look on Gilan Tahar, on a woman undone with blood loss. Gilan had gotten a bandage tied on the wound in her shoulder, but it was soaked. Haury Savuun was still conscious, by what force of will the gods only knew. "Gilan—we got a long sprint ahead. We don't want to do any shooting—don't want to attract any attention near those cans." She fished in her pocket and drew out the light pistol, handed it to Gilan. "In case. But you by the gods stay with us." "We're with you," Gilan said, and the overhead erupted and another length of hose and a length of pipe hit the deck and bounced erratically the other way—as easily into the midst of them. "Come on!" Pyanfar yelled, and headed for the next berth in a roiling of laser-riddled smoke so thick it obscured the next support girders. She sprinted for the cans with the yellow circles, remembering then that kif were at least partially color-blind. Vermin scampered pell-mell as they charged up to the airlock, as the hatches shot open, inner and outer, as Tirun turned to hit the lock-close in the dim orange passage. Hilfy ran, skipped aside from the collapsed cage and the can the kif had left— Explosives—Hilfy surmised in horror, explosives, if the kif were willing to decompress the dock. "Go!" she yelled, bristled all over, and Skkukuk darted past with kifish speed, Khym and Geran gaining. Tirun banged into the collapsed cage and cursed; and Hilfy clutched her gun and pelted after Khym around the bend of the passage with Tully and Dur Tahar hard after her. "Tirun!" she yelled, half-turning there; but: "Go!" Tirun yelled back, running hard enough at the outset of their course—Tirun would do the best she could, lame in any run, and bring up their rear and cover their backs even if she commanded. "Get down there, get clear!" Hilfy ran, passing Tully and Tahar, coming up behind Khym as they reached the pressure gates at the bottom of the ramp. There was a gentle, distant popping of fire. A shot went off the inner wall. Skkukuk skipped and dodged, and dived for cover. "You get, get!" a mahe cried, rising from concealment near their ramp, waving a frantic arm. There were mahendo'sat holding positions over near the cargo-console, Jik's people or Goldtooth's. Hilfy sought cover immediately behind the gantry control console and the sheltering metalwork of the gantry itself, leaned there with her heart pounding in terror and glanced back to see Tirun and Tahar and Tully pelting off the hazard of that ramp. O gods, gods, get us through this—I can't, I can't—She flung a look the other way, thinking Khym had gone to cover in a stack of cargo-cannisters ahead. He had not. "Na Khym!" she yelled in dismay, huddled in the solidity of her shelter, for Skkukuk dashed on, and Khym followed. "Gods be! Khym! Uncle! Stop! Wait!" Then it all seemed clear, the direction of the kifish enemy and the direction of the fire where Pyanfar and Haral had gone, and she shook fear away to some far cold place and gave up on either survival or mortality. Go on, Hilfy Chanur, go on, is a man crazy who knows he's overdue to die or a kif on his way to switch sides again?—go, fool, Haral's out there, and Pyanfar—run till the shots come your way and then you cover and shoot till they stop. It's all real simple, kid. Haral's voice, instruction-giving again. And Pyanfar's: Gods-be fool. Fire hit, tracing smoke puffs on the deck where Khym ran. Pyanfar darted behind the cans of volatiles and kept running, feeling the ache in bones and head with every jolt of her feet on the deckplates. The air was too thin and burned the lungs, the ammonia-smell cut with acrid smoke and laced with ozone. She sobbed another breath in a glance back and stopped to wave Gilan and Naur on with a pass of her hand, covering them without firing—wanting no notice they could avoid, but keeping her finger hard on the trigger. Vihan had Canfy by the arm, guiding her; Nif and Tav sprinted after, and hindmost, Haral with Haury flung over her shoulder, jogging along at what pace she could make, Haury no small woman and Haral not smallish either. "Go," Pyanfar yelled at Gilan's back, and ran back to intercept Haral as Haral struggled away from the explosive cans, grabbed Haury as Haral ducked out from under her body—no word of debate from Haral. Haral ran; and Pyanfar shouldered Haury to a carry and jogged on, all but blind for want of air. Fire suddenly burst on the far side of the cans—evidently kif saw the hazard marker—not hitting them. They kept going, reached a tentative shelter behind a cargo-loader. But next was an open space, and a run to scant shelter by the stress-supports. After that, another run, and another and another. And if Jik had not reached them by now, there was something impassable in the way. "Na Khym!" Hilfy cried, beckoning her uncle to safety, and he heard, by the gods he heard, and spun about and came sliding in by the gantry-side beside her all reeking of sweat while Geran slid in beside. "Gods," Geran said, pointing ahead, and there was Skkukuk still going, face on with a kif who stood frozen in his path as if it were trying to analyze the matter; then it fired, twice, zig and zag, where Skkukuk had been, but not where he was, which was coming down right onto the kif and taking it in a rolling tangle of black robes. "Uhhn," Khym said. The uppermost kif's head was bearing down and down at its enemy—gods knew what it was at. Hilfy shuddered and looked back as Tully came sliding in, -and Tahar and Tirun with him, Tully desperately out of breath and white and gasping in the kifish air. "Where's Skkukuk?" Tirun asked. "Gone over?" "Gods know which one's alive over there," Hilfy said. "I don't and I don't care." She lifted the gun then, not clear she was going to shoot, but not clear she was not going to either. Tirun's hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. "What are you into? What are you into, Hilfy Chanur?" The fury on Tirun's face bewildered her; and came home slowly. Hani. Home. And civilized behavior. "It's a gods-be kif!" "Who's in command out here?" She let go the tension in her arm and lowered her ears in silent deference. Tirun let go her hand, ears flat. "Py-anfar," Tully said, and took her by the shoulder, hard. "Hilfy, Py-anfar—" She threw off his hand. "Can we for godssakes move it?" Dur Tahar asked. "Move," Tirun said, and led this time, until others of them outstripped her, Hilfy among the first. Like a shadow in the tail of her eye she saw the kif leap up and run into the shadows on the far dockside, saw him weave out again and into cover, and afterward, vanish. Pyanfar stumbled, hit the deck on her knees and threw herself to save Haury's skull—but Haral and Tav were quick enough—both of them to save Haury, and Haral to grab Pyanfar by the belt and haul her into shelter of a metal console. "O gods," Pyanfar moaned, and made shift to get her torn knees under her. Her chest and gut ached, her loins were water, the knees long gone. She leaned on Haral's arm and on Haral for a moment. "I'm too old for this—o gods—" "Aye," Haral panted, the two of them braced against each other, holding to each other. And the world went to fire and sound. "Good gods!" Geran cried; and Hilfy: "Something's blown up! My gods—" Smoke came rolling down the dock like a black wall, obscuring knots of miniaturized kif, throwing laser-fire into visibility before it swallowed everything. And there ahead was a cluster of red-brown amid all the black and gray, figures huddled together on dockside. "Look!" Khym yelled, and headed that way, strung out as they were; and Hilfy grabbed Tully and ran. Sirens blew, decompression alert, the triple-interrupt pattern screaming alarms transspecies and translogic—the docks had gone unstable. An outer wall was in jeopardy. And gunfire never stopped. AP bursts peppered the inner walls and kif barred their way, backs turned toward their advance, kif pinning down that group of hani ahead. Geran opened up and Hilfy did—braced for aim, then moved, for Khym risked their line of fire—rushed ahead firing as he went, and no matter his wretched marksmanship, there was no need to pick targets. The kif besiegers scattered, and Hilfy stumbled a step as a splinter hit her calf—recovered herself and kept going, in and out among the girders and cables. Shots still came and she fired back at opportunity, rounded the last comer of their cover and dashed across the open dock and in among the hani at Geran's heels. And stopped cold. They were Ehrran crew, blackbreeches, who stood up to face them with guns and rifles leveled. It was the second impact for a battered skull, and Pyanfar lay there retching after breath tinged with sweat and smoke and volatiles. Sound when it returned was a chilling siren above the thump of fire. She felt something stir against her, got her eyes focussed against a tendency to cross and stared over into Haral's dazed face beside her. "I think they got those cans," Haral commented from the horizontal. "O gods, my head." And started moving, swearing in soft incoherency. Pyanfar rolled on an elbow and sat up. "Gilan—" The Tahar were all moving—sluggish, but moving. Haury proved life by turning on her side and trying to get up on her own; and Pyanfar swung round and looked where the sudden wild fix of Haury's eyes went. Reflex pulled the trigger of a gun she had forgotten she was holding. The shell burst on a kif in mid-leap; and the remains thudded off their sheltering can-stack onto the deck hardly a bodylength distant, while three more kif scrambled for other cover. She sat there and shook like a beardless youngster; and got her breath and shoved her heels and one hand under her. "Keep going," she said in a voice that failed of steadiness, and looked up at the blank, unfriendly pressure-gates of a sealed ship-berth. An empty berth. Or a ship that had gone on protective internal seal. Those gates in that case could open and pour out hostile kif into their refuge at any moment. "We've got to keep going—" "Haury," Tav objected, wobbling to her knees. "Haury—" It was so. Haury Savuun had to be carried. None of them had the wind for it. Pyanfar sank down where she was, on her heels, and Haral rested again, holding her hands locked behind a skull that was doubtless doing what hers was, a steady throbbing to the siren that told them the dock might blow to vacuum at any moment. "They've stopped shooting," Nif Angfylas said, her torn ears lifting despite her exhaustion. "Maybe—" A shot hit the wall and they ducked and covered. "Gods-be!" It was a new angle of fire, one forty five degrees oblique to their escape route, and high. "They got us pinned!" Another shot exploded and Pyanfar tucked her head into her arms, lifted it with a sinking feeling—the opposite quarter, that time. "They got us crossed," she yelled at Haral. "Get that gods-be sniper ahead highline, and watch your head! I think he's on the second level walkway!" She scrambled for the firepoint at the other corner of their shelter, and felt a presence close behind—Vihan Tahar, looting the dead kif's body for weapon and cartridges. Vihan ducked in close at her shoulder while Haral took the other side of the console that offered their tiny triangle of shelter from incoming fire. Smoke roiled up and drifted in blinding clouds. Whatever had gone up had gone in a hurry—it smelled like fuel; but a lake of it still burned on the dock, sending a hellish glare up to the smoke-palled overhead. No fans working up there. The air ducts had gone sealed, not to encourage the fire. It did not encourage breathing either. Her nose ran. She wiped her eyes with a gritty hand and checked the AP's cartridges. Down to six. No reloads. "We don't waste any fire," she said to Vihan, at her back. "Anything compatible on that kif?" "Got two rounds," Vihan said, pressing them into her hand. "His gun's in pieces." "Get over there and see if Haral needs them worse; I got—" Fire came back; Pyanfar took a chance shot the moment she saw the brighter flare of a rifle aimed their way, and dived aside, shouldering Vihan to the ground. Thunder broke and particles showered. Pyanfar bobbed up again and restrained herself from spending another round. "May have got the son—I can't tell—" Kif moved, a number of black distant figures cavorting in rolling smoke, about a lake of golden fire. Sikkukkut's? Akkhtimakt's? BOOM! from the other side. She spun about and plastered herself flat against the console with Vihan and Naur crouching tightly by her; and rolled a glance at Haral, who had pressed herself mirror-image to the far corner of the console. "Get him?" "Dunno," Haral said, and wiped watering eyes with a bloody fist. "Gods-be smoke—" Pyanfar looked up, where the smoke got lower and lower, obscuring most of the gantry now, lowering a black, asphyxiating ceiling over their heads. "They by the gods got to get those fans going soon." A cough threatened. Her own eyes were pouring water and her throat was raw. "We got four berths to go to next dock," Haral said. "We got a gods-be blockade up there," Gilan said. "We got kif between us and any way out of here. Snipers got your own people pinned for sure. Sikkukkut's losing this one—" "Console—" Pyanfar said suddenly; and twisted onto her knee, found the storage panel at her back with the kifish lettering that said EMERGENCY. She ripped it open and hauled out the first aid kit. Plasm foam. A few plastic bandages. She shoved the contents in Gilan Tahar's direction. No injectables. No class two supplies. No oxygen. A second glance up. There was a console call-post up over their heads, if anyone wanted to stand tall enough to try for it. And tell the kif in central their precise position when it got to that. But the sirens warned of more imminent disasters. The smoke worsened. She thrust herself onto her knees and risked her head standing up, a quick snatch at the mike and jab at the recessed channel buttons. The connection failed. "Captain," Haral cried in anguish as she tried the input again. "Gods-be short gods-be cord—Pride, hello, Pride, do you receive?" "Try Mahijiru!" Haral shouted from a crouch a little below her shoulder. "And get your head down!" "Captain," a hani voice came back, hoarse and weak and static-riddled. "What's going on?" "Chur? Chur? Where's Tirun? We need help—" Something whistled past her head and blew at her back; and something seized her about the legs and got her down, hard, Haral wrapped about her as a second burst blew the corner off the control console and roiled up a stinging smoke. Somewhere in the murk overhead, bending metal shrieked and groaned in protest, something huge giving way— "Gantry's going!" Nif Angfylas cried. "Migods, the gantry's going down—" Pyanfar rolled, as the metal-sound rose to a shrill grinding. She was not the only one to grab for Haury; Tav Savuun had her sister's other arm—there was general collision of well-meaning help; and in the smoke above, the gantry's dissolution progressed one shrieking degree at a time, impelled by inexorable station-spin and its own steel mass. Cables dropped down and writhed like snakes. "Run!" Pyanfar yelled, struggling to stand and pull Haury with her. Her knees wobbled as she drove against the weight. "Run!" "Where's my aunt?" Hilfy Chanur yelled at the Ehrran over the noise of fire, of a horrendous crash from somewhere down docks. "What's their position? Have you seen them?" "Out there!" the seniormost Ehrran crew woman yelled back with a wave at the stinging smoke. "How should I know?" The Ehrran's mouth fell open as Tully came panting up with Tirun. "My gods—you fools!" Hilfy shot out an arm: Tully evaded the Ehrran's grasp with a suck of gut and a spin onto the off foot—and Hilfy flung herself with a hard body-check into the path of the Ehrran officer. "You bastard whelp—" The Ehrran raked a left hand full of claws into her shoulder, and out of nowhere a heavy blow shot past Hilfy's shoulder and the Ehrran rocked back with a curse. Tirun's arm. Tirun, ears flat and with an AP gun in the other fist. "Go!" Pyanfar yelled, seeing the gantry hit and bounce and thunder like a perversely living thing, now toward the kifish positions and now toward their own, broken and in several places achieving independent motion. Smoke skirled and billowed in the shock. And for a precious moment there lingered that random violence on the docks as great as the kif and bouncing the kif's way. "Go!" Pyanfar yelled. Tahar crew grabbed Haury by one arm and the other, and they limped along. Pyanfar spent one precious shot toward the far side of the dock to keep kifish heads down: Haral fired another of their diminishing few rounds and Gilan Tahar let off a third as they ran and lurched their way behind the cover the careening wreckage gave them. "Come on!" Tirun shouted at the Ehrran officer. "Save it for later, Ehrran—we got troubles down there! You want to talk about it later, fine. Let's get the rest of us off that dock down there!" "That's Tahar!" The Ehrran pointed at Dur Tahar. "By the gods, Chanur—" "Save it," Tirun yelled. "Settle it later, hear? You're talking to a ship's chief officer, woman, and we got hani lives at stake!" "I don't regard any Chanur patents. You got a man out here carrying arms, you got a non-citizen alien and a known fugitive with weapons—" The Ehrran raised her gun. "You're under arrest, you, all of you!" "You gods-be lunatic," Khym roared, and waded forward. A shot went off and he spun half-about— "Gods!" Hilfy cried. Muscles jumped and she launched herself at the same time as Geran and Tirun and Tully. But Khym had never stopped; he made his spin full about, landed a sweeping blow and the Ehrran went flying across the dock. Hilfy's own particular target had her mouth still open when Hilfy hit her and sent her knee up into an unprepared gut-straightened the Ehrran up with a gunbarrel under the chin and shoved her back. "AP," Hilfy snarled, in case the Ehrran crew woman had any doubts what was at her jaw. "Drop yours—drop it!" The woman rolled her eyes and a gun thudded to the deck. Hilfy shoved her loose. Ehrran were scattering, in full flight, two delaying to pick up their senior, unconscious on the deck. Tully was picking himself up off the deck, bleeding at the nose and wobbling, but he still had his gun in hand, and the last Ehrran lit out running. Hilfy sucked wind and aimed the AP into the running midst of them— Her finger froze. Her hand shook. None of them fired. None of them did. The blackbreeches crossed the open area, plunging through a group of oncoming mahendo'sat who had appeared out of cover. "Mahend' nai casheni-te!" Tirun yelled at them. "Hai na Jik!" "Pau nai!" the shout came back, with waving of arms. Wait! "Blast you, help!" Fire spattered the dock. The mahendo'sat dived back pellmell. "Gods-be!" Tirun yelled, not her voice but a hoarse, cracking sound; and they dived for cover on their side. "You all right, Khym, you all right?" Geran asked. "Uhhhnn," he muttered, hand on his upper arm. Blood leaked through. His eyes were dark and dreadful to see. "Let's move." "Come on," Tirun said; and leapt up. Down-docks. Into the fighting. The only way any of them chose to go. "Where's Tahar?" Hilfy yelled, suddenly missing the captain as they started to run. "Tirun—Tahar—" "Go," Tully yelled, waving his arm to indicate direction, gasping for breath as he tried to keep pace. "Tahar go!" Ahead of them. Pyanfar stopped and turned and sent another shot toward the inner wall of the docks, covering the three carrying Haury Savuun, putting herself and another of their last rounds from the AP gun between Haury's all-too-exposed person and the chance of another shot. A shot came back low and exploded off the downed gantry in a hail of fragments. A second shot went past her: hit the back wall. She staggered and flung herself to the minimal cover they had, wiping a haze from her eyes. "We got to keep going," she said, shoving Nif aside to drag at Haury's limp arm one-handed. "We got no more choice, we're out of cover—" "Where's Jik?" Haral gasped, as they kept moving, as a shot whumped off the far wall and something blew up behind. "Gods rot that earless son, where is he?" Where's Tirun? Pyanfar translated that. Haral did not ask that, neither of them wondered that aloud. And from overhead, everywhere, thundering through the public address: ". . . Ktogot ktoti nakekkekt makthaikki . . . . kothoggi gothikkt nakst . . . sotkot naikkta . . . hakkikktu . . . skthsikki . . . nak sogkt makgotk Kefku . . . ." "Sikkukkut's—claiming—victory," Naun Tahar gasped, laboring along with Canfy Maurn against her. "Good luck to him," Pyanfar gasped, and grabbed Canfy from the other side as Canfy stumbled. And stopped, blinking tears in the smoke. A lone figure sprinted toward them, hani and armed. Chapter 14 "Gods," Pyanfar cried, "that's Dur! Tahar!—where's the rest?" Dur Tahar yelled something back, and came sprinting through the fire-zone into Gilan Tahar's path—cousin and cousin in the stinging smoke, Gilan and Vihan, the distant kin, in hasty embrace—a glance round as Pyanfar struggled up with Canfy in tow and Haral came running, glancing at every third stride to the darkened farside where sniping went on unabated. "Where?" Pyanfar yelled at Dur Tahar. "Gods rot it, where's my crew?" "Ehrran—" Tahar gasped, and whirled and caught her by both arms, "they tangled with Ehrran—Pyanfar—" Tahar gasped a second mouthful of air. "Come on—" Pyanfar scanned her up and down in hopes of AP rounds; there was nothing, nothing but the smallish gun in Tahar's grip against her arm. Her heart sank. "Tahar, where's Jik? You seen Jik or Ismehanan-min?" "Gods-be mahendo'sat're off across the docks holding their own positions—I don't know." "Captain!" Haral sang out, and Pyanfar looked beyond Tahar's shoulder to more oncoming figures, red-brown hides and one white shirt that shone through the smoke like a natural target. "Gods rot it!" Pyanfar screamed at the lot of them, "we got snipers! Run!" Her heart was up in her throat as her own crew came charging up through the smoke. Tirun, Geran, Hilfy, Khym and Tully, all of them armed; Khym bleeding down his arm, Hilfy from the calf, Tirun limping along hindmost and grimacing in pain. "What kept you?" Haral yelled at her sister. "Hey," said Tirun, panting to a halt in front of Haral, swinging a gesture back at the smoke-hazed dockside. "What'd you want? Next time you arrange a party, Hal, for godssakes give us the address!" "Let's get out of here!" Pyanfar yelled, and waved an arm. "Get the injured on their feet, let's get out of here!" Khym gathered Haury Savuun up in his arms, leaking blood on both of them, and Tirun and Geran flung an arm each around Canfy Maurn as they gathered breath and wits and headed through the smoke and the din of sirens-the deep bass sirens of dock-emergency alternate with loudspeakers that clicked and hissed and thundered with kifish threats and instructions. A sudden glare of sodium-light broke through the smoke-haze at the left, close, a light alive with shadows as robed figures came pouring out of a ship-access. A hundred kif, a whole ship's crew headed out toward them at some summons; or having finally made its collective mind up which side to join. New sirens wailed, high-pitched. Fire hailed about them from the flank as other kif aimed at the sudden breakout. "Run!" Pyanfar yelled, and veered off across the dock, limping. She turned and let off her last shot where it counted, into the heaviest firepoint that was putting shots past their ears; and turned again and ran, breathless and all but blind toward a set of girders near the main freight-chute, where a conveyor went up into the station's upper levels. And stopped cold as she rounded the corner and saw the band of kif in front of her, APs leveled dead at her and her empty gun. Gods-be, she had time to think, in profound self-disgust. An AP shell landed in the full middle of the kif. Her forearm flew up on instinct to save her eyes, her legs flung her sideways and sprawling to confuse hostile aim; and she rolled to her knees staring up at a single standing kif who held his AP gun widely to the side, non-combatant beside a smoking heap that had been five of his fellows. "Captain," Skkukuk said as cheerfully as she had ever heard a kif speak, about the time her crew poured about her and made a defensive wall. She struggled for her feet, almost sprawled again, but Tully, closest to her, caught her arm and saved her balance. "I feared treachery," said Skkukuk with a wave of his hand at the rest of the crew. "And so I followed you my own way, captain, to be of service." "Gods save us," Tirun muttered. "I would advise," Skkukuk said, "going back to the ship. The hakkikt Sikkukkut will reward you for that prudence." "You're a gods-be agent of his!" Pyanfar cried. A flourish of dark sleeves and weapon-hand toward the smoking pile of kifish corpses. "Did I not offer you my weapons? I am skku to Chanur, no other, and I have given you your enemies." Skkukuk turned and pointed down the docks toward their own berth. "The mahendo'sat have secured the docks a little further on. Come and I will show you a safe route." "Then move," Pyanfar said numbly. "Get!" "Keep this one from my back!" Skkukuk pointed a claw in Hilfy's direction. "This one—" "You gods-be filth!" Hilfy cried, and headed for him, but Pyanfar caught her ann. "Move it!" Pyanfar yelled at the kif. The kif turned and started off in a dash for other cover. "Go," Pyanfar said, still holding Hilfy's arm, and hurled her into free, passing her in the tracks of the kif who sped as a darting wisp of black in the smoke. Whump! Overhead, power went up full: lights glared; the distant burr of fans reasserted itself. Kefk station was trying to live. The loudspeaker blared, inaudible in the other din. There was a sudden fading-out of fire; as if entropy had set in—decreasing organization and increasing desire on the part of kif still involved to exit the affair with whatever gains they had: alive. Defense only, at this point. Follow the kif. Trust the kif who had saved her skin. They were within com range of The Pride. Pyanfar reached for the pocket com in her limping jog, coughing as she went, blinking smoke-stung tears and hoping to the gods all the rest were still behind her as she tracked the light-footed kif from cover to cover. "Chur," she gasped into the com. "Chur, it's Pyanfar—do you hear me?" No answer. A dozen strides more. "Chur!" Silence from the com. It could have gotten broken in a fall. It could have. Skkukuk came to a sudden halt in the shelter of a set of girders just ahead, and plastered himself against it. Strobe-light flashes lit the smoke ahead, a ceiling-towering series of upward cycling lights that sent ice to a spacer's heart. Of a sudden the whole station shuddered. Pyanfar flailed wildly for balance and found it next Skkukuk in a thunder of rollers and hydraulics and an airshock that made the ears ache. "O gods," she said, braced against the column and staring into that rolling cloud as the rest of the company reached them. The great doors of the section seal had shut. The Pride's dock, Mahijiru's, Vigilance—Aja Jin—They were cut off. "What—" Khym's voice came in gasps, subdued and frightened. He leaned there gasping, his back to the girder crossbrace, Haury limp in his arms. "What happened?" "I don't know," Pyanfar said. The whole station seemed suddenly quiet. The sirens were silenced. "Could've been holed—" The Pride. O gods. "We're cut off." She tried the pocket com again. "Chur. Chur, you receiving?" She expected no answer. She got none. She flicked it to standby again and met Geran's eyes by accident. "Probably can't get through," Pyanfar said on a gasp. "Range is marginal through that seal." "Ktiot ktkijik!" the PA thundered—EMERGENCY. And went on and on—Skkukuk lifted his dark, long face the better to hear, but the kifish words garbled in the echoes. Another burst of loudspeaker sound, from another direction, likewise kifish, groundlevel. "Captain!" Haral caught her arm and pointed, where four brightly-garbed mahendo'sat had broken from cover and begun to run their way, close at hand. Desperately. "Gods be," Pyanfar said, "Jik—Jik, you gods-be earless—What's going on over there?" Jik came panting up and caught her arms, at the end of his breath. "You come—got go—other way. Got no go ship, no go ship—" "What happened over there?" "Got trouble. Got Vigilance—I think she blow dock. I think she go—go Meetpoint." "Where's Mahijiru? What's Aja Jin doing, for godssakes? You got contact? Clip a vane off her! Stop her!" Jik blinked and gasped. "I lose contact Aja Jin—Mahijiru power up. Mahijiru—Vigilance—go." "He's after her." "He no shoot, no shoot. Pyanfar, I not know what he do—Get off dock, we got get off dock! My partner—he—he not shoot!" "You mean he's going with her? He's going out with Vigilance?" "A," Jik gasped, shaking at her. "We got—problem—" "Kkkt," said Skkukuk. "Understatement. The hakkikt will not be pleased with mahendo'sat or hani today." "Shut up!" Pyanfar snarled; and Skkukuk lowered his head between his shoulders. "Look about you," said Skkukuk. "Uuhhhnn," Haral said; and Pyanfar looked. Shadows appeared throughout the smoke-haze, robed shadows converging on them from all sides, with caution and deliberation. And leveled rifles. "These will be the hakkikt's," Skkukuk said. "Since they aren't shooting. They will get us back to your ships. Or not, at the hakkikt's pleasure. Kkkt. I trust you did not offend him in your interview." "Beware of Goldtooth," Pyanfar muttered distractedly. "Beware of Ismehanan-min." "What say?" asked Jik. "What talk, Pyanfar?" "Not me. Stle stles stlen. The stsho warned me at Meetpoint. From the start. I paid a lot for that advice. A whole lot." She shoved her empty gun into its holster and stared bleakly at the narrowing circle of kif. "Everyone stand easy. Let's just hang onto the guns if we can." "Kkkkt. Parini, ker Pyanfar?" "Appreciated, hakkikt." Pyanfar reached out a sooty, blood-caked hand as an attendant brought a cup to her side, there in Harukk's dim hall. Back to starting-point. The blood and stink of the docks still clung about them. They bled from wounds. The hakkikt elected to have his nose offended; or delighted in the sweat and discomfort of the opposition. All of them were there—Hilfy, Tully—seated at Sikkukkut's low table, on insect-legged chairs: Haral; Dur Tahar; Jik; the others of all three crews, hani and mahendo'sat alike, were back in the shadows along the wall, among armed kif—except Haury Savuun. The kif had taken her over objections as violent as they dared make. To no avail. It was surely mockery that set Hilfy and Tully as guests at Sikkukkut's table; with Dur Tahar: and unsubtle mockery that set Skkukuk to crouch on the floor near the hakkikt's chair, robed knees up near hooded head, arms tucked out of sight, a very, very quiet Skkukuk, as small as he could make himself. Sikkukkut sipped his own cup. It was not parini. Dark eyes glittered. "Should I wish a dockside destroyed in future," Sikkukkut said, "I will only invite my friend Pyanfar. First the stsho, then the mahendo'sat, and now the kif. You are an expensive guest." "I'd like to contact my ship." "Of course you would. Kkkt., Chur Anify has stayed aboard. Wounded, you say. But perhaps still capable at controls. Who knows? While, Keia, the complement you left on Aja Jin is—virtually complete. Except yourself and the four with you. You and Ismehanan-min withdrew your crews from the docks simultaneously with those of Vigilance. To put it directly—why?" "A. Because—" Jik fished in his pouch for something and came up with a smoke and a light. He carried the stick to his lips and lit the lighter. "No," said Sikkukkut definitively, and Jik paused and looked his way, fire burning and smokestick unlit. "No," Sikkukkut said again. Jik froze a moment as if undecided, then deftly snapped out the lighter, palmed the smokestick and returned both to the pouch. "Well?" said Sikkukkut. "Number one sure thing Vigilance got make trouble." Jik hooked a thumb toward the company over by the wall, and gestured loosely toward Tahar immediately at his right. "Ehrran go out, they think maybe they get hands on Tahar. Want bad. No good try. Pride don't let. Things go bad quick, shooting start, those hani they get recall order. Pride crew, they try find captain, a? Try cross dock—they same time save Ehrran hides all by accident. They run like hell, board ship. When I see Vigilance crew go off dock, I get quick nervous." "You knew what she would do." Sikkukkut sipped at his cup, flicked his tongue delicately about his lips. "Well, as we sit here at our ease, Vigilance is still outbound—on Meetpoint vector, without a doubt. Your colleague and partner Ismehanan-min is running hard behind her, not a shot fired on either side. Does that surprise you, Keia?" "Damn sure surprise," Jik said darkly. "And yourself, ker Pyanfar?" Pyanfar lowered her ears. "Hakkikt, I told you what Ehrran would do the minute she got the chance. No, I'm not at all surprised." That did not well please the hakkikt. She saw the tension in the hand that held the cup, the relief of tendons and veins under the dark gray skin. But the snout gracefully lifted from the cup again. The dark eyes blinked ingenuously. "What would you do, skth skku?" Vassal of mine. Pyanfar flattened her ears further. "What's necessary to do, The hakkikt has no need of my advice, but our motives still coincide. Pukkukkta. Ehrran plainly aims to kill us, and I don't intend to let her have a sitting target. By your leave, hakkikt. What I said before the fighting started is still the truth." "Sktothk nef mahe fikt." Safety snicked off a gun close at hand. A guard held a pistol close to Jik's head and Jik never flinched, but picked up his wine and took a measured sip. "Do you trust our friend Keia?" Sikkukkut asked. "He's still here. He was doublecrossed in this, same as us." "Was he, truly? Second question. Is he my friend?" "Like always," Jik said with a tilt of his imperiled head, and the cheerfulness faded to a frown. "Hakkikt, long time I work with Ana Ismehanan-min. He sometime crazy. I think maybe he got idea, maybe go this place—" "Humans." Sikkukkut leaned forward, set down the cup on the low table and rested his hands on both his knees, long jaw outthrust. "Ismehanan-min knows precisely what he is working for. Mahen interests—which have perhaps very little to do with mine. Or even yours, ker Pyanfar. I wonder what those two discussed with each other before Ismehanan-min left dock. I wonder what agreements exist. Would you know these things?" "I've never found Goldtooth forthcoming on his plans." Exhaustion threatened her with shivers; or it was the cold; or a sick dread of the narrow path .they walked, and where it might turn next. The gun stayed at Jik's head; and there was ice in her stomach and her nose ran. "He left Jik here. So he didn't tell Jik anything. Same as me. Didn't trust me with what he was up to." "But he trusted—I do dislike that concept—trusted this Rhif Ehrran." "That isn't necessarily so, hakkikt. I don't think he trusts anyone." "But Ehrran has a ship on her tail and at last report, she isn't firing. Is this characteristic of Ehrran?" "It is if she's got a hunter-ship on her back. She's only brave on docksides. I haven't seen her style in space. But I know she's no match for Goldtooth in a fight. Couldn't be, if he's got position on her. Fancy ship, fancy computers, lot of programmed stuff. Programs for everything. But I wouldn't bet Vigilance's arms systems against Mahijiru and I sure wouldn't bet her crew. Evidently she thinks the same." "There's another possibility. Ismehanan-min boarded Vigilance during his time in port." Her ears pricked up. It took no acting. "After or before he came to me, hakkikt?" "After. Does it suggest something to you?" "It might still have been on our business." The sweat stung in her wounds. Across the chamber, against the wall, Canfy Tahar slowly slumped to the deck, not fainting, but at her limit. Tav knelt by her; and kifish guns angled toward them. They still had their own weapons: kifish etiquette. But theirs were not out of holsters; and the kif's were. And the gun never left Jik's temple. He sipped carefully at his drink and ignored it. But that was calculated and dangerous too. "I doubt it was," Sikkukkut said. "If they are not acquaintances, who sleep in one bed, they will be by morning. Is that not a hani proverb?" She blinked. "A hundred year child. That's a mahen proverb. Longtime trouble from a single act. Goldtooth's either making a serious mistake, hakkikt, or he's still acting in your interest. He'll be at Meetpoint. Where he's useful. And it's not his style to consult with his partners." "What of that, Keia?" "I like that smoke now, hakkikt." "Answer." Jik's eyes came slowly to Sikkukkut's. "She right. I think maybe Ana got idea put self where make lot trouble." Sikkukkut's long nose drew down somewhat. It was not a pleasant expression. He folded his long fingers beneath his outthrust jaw. "Kkkkt. Shall I observe, Keia, that your position is uncomfortable? That I presently have ships proceeding toward jump, to warn my enemies. That this whole diversion on the docks—diversion, Keia!—was perhaps created to give those two ships time to get away." "They be kif who fight, hakkikt." "They are worms who lacked initiative until someone moved! Don't tell me kifish motives! Don't play the innocent with me, mahe, or you will find me other than civil!" Pyanfar flexed claws and tried to think past the pounding of her heart. Hunter-vision tried to take over. She forced the black edges back. "She was in port with him." "Him," Sikkukkut said sharply. The kif turned his attention in her direction, went off one hunter-fix and onto her. "Who?" "Goldtooth was at Meetpoint at the same time as Rhif Ehrran; same time as you, hakkikt. I'm wondering who was talking to whom back then. You talked to Goldtooth. He intimated that much. But who met with the stsho? And who met with whom in stsho offices?" "No," Sikkukkut said, as if he had turned a thing over in his mouth and decided to eject it, delicately, his eyes burning and full of estimations. "No. I don't credit the stsho with that much nerve." "Then," said Pyanfar, "the stsho at least thought they were on the inside of this business. They thought they were ahead of the hunt. Or leading the hunters where they liked." "Suppositions are a shaky bridge, ker Pyanfar. Particularly when the waters are deep. You wish to distract me. You see—I know friendship. I put it with martyrdom—in the category of terms useful to know. Friendship—is also subject to rearrangement of loyalties. At the most disadvantageous moments. Believe me that I understand the exigencies of allegiance—trading and advantage. Let's operate within them. Shall we? Let's consider what prompted this attempt on my life . . . since that's surely what it was. Let's consider how it incidentally created the timing for escape—Vigilance uses its guns as it parts our company and breaches an entire dock to hard vacuum, a dock conveniently free of mahen or hani casualties. Not of kif. But remarkably your crew and the crews of Mahijiru, Aja Jin—Keia; and of course Vigilance—were not on that dock when it decompressed." "We weren't in a favorable situation ourselves, hakkikt!" "Be still, ker Pyanfar, and let my old friend Keia do this explaining. Let him tell me how Aja Jin was so fortunate in its timing. Do you want your smoke, Keia? Take it. Perhaps it will facilitate your thinking." "A." Jik reached again into the pouch, kept his movements measured: I am not in a hurry, they said. You do not force me. And that sudden patience on Sikkukkut's part raised the hair on Pyanfar's nape. Stalk and circle. Take it. Have what you want at my hand. When I choose. If I choose. Your addiction is your vulnerability and I control it, I demonstrate it to these others and you must bear with that. And soon with other things. See, hunter Pyanfar, how easy and how perilous the fall from my favor. Friendship and kinship is your addiction. I can twist that knife too. Gods-sakes—as Hilfy let go a long, careful breath—sit still, niece. The smoke rose, gray wisp against the orange sodium-glow; and swirled above Jik's head, taken by the ventilation. "I tell you," Jik said easily, and gods, there was only the faintest fear-smell: he was that steady. The strong smoke subdued other olfactory cues, deliberate stratagem, perhaps. "I tell you, I not happy. Ana be old friend. But politic make different. We be mahendo'sat, hakkikt. I know what he do. He hedge bet." He made a gesture with the smokestick and put the lighter away. "He call me fool. Maybe I be. We not trust Ehrran either one. I know damn sure when Ehrran crew make fast withdraw from dock we got trouble. Mahijiru already got close up tight hatch. I send all crew aboard, tell get hell off dock, try get damn fool hani—" He gestured Pyanfar's direction, and over his shoulder at the others. "They going find captain. Damn sure I got no way stop. Damn good idea anyhow. Pyanfar be val-u-able ally. Maybe do favor to hakkikt, a? Rescue Pyanfar." Another large drag at the smoke. It leaked slowly from his nostrils. "I not like whole ship company go out from The Pride—but they go quick get off dock. This number one good idea. I don't trust Ehrran. I run like hell, try catch these hani. No good. We get pin down. We got no hakkikt permission be on dock, a? Every damn fool out there want shoot us. Hani go through. We stuck. So got one job then—hold way open for hani, back to ship. We do. We hope Ana take care Ehrran. I think he do. He follow her. I still got hope he got good idea. Maybe help. He not like tell what he do. This maybe make friend lot nervous. Make me damn nervous now, a? I be like you, hakkikt. I always like know what my friend do." "Your friend has left you in a precarious position. Or you've elected to stay and lie to me." "A. No lie. Got know truth to make lie. I not know. He not talk to me." "Meaning nothing can extract this truth from you." "Not got. What want? I say give you Kefk. I give." "Kefk is in ruins, Keia. It seems a dubious gift." "You got lot sfik. You step on Kefk, go 'way, take lot more prize, a? Akkhtimakt no got. You be rich, you fix, easy." "Ah. But you still suppose Ismehanan-min is going to support us at Meetpoint." "He no like Akkhtimakt." "I take that for granted. You yourself serve your Personage and not me. As he does. Doesn't this mean some agreement of action?" Jik drew another large breath of smoke and sought a place for the ash afterward. There was none. He tapped it and let it fall to the floor. "I serve Personage. I tell you plain I got reason want see you be hakkikt. I think this be good for all. So I serve Personage. Serve you. Balance, hakkikt. You be Personage we recog-nize. You got lot sfik with mahendo'sat. These be crazy times. Better kif got good smart Personage, a?" "Flattery, base flattery, Keia. Diversion again. I tell you I am not persuaded it was kif who began that fight on the docks. An this—" —in a blink Sikkukkut's arm shot out, and guards pounced on Skkukuk, hauling him upright. "Kkkt!" Skkukuk's protest was throat-deep and anguished. "He's mine," Pyanfar said tautly. Never back up, never back down, never let a kif get away with any property. "A present from you, hakkikt." Dangerous. O gods, dangerous. So was flinching when that long-jawed face turned her way. "It remains yours," Sikkukkut said. "It gained a little sfik," said Pyanfar. "In our service out there. I'd like to keep it." "Kothogot ktktak tkto fik nak fakakkt?" The question went to Skkukuk; and Skkukuk drew his head back as if he wanted to be far from Sikkukkut's sight. "Nak gothtak hani, hakkikta." "Nakt soghot puk mahendo'satkun?" "Hukkta. Hukktaki soghotk. Hani gothok nak uman Taharkta makkt oktktaikki, hakkikta." —No. Desperately. I saw no collusion. The hani argued over possession of the human and Tahar and left, hakkikt. A wave of Sikkukkut's hand. The guards let Skkukuk go and he collapsed back into a head-down chittering heap beside the table. "So he attests your behavior," Sikkukkut said. "Your sfik still powerfully attracts his service. I wonder is it hope of you or dread of me so impels him." "He's useful." "And as we speak, Vigilance and Ismehanan-min hasten, to betray us at Meetpoint. What attraction can they find there, I wonder, that impels Ismehanan-min to abandon Keia here to my pleasure—do I not correctly recall a mahen proverb, Keia my friend, that green leaves fall in storms and the strongest friendships in politics?" "Long time friend, Ana Ismehanan-min." "But he would let you die." "Like you say, politic. Also—" Jik pinched out the smoke and dropped the butt into his pouch. "Also Ana lot mad with me." Jik's eyes came up, liquid and vulnerable and without the least doubt. "He know I work with tc'a. Fool, he say; Jik, you be damn fool involve methane-folk. Ana, I say, I not much worry, I long time talk tc'a. Got lot tc'a know me, long time. I want tc'a come here to Kefk—fine. Dangerous, maybe. I think now maybe knnn got interest. Maybe good, maybe bad—" O, deft, Jik. The methane-breather connection. That's one thing Sikkukkut has to be afraid of. For godssakes don't overdo it. Jik shrugged. "So, Ana be lot upset. Lot knnn interest this human thing. Lot interest." Profound silence. Pyanfar found herself holding her breath and daring not get rid of it. She kept the ears still; and even that betrayed the tension every posture in the room already betrayed, kif and hani alike. Tully's eyes darted to Jik, to her, to the kif—the solitary, sapphire-glittering motion in a gray and black world. "Yes," Sikkukkut said. "There would be interest on their part. And it has also occurred to me that we have a source of information here among us. At this table. Tully—you do understand me, Tully." O gods—She saw Hilfy's minute flinching; the tension of muscles in her, in Tully, in Haral—Look this way, Tully— "I understand," Tully said at his clearest, looking straight at Sikkukkut with never a look or a pause for advice. "I not know, hakkikt. I not know route. I not know time. I know humans come quick." A long moment Sikkukkut gazed at him as she glanced between them. A visible shiver began in Tully's arms, his hands upon his knees. "You and I have met before on this matter," Sikkukkut said. "But how fluent you've become." "I be crewman, hakkikt, on The Pride. I belong captain Pyanfar. She say talk, I talk." Gods help us, be careful, Tully. "Where will they likely come?" Now Tully looked her way, one calmly desperate look. "Do you know?" Pyanfar asked, pretense, not—pretense. He continually baffled her. "Tully, gods rot it, talk." He looked back toward Sikkukkut. "I not know. I think humanity come Meetpoint. I think Goldtooth know." "Kkkkt. Yes. I think so too. So does Akkhtimakt, who stripped that knowledge from your shipmates. Who has what that courier carried, information that—doubtless—has sped to points in mahen space. Truth, finally, arrives from the least likely source. You amuse me—Tully. You endlessly amuse me. What shall I do with Keia?" "Friend," Tully said quietly, evenly. His best word. Almost his first word. His fall-back word when he was lost. "But whose?" There was silence. Long silence. "I think that Keia will be my guest a while. Go back to your ships. I shall release your crew, Keia—in time. I wouldn't impair your ship's operation. And I'm sure your first officer is quite competent." Jik reached for another smokestick. No one interfered. He slid a look Pyanfar's way. Go. "Right," Pyanfar said in a low voice. "I take it we're dismissed, hakkikt?" "Take all I have given you. You'll board by lighter. The dock access is not useable." "Understood." She rose from the insect-chair, in the murk and the orange glare; and signed to her crew and to Tahar. Jik sat there lighting his second smoke and looking as if that were the most ordinary of companies to be left in. O gods, Jik. What else can I do? "The hakkikt promised all," Pyanfar said to the guard, her ears flattened and her nose rumpled. "I want the wounded hani. Savuun. Haury Savuun. You'll know where she is. You'll bring her." It pushed—about as far as they could push. "Yes," the kif in charge said, stiff—all over stiff. The hostility was palpable. Not hate. There was no hate in question. It was assessment—what the foreigners' credit was with the hakkikt. When to kill. When to advance and when retreat in the hakkikt's name. A kif did not make two mistakes. Yes. It turned and gave orders to that effect. It was a silent trip after that—down through Harukk's gut to the hangar-bay; and no relief at all until they had gotten down near the large boarding-room, and Haury arrived on the other lift—dazed, wobbling on her feet as they brought her out, but limping along with kifish help. From Haury a lift of the head, a momentary prick of the ears and widening of hazed eyes that betrayed confusion, then a taciturn expression, a wandering sweep of the eye that took in friends and guards and the boarding-lock. Gods knew what she had expected being brought down the lift. But only the tautness about her jaw still betrayed emotion—a hani long-accustomed to kif, grim and quiet. Eternally playing the game that kept a kif alive. "We're getting out of here," Dur Tahar said when Haury and her guards came up close. "You all right?" "Fine," Haury said in a hoarse whisper of a voice. That was all. She gave Pyanfar one long uncommunicative look; and took her sister Tav's help in place of the kif's. There were bandages about her ribs. Plasm on her wounds. The kif had, done something for her at the least . . . with what courtesy was another question. "Go," said the kif on the docks, with the wave of a dark hand toward the waiting lighter-access. "Compliments of the hakkikt." Praise to him stuck in the throat. Pyanfar favored the kif with a stare and stood there with hands in her belt, near her empty weapons, while both crews boarded. Haral stood with her. They went aboard together, down the short, dark tube past the hatch. No suits necessary in the lighter, thank the gods: nothing kifish would have fit. Pyanfar walked the center aisle into the dim, utilitarian rear of the cargo lighter, where Chanur and Tahar sat side by side on the deep benches. Up front, the kifish pilot gave confirmation to the launch crew in hisses and clicks and gutturals. Pyanfar sat down, belted in as the lighter whined in final launch-prep, sealing its hatch to the ship. The lighting, such as it was, lined the pilot and co-pilot up front in lurid orange, making shadows as they moved. The cold air stank of ammonia and machinery. No one spoke. They swayed and braced as the lighter moved out of the bay on the launch boom—smooth, not a shudder in the arm. Well-maintained, was Harukk. Pyanfar noted such details, recalling the balky loader The Pride had tolerated for years. No glitches in this sleek killer-ship. No little flaws even in things that had tolerance. One knew something about a captain from such detail as this, and Pyanfar stored the information away among the other things she knew of Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin, inquisitor for Akkukkak, conniver from Mirkti, prince and lord over ruined Kefk. The boom grapple thunked and let them free in their armored little shell as the shadow-pilot reached out a thin arm and put in a gentle thrust aft. Beyond their shadow and the glare, the massive side of a neighboring kifish ship hove up in the double viewport and spun off as the lighter accelerated and maneuvered at once, leaving the rotational plane and letting station spin bring The Pride to its approach-point. Arrogant, Pyanfar thought, irritated with the cavalier exit maneuver. There's a flaw for you. Grandstanding for the passengers. Sikkukkut would have this pilot's hide for that. Then, remembering the access ramp to Harukk and its awful ornaments. Literally. O gods, gods, Jik— Kif talked to kif as the viewplate dimmed to dark. They went inertial now, freefall. From here on out the tricky business was up to the onboard computers and Kefk's guidance—nastiest of all maneuvers, getting up to the emergency access of a ship at dock, on computerized intercept among the vanes and projections of ships locked to a rotating body. They did not propose to use the cable-grapple and winch in, but to engage The Pride's own docking boom and come in on The Pride's power. That took one access code to activate the hatch and boom—one precious key into The Pride's computers, handed to the kif. That code had to be changed immediately when they got aboard. Damage my ship, hotshot, and I'll have your ears. Easier to worry about a botched dock or a code switch than worry about other things. Like no contact with The Pride. "Your ship does not respond," the kifish officer had said when she had asked the docking request transmitted. And that meant Chur was not answering. Chur could not answer. Geran knew it and sat back there with the rest, silent and uncommunicative and with no expression at all when Pyanfar chanced to look her way. Chanur estate. The courtyard gate where Geran and Chur walked in one day, young and catching eyes wherever they went with their delicate Anify beauty—Chur all pleasantness and Geran sullen-silent even while Chur was asking favors of the Chanur lord and a place in Chanur's household. "Watch them both," the old lord had said, na Dothon, her father. "Watch them both." Chur of the ready smile, and Geran of the ready knife. It was the knife in Geran's mind now. Bloodfeud. Pyanfar knew. She gnawed her mustaches with dread of what might already exist on The Pride, and fretted at the delay of using the lighter; and loathed the procedures and the kif with their dark hand into The Pride's codes, their presence at her vulnerable downside access. Allies. Allies—while they did gods-knew-what to Jik. Traitor, was a word she thought, among other words for Ana Ismehanan-min. Vigilance had to be going for jump by now and Mahijiru sped after—Goldtooth knowing, by the gods, knowing he was leaving Jik in a desperate bind—but not knowing he had left Jik a prisoner. She refused to believe Goldtooth had known his gods-be fool of a partner would have not gone immediately back aboard Aja Jin with his crew, that the loyal fool would have headed down that dock-side personally, hunting a hani friend, trying to get them clear of that threatened dock and clear of kifish retaliation. And gotten himself caught by the kif. Alone. Soje Kesurinan commanded Aja Jin now—an able woman: all Jik's people were first-rate, and his second in command was no fool. Would not become one, she hoped. Gods, she hoped. Treachery on all sides. Only the kif had betrayed no one. Only the kif had stood by their word. Like Skkukuk, back there, a forgettable lump of shadow at the lighter's extreme rear. Skkukuk, who had never yet played them false. Loyalty? Your sfik still attracts his service, Sikkukkut had said of Skkukuk. And wondered in the next breath whether it was the alternative which compelled Skkukuk's devotion to his new captain. Chur. Jik. The cold of the air penetrated Pyanfar's skin and she sat numb while the g force of rollover hit and a vast white mass hove up in the viewport. Braking started in earnest as white and black alternated—as station rotation carried a kifish ship past their bow. Slower and slower. Lower and lower toward the place The Pride would occupy as the rotation carried it round. Doing it on the first pass, thank the gods. No waiting round. The access code would have gone out. The Pride would have her docking boom extended, waiting for them to make contact, continually tracking them, aligning the cone precisely with their approach. The rim of the cone came up, gargantuan on their relative scales. The co-pilot reached and hydraulics whined, extending the lighter's own docking-stops, a ring of partials about the bow to prevent the cone swallowing them entire. They shoved forward into the green-lit interior. Contact and gentle hydraulic rebound as the lighter's ring absorbed the shock and locked hard. Not a grind or grate. Perfect dock. Arrogant and good, Pyanfar acknowledged. But if he isn't, a kif's not a Harukk pilot, is he? A dozen worries gnawed at her, tumbling in suddenly as she ran out of concerns to distract her. Another whine from the lighter's systems, a shuddering as The Pride's years-unused boom dragged them down against the hullport, lock beeping at lock until the boom knew how much extension to leave on it. They had stable g now, linked via The Pride's boom to station's rotation. She unbuckled and felt her way over Khym's knee and Haral's till both of them unbuckled and made room for her next Dur Tahar. "Dur," she said, "you're welcome aboard. Want to tell you that again. We've still got a little time here, I hope to the gods." "You've got your own troubles." "We got medical equipment. Moon Rising—" "We're pretty well set up to handle it. Got some nice stuff. Piracy—pays, Pyanfar. We'll see to Haury. And the rest of us." She nodded, started to get up and make her way back forward as the deck rocked to final contact. The accessway whined, starting into place overhead. Dur Tahar caught her arm. "What you did—going after my crew; staying with them—they told me how you and Haral carried Haury down that dock—" "Yeah, well—" "Hey." The hand bit hard. "Chanur. You want my word? You want anything we have? You've got it." "You follow my lead in this?" "Hearth and blood, Chanur." She nodded slowly. There were things not to say aboard, where every word they whispered might be monitored up front; or outright recorded. Even dialect was unsafe: there might be kif translators. And there was a plenitude of things not to hint at—like plans for Meetpoint; and what they were going to do if they found hani lined up on the other side. Like what Moon Rising might do to her credit with the hakkikt if it ran. "I vouched for you," Pyanfar said, "way out on the cliff's edge." "We're with you, I said." She looked long into Tahar's shadowy face, as the final contact boomed home, as the hatch opened and her crew unbuckled. She calculated again that they might be recorded: she gestured with her eyes toward the overhead, saw the little lowering of Dur Tahar's lids that acknowledged she was also thinking of it. "There's one ship in particular I want," Pyanfar said. "Meaning Vigilance," said Tahar. "Meaning Vigilance." "No argument from me." "Huh." An orange glare flooded in from overhead as the lighter hatch whined open. She turned and reached for the ladder without a courtesy to the kifish crew, as Haral scrambled up it ahead of her, where the pale circle of The Pride's hatch was mated up to the dark access-clamps. Haral whipped a wad of kifish cloth from her pocket, grasped the space-cold lever and yanked. The hatch retracted in a puff of unmatched airpressure, a breath of clean cold wind. Haral looked down from the top of the ladder, in a bath of white light; Pyanfar waved her on, protocols be hanged; and Haral clambered up and through. Pyanfar scrambled after, feeling the ladder shake as someone else hit it in haste. She came up in the brilliant white light of The Pride's emergency airlock, turned round with Haral to pull Tirun through, and Geran next, and Tully, and Hilfy, and Khym with his arm bleeding again after the quick plasm-spray the kif had given it. She forgot, she outright forgot and had straightened to see to Khym when she heard something else hit the ladder and saw a shadow scramble up to them. She bent and offered her hand: Haral was not about to. Skkukuk's dark, bony fingers hooked to hers and he sprang up into the hatch with kifish agility, head up and wide-eyed. So the captain helped him with her own hand. Skkukuk's eyes glittered and his nostrils flared in excitement, and she felt a frustrated disgust. The hatch whined-down and thumped into seal under Haral's pushbutton command. The inner hatch shot open on the E-corridor. "Geran," Pyanfar said on the instant, turning. "Get!" "Aye!" And the smallish woman headed out of the lock at a dead run ahead of them. "Seal us!" Pyanfar yelled at the crew in general, leaving security to them, and lit out on Geran's heels, headed for topside, for—gods help them, whatever there was to find up there on the bridge. She heard the hatch seal. Lights came on in the corridor ahead as the monitor picked up the sound of Geran's running footsteps and stayed on to the sound of hers. The E-lift was in place, automatically downsided by the hatch-open command. The lift door opened instantly to Geran's push of the call button, and Pyanfar skidded in after and emergencied the door shut as Geran punched the code to send them on their way, up and then sideways as the car shot down the inner tracks for the main lift shaft. Geran was panting. Her ears were laid flat, her eyes showing white at the corners. She was close to panic and she would not look Pyanfar's direction, staring only at the sequencing marker-lights as the lift ran its course up, up-ship and up again to the main lift-shaft and the corridor to the bridge. There was no time for comfort now. And no use in it. They hit the main-corridor running—a small, dark thing squealed and eeled away down a side passage, and another scuttled ahead of them in panic—gods, what is it?—Pyanfar let it go, her mind on one thing and only that; and one quick glance into the open door as they passed Chur's borrowed room—showed where Chur was not. The bed was empty, sheets flung back, tubes left hanging, the lifesupport machinery flashing with malfunction lights. Pyanfar spun on one foot and ran all-out after Geran, on and pell-mell onto the bridge, where a thin, red-brown figure lay slumped in Hilfy's chair, head-down on the counter. A pistol lay by Chur's shoulder. Her arm hung limp over the chair arm. Geran brought up, hand against the chair, and lifted Chur's head—used both hands to prop her back against the seat. Chur's jaw hung slack. Pyanfar reached to offer what she could of help, her own hands shaking. Chur's ears twitched, the jaw shut, the eyes opened half, and she made a wild lunge for the counter and the gun. Pyanfar caught her. " 'S all right, it's all right," Pyanfar said, bracing her up and putting her face where the wild fix of Chur's eyes could register who it was. "It's us." "Gods," Geran said, and sank down to her knees on the spot, against the chair. Her ears were back. She was shaking visibly as she clung to the chair arm. "Gods rot it, Chur—What're you doing here?" Chur's ears twitched and slanted her sister's way as she turned her head. "Everybody get out?" she asked, the faintest ghost of a voice. The lift was cycling. "They're on their way up," Pyanfar said. "Even got Skkukuk back, worse luck." "He with you?" Chur asked thickly. "Gods, I thought he was loose on the ship. Been seeing things—little black things—couldn't find anybody aboard—gods." Chur. lay back against the seat-back and blinked, licked her mouth. "Vigilance—went, captain. I tried to get the guns to bear, tried to stop 'er. Missed my fix. Armament's still live—" She made a loose gesture toward Haral's seat. "Got back here—I don't remember—gods-be little black things in the corridors—" Pyanfar got up and walked over to her own post. The armament ready-light was flashing red on the boards. She shut it down and capped it and looked up as the lift door opened down the hall and their ill-assorted crew came running, kif and all. "She's all right!" she yelled out to them from the bridge, violating her own cardinal rule; and went back to Chur, only then realizing Chur had not a stitch on. "Migods," she muttered, with not a blanket to be had and two men—no, three—arriving on the bridge; and then decided no one cared. They were all crew. Even the kif Skkukuk, brought along willy-nilly. Tully came rushing over among the rest, and Chur grinned and reached up and patted his anxious face right in front of Khym and everyone. "Let's get you back to bed," Pyanfar said. "Gods-be med—machine's blowing its fuses in there." "Uhhnn." Chur put a hand on the chair arm to lever herself up, and fell back. "Goldtooth," she said suddenly, hazily. "Goldtooth." "What about Goldtooth?" "Took out after Ehrran—blasted out this message—" "You get it?" Chur waved her hand at the com board. "In there somewhere. In the decoding—function—" Pyanfar started to bring it through on the spot; and stopped with her hand on the board, remembering Skkukuk standing there. She turned and waved a hand at the crew. "Tirun, take station. I want a systems checkout. Fast. Geran, Hilfy, get Chur to bed. Haral, Khym, Tully, take Skkukuk to his room, then go wash up, patch up, and get back here double-quick. We got ops to run." Haral's ears slanted. "You're worse hurt than I am." The metal particles stung at every move; most of her exposed fur was matted with blood from pinprick punctures. Her battered skull throbbed with so many impacts she had gotten used to the pain. It was likely true she was the worse case. But: "Get," she said, because there was that message from Goldtooth in the decoder; and Haral read her by that silent way they had of thinking down the same line. Protest filed, Haral turned and made to gather up Skkukuk as she went. "I am a valued ally," Skkukuk said, drawing himself up in offense. "Captain, I am not to have my door locked, I am not—" Shut up," Hilfy said, facing him by Chur's side. "Move it." "This one means harm," Skkukuk said. "Kkkt. Kkkt. Captain—" He dodged as Khym reached for his arm. "They have taken my weapons! I warn you their intentions—" "Get!" Pyanfar said. Skkukuk flinched and ducked his head, and Haral motioned to him again. Shouldn't have yelled, Pyanfar thought. I shouldn't have yelled; the son did save my life, fair and plain. But he's kif. They led. him out and down the corridor, Haral and Tully and Khym together. And Hilfy and Geran turned Chur's chair about and with tenderest care bent down and lifted Chur out of it. "I can walk," Chur said. "I c'n walk, I just got tired—" But they swept her off her feet between them and carried her anyway, off the bridge and down the corridor, Chur mumbling protests all the way, only then and loudly realizing she had forgotten her breeches. Pyanfar sank into the vacated chair and punched the recycle on the com-system. Nothing came up. Frustration welled up, changes in the systems, every time they looked, some new gewgaw in the works. "Gods-be, what's access on the decoder?" "That's CVA12," Tirun said from Haral's post. "To your one, I got it, I'm getting it." It ran. "Gods rot, it's in mahensi!" She cycled it again and sent it through the translator. "Situation deteriorating," came the translator's droning voice. "Advise you human destination Meetpoint. Same mine. I got talk to one Stle stles stlen. Make maybe deal. Ehrran go; I go, same. Keep company. You clear dock number one fast, both. Got little fracas start." "Gods blast him!" "—Best chance I can give." "Blast him to his own hell! You know what you did, you smug bastard, you know where you left your partner?" The message ended. Pyanfar cut it off with a shaking hand. Sat there with both fists clenched, until the black edges cleared from her vision. Then she carefully punched in another call. "Aja Jin, this is Pyanfar Chanur, come in." Not on coder program. The kif down the row, the kif in station command—were undoubtedly monitoring even the so-called shielded-line. Everything. It was not politic to be too closely associated with Aja Jin just now. Or to talk in secret. "Captain, this Soje Kesurinan, Aja Jin. You back? You got news?" "Bad news, Kesurinan. Your captain's been detained. Him. Those with him. In the hakkikt's custody. I think your personnel are going to be released. No word like that on your captain. The hakkikt—" Keep it neutral, keep it ambiguous, tip Kesurinan off to the situation as much as she could read between the lines. "—the hakkikt sort of wants to assure Aja Jin's good behavior. After Mahijiru lit out. And to discuss the matter. You got any news on that?" "They jump," Kesurinan said after a moment. "Confirm. You got word captain's status?" "Just that the hakkikt, honor to him, wanted to talk to him. Alone. I left him in good health." Honor to him. We're being spied on, Kesurinan, remember that, we're in real trouble. Don't press me with questions. A long pause on the other side. "You got suggestion, captain?" "I suggest if you've got a good explanation what Mahijiru's up to with Ehrran, it sure might help." "I get," Kesurinan said. The strain came through the accent and the corn-garble. "I do number one quick." "If you learn anything let us know double-quick. I think your captain's situation is extremely delicate. I don't think he knows what the hakkikt, praise to him, wants from him. If you can come up with that it might help. Understood? We'll use what good influence we have." A second long pause. "Yes, understand. Thank you, Chanur captain. Thank you call us." "I'm sorry," she said, heartfelt, and broke the transmission. Propped her throbbing head on her hands and winced helplessly at touching one of several lumps on her skull. It bled. She felt the dampness and looked at the stain on the fur between her pads. She began to shiver. "I'm going to wash up," she told Tirun. "Can you carry on a while?" "Aye," Tirun said without turning around. On the boards rapid checks were going, searches after surreptitious exterior damage which, if not the kif, Ehrran might have done to them. Or Mahijiru. She could not believe in Mahijiru's desertion. Could not believe Goldtooth had turned on them. But it was politics. Like han politics, like the scramble for power that put herself and Ehrran at odds. In this case it was two partners who violently disagreed on how to deal with the kif—Jik who wanted compromise, and Goldtooth who played some other game, involving knnn; a game in which the stakes were perhaps too high, too unthinkably high, to put friendship anywhere in the equation. The affairs of rulers, of Personages. Hani had never tolerated any divine right but the right of clans to decide their own affairs; or the rights of groups of clans to hold a territory: and hani never by the gods bent the knee to anyone but kin and house lord. Honor to him. Honor to a prince of pirates who tortured her friends and laughed inside when a hani had to mouth politeness to him. I'd pay him any pretty speech he likes for Jik's life; and I'll pay him something by the gods else, the first chance I get. Likely he knows it too. He wanted me before he wanted the mahendo'sat. Offered me alliance back at Meetpoint. He couldn't trust the mahendo'sat. He knew that. He knew how a hani could be snared: he appreciates what Chanur could be and do—the way the han appreciates it, oh, yes, the han wants our hides on the wall. The han saw it before the kif did . . . what we were capable of after we took out Akkukkak, after we contacted humans. They saw it coming . . . if we were ambitious. And they thought we were. And they pushed us to it. She walked off the bridge, paused for a moment at the door of Chur's room, where Hilfy and Geran had settled Chur in again. "Gods-cursed needles," Chur said to her. "Sure. You tear loose of that again I'll have a word with you." "Goldtooth's message." "Ambiguous as ever." She saw the glance Hilfy and Haral gave her. "I don't know what he's up to. "They would not have told Chur about Jik and his companions, not spilled any more bad news on her than they could avoid. "Stay put, huh?" "Where's he going?" "He thinks he's going to Meetpoint. So's everyone else we know. Big party going to happen." "We?" "Oh, yes. You can lay bets on that, cousin. We'll be there." Chur blinked, turned her head to the side, where Geran was taping tubes at her elbow. "Captain's not telling all of it, is she?" Geran pursed her mouth. Said nothing. "Conspiracy," Chur muttered. And shut her eyes, exhausted. "She did a good job," Pyanfar said, reckoning Chur could hear that. "Yes," Geran said. Pyanfar lingered there a moment, studied the three of them. Chur; Geran; Hilfy. None of them the same as they had been, excepting Chur, excepting maybe Chur. Geran's movements were quiet, economical, delicate; her manner was wry cheerfulness, and it was a mask. Chur sensed it, surely, knew the killing rage buried under it, Geran of the knife, Geran the silent one. Geran who smiled with the mouth nowadays and not with the eyes. And Hilfy. Hilfy had gone to whipcord and hair-triggered temper. No more young Hilfy; no more young at all. Hilfy had gone fine-honed and when she was quiet there was always a shadowplay behind the eyes, where things moved Hilfy Chanur did not talk about. There was sodium-fire and dark; and no bath took away the ammonia-stink and the blood. But Hilfy had sat there in that all listening to her tread the narrow line with this kif, the same as Geran had sat there consumed with worry about her sister and never betrayed it; and Tirun had done her job down to the line same as Haral, where they were needed. And sitting there side by side in that dark council hall—Tully, answering the kif calmly; and Khym, whose self-control had never broken, two males who had held their anger quiet inside and waited for orders from their captain. Crew. Same as the rest of them. The best. The Pride. Something the kif would never own. "Huh," Pyanfar said, summation, and walked away down the corridor. APPENDIX Species of the Compact The Compact The Compact is a loose affiliation of all trading species of a small region of stars who have agreed by treaty to observe certain borders, trade restrictions, tariffs, and navigational procedures. It is an association, not a government, has no officials and maintains no offices, except insofar as all officials of the various governments are de facto officers of the Compact. The hani Native to Anuurn, hani may be among the smaller species of the Compact, but the size range, particularly among males, is so extreme that individual hani may overreach and outbulk the average of other, taller species. Their fur is short over most of their bodies except for manes and beards. It ranges in color from red gold to dull red brown with blackish edges, and in texture from crimped waves to curls to coarse straightness. Hani were a feudal culture divided into provinces and districts a few centuries previous to the events of The Pride of Chanur. They had well-developed trade and commerce when they were contacted by the spacefaring mahendo'sat (qv) and flung from their middle ages, with its flat-earth concept and territoriality, into interstellar trade. The way of life previous to that age had been this: that individual males carved out a territory by challenge and maintained it with the aid of their sisters, currently resident wives, and female relatives of all sorts, so long as the male in question remained strong enough to fend off other challengers. Actual running of the territory rested with a lord's sisters and other female relatives, at least a few of whom, if he was fortunate, would prove skillful traders, and whose marriages with outclan males would form profitable links with the females of other clans. Such males as lived to become clan lords were sheltered and pampered, kept in fighting trim at the urging of their female relatives, and generally took no part whatsoever in interclan dealings or in mercantile decisions, which were considered too exacting and stressful for males to cope with. The male image in most households was that of a cheerful, unworldly fellow mostly involved in games and hunts, and existing primarily for the siring of children and, in time of challenge, idolized for those natural gifts of irrational temper and berserker rage which would greet the sight of another male. The females stood between him and all other vicissitudes of life. Much of hani legendry and literature, of which they are fond, involves the tragic brevity of males; or the cleverness of females; or the treks and voyages of ambitious females out to carve out territory for some unlanded brother to defend. Under the management of certain great females, vast estates grew up. Certain estates contained crucial trade routes, shrines, mountain passes, dams—things which were generally the focus of ambition. Certain clans formed amphictionies, associations of mutual interest to assure the access of all members to areas of regional importance, which was usually done by declaring the area in question protected. Out of such protected zones grew the concept of the Immune Clan; that is, a clan whose hold over a particular resource must not change, because of the need of the surrounding clans to have that resource managed over the long term by a clan with experience and peculiar skill: such clans devoted themselves to public service and dressed distinctively. Immune males enjoyed great ceremonial prestige and were generally cloistered and pampered, while the sons of Immune houses were without hope of succession except by the death of the lord by natural causes. To attack an Immune male was a capital offense, bringing all the area clans to enforce the law. This form of regional government proved successful in bringing Enafy province, where the Llun Immune had its seat, to preeminence in the great plains of the Llunuurn River. Enafy province spread its influence through trade into other regions and other amphictionies sprang up, some less benevolent. The concept of amphictiony spread to other continents and races and, while other cultures survived, generally they were small, or so divided that they managed little growth: the Enafy and Enaury of Anuurn's largest continent spread their culture by trade and occasionally by intrigue and by marriage and alliance. Into this situation came the mahendo'sat, who chose for their landing site the Llunuurn basin, as the most extensive river system on the planet and the area with the most developed roads and habitations. Because of this selection, initial contact happened to be with the largest and oldest amphictiony, in the lordship of na Ijono Llun. Na Ijono's sister ker Gifhon Llun went out to meet the intruders, since they were neither hani nor (as Gifhon assumed incorrectly in several cases) male. By the time she understood what she was dealing with, dealing had begun, trade had been offered, and the world, without Gifhon's clearly realizing it for some years, had forever changed. Other amphictionies felt threatened by this relationship of Enafy province to the mahendo'sat and the elevation of the Llun clan from supervisors of the dams of the lower Llunuurn tributaries, to supervisors of a starfaring shuttle-port and station. The mahendo'sat played one against the other and snared all the hani leaders into trade. The hani amphictionies, however, whether or not it accorded with mahen intentions (and perhaps it was the intent of the mahendo'sat from the start) began to deal with each other in the concept of a much larger amphictiony, one with Anuurn itself as the Resource which had to be protected. So the han was created, the council of councils, the heart and center of hani government, microcosm of the world in which alliance, province, clan and Immunity still played their role—as, indeed, han has another meaning as a collective meaning All Hani. Theoretically every hani lord was ceremonially part of the body: some actually attended and addressed the assembly. The seats, one to each clan, belonged to the female heads of household, or, in practice, to any senior female in the vicinity of the several meeting halls, one of which existed and exists in every province. The han is thus composite, and only infrequently holds a true general meeting, the location of which is subject to intense negotiation. Hani relations with other starfaring folk were not generally positive. The stsho (qv) were not in accord with the mahendo'sat intervention on Anuurn: their motives might be judged to be several—unwillingness to see the mahen sphere of influence increase; the fact that they and the hani shared a territorial border; their distrust of all virtually exclusive carnivores based on their experience with the kif (qv); their fears of instability in the Compact; or other reasons which like minds might comprehend. The kif understood the arrival of the hani on the scene as opportunity, in the exercise of which they were driven back by mahendo'sat and hani combined. The opinion of the compact's other species was never solicited nor received. Hani territory included originally Anuurn system. The name of their home star is Ahr. The planets of Ahr system are, in order: Gohin, a hot and barren world without atmosphere; Anuurn itself; Tyo, a cold, barren world partially terraformed for a hani colony; the gas giants Tyar and Tyri; and frozen Anfas. Gaohn station was built by mahendo'sat in orbit about Anuurn and turned over to Llun, whose males were the only hani males ever to leave the surface. Kilan station was built in orbit about Tyo, never particularly prosperous; and Harn station was built as a shipyard facility. The Chanur Family A very old clan of Enafy province, occasionally obscure but more often involved in the amphictiony of Enafy under a series of ambitious leaders, Chanur sprang into considerable prominence as one of the first clans to see the benefits of offworld trade. Kohan Chanur is current lord: his principle mates are Huran Faha, Akify Llun, Lilun Sifas. Actual manager of the estate is his aunt Jofan Chanur par Araun. His sisters are Pyanfar, Rhean and Anfy Chanur, whose mates are of clan Mahn, Anury, and Quna respectively, and who captain the ships The Pride of Chanur, Chanur's Fortune and Chanur's Light. His daughters are: Hilfy, by Huran; Nifas, by Akify, among others; and two sons (exiled). Araun is a tributary clan, rated as cousins to Chanur; other cousin clans are Tanan, Khuf, and Pyruun. Jisan Araun par Chanur was mother to Haral and Tirun through an obscure tributary clan lord from remote Llunuurny, long since defeated and replaced by a male Haral and Tirun declined to support, leaving him to his numerous if unambitious sisters. Nifany Pyruun, Jofan Chanur's blood cousin, is birth-mother to Chur and Geran and a son in exile. She is administrator of Chanur offices in the port authority. Kohan's most recent defense of Chanur was against Kara Mahn, son of Pyanfar Chanur and Khym Mahn. Mahn, a nonspacing clan in the Kahin Hills nearby, remains an uneasy neighbor with Kara in Khym's stead, and his full sister Tahy at the head of Mahn's financial interests. Hani language and religion There was not, of course, one language, but the Enafy dialect of the Llunuurn valley became standardized as the language of commerce and diplomacy. With considerable resistance it was adopted as the language of the han and is the only language heard offplanet. The language was the vehicle of the spread of Llunuurn culture planetwide and carries it into space. Terms of respect are: ker, title of a high clan woman; na, title of a clan lord; par maternal daughter of a clan. Nef is the title of an ex-lord, who is no longer entitled to be called by the name of his clan. Hani terms of disrespect involve uncleanness; age (eggsucker implies one too old to hunt moving game); disavowal by clan (bastard is an inaccurate translation, since legitimacy cannot be at issue in a matrilineal descent); the deities; the condition of the ears, which tell a great deal about one's efficiency in self-defense. More peculiar is the use of feathered, an impious reference to a hani religious debate; and son, as in gods give you sons; since male offspring do no work and are exiled at puberty to return and attempt to take over the estate in their prime, a house with many sons is in constant turmoil. The Mahendo'sat Among the tallest species of the Compact, tending to ranginess and length of limb, the mahendo'sat have fur ranging from sleek sheened black to curly brown, with all gradations in between. Their claws do not retract, and are more a tool of utility than a weapon. They are omnivores, native to Iji, from which they control a considerable territory. Their neighbors on the one side are the hani, on the other the kif, with whom they share some territory in dispute. The mahendo'sat have more than a hundred languages native to Iji. Their own lingua franca is chiso, which not all mahendo'sat speak; and very many mahendo'sat have never succeeded in learning even the simplified pidgin that they popularized during the hani contact. Ironically, this species which pursues both art and science for its own sake and which is continually engaged in research of all kinds, cannot translate either into or out of its own set of languages with any degree of accuracy, which some might suspect indicates more than apparent idiosyncrasies in psychology as well as physiology. The fact that the pidgin is mostly hani rests on several facts, most of them having to do with the mahendo'sat's inability to translate their own tongue. First, mahendo'sat and stsho were already in communication with great difficulty through a bastard tongue involving kif, who spoke stsho. Second, when hani came into the picture, hani proved able to learn kifish and stsho and with their long experience as traders, evolved a pidgin hani that blended with the current pidgin and virtually supplanted it. This proved something even mahendo'sat could handle, and which kif had less trouble with than they did with stsho. So the mahendo'sat took to it with relief. As for the inner workings of the mahen culture, even the species name exists in some uncertainty. Mahe is generally singular, sometimes plural; and mahendo'sat actually seems to stand for the species collective mentality, or the species as an entity, or for some concept which refuses translation as nation or species. The term han in its application as the collective of the hani species is clearly a reflection of mahen influence in the formative phase of hani world government. Mahendo'sat are often collectors, which they have in common with stsho; but mahendo'sat are most interested in natural objects and make elaborate gardens, an art which they taught to the hani, whose gardens nevertheless maintain a hani-like plainness and agricultural practicality. Mahendo'sat on the other hand are devoted to design and derive philosophical meaning from the growth patterns of their carefully tended trees. Mahendo'sat also keep pets, a trait they share with stsho and perhaps tc'a (qv) but mahendo'sat are likely to keep difficult ones and to lavish care on exotics. The history of the mahen species is one of pocket kingdoms, continual religious ferment, mysticism, leaders with self-claimed credentials rising to some purpose and vanishing in what may have been a tradition of such vanishments. They are greatly concerned with abstracts and courtesies, symbol and hidden meaning. Modern and ancient mahen authority rests on Person, involving dignity and charismatic appeal, and interlinking Personages in an elaborate chain of command in which one appoints the next, but in which a higher Personage may be brought down by the malfeasance or error of an appointee. Mahendo'sat set great store by this indefinable quality and esteem it where found, to such an extent that they likewise choose to honor or ignore members of other species with complete disregard of those species' own concepts of authority. Personages are of either of the species' two genders, usually of mature years. Personages come in many ranks and levels of authority, but all are attended by a Voice, a person usually of the opposite gender whose apparently self-appointed task it is to represent the Personage and to utter unpleasantness which the Personage is too serene to deal with. The mahen social unit is complex, revolving around personage: mating is at apparent random, but Person has a great deal to do with it. Young are traded about with apparent abandon, but this also has to do with the bonds of Person, and the desire to expose the young to good influence or superior instruction. The mahen government currently rests with a Personage at Iji whose serenity is untroubled; but in the fashion of mahendo'sat, this and the entire form of government are subject to change without notice. The Stsho The stsho, native to remote Llyene, are a pale, hairless species, trisexual hermaphrodites, one of each triad bearing young: but that same individual may exist within another triad as a non-bearer. Stsho refuse to explain. They are omnivores of great sensitivity and fragility. Their limbs break easily. Their very personalities fragment under stress, which seems to serve as a social absolution. It is very impolite to recognize a stsho who has changed persona, or as stsho call it . . . Phased. An individual seems to go through many Phases in life. They trade. They are aesthetes and enjoy subtle distinctions in taste and sight. They have forty-seven different words, for instance, for white. Like hani, they prefer bowl-structures for chairs and beds. Their elaborate architecture is apparently random and universally pastel in color. They are the only natives of Compact space who need drugs to survive jump. They permit no intrusion of oxygen-breathing species within their territory, but they are utterly incapable of enforcing this except through their relationship with the unpredictable methane-breathers who divide them from kif territory. They share one border with the hani; methane-breathers come and go within their space; and to their considerable distress they have discovered humans are at their backs, on the side of stsho space nearest Llyene, which is a mysterious and forbidden world. They were among the first spacefarers in the region, anomalous, because their primary policy seems to be to acquire the widest possible area about their homeworld from which strangers are excluded. Certainly they did not seem to go to the stars to make contact with outsiders. Or perhaps some experience lies in their past which has made them what they are. Stsho allow no real information about stsho to leak out of their space, which greatly vexes the curious mahendo'sat. Legendarily Llyene is a treasure world of fantastical wealth. It is certain that stsho trade is lucrative in all directions, and that they are the source of a great deal of technology that the mahendo'sat turn to various purposes. The Kif Kif are tallest of the species of the Compact, very lean and having virtually no body fat. They are mostly hairless, except for a close-growing strip down the midline of their elongate, long-snouted skulls—which is seldom visible, as kif go robed and hooded and seldom bare their heads.The skin is gray and soft, if very tough and much wrinkled, and hot to the touch of hani or mahendo'sat. They are agile and strong; their claws are retractable and very sharp. Their eyes are usually red-rimmed: they prefer very dim light. What their genders are is a matter of guesswork. They may have two, but outsiders often use it of a kif in complete uncertainty, and he by convention which the mahendo'sat began: kif use he and occasionally she of themselves, but whether this precisely reflects a mahen/hani style gender distinction or something more like the stsho is still uncertain. Kif give few clues to aid the guesswork. Kif got into space independently, through an arms race, and acquired starflight through contact with tc'a, whose wisdom in this other species question. Kif are totally carnivorous, incapable of swallowing anything very large. Two independent sets of jaws exist within the snout, one to bite, another to reduce the intake to pulp and fluids. They prefer live food, and actually have rather delicate appetites: they are repulsed by carrion and could not easily handle cooked meat. Color does not play a part in their decor, which is generally utilitarian and often black and gray. The light in their dwellings is quite dim. They have keen night vision, and indeed much of their homeworld dwelling is underground, though some mahen scientists have disputed on the basis of the kifish eye (smaller than the eyes of other nocturnals on other worlds) whether the species did not in fact originate as a diurnal hunter and change its lifestyle in the remote past. As kif do not share data with mahendo'sat, and stsho and hani have no interest in the question, it goes unanswered. Curiously kif do practice art, which seems confined to objects of ordinary use, weapons, cups, boxes and containers, which are embellished in tactile patterns. They place little value on mass-produced goods and great value on objects they believe to be unique, or on consumables such as rare and endangered species or uncommon liquors. They do appreciate intoxicants of various kinds but are the most moderate of known species in their consumption: individual kif who have become intoxicated have been killed outright by their companions. Kif are facile linguists, great mimics, and in particular speak fluent hani, as well as their own several languages. Their homestar is Akkt, their homeworld Akkht, which outsiders often confuse, and reputedly both mean home or homebase, since home as understood by kif has the connotation of a place to which one repairs to gather one's forces for the next season. When they discovered outsiders, the shock and subsequent period of organization enabled a few leaders to seize power on Akkht, and eventually let the space-faring kif seize power over Akkht entirely. Kif have historically had little organization, usually engaged with each other in disputes and continual snatching of property from weaker kif. They have the concept of sfik, or face, in which the stronger will hold to a thing and defy all comers. The more attractive and unique the prize, the greater the sfik. Their interest in art perhaps revolves around this; of particular sfik-value are consumables or perishables which may be destroyed or used at any moment and for calculated purpose to frustrate the enemy. Taking such a thing is difficult and of great value, and there are also legendary destructions of great and valued objects. Along with sfik there is also pukkukkta, which has no true translation except as a devastating blow to a rival. Usually the kif operate as individuals or as crews, in which one kif is supreme, and weaker kif, if not protected from this one, are at least protected from other kif. Sometimes a kif rises to a position of supremacy in which others fear to challenge him and in which he gathers great fear and support from those about him. Such a kif is a hakkikt, which kif say means prince. A hakkikt's existence usually means a period in which outsiders will have trouble with kif. There is a growing expectation among kif that a hakkikt will arise to unite all kifish worlds into a power the rest of the Compact cannot withstand. Tc'a Tc'a are serpentine beings, leathery gold, methane breathers, native to Oh'a'o'o'o. They have a multipartite brain that thinks in matrices and communicates in harmonics. The mouthparts are toolusing. They can bulk a dozen times the weight of a mahendo'sat and bear several young at once, without apparent attention to the process, which has happened in the middle of conversations. They do trade, and mine, and what they think remains tc'a business. They usually run the methane side of stations in the Compact, since so far as anyone knows they are the only methane breathers interested in doing so. They are associated with chi and knnn (qqv), and while a great deal is known about tc'a comings and goings and while they take no aggressive action against any species, virtually nothing is known about the tc'a mind or the history of the species, except that they were in contact with the chi before they met the stsho, and were extremely early spacefarers. Chi Chi are neon yellow sticklike beings who (which?) move with great rapidity and often seem to be in total panic. "Crazy as a chi" is a hani proverb widely understood. It is uncertain whether chi are associates of the tc'a or pets. Chi can run ships but are erratic navigators and it is virtually certain they did not invent their own technology. Tc'a are not found without chi, though occasionally chi may nest in communities into which tc'a do not appear to go. Natives of Chchchoh, chi regularly accompany tc'a into the most hazardous mining areas. No oxygen-breather has ever reported visiting Chchchoh. Tc'a will not permit it, for what reason is unclear. It is known that chi reproduce by growing a second brain at some point midway along their bodies. Additional leg segments follow; then fission, and the newborn chi races off independently. Gender with a chi is therefore of questionable application. Activities have been observed which may be mating, but this is uncertain. Knnn No one knows the name of the knnn homeworld. No one knows if their ships have names-except perhaps the tc'a or the chi, who do not say. No oxygen-breather is even sure which star they come from, except that it is on the underbelly of the Compact, and suspicion centers around one star known to be a hub of knnn activity. Knnn look like black nests of hair-snarl with spider legs. Packrats of the galaxy, they breathe methane and sing long involved songs over ships' radio. They are (perhaps) miners and (one supposes) traders, but their idea of trade (as best the tc'a could communicate with them) is to dash onto station or ship, and exchange what they've brought for what they want or what they take a fancy to. In the bad old days, knnn simply gutted ships. They go in swarms or solitary, and their ships are the only ships known to change vector in jumpspace. They have a jump boost and turn maneuver that is impossible for oxygen-breathers. They are not popular. One can only talk to them through the tc'a, who can get a kind of general translation-if you can understand the tc'a's seven-part matrix-sentences. Knnn ships observe no lane regulations or instructions, and no one is about to challenge them on the point. It is suspected in some quarters that the knnn may have been the origin of much of the technology of the Compact. No one except the stsho knows whether the stsho actually devised their own technology, and perhaps stsho in general do not know: certainly they do not comment on it. Knnn were unknown at Anuurn until Pyanfar Chanur brought them there. Her people are not grateful.