When at last she returned to Grandam's, leaving Thariinye to stroll away with a pretty techno-artisan on each arm, it was dark already.

 

Grandam was not inside and Maati was already asleep. It took Acorna a long time to settle into sleep, and during that time Grandam returned and touched horns with her, acknowledging Acorna's concern. "I was called out to another general council meeting, pet," she said wearily. "We're still receiving signals from the ships dispatched this morning, but so far none have identified the reason why we are not receiving the more distant signals."

 

The following morning Acorna tried to visit the homes of the people who had left their gifts at Grandam's door the previous day.

 

She carefully gathered the nicest grasses she could find as a peace offering, then set out for the home of the young male she had grinned at. At the flap of his pavilion, she inquired if she might come to visit.

 

After a few moments the flap was opened by an older female, who announced that her son had gone off visiting his former schoolmate. She projected a picture of a lovely black haired, black skinned Linyaari with a white blaze from her horn down the center other mane/hair to the middle other back. Also in the thought was that the girl's full coloring, her long face, very down-turned, slightly flared nose, and curveless arms and legs were far more beautiful than Acorna's pallid coloring and somewhat shorter jaw line and nose.

 

"I'm happy to hear that, ma'am," Acorna replied. "I simply wanted to apologize for my social error at the reception. Where I was raised, baring one's teeth is often a sign of friendliness and welcome rather than hostility, as it is here."

 

"You must have been raised by rather strange people," the woman said with a lift of her brow.

 

"Very good people, actually but, well, I'm glad your son is enjoying time with his friend and not-"

 

"Not in space?" she asked dryly. "He serves a vital plantside function as a communications officer. Our people do not do space given a choice. It is good of you to apologize, but quite unnecessary. We were all very fond of your parents, of course, and Neeva is a fine lady, so when we heard you were returning, we were anxious that our son meet a girl from such distinguished stock. We hoped he would find in you some of those qualities that make the rest of your family so admirable. But with your, shall we say, unusual, background, I fear you just aren't really suitable for our son. So you needn't bother to call again. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have much to do. Good day." Acorna was glad tent flaps could not be slammed.

 

Other than that, no one was actually rude to her but, as the pavilions all had both a front and back flap, and the people Acorna was going to visit could undoubtedly hear her coming long before she arrived, it simply appeared that everyone she wanted to see was extremely busy that day, each going about his or her typical Linyaari day, whatever that was like. From what Acorna could tell, it seemed to consist of grazing. Far away. She sighed and nibbled on the handful of grasses she had. Making friends was going to take a while.

 

Somehow, she decided, as irrational as it was, because her arrival coincided with the crisis, she was being held responsible for it.

 

Grandam Naadiina was busy with the council and often came home late. She briefed Acorna on what developments there were, but actually, there weren't that many. The main thing that took time was the Linyaari desire to reach consensus in decisions, which required a great many discussions and much trying out (at least hypothetically) of different tacks until one they all agreed on worked. Of course/in this case, without more input from the persons off planet, not much could be decided. Grandam Naadiina was a bit disgusted. "It's a wonder we ever got off planet before the Khieevi arrived," she said. "I'll bet it took them less time to invade our world and turn it to rubble than it did for the council to decide what we would call this world."

 

Maati was exhausted when she came home at night, after running errands and carrying messages all day long.

 

Acorna spent much of her time visiting with the technoartisans, who didn't seem to mind if she watched them work or asked questions. Daytimes not spent with them were difficult for Acorna, who nevertheless tried very hard to learn all she could of the rest other people.

 

Linyaari always seemed to be walking in pairs or larger social groups, and when she approached, they were always heavily engaged in intense conversations about matters she had too little knowledge of to even ask an intelligent question. On the rare, desperate occasions when she tried to interrupt, people would politely but pointedly excuse themselves and turn their backs to continue their conversations. Even the business establishments seemed to be closing just as she approached.

 

"Is there no school I could attend, no class to take, no tutor on Linyaari culture to teach me what I need to know? " Acorna asked Grandam Naadiina.

 

The old lady looked rueful. "We learn our own culture from our parents, from growing up in it. There has never before been an outsider-so there has never been any need to teach how to be Linyaari to one of our own. And truthfully, you seem fine to me. Except for that smile at the reception, I cannot tell you any particular thing you are doing wrong. If you had grown up among us, no one would criticize or complain of any of your words or actions. But you did not grow up here, you see, so even though you are Linyaari the others still see you, if not as a barbarian, at least as someone not Linyaari. And neither I nor the Ancestors can tell them differently. Ours are a very stubborn people about some things."

 

"I see," Acorna said. She did, too, and she didn't like it. As different as she had been among the people who raised her, still, many had been willing to give her a chance, to at least find out who she was. They had not just fed and clothed and educated her, they had loved her, even when they must have found her appearance and her behavior extremely strange. They had simply worked around her differences and helped her adapt to their world. Here, where she looked so much the same, she felt different as she had never before felt in her life. Remembering Gill, Calum, Rafik, kind Mr. Li, the clever Kendoros, and wily Uncle Hafiz, she could have wept with longing for them.

 

She shook her head slowly. She would never have imagined that her own people, the people Neeva and the others had said could read feelings and heal wounds, as she could, would be so hard for her to reach. "It is almost as if they are afraid of me," she told Grandam.

 

"Perhaps they are," Grandam Naadiina said. "Your arrival has shown me that our people have become very skittish since our exodus from Vhiliinyar. I don't really know what to tell you, dear, except to be patient with them."

 

Acorna nodded and did her best.

 

When she returned for the fifth time to try to pay the dressmakers, they were closed, as they had been every time she approached. She noticed that the pavilion beside theirs was quite busy, however. Two lines of Linyaari went in and out.

 

One line consisted of pale-skinned, silver-maned Linyaari such as herself. They were going in.

 

The other line was comprised of the more colorful, and presumably younger Linyaari, spotted, brown, black, red, gray, golden, so many different colors of hair and skin colors.

 

Acorna decided that since she had nothing better to do and these people did not appear to be engaged in private conversation, she would, very quietly and trying hard not to think any alien thoughts, join the line.

 

She told herself simply to be receptive, to learn what the line was about. What she heard were remarks such as, (Brilliant! I don't know why no one has thought of this before!) (It's the very latest. Everyone is doing it. Except those who you know-go oat there all the time.) (And to think, remember when we were children, and everyone wanted to look like that? All colorless and bleached out? This look is so much healthier!) (I think it's only because it is so much younger looking-perhaps because we've become conditioned to think of Linyaari of color as the young ones who did not endure the journey and who do not remember the home world.)

 

When she reached the pavilion, she began to notice that some of the multicolored Linyaari emerging were wearing the same clothing as the strictly white Linyaari who went in. So. Acorna couldn't help smiling. Gill might say they were now horned horse people of a different color. When her turn came, she was offered a smock by an attendant wearing a horn-hat. This was interesting. Acorna had thought the horn-hats were only for formal wear but perhaps those working with the public sometimes wore them to partially shield themselves from the multitude of thoughts, feelings, and attitudes coming at them from several directions at once.

 

"Please enter the minipavihon, remove your clothing, don the smock if you wish, and ring for your personal colorist," the attendant told her. Acorna was moving away as she heard the attendant repeat herself four different times. That would be a good job for a robot instead of a sentient being! Or a shelf full of smocks and a recording!

 

But Acorna went inside, took off the dress and the beautiful belt, put on the smock, and rang for her "personal colorist."

 

The colorist was of a reddish brown color, with her mane golden streaked with white. "What do you recall as being the skin of your birthright?" the colorist asked.

 

From the friendly way she spoke, the colorist no doubt had failed to recognize Acorna as the pariah of the planet. Acorna said, "I was born in space and so I have always been this color."

 

"A shipborn and you want to try color? "

 

"Yes. Is-is that forbidden or somehow against custom?" she asked, fearing she was making another social faux pas.

 

"Oh, no, my dear. Simply very daring. The star-clad and the space-going caste have always been, shall we say-vain-of their lack of coloring up until the great transference. Now, with most of us having been bleached out by the journey-" The colorist's golden eyes were rueful as she spread her arms and shrugged.

 

"You, too-you used to be the same color as me?" "Still am, darling, under the cosmetics and dye. Tomorrow I could be black if I liked, or roan. But today, this is the real me. Now then, what, do you suppose, is the real you?" "I hardly know. Are there-rules about color?" "Not really. Of course, your paints tend to breed paints and that sort of thing, but we Linyaari have been very open about that for generations. You can be anything you like at all. I myself am not exactly au naturel." She tossed her head so that the fringe above her golden horn flipped in a saucy way. "I call this look aural sorrel. None of us were ever born this way but so what? It is my art to improve upon nature. So, sweetie, how about you? What'll it be?"

 

Acorna was tired of trying to blend. "Stripes," she said. "Zebra stripes."

 

"Zebra?"

 

Acorna projected a mind picture of the beast she had viewed vids of while still a child aboard the mining ship. The colorist giggled and began working on her.

 

"You'll stand out for sure in these," she said. "I must say, it's rather an attractive look."

 

"I seem to stand out whether or not I wish to," Acorna said. She had made herself conspicuous, to some extent out of rebellion against being isolated from her fellows, but her unusual appearance had the opposite effect, at least on some of the younger Linyaari. They commented favorably on the stripes and asked about them, then invited her to a ring-toss tournament.

 

Watching the boys and girls catching circlets of flowers on their horns and tossing them back and forth, keeping them away from the opposite teams, made her feel unusually young and giddy again, a feeling that continued until a loud crack of thunder heralded sheets and spears of red and green lightning splitting the sky as an earthquake might split the ground, and torrents of rain poured down on everyone, washing all of the colorful paint jobs down into the grass, beating the flowers into the mud and making footing so slippery that many people stumbled and fell running for shelter.

 

A great wind came up, so forceful that Acorna fully expected to see the pavilions tumbling along the ground like wheels, but of course, the structures only gave the appearance of being fabric and poles. They were actually quite sturdy. In fact, the storm gave her an opportunity to observe another feature of the buildings. As the ground flooded, the floors of the pavilions rose, extruding ramps leading up from the ground to the raised floor. The central poles pulled in, too, so as not to attract the lightning. In fact, other poles suddenly appeared on the outskirts of the compound, specifically raised to attract the lightning.

 

"Power collectors," a very wet Grandam Naadiina told her.

 

She came in shortly after Acorna and laughed to see the running black dye on her skin and hair. Grandam herself was thoroughly drenched but after a brisk toweling for all three of them-Maati had been closest to the pavilion when the storm broke and hot herbal teas all around, Acorna was back to her original color of hair and skin and all of them were a great deal drier.

 

It was a very noisy night, but the miraculous pores of the pavilion fabric kept out the damp and most of the wind, leaving only a heady feeling due to the ions charging the air.

 

"Tell us a story, Grandam," Maati begged. "Tell the one about how the Ancestors left their old home to come to Vhiliinyar."

 

"Very well," Grandam said. "Long ago, very long ago, before the first Linyaari was born, the Ancestors lived among other species on a distant planet. As they do even now, and as they have passed down to the Linyaari as their legacy to us, the Ancestors possessed horns with the power to heal and to purify air and water.

 

"They were, as we are, peaceful creatures, who desired nothing more than harmony among themselves and with all the other animals. They were shy and fled at the first sign of trouble, and would stand and fight only to defend themselves or one another, or occasionally some weaker animal preyed upon by a stronger one. They lived high on the mountains and deep within the forests and their powers were valued by all so that they had no natural enemies.

 

"And then one day to the forests and the mountains came a new species that walked on hind legs, as we do, and carried tools and weapons with its forelegs. These creatures were not overly bright, they were not kind, and they were very, very arrogant. They cut down forests and diverted streams and rivers. They dug up plants and laid bare the ground to plant crops of their own choice. Some of these crops the other creatures, including our Ancestors, found quite tasty, but the newcomers were selfish and did not wish to share and slew any animal they could find who wished to sup upon their crops.

 

"The Ancestors thought that some misunderstanding was occurring. They believed all creatures to be reasonable, as they were, and except for food and mating needs, to be peaceful, as they were. But it was quite evident these new creatures-men, as they were called - were not understanding their place in the scheme of things.

 

"The Ancestors decided to attempt to communicate with them but they feared the males, and so they would attempt to find one of the younger females when she was alone and converse with her, show her how the air and water could be pure, show her how wounds could be healed. This was a grievous mistake, for the most part.

 

"The young females told the males, who felt that the horn's power was inconveniently attached to large, swift, shy creatures who knew where and when they wished to deploy the power. The men began systematically to hunt our Ancestors until many many of them were dead or captured.

 

"Of the captured Ancestors, some were slain but some also escaped, after observing the ways of the men in their dwellings. They felt that some of the things the men could do were very great powers as well. "But overall, it was a tragic situation for our Ancestors, and they used the power they had always had to communicate with other species and each other to cry for help. As they were hunted and harried, the cry became louder and more desperate until at last it was heard.

 

"Off-world spacecraft arrived and offered refuge to the Ancestors, taking them aboard but at the same time, causing an atmospheric disturbance that produced a great flood that covered all of that planet. The Ancestors grieved to see many of their fellow creatures destroyed, but they found it hard to grieve for men.

 

"The beings who had found them were the Ancestral Hosts. They, too, communicated by thought, but unlike the Ancestors, they stood on their hind legs like men. They took the Ancestors to Vhiliinyar. Over the years, the Ancestral Hosts, because of the love between the two species, began to genetically blend with them. Eventually, a race arose made of the best of both the Ancestral Hosts and the Ancestors-the Linyaari. Gradually the space-faring race blended with our own, and then left, or perhaps just died away, for they were shorter-lived than the Ancestors.

 

"But the Linyaari remained, and many of our Ancestors remained, and we all remembered, to remind us of the dangers the Ancestors had once faced on that other world, and to teach us that while we must sometimes share our gifts with others, we must also beware and keep our home hidden from them, lest our enemies find us once more."

 

"We are the ki-lin" Acorna said excitedly. "Or rather, the Ancestors are! My guardian, Delszaki Li, told me of the Ancestors from mankind's viewpoint. He came from a very old people whose memory predated the great flood of which you speak. They revered the Ancestors almost as much as the Linyaari."

 

Grandam yawned. The herbal tea was taking effect. "I'm glad our story pleases you, Khornya. I haven't seen you look so animated since you arrived."

 

"I think I'm finally starting to adjust," Acorna admitted, sleepily.

 

But the next morning, as she was leaving for the technoartisan compound, Acorna was intercepted by a breathless Maati, whose eyes were round, wide, and wet. "Khornya, Khornya, I came right away to tell you. We're not getting the routine signals from the Balakiire anymore."

 

"Since when?" Acorna asked.

 

"Earlier this morning, about three kii ago." A kii was roughly fifty-seven minutes of Galactic Standard Time, Acorna had learned. "Everyone else is finding out now but I wanted to come to tell you myself," Maati said. "Khornya, I'm sorry." The young girl began to cry, which helped Acorna to control her own fears enough to put her arms around the child, hug her, and rock her.

 

"There, there, Maati. They've probably just been affected by that same problem that's blocked communications from the other missions-the one all the ships went to try to fix. Grandam says most likely it's some sort of equipment failure and as soon as one of the crews identifies it, it will be fixed and we'll be hearing from everyone again."

 

"Do you think?" Maati asked.

 

Acorna was glad that Lmyaari children weren't psychic, so that Maati couldn't tell how frightened for Neeva and the others she really was. "No doubt. If the Balakiire has lost contact, that means they're also closer to the source of the problem. The others won't be far behind on their way to their own destinations, so probably one of them will have an answer for us soon.

 

But the answer, as the days progressed, was that with one ship after another, contact was lost. Relatives and friends were informed of each successive failure to receive a ship's signal. In the interests of security, signals would not be sent from the planet to a ship which could no longer be heard from. Everyone knew that the Khieevi could be listening, and find narhiiVhiliinyar by tracing the signals. That was not a thing that could be risked. All over Kubiilkhan, all over narhii-Vhiliinyar, eyes turned heavenward as the planetbound searched skies which were silent except for the sound of thunder and the clatter of rain and hail.

 

It seemed as if the storms brought with them such an unescapable wash of anxiety, regret, fear, and grief that Acorna paced with restlessness.

 

"Grandam, I feel so useless. I need to be active, to be of service. You and Maati come home exhausted every night. Can I not relieve some of your burdens somehow? If not yours, then perhaps Maati's? Surely if a child can do her job, I could, too."

 

"Hmmm," Grandam sighed wearily, sinking onto her pallet, which was still dry thanks to the raised floor. The inside of the pavilion was dark now and confining rather than cozy with the flaps closed against the rain. "A very good suggestion, Khornya. Our people need more than ever to stay in touch with what's happening, with the crisis, with what the government is doing about it, and with each other. I, for one, would welcome your help."

 

While heading toward Nirii, the crew of the Balakiire distracted themselves from worrying about what might await them by imagining the parties they were missing.

 

(I just hope we'll make it back in time for Acorna's bonding ceremony,) Khaari joked.

 

(I think you're being a little premature,) Neeva responded. (I'm afraid if the new viizaar has her way, my niece will be put to work picking seeds from the grass and replanting them by hand or some such chore. Liriili is unbonded herself.)

 

(I get the feeling she prefers it that way,) Khaari said. (I think you are being too hard on her.)

 

(Not intentionally,) Neeva said. (But Liriili is a very complex person, I fear all of her thoughts and motivations are not known even to herself-possibly that is what makes her such a good administrator. She would convince herself that whatever she was doing or not doing was for Khornya's good or the good of the planet.)

 

(If you mean sending us to Nirii, at least we've learned we have lots of company. Other ships were dispatched not long after we left,) Melireenya put in.

 

(I wonder that they didn't leave more of the fleet on narhiiVhiliinyar,) Neeva said. (What if the Khieevi should attack while we're gone?)

 

They all shuddered and tried to suppress images of all the people planetside biting down on suicide capsules.

 

(That's not going to happen,) Neeva said firmly. (The Khieevi got a taste of their own medicine at Rushima and will not think we're such easy targets again.)

 

(At least not any time soon,) Melireenya said. (But after this current crisis is dealt with, our government needs to put a bit more thought into defensive strategies and weapons again.)

 

(And we must find another world to evacuate to. It's not enough to keep ships and personnel on hand at all times should evacuation be necessary. We need a place to go,) Khaari said.

 

(No,) Neeva countered. (Wishful thinking is no substitute for the kind of defense we saw at Rushima. We simply cannot just keep running from world to world and letting the Khieevi destroy everything we leave behind. When we return home, I believe we should approach the Council about getting our trade allies to join something like the Federation Khornya's people belong to. I believe the time has come to take a stand.)

 

As they approached Nirii, it was decided among them that Neeva, as the ambassador, would take the shuttle to the surface, landing in the Linyaari-occupied district of Nirii's principal continent's principal city. The rest of the crew would remain aboard the Balakiire in orbit around Nirii.

 

Because the crew of the Balakiire did not know what to expect, the ship had not made her usual contact with the com base in this sector of the planet. When someone of Neeva's stature paid a visit, it was customary to do so. But under these circumstances, the notice was waived as an unnecessary risk. Neeva stepped out of the shuttle and onto the empty docking bay. Normally between five and ten shuttles stood here at any given time. As she gazed around the cavernous space, Neeva knew that something very wrong had occurred here.

 

She had made her landing cloaked and under cover of darkness, a moonless night with a light snow falling from a dark pewter sky emptied of light. The rest of the city was full of lights, all white, all small, and seemingly strung along orderly grids. This time of night the streets and skies were empty. Though there was no curfew and little superstition on Nirii, the people were nonetheless extremely conservative and self-contained. They conducted their business during the day and their home life at night, period. Like the Linyaari, they were inclined to use thought-talk, but they did so only privately, among friends and family, after heavy mental shielding was released. There had been no crime here for a number of years, nor had there been any war, making the people of this planet ideal trading partners for the Linyaari, particularly since they were a highly scientific and technologically inclined people.

 

The Linyaari district was not required to follow Niriian customs but usually did, in Neeva's experience. But she saw no signs of life, no footprints of people or animals or any other species as she walked down the street between two of the four large dwellings that faced each other across a square. Centering the square was a park where athletic events, lectures, entertainments, and meetings were held. The building appeared, at least from the outside, to be totally deserted. She entered the door to the building on her left. It was unlocked, and irised open at her touch. This wasn't too surprising. The residents of Nirii did not lock their doors as a rule.

 

The building felt sterile, devoid of life or any evidence of it.

 

The doors to the cubicles had been removed, and gaped at her as she walked past them, peering into empty apartments containing no furnishings, mementos, or equipment. Each building had contained eight apartments, and all of these were empty, in each and every building. Neeva could catch not a whisper of thought, not a spark of raw emotion.

 

She returned to the outside, her skin crawling with the unnatural silence and emptiness of the places where some of the best and brightest of her people had lived while learning, teaching, trading.

 

As she stepped out onto the park, her feet disturbed the layer of snow on the ground. She noticed that the native grasses her people had planted here were untended, dead. Nor had there been anything remaining to eat in the indoor gardens that each apartment customarily boasted. There had, in fact, been no way to tell which room served which function, so completely empty had the former dwelling places been.

 

But beneath her feet the soil, snow-covered as it was, was beginning to tell her something at last. Anger and fear, confusion, interrupted sleep, interrupted mating, longing for loved ones who were not there, the cries of frightened children and some, not much, but enough to scare any resisters, actual pain.

 

She was so busy absorbing these impressions that she failed to hear the snow-muffled footsteps of the party approaching her until it was too late to run back to her shuttle.

 

Leading the party was the large, double-horned, heavily built form of her old friend and primary negotiating contact, Runae Thirgaare, along with some other Niriians unknown to her. And behind them, four uniformed people who looked very like those who had sheltered Khornya.

 

"Vue()haanye ferilli Neeva," the Runae said to her with less warmth than usual in her greeting. "I am afraid we can no longer welcome you and your kind among us."

 

"Why not?" Neeva asked. "Where are the others?"

 

One of the uniformed strangers stepped out from behind the Runae. "We will take you to them, VLfe<)haanye feriiu Neeva," a hornless woman almost as large as the Runae said. "We are Federation forces and have detained your people to assist us with our inquiries into certain criminal irregularities we are investigating at this time."

 

 (Runae, please, speak to me yourself. What is happening here? You know I have only just come from my own world. What crimes could my people have committed? You know us as well as your own!)

 

(Not quite as well, VU^haanye. Your people are inclined to some wildness and peculiar practices. They are unpredictable. Ours is a well-regulated world. We have no idea what trespasses you may have committed elsewhere. It's to be expected, of course, of those who are deprived of the stabilizing influence of a second horn. I'm sure there is nothing to worry about. These people are from the regulatory body for a large federation of allied worlds far beyond us. We are, at their behest, considering membership at this time. So you see that of course we must respect their request for extradition.)

 

"For what criminal irregularities are we being charged?"

 

Neeva demanded of the hornless beings.

 

"We'll explain it all along the way," the woman said. She looked very familiar to Neeva. Her uniform particularly looked familiar. Wasn't it very much the same one as was worn on Rushima by the troops that had assisted in the repulsion of the Khieevi attack?

 

Neeva pondered this as she was hustled past her own shuttle, which was being transported to the same place she was, a larger vessel with some official-looking markings on it. It wasn't until the uniformed woman began to push her into the hatch, pushing down her head so that her horn did not catch on its upper flange, that Neeva recalled that the troops who had assisted on Rushima were not allied with any Federation. They were a private army of mercenaries under the command of one General Ikwaskwan.

 

Grandam "was as good as her word. Acorna joined -ssfc ^ ^ .-Maati and several other couriers in carrying ^^f messages back and forth from the governmental compound to the citizens at large. Despite grave concerns about the situation in space, Acorna felt better than she had done since her arrival now that she was able to be useful and somewhat a part of things. Being a government messenger also gave her a much better idea of the communities in the area and the scope of settlement on narhii-Vhiliinyar than trying to make contact on her own had done.

 

Besides the central compound, mostly composed of government officials and workers and their families, many of which included one or more members who were now on active duty as emissaries in space, and the large techno-artisan compound, there were many other petals to the flower that formed the populated area of narhii-Vhiliinyar.

 

Naturally, Acorna had realized there had to be more people than she had met thus far. From the air she had seen what looked like a large flower garden spreading out over the continent upon which the Balaklire landed.

 

Now she realized that this flower garden was but a single bloom-the center was the government compound, and extending from it, connected by road and common grazing fields and plains, were the technoartisan compound, an educational compound (mostly for those who wished to study offplanet cultures-it was assumed that Linyaari would need no studies in how to be Linyaari, unfortunately for Acorna), an agricultural experimental farm where new food stuffs were developed and tried, and other functions.

 

One compound was mainly devoted to very senior elders who did nothing but contemplate higher philosophies and mathematics. The remainder of their compound was staffed by junior people who studied with the elders and supplied their practical needs. Grandam Naadiina said she had gone through that phase fifty ghannye ago and found it far more entertaining to be with the younger folk in the central compound. They were much more amusing, and laughing, she said, helped her stay youthful.

 

Narhii-Vhiliinyar had no mining and very little manufacturing, despite the bins of raw materials in the techno-artisan compound. Those were all imported.

 

Surrounding these compounds were the communities whose labor and expertise staffed the various enterprises, while beyond them, in semicircular clusters, were smaller units of the same sort, independently producing other products and supplying other services to their communities. Beyond the plains were low mountains and there, she was told, was where the Ancestors dwelled when not performing the ceremonial functions they had taken it upon themselves to offer.

 

Acorna could well understand why Maati was so tired at the end of every day. She could also understand why the young girl did not need to be in school. Walking and even running to the various homes, businesses, agencies, and other message stations within the central compounds was quite educational in and of itself.

 

Thariinye complained that Acorna had so little time to walk out with him and accept his "tutelage" and indeed, when she was not on duty, she was far too glad to be off her feet to wish to walk anywhere with anyone. So she was quite surprised when carrying a message to the agro-farm one day to sense great hostility from a young woman, with ruddy skin and black hair who was sorting seeds into packets for distribution throughout the planet.

 

"Have I done something to offend you?" Acorna finally asked, though she couldn't imagine what it might be, aside from the usual prejudice she had felt when she first arrived.

 

That had diminished somewhat now that she was frequently seen to be serving an important function among her people. She supposed it was also that she was harder to avoid and too busy to notice, most of the time, any lack of friendliness.

 

The woman's anger and dislike were evident not just in unvoiced thoughts, however, but in the stiff way she held herself, the angry way she wrestled the seeds into their packets and sealed the packets as if imprisoning the guilty seeds for life. It was evident in the flashing of her big green eyes as she darted glances at Acorna while she was delivering her verbal message from Liriili, and in the snappishness of her voice when she finally attempted to dismiss Acorna.

 

"Isn't it obvious? First you bring trouble to us so that my father is sent off-planet to solve it-"

 

"Wait, wait. What trouble? Who is your father?"

 

"Aagroni lirtye. He criticized you and you used your influence to have him sent away."

 

"My Influenced "Acorna said. "Feel free to read my thoughts. I have no influence here. If anything, I have the opposite of influence. And I have nothing to do with the problems that sent your father off-planet."

 

If the woman took her up on her offer, she did it very quickly, and she looked away for a moment, confused, and then back up. "And then-and then there's Thariinye. Why won't you release him?" the woman demanded.

 

"Release him?" Acorna asked, quite baffled.

 

"You don't care for him, you don't even like him, I can see that, so why are you taking him as a lifemate? He means nothing to you and he m-means everything to m-m-m-me!"

 

"You're telling the wrong person this!" Acorna said. "You should tell him if you feel that way! I have no claim on him whatsoever. He was the first Linyaari male I met and is an old shipmate with whom I've shared certain adventures, but it's his idea entirely that we should be lifemates, not mine!"

 

The girl looked puzzled, and wiped at the tears of anger and frustration that flowed down her cheeks. "I can tell you're speaking truly, but I thought..."

 

"What I think," Acorna said with sudden insight, "is that Thariinye is no more interested in me than you seem to think he is in you. I believe he likes all of the attention from all of the eligible females and doesn't wish to settle yet with one-by seeming to choose me, when he must know I don't feel that way about him-I suppose he feels free to take his time making another, more suitable choice. He's not unkind and I doubt it occurs to him that he is causing you pain."

 

"It's true he-he doesn't know how I feel. I knew he was promised to you and so I concealed my thoughts, thought pointedly of plowing furrows and planting when he was around and"-she blushed-"I suppose he took my metaphor literally." She sighed. "He is such a lusty fellow, it was very hard, I mean difficult, I mean ..."

 

Now Acorna was amused. "I definitely think Thariinye is the one you should talk to. Good luck."

 

Her amusement faded as she went about her other errands. It was true that Thariinye was not her choice for a lifemate, but on a whole planet of beings similar to herself, with many eligible males, she had not thus far met anyone who was.

 

In fact, Pal Kendoro, who was not even the same species as she was, inspired more warm feelings in her than almost anyone she had met here so far except Grandam and Maati.

 

So if finding her a mate was part of the reason for her being here, it wasn't working out. And she would much rather be taking her chances with her aunt and the rest of the Balakiire's crew, or any crew, than stuck down here with no real purpose and no ability to influence events or people.

 

What if the Khieevi had returned, what if the radio silence was because the ships, the crews, the other planets even, had all been destroyed, invaded?

 

Acorna firmly shook her head and put that out of her mind. It did no good to worry about such things. For the first time in her short life, it did no good to do much of anything but wait and watch and hope for the best. She did not think she was going to be very good at it.

 

"What do you mean 'detained,'" Melireenya asked the official on the comscreen. She had a hard time believing she was having this conversation. The Niirians were the last people she would have expected to behave even rudely to the Linyaari ambassadors or tradespeople. Niirians were courteous and ethical, like the Linyaari themselves, punctilious and moral almost to a fault.

 

"We do apologize, madam, but the circumstances were totally beyond our control, as we explained to Vue^haanye Neeva. Probably your ship will only be impounded for the time it takes to retrieve your original representatives and return them to you, but in the meantime, our orders are very clear."

 

"Not to me," Melireenya said. "And I'm good at reading minds. So please enlighten me. What is it that your orders say?"

 

"All Linyaari coming within our spheres of influence are to be detained for diplomatic reasons. I'm afraid I'm not privy to the reasoning behind this. I am so sorry to be the bearer of such distressing tidings, madam. You have been a good friend for many years."

 

Melireenya softened. The young official's voice held genuine consternation and his horns seemed to droop with shame. "As you have been to me, Snoraa. I suppose there is no alternative but to trust our old friends one more time?"

 

"None, I fear. But I will take it as a personal matter of honor that no harm befalls you or your crew."

 

"I appreciate that assurance, Snoraa. Did you issue the same courtesy to my lifemate?"

 

From his silence, Melireenya guessed that Snoraa had-or at least had concerned himself with the fate of Hrronye and his students.

 

"May I speak with the vifeDhaanye, please?" she asked politely. Neeva had taken the shuttle to the planet's surface, feeling it a wise precaution until she knew what had become of the missing Linyaari and why they had sent a distress signal home.

 

"The vmeShaanye has been detained as well and is presently incommunicado, madam. Please dock your ship in bay one one four and present yourself and your crew to the guardians who will greet you there. I will do what I can to assist but my job, you understand, is to insist upon your compliance with my orders at this time."

 

Melireenya had attempted to send another message back to Vhiliinyar. Like her previous attempts since coming within the planet's orbit, her transmission met with no response.

 

Unable to contact base for further orders and worried about what was happening to Neeva, she saw no viable alternative but to comply. From the transmissions they had been receiving from the other Linyaari spacecraft, she and Khaan had determined that most of the fleet, if not all of it, was now deployed. Unlike the Balakiire, the rest of the ships were not investigating a distress call, but rather a widespread radio silence on behalf of the diplomatic, trade, and educational missions stationed on various planets. She opened all channels in an attempt to reach the other ships, to apprise them of Nirii's odd behavior, but was met with the same silence that greeted her calls to home base. Something was very wrong.

 

She sent out a general Mayday, with no response whatever. Her only consolation was that none of this seemed even remotely like a Khieevi attack or invasion.

 

But as she prepared to land, she felt a deep sense of panic like none she had ever experienced. She thought that the elders must have felt this way in the old stories when, attempting to make contact with a hostile species by communicating with its least dangerous members, the young females, they found themselves instead surrounded by armed males and were taken into captivity, the purpose of which they did not truly understand to this day.

 

Her fears were well founded. No sooner had she landed than a team of uniformed people, not Niirians but very much like the people among whom Khornya had been dwelling when the Balakiire located her, boarded the ship. Two of them forcibly removed her from the command seat while two others removed Khaari from hers and still others swiftly took over the controls at both of their stations and demanded the access code to the ship's computer.

 

"Who are you?" she demanded. "What gives you the right to tamper with a sovereign Linyaari vessel? I demand to see Runae Thiirgaare at once."

 

"Take it easy," a burly young man who seemed to have no hair at all told her. "You are under arrest by the Federation Forces and your ship is being impounded."

 

(Don't worry, Melireenya,) Khaari's thought came to her. (They will have difficulty impounding us unless we cooperate.)

 

(Then why do I feel us lifting up again?) Melireenya returned.

 

(Oh, dear. This must be one of those tractor beams we've been hearing about that allows us to be towed by another ship. I didn't see one, though, did you?)

 

(No. But they may have been cloaked.)

 

Over the com system, Snoraa's voice could be heard demanding that the vessel ask for clearance but the uniformed people paid him no heed.

 

"What are the charges?" Melireenya asked. "And for that matter, what are the mysterious crimes that our people are supposed to have committed?"

 

She was picking up a welter of feelings and confused thoughts, most of them violent, angry, or lustful toward her or her fellow crewmen, or disrespectful of the bovine-like Niirians. They were lying, that much she knew. All of them were lying. But they were following orders, which was how they earned their living.

 

"Well, let's see, ma'am, what were those charges again? Resisting arrest, fleeing custody, failure to render assistance in a medical crisis, nondisclosure of residence, crimes of omission against the various environments under Federation protection. That's for a start. When we think of others, we'll let you know."

 

"That's nonsense!" she said. "Narhii-VhiIimyar is not part of your Federation!"

 

(And to think, we were just discussing whether or not it should be,) came Khaari's thought.

 

"Oh, yeah, that's the other charges," said the uniformed ruffian. "Criminal trespass, entering Federation galaxies without a license, abduction of a Federation citizen."

 

"Abduction? The only person who accompanied us was the niece of Vi<fe()haanye feriLii Neeva and she came willingly and eagerly to her home world."

 

"We'd just like a chance to check that out, ma'am," he said. "Suppose you set this egg back on course for your home world and we'll ask the citizen in question ourselves."

 

"We can't do that," Khaari said.

 

She had been watching the woman who took her seat trying to access the navigation system.

 

(Create a diversion, Melireenya,) Khaari said. Melireenya screamed and lunged forward, pointing and screeching out the words to a Linyaari poem she remembered from her youth.

 

Khaari took advantage of the distraction to slip in closer to the woman sitting in her seat, who had swiveled around to see what the commotion was. Khaari was able to make two swift keystrokes before the woman turned back.

 

(There!) she said. (Thanks.)

 

(Were you able to delete the course information?)

 

(Naturally. Had we been able to complete our sequence before they boarded us, it would have done so of its own accord. It's a good thing we Linyaari have good memories for navigation.)

 

The woman in the navigator's chair swore something ugly and violent.

 

"What's the matter. Brill?" the man with no hair asked.

 

"It's gone!" she said. "I had almost accessed the route when-you erased it!" she said to Khaari.

 

"It's self-deleting," Khaari said, which was true enough. "After all, we know where we've been already."

 

"Yeah, but how do you know how to get back there?" the man asked.

 

"That is a matter of planetary security," Melireenya said. (If they can talk like petty bureaucrats, so can we.) "Now then, speaking of abductions, if you are the people who have abducted our ambassador and other members of our diplomatic community, we must insist you release them and us immediately."

 

"Yeah, 'well, tell us who is going to make us and how we can get to talk to them and maybe we will," the man said.

 

Khaari was staring at them. (Those aren't the uniforms of Federation Forces, Melireenya.)

 

(I noticed that. These are the same uniforms worn by the troops on Rushima. Mercenaries. Now, what do you suppose they are up to?)

 

(I have the unhappy feeling we're about to find out.)

 

There was no doubt in Becker's mind whatsoever that he should space the android. The damned things had homing beacons that left indelible electron trails for the owners to follow in case of loss, theft, or, on very rare occasions, defection. Furthermore, there was no way to remove the damned beacons that Becker had ever heard of. Even if he inactivated or destroyed the android completely, the beacon would take the lickin' and keep on tickin.'

 

Of course, if he spaced the android, the homing device would go into space, too, and kinky Kisia could follow it into infinity for all he cared.

 

The thing was, Becker just could not quite bring himself to throw out something so useful, so potentially salvageable. So ultimately valuable. He hadn't actually tried to deactivate the homing beacon on an android before. People abandoned androids very rarely and if an android happened to be the sole survivor of an unfortunate space accident, it was unlikely there'd be anybody left to follow the beacon, even if whoever found the droid could not legally claim salvage rights. Surely if he tried, he could do it. But Kisia wasn't a problem to be sneezed at.

 

RK jumped on the droid's chest and kneaded big rents in its tunic. This was accompanied by a lot of drooling and the cat rubbing the top of his head under the android's chin, then rubbing the sides of his mouth against the droid, cat lip curled upward as if smelling something nasty.

 

"You don't think you marked this thing enough already, huh?" Becker asked. "Come on, cat, we have to space this dude."

 

But when Becker started to lift the android a second time to haul him to an airlock, RK took a swing at him that would have ripped his hand open if it had connected. The cat's back was up and his tail bristled.

 

"Hey, look, I know he followed us home but you can't keep him, dammit, and neither can I. He's bugged."

 

For a cat in the business RK was in, the feline member of the crew did not seem to take technical difficulties as sufficient reason for infringing on his territory. He snarled menacingly, ears flat, eyes narrowed, back feet clawing on the androids chest much in the way bulls were known to paw the ground before charging.

 

Becker swore and sat back on his haunches, hearing the cat on the one hand and the steady bleep on the other. "I've got half a mind to leave you both off on some rock and let him take care of you if you're so crazy about him," Becker said. The cat remained unimpressed. They both knew that Becker would not do this, however unreasonable RK was, as the android would sooner or later attract Kisia Manjari and he would not wish her attentions on his worst enemy, much less his usually more or less convivial shipmate.

 

"Okay, okay. Will you let me haul him up to the bridge then so I can watch where we're going and probably, who's coming with us, while I try to disable the beacon?"

 

The cat marked the android again, then lightly jumped to Becker's shoulder and wound purring around his neck, claws close to his jugular, just in case he tried something funny. Becker hauled his and everyone else's asses up to the bridge just in time to spot one of those rare wormholes, uncharted by anyone but Theophilus Becker.

 

"You're beautiful, baby!" he said, blowing a kiss as the Condor dove into the hole.

 

He wasn't sure how effective those electron trails were through wormholes but with any luck at all, maybe he could buy a little time this way.

 

The hole spit them out in the same chewed up galaxy where he had discovered the trashed planet with the horned cat toys.

 

Becker returned his attention to the android. Now he really had to get that transmitter disabled. He dug in to the task at hand. The cat looked on as anxiously as an expectant father.

 

Becker kept hoping that if he fooled around long enough, the cat would do what he usually did and get bored and wander off someplace to sleep, but of course, that was what Becker wanted so no way was RK going to do that.

 

Becker was concentrating so hard he was sweating, and meanwhile that annoyingly regular little bleep continued. After a while, RK's possessiveness subsided enough for the cat to start noticing the bleep, too, and taking an interest in it. An intense interest. The cat stalked up and down the recumbent length of the robot, across the open control panel, waving his newly fluffy tail under Becker's nose as he walked between Becker and what he was trying to work on.

 

"Look, cat. A little cooperation would be appreciated."

 

RK, much to Becker's surprise, backed off a little, looking offended, sat down and began washing his right front paw. Both ears, now that he had two again, were cocked forward at an extreme angle. Becker stopped working for a moment to watch the control panel again.

 

When he glanced back at RK, he saw that the cat's ears twitched very slightly with each bleep, and the critter was hunkered low, into stalking posture, his hind end wiggling with suppressed excitement as if he was about to spring.

 

"Don't look now, cat, but unless the digital navigation system is on the blink again, we're homing in on the planet where we found the horns. What do you think? Should we give it a fly-by? I think we've probably got enough time to disable the transmitter. We've been weaving through wormholes like a demented spider. It's gonna take Kisia and company awhile to get here. I vote we land and get this over with, then split."

 

RK did not vote out loud, but instead sprang for the android's neck, where the cat began biting and digging at the plastiskin with his claws.

 

"Oh, is that where the homing beacon is coming from?" Becker asked. "Okay, if you'll move your furry carcass I'll see if I can disable it and reprogram this dude."

 

With a little physical persuasion, and the inducement that the man was actually doing what the cat wanted him to anyway, RK eventually subsided and Becker was able to concentrate totally on the android-so totally, in fact, that he lost track of time and place. He felt peckish and grabbed a handful of cat food but, after having to fish some of the food pellets out of the android's inner workings, he gave up on snacking.

 

He had set the Condor on voice control for most functions. The voice control had the voice of Buck Rogers. For a while, Becker had used the usual ploy of having the computer sound like a husky-voiced woman, but he'd found he wasn't getting much work done. He was always heading back to port to find a pleasure house. Now he used the voice of a heroic space voyager. He figured that would help him be proud and happy to be voyaging among the stars.

 

So, with Buck's backup, and having committed himself to the task of debugging and rehabilitating the android, Becker gave it his full attention. Locating the main axis of the homing beacon wasn't the only problem. The damned thing was thoroughly integrated with both the central nervous system and the circulatory system of the android. The wiring had to be

 

removed completely and redone with minimal harm to the KEN unit.

 

Becker was very good at this kind of thing, when he wanted to be. It was one of his talents, prolonged intense focus on a single complex problem. Unfortunately, although the ship was still under his command, the part of his brain not devoted to working on the android was occupied fully with the problem at hand. The ship told him about wormholes and black water, space pleats and folds, and he took physical control long enough to negotiate through or around these, but all the best part of his brain function was devoted to the problem lying on his ship's deck. He really didn't register how long his work was taking until the Condor came within the orbit of the planet where they'd found the horns.

 

As he was just then managing to extract the last of the homing beacon, the Condor's computer had to clue him in. "Captain Becker, do you wish to land? Or would you prefer to crash in a dramatic, explosive ball onto the surface when at last we have orbited until we run out of fuel?"

 

Becker looked up from his task. The extraction of the homing beacon had been successful. The bleep was gone, though it was almost as if he could hear the echo of it in his head, he'd been listening to it for so long. RK had finally gone to sleep and had opened one eye when the computer spoke.

 

"What? Oh, guess we should crash. No, just kidding, Buck."

 

"Not funny, Becker. You programmed me with a sense of humor, but I did not find that amusing. I was already implementing the orbit by the time you said no."

 

"Of course I programmed you with a sense of humor-otherwise I'd have taken a crowbar to you years ago. The cat isn't much for laughing at my jokes."

 

"I'm waiting, Captain Becker. This planet, however, is not. It continues to exert its gravitational force upon me."

 

"Oh, yeah, okay. Let's set down in that green patch where we found the horns the last time-you have the coordinates, right?"

 

"Accessing . . . can't seem to find them, Captain Becker. Will that open volcano crater do just as nicely?"

 

"What? Huh? Are you crazy? Of course not!"

 

"Just kidding. I accessed those files nanoseconds and nanoseconds ago!"

 

"Now I know why usually I run the ship myself and talk to the cat!" Becker grumbled.

 

He figured he would have plenty of time to put the android back together after they landed. He'd have to wait to dispose of the deactivated beacon in space again. He certainly didn't want it to lead Kisia Manjari to this planet. He finally returned his attention to the landing procedure.

 

"How's it going. Buck?" he asked the computer. "A-okay, captain. There is just one little thing I thought you might wish to be aware of, however." "What's that?"

 

"The tail of a space liner seems to be extruding from the outer atmosphere. It looks as if it means to set down beside us." "I don't suppose we could take evasive action?" "You're kidding again, right? Where would we take it? Between the last few centimeters of atmosphere left-well, not any more -between ourselves and the ground? Sorry, Captain, we've landed. The other craft must have been cloaked." "I don't suppose we have that capability, do we?" "Afraid not. Besides, they know where we are," the ship said.

 

"Well, just a minute then." He spoke to the comscreen. "Hey, you, with your tail hanging out, identify yourself! This is Captain Jonas Becker of the Condor, flagship of Becker Interplanetary Recycling and Salvage Enterprises, Limited. My company has already got dibs-staked salvage rights, I mean, on this planet. Uh . . ." he continued, as there was no answer, "... I don't suppose you're a derelict in distress looking for a-tow, are you?"

 

Kisia Manjari's face appeared, grinning, on the comscreen.

 

"Nope, I didn't think so," Becker said, disgusted. "What's the matter, princess? Forget your receipt?"

 

"Oh, no. Captain Becker. It's just that you go such interesting places and find such interesting things, I wanted to come along. I sent my droids to find out where you were going next, but you killed them. Well-all but the one whose track we've been following."

 

"There now, RK, what'd I tell you?" Becker said to the cat. "Another fine mess you've gotten us into!"

 

"Oh, is the nice kitty there? I still really really want to play with it," Kisia said. "I've heard so very often that there's more than one way to skin a cat and I really want to find out."

 

By now, Becker had a visual on \}\eMu)(U, totally uncloaked and a largish dot in the multihued twilit sky.

 

"You're a sick cookie, you know that, don't you?" Becker asked.

 

"Why, thank you."

 

Meanwhile, he opened the emergency cat flap in the hatch. Normally, from the hatch's opening to the ground on a given planet was a bit of a leap for RK, and the cat used the robolift for an elevator in the same way that Becker did. But Becker had rigged the flap up for just such occasions as this-not that there'd been many occasions such as this, but Becker had a healthy imagination and a goodly amount of paranoia. He turned off the comscreen, grabbed RK before the cat had a chance to protest, and shoved him down the chute that led to the cat flap. He then opened the cat flap with the remote. He got a visual of RK sitting among the grass on the ground, licking himself vigorously, and then, as the other ship landed, bolting for the rough ruin of the landscape beyond the grass. RK would have sense enough to steer clear of Manjari, as long as he was free to do so, Becker knew. Becker was pretty sure he himself could outmaneuver her, but RK shouldn't be trapped in the ship. In fact, if he left the ship himself, he might succeed in escaping her and it might not occur to her to attack the Condor. After all, the only thing he could think of that she wanted from him was the horns and this was where they'd come from. She had what she wanted. If she couldn't find him, she'd more than likely take her booty and run off to do whatever it was she meant to do with it. Finance a fleet made from a higher caliber of cast-off parts, maybe.

 

He didn't suit up this time. It would just slow him down and he already knew he didn't need to for this atmosphere. He did slip on antigrav boots, however, the ones he wore on planets with gravity far heavier than that of Kezdet. He didn't want to take the time to lower the robolift. Instead, he opened the hatch and jumped out. The boots bounced him back up a couple of meters, and he sprang for the hinterlands, as if he was Jack wearing the seven league boots from one of the old fairy tales Dad had encouraged him to read in between physics texts in an attempt to give him back a little of the childhood that had been stolen from him on the labor farm.

 

He should be able to get away before Kisia emerged from her ship, he thought, feeling very cocky as he left the grass for the rocks. It wasn't until the bolt from a stun gun mounted in the ship's side sliced through him that it occurred to him, in one last flash of thought, that Kisia probably had no need to leave the ship to bring him down.

 

None of the people who invaded the holy place were able to see him, so well did he blend with his surroundings. But he saw them. Saw the first spacecraft land and the small furry animal, the same one who had come before, first fall from the craft's belly, only to twist in midair and land on all four paws. It momentarily licked itself, then came running-straight toward him. None of the people had seen him, but the small furry creature headed his way immediately, past the sacred place and into the rocks where he lay concealed.

 

The other ship descended and as it did, a man bounced out of the same ship as the one that had carried the animal. The second ship landed, and a bolt of light shot from it. The man was on his third bounce, almost safe behind one of the hillocks of rubble created by the Khieevi when they destroyed this world. The man was the same one who had come before with the animal. He had the same smooth face and forehead. He did not look like a Khieevi and he did not act like a Khieevi. The Khieevi did not run in fear. They caused others to fear.

 

The animal had reached the hidden one, had greeted him with soft twinings and loud rumblings, seeking sanctuary. It had watched, wide-eyed, as the man fell. It had changed its body so that it grew to twice its size and the pointed ears lay flat on the head. The rumbling had given way to the sound air makes when escaping the lungs of someone punched in the stomach.

 

The second craft landed. Four people came out of it. There was a small one with a loud voice, and three larger ones. The small one moved with certainty, the others had less.

 

The small one walked right to the man, pointed to him, and indicated that the others should carry him. They did so, carrying him back to the grass between the two ships. The small one began to kick the body all over.

 

That was when the little animal burst from the rocky cover and leaped across the grass, into the midst of these intruders who, although they looked like the first man, appeared from their actions, from their-energy-to be Khieevi after all.

 

The hidden one shook and felt sick. He could not bear the Khieevi again, he was sure he could not. They had hurt him beyond repair before. He could not face them again, not even to save their new victim, for he knew he could not save him.

 

The little animal had less experience, though. It dove straight into the middle of them in a howling, angry whirlwind of fury, blood, snarling, and screaming. The blood appeared to be mostly from the small biped in the center. The noise seemed to be coming from all of them.

 

And then, all at once, another light bolt and the furry creature fell to the ground. A silence fell upon the group.

 

The people still standing looked much different now. Their clothing was torn, one of them covered an eye with his hand, and their faces were a network of scratches. The small biped had her-for the voice sounded female to the hidden one-hand to her throat and red blood streamed from between her fingers.

 

She sent a vicious kick into the body of the little beast and it flew to the edge of the grass.

 

Then she began once more to beat the unconscious man, until one of the other men stopped her.

 

The hidden one rocked and cried and grieved and wondered if perhaps-perhaps the little animal could be saved without the Khieevi noticing. There was enough power nearby to heal it, if the wounds were not already fatal.

 

On his belly, the hidden one slithered toward the edge of the grass where the small body lay.

 

Becker had definitely had better days. The pain in his leg was intense. Kisla's kicking reminded him of the time he had dropped one of those Myrathenian morning stars on himself while trying to store the damned thing. Lots of little sharp pains. Speaking of which, it looked like Kisia and her gang had lots of little sharp pains themselves. RK had apparently come back; their faces definitely bore his signature. But where was the little demon anyway? Becker raised his head to look around. The eye that wasn't busy swelling shut saw the small furry body by the edge of the-moving -rock.

 

Kisla's boot aimed at his jaw. Becker caught her leg in one hand and jerked. She fell on her butt. Somewhat to his surprise, though her crew showed him their weapons, they did not intervene. Come to think of it, he wasn't all that surprised that they didn't. These were humans, not androids. Working for Kisia probably had a few uncomfortable side effects.

 

"Shoot him!" Kisia screamed.

 

"Calm down, princess. What did I ever do to you?" he asked. His voice was a little slurred. Apparently one or more kicks had done more damage than he thought.

 

"You cheated me is what! You destroyed my droids--" "You poet, you," he said.

 

"And you lied about the horns! You said there was only the one! You lied! I found another horn. Where are the others?"

 

He sighed painfully. He really had to get rid of her and go see about the cat. "They're right here-all around. I just took a sample or two."

 

"He's lying," one of the crewmen said. "There's nothing here. I've been looking."

 

Kisia kicked herself free of him and stood up, but she stood back. "Okay, time to make him tell! Let's take him back to the i • lf ship.

 

"Before we go through all that, why don't I check his computer banks and see where he found the horns, and if this is the place? Meanwhile, you can keep him on ice while we make a more thorough search for the horns." This was proposed by a sane-sounding man, a high-ranking member of Kisla's new crew, judging by the decorations on his uniform.

 

"I give the orders here," Kisia said.

 

"Yes, ma'am. I'm just trying to suggest a fast way to check on what the man's told us."

 

Kisia liked to give orders but she wasn't stupid. The guy was making sense. She hesitated.

 

"With your permission then," the man said, not making it a question, and turned to go.

 

Becker sat up again, unhooking the remote from his belt. "Here, buddy, you'll need this. Red green blue red." He could cooperate with sane people. It wouldn't do to get Kisia excited again.

 

It was a good move. The other two crewmen tied Becker up-well, taped him up, having apparently brought along a roll of silver tape just for the occasion. They only let Kisia get in two more kicks before they distracted her by rooting around, looking for horns. During the time they were doing this, Becker noticed that RK was no longer lying where he had been. That was interesting. Could the little guy fake being hurt? Nah, surely not!

 

After a while-Becker didn't know how long as his consciousness seemed to fade in and out, along with Kisla's dainty little foot-the crewman who had gone up into the ConSor returned. He was carrying the sack that contained the horns. Becker groaned. He'd gotten used to a sweet-smelling spaceship and had been sort of hoping Kisia wouldn't find the horns so he could heal himself. "Well?" she demanded.

 

"This is the place all right. Not on any of our maps but the coordinates are the same ones he marked before. Here are the horns. This all there were, buddy?"

 

"I didn't think so," Becker said truthfully. "That's why I came back. But the light's not that good. Maybe we took them all the first time." He tried to shrug but his shoulder had stiffened up too badly.

 

"Your droid is a mess," the crewman continued his report to Kisia. He brought out the mess of wires and syn-tissue that Becker had extracted from the droid. "Here's the homing beacon. You know, your uncle-I mean you-figured Becker here would make a beeline back for where he found the horns. This very likely is the place."

 

"Maybe," she said. She had the sack now and was pawing through it. "Where did you find these, junk man?"

 

"Lying around on the ground here. Don't ask me why. I didn't get it off any living girl, if that's what you're thinking."

 

"That's too bad, but it can be remedied later," Kisia said.

 

And just then a series of explosions shook the ground, shooting blossoms of dirt and fire in a more or less straight line toward the Mu)<u.

 

"What the hell is that?" one of the crewmen asked.

 

"Asteroid shower?"

 

"This planet has obviously undergone some kind of destabilization recently," the fellow who had boarded the Condor said. "I don't think we'd better hang around very long. Want to take Becker here along with us, ma'am?"

 

Kisia grinned through her sharp little teeth as another explosion rocked both the MQ<u and the Condor. "No." She snatched the remote from the crewman's hand, threw the unit to the ground and stomped on it, grinding it under her heel. "We'll leave him. No food or water here except on his ship, which he can no longer board. He'll have to eat the cat-hey, where did the cat go?"

 

Another explosion erupted beside her before she could answer. She kept her mouth shut as the crewmen herded her aboard the MQiu, which prepped for takeoff in record time. The ship rocketed back into space like a scalded cat.

 

Speaking of cats . . .

 

Becker passed out, only to awaken when something wet hit his face. Cat drool. RK, looking no worse for wear, stood on his chest, kneading sharp claws into it. He no longer lay beside the Condor. It was dark, and he didn't hurt anymore. Not anywhere.

 

If someone had offered to make Edacki Ganoosh king or emperor of the universe, he would have turned them down. He did not wish to have ultimate power or ultimate responsibility or ultimate visibility. He far preferred the joy of playing puppet master and pulling the strings that manipulated people and events for his amusement. Presently, he was both very happy and highly amused.

 

His network's tentacles had extended far beyond his customary haunts, into new galaxies where his allies had allies who had allies and those allies had allies who were quite accustomed to dealing with people who fit the description of the Linyaari. Also, like the Linyaari, these particular people were said to be quite advanced and peaceable and law-abiding by nature. Ganoosh, though he was not fond of abiding by rules himself, was very fond of such people. They were so much easier to control. Sometimes he wished his ward were more law-abiding but then, if she were, she probably still wouldn't be alive now. She would have been much less trouble, but also much less useful.

 

He was, in fact, quite anxious to hear from the dear girl. The Mu)(U had not communicated for a very long time. The willful child was probably just trying to keep her dear guardian in the dark. He was greatly pleased at how quickly Ikwaskwan had taken control of the situation, his mercenaries now patriotically serving as Federation peacekeepers, traveling to the farflung, non-Federation worlds that had been harboring the Linyaari renegades. These staunch uniformed troops let the non-Federation worlds know that continuing to aid and abet the Linyaari would sadly lead to a show of force on behalf of the Federation, which could not allow such people to just go running out of its jurisdiction after committing the interesting array of offenses Ikwaskwan and the others had dreamed up. As Ganoosh had suspected, the worlds frequented by Linyaari were as staid and peaceful and law-abiding as the unicorn girl's visitors had claimed their own world was.

 

Ganoosh considered it a great pity that the Khieevi Ikwaskwan's men had helped defeat had no known allies or common language or communication with any other race. He felt that such ferocity as they were known to exhibit could be of value to his enterprises.

 

The com unit sent forth a blast of the static that it was patented not to emit and then Kisla's voice preceded her indistinct image on the comscreen. "Oh, Uncle Edacki, we have failed! Daddy is furious with me, I'm afraid, and says I am not fit to command a starship. Please please please don't be mad at me! It was the crew's fault really. They were such sissies when I wanted to torture Becker. They didn't even want me to kick him around or kill the nasty cat."

 

"Calm down, sweetheart, and tell Uncle Edacki all about it now. You must remember the crew are corporate employees, not information-gathering specialists. I should have thought to send one along but I was trusting to your natural talent. I can scarcely believe you got your hands on the man and did not find the place from which the horns came or secure any more of them."

 

"Oh, I found it, all right. At least, I found the place he got the first ones from. But there weren't any more and there are only a dozen or so in his sack."

 

"I have a hunch he is holding out on you, darling girl. Do ask him again nicely."

 

"I ca-a-a-n't," she wailed miserably. "He got away? "

 

"No I sort of, you know ..." She made an approximation of the sound of a laser burning through flesh. She did it very well, and it was a difficult and unpleasant noise to reproduce.

 

"Did you let your enthusiasm get away with you before you investigated thoroughly, Kisia Manjari?" Ganoosh asked her sternly.

 

"Nooo! Really, Uncle! We checked his computers and according to them it was the right place. But after I zapped him, these little explosions started going off everywhere and the MQcD was about to be hit so we took off and left him. We can always go back if you want us to, and take his ship and check the computers again."

 

"No, no, my dear, that would most likely be unproductive. I should have known persons such as the late Mr. Becker would have no truly valuable finds to share with us, no matter how prettily you asked."

 

"You're not cross, are you. Uncle? Perhaps you could send me to the school, you know, where your information extraction specialists learn their trade. I know I can very helpful in this work if you'll just give me another chance."

 

"Oh, precious, don't fret your little head about it. Of course I'm not cross with you. You did get more horns. All the horns Mr. Becker had. And I have no doubt but what, if a school for information extraction specialists existed, you would, except for that little tendency toward impatience of yours, be at the head of the class in no time. In fact, with your natural talent, I'm sure you could be an instructor."

 

He saw her well enough now to discern that she was blushing with pleasure. Positive reinforcement worked well with this girl.

 

"I have so much faith in you, in fact, that I want you and the Mu)a^ to undertake a new mission."

 

"Oh, goody! What is it? Do I get to extract information?"

 

"Certainly, my darling girl, and from a wealthy and pampered pair of newlyweds, one of whom is a very close personal friend of your own close personal enemy . . ."

 

"Which one?" she asked eagerly and he could see her taking inventory of people she knew of who filled his description. "Oh, Uncle, you don't mean that wily old sheik, do you?"

 

"Now who is wily? You figured that out immediately. Bright girl. Good girl. Yes, I'm afraid the stupid Yasmin allowed herself to be found. To buy her own head she betrayed the tail I had on her. I expected no better, to tell you the truth. However, Harakamian's ship the Shahrazad has just left the Rushiman orbit. Fortunately, Yasmin apparently did not feel it necessary to tell her captors about the secondary monitoring devices she placed aboard the ship. We are still able to get a fix on the Shahrazad without difficulty."

 

"Can I kill Yasmin for you when we get back?" Kisia asked. "She shouldn't have tattled on our surveillance ship."

 

"I'll think about it. Patience, remember, darling. Yasmin has her limitations but she may still prove useful if I can retrieve her from the settlers-preferably after she's done a bit of hard penal labor to remind her who her friends are. No, I want you to follow, properly cloaked and shielded, until such time as you can board the Shahrazad and take the Harakamians prisoner. At that time you may use any methods you wish to determine the course Hafiz is employing to reach the unicorn girl's home world."

 

Kisia was beaming. "Uncle Edacki, you are the but. I'll find out for you at once!"

 

"Make it so, sweetie. And Kisia? Lovie?"

 

"Yes, Uncle?" Her impatience was now again evident, along with a certain defensiveness, like a dog who was afraid its treat would be snatched back.

 

"You're not to go there once you find out. Just relay the information and detain the Harakamians until I give you further orders."

 

"Awww, Uncle!" "Kisia!" he said warningly.

 

"Oh, all right. May I hurt them while I detain them? Even if I can get the information some other -way?"

 

"There will be sufficient opportunity for that, dear heart, once we have the information you are after. Hafiz Harakamian has many secrets and I'm sure you will enjoy cajoling him to confide in you once I tell you what it is I wish to know. But that can wait. Now, scoot! You've a job to do. Commander Kisia!"

 

"Yes, Sir," she said, blew him a kiss, and the screen went dark.

 

Some aspects of Ganoosh's plans were going even better than he could have hoped.

 

His teams had found an entire chain of planets destroyed by the Khieevi. While the planets themselves were depressingly without commercial value, one of them had a serviceable moon. With the help of biosphere-type prefab experimental stations, it was soon able to support sufficient personnel for his purposes. Ganoosh installed his teams of scientists and security forces. The former were told what to look for and the latter were told where to find subjects. Nothing could be simpler.

 

General Ikwaskwan reported back to him via remote relay, and the reports were enormously satisfying to both Ganoosh and the general.

 

One by one, the Linyaari trade partners were being identified -occasionally by the Linyaari taken into custody, and more often by the trading partners themselves. A few of the trading partners had proved awkward, but forceful persuasion generally was all it took to sway them into surrendering their Linyaari guests, and the location of any trading partners they knew about. Two large, secure wards were currently filled with the white, single-horned humanoids. If things went well, there would soon be more. More horns and more likelihood of breaking one of the Linyaari and finding the location of their home world.

 

When the most recent arrivals were herded into the biosphere, General Ikwaskwan was in residence, listening to the complaints of the scientists. These unimaginative men claimed that they had all of these subjects, but unless the subjects could be observed doing whatever it was they supposedly did, the scientists would be unable to proceed. Linyaari were extremely stubborn, for a peaceful people. They seemed to be able to communicate without words, leaving the scientists continually feeling as if they were being discussed, even though the Linyaari never spoke in their presence, not even to complain, once they realized what the scientists wanted.

 

"Sedate them," Ikwaskwan said. "Put them in cold sleep until you need them. I don't care."

 

"I thought so!" a loud, nasal, feminine Linyaari voice rang through the sphere. "General Ikwaskwan! Are these your people? There has been some mistake. You know who I am. Please tell them to release me and my crew and our people at once."

 

Ikwaskwan didn't know the lady in question at first. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought he had actually captured Harakamian's niece, Acorna. But no, there was somethingolder, about this woman. "Madam, you have the advantage of me," he said, with a mocking, courtly bow.

 

"I'll refresh your memory then," she said, dragging her captors nearer to him. He signaled for them to let her go. "I am VL)e()haanye ferliii Neeva of the Linyaari people of narhiiVhiliinyar. I demand to know the meaning of this outrageous imprisonment of myself and my people. The trumped-up charges your people used to abduct us are so patently ridiculous, I'm amazed you were able to take us without a formal protest from our hosts."

 

"Your hosts stood to gain a great deal by the transaction, madam, if you know what I mean," Ikwaskwan said. "Besides, we were able to convince them that while you may be wellbehaved in your own sector, you were definitely a criminally disruptive influence in ours. You are to be congratulated on finding so many supremely stodgy allies."

 

"Neeva, save your breath," said another of the newcomers just as loudly, as if she thought they were all deaf. "There's been no mistake. Obviously he is no longer an ally."

 

"Very astute, dear lady. I put my superb mercenary forces at the service of the highest bidder. As you see, the highest bidder has changed since our last meeting."

 

(Neeva! Is it really you? Oh, beloved lifemate, how I have longed to see you, but not here and now.)

 

Ikwaskwan was rather amused to see the fight go out of Neeva as her attention was drawn to the others of her kind in the biosphere. He hoped what was said but so far unproven about this race was accurate. Otherwise they were a waste of good air and food, as far as he was concerned.

 

He shrugged and left them to the scientists. He was ready to return to his own compound for a time and reunite with Nadhari. He had some rather splendid plans that would make good use of her. He planned to put her at the service of Ganoosh, whether or not she was willing.

 

The titillating but distracting struggle for power between them would be over for the moment, if he did so, but it would be delicious to break her time and time again. Of course, the real point was to see how thoroughly these supposedly miracleworking Linyaari could put her back together again. She would never forgive him, of course, but that was part of the fun of it. The joy in conquering a woman was in playing the last trick and this, surely, would be the best trick anyone had ever played on Nadhari. Just to be sure he would be the one doing the taking, not the other way around, he brought along a company of the best troops he had who had not been trained by her.

 

When the remaining communications officer buzzed the cornlink in her room to tell Nadhari she was being hailed, she asked, "The general, I presume?"

 

"As a matter of fact, ma'am, no," the officer said. "This is another party. They've been cleared to speak to you, with your permission."

 

"You have it," she said abruptly. She hadn't spoken to anyone outside the station since the day Ganoosh called Ikky. Ikky had pretended nothing was happening, and Nadhari, aware of her precarious position, had gone along with the pretense, while keeping her senses tuned for an opportunity to turn the tables, escape, or at least get a message through to let the Kendoros know of the alliance.

 

Fortunately, she hadn't needed to maintain appearances for long before Ikky and most of his troops departed.

 

She switched on the comlink. "Colonel Kando?" The halting question came from a young Starfarer girl she recognized from the Khieevi invasion of Rushima.

 

"Yes?"

 

"We would like to retain your services as a combat instructor, please," the girl said.

 

Nadhari watched a figure move into the comscreen. When the face appeared, she saw with relief that it belonged to Pal Kendoro.

 

She knew she was being monitored and tried to figure out what she could say to tip them off to her situation.

 

"Hello, Pal, long time no see. Are you running a day care facility these days?" she asked.

 

"You know better than that, Nadhari," Pal said. "Look, we've come to try to recruit your help, and the general's if he's available. We would like to dock and speak with you face to face, if possible."

 

"I don't think that's a good idea. Pal. I'm not at liberty to receive guests right now and the general isn't here."

 

"Be that as it may, we've come all this way to talk to you. We request permission to dock. We have reason to believe there's a threat to Acorna and her people. House Harakamian has authorized us to retain your services and the gen "

 

"This isn't a good time to talk about it, Pal," Nadhari said. "The general already knows "

 

Her transmission was suddenly interrupted by the smooth and friendly voice of Sergeant Erikson. "Permission to land granted. Haven. Just come on in and set 'er down. We have a lot of vacancies right now."

 

Damn! How could she warn them off now?

 

She was both pleased and surprised to find that her door irised open to her touch as usual, so she had not been confined to quarters. There was a trap in this situation somewhere. She knew it, and if she could keep the Haven from falling into it, she had to try. She sprinted for the docking bay.

 

The canopy was open and the Haven was already landing before she could pull on her pressure suit and gravity boots. She waved at them to go back as she stood in the transparent viewport between the air lock and the open landing bay, but of course they didn't understand. They thought she was greeting them. Damn. If she'd had a rock she'd have thrown it. The Haven set down as trustingly as a child settling onto its mother s lap.

 

Immediately afterward, as if by magic, Ikwaskwan's flagship suddenly appeared above the bay. It had been cloaked, she realized. Lurking. It probably picked up the Haven's signal from some distance away. Ikky apparently felt he had some business with the Haven, because Erikson would never have welcomed them without orders to do so.

 

What was the general playing at now?

 

The docking bay boasted a huge comscreen with loudspeakers and Ikky's face appeared before them. Nadhari pulled on her helmet and stepped out into the bay. Despite the bulkiness of her suit, she felt naked without a side arm.

 

The big face on the comscreen looked down at her as if she were a bacteria under a microscope. "Nadhari, you didn't tell me you were expecting visitors or we'd have tried to make it home sooner. This is my lucky day! I get to see you again and also those plucky Starfarer kids."

 

Plucky? Oh, God, if he was being that phony the kids were done for, too. But if he was keeping up pretenses, she had one other own to try. The mike in her helmet worked. "It was unexpected. They came on behalf of House Harakamian to retain our services. Thye've brought us. General, a substantial offer," she said, almost hopeful that it would work. Money was Ikky's native language. Maybe House Harakamian could buy him off?

 

But as the flagship came to rest beside the Haven and the dome of the docking bay closed over them, a weapon she had not been aware of was deployed by Ikky from the safety of his ship. The air in the bay turned oddly greenish and a strong noxious-smelling mist soon filled the interior of the docking facility.

 

She was staring at it in horrified fascination when Erikson and five other mercenaries entered the lock. She was suited up, and clumsy. They wore simple gas masks and were armed. She tore the mask off one of them and broke Erikson's leg, but they didn't fire on her. Instead, three of them subdued her while the others snatched her helmet off before raising their weapons. When the stun bolts hit her, the last thing she saw before the world faded to black was Erikson's satisfied smile.

 

She was not conscious when the Haven was boarded, after the hatch had been forced open by masked troops to allow the ship to fill with gas. One by one the Starfarers were carried out of their own ship and aboard the general's, while Nadhari herself was tenderly scooped up by Ikwaskwan and later just as tenderly chained to his berth aboard the flagship. She did not feel this either. The flagship, full of this unexpected human bounty, began the voyage back to the experimental station, leaving the Haven, standing alone in the docking bay, forlorn and seemingly empty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roadkill!" Becker cried, and the cat jumped back as if scalded. But there was nothing wrong with the critter. Not a thing. "Hey, buddy, I got hit and from what I could see, you got hit. Why don't we hurt? If we already died and went to heaven, it's a lot darker than advertised up here."

 

"Riidkiii?" a voice asked. It was not the cat's voice. The cat was washing vigorously, taking inventory of all of his parts. A gray, shambling, lumpish form appeared, hovering over Becker. The face was long and the forehead had a caved-in look to it. Matted, filthy hair surrounded it. The figure was pointing to the cat.

 

"No, man. Roadkill. Road. Kill. It's a joke."

 

"Riid. Kiiyi." The figure tried hard, but his tongue couldn't seem to cut through.

 

"Yeah, see, the joke is from back before flitters, when we all traveled in wheeled conveyances which rolled on the ground along paved stretches on planetary surfaces called roads. Critters like RK here-okay, Riid Kiiyi, if you insist-critters like him would wander out on the road and get squashed. Like he almost did."

 

The figure stroked RKs back and the cat rose up to meet the clubbed-looking hand. Becker had thought something was wrong with the hand before, and now he saw that each finger lacked a knuckle, and the hand didn't have enough fingers. The guy's feet were screwed up, too. They looked more like a goat's feet-cloven hooves-than like a person's feet.

 

"Riid Kiiyi Khieevi?" inquired the figure-a male, Becker decided, from the overall stance and bearing of the creature.

 

"No, Riid-Roadkill isn't whatever you said. Roadkill is a cat. A Makahomian Temple Cat, to be precise. -Makahomian Temple Cats are bred from ancient Makahomian Cat God stock to be defenders of the temples of-ah-Makahoma. They are very fierce fighters. I guess RK kinda thinks of the Condor as his temple now and me-I must be the pope at least! That's how come the little guy waded into Kisla's gang, even when he could have got away. Nice kitty," he said, and petted RK, who growled a little.

 

That was when Becker noticed that the funny looking guy had a little boxy device he had positioned between himself and Becker. Becker touched it. "What's this?"

 

The other guy pointed to Beckers mouth and made a shadow duck quacking in the flickering light cast on the wall by the fire burning in the-cave? It had to be a cave they were in. When had the fire been lit? Becker didn't remember a fire. Maybe he wasn't yet one hundred percent recovered. Must be still lapsing in and out of consciousness.

 

So-Beckers mouth, quacking-speaking maybe-then the man made a sweeping motion with both hands that clearly meant exchange-and pointed to his own mouth. "Linyaari."

 

"That your name? Linyaari? I'm Becker. Me. Becker," he said, feeling like the lead character in one of those ancient icons of classic film, Tarzan. He pointed to himself. "Becker." To the cat, who rose up again, to allow himself to be stroked, "Roadkill." Back to himself: "Becker." He pointed to the man again and asked, "Linyaari?"

 

The man made a sweeping motion with both hands and arms to indicate either the whole cave or possibly the whole planet. "Linyaari." Then pointed to himself. "Aari."

 

"Art? You're Art! Hi, Art. Jonas Becker. Much obliged for the rescue."

 

"Muk oblii!" Aari responded. "Hit, Biickir." The filth on his face ran with wet streaks, glistening in the firelight. "Hit, Riid. Kiiyi." The cat climbed onto Aari's folded legs and began to purr.

 

Over time, Becker wasn't sure how much time exactly, Aari's grasp of Standard improved. Aari encouraged Becker to talk and used different words as Becker brought them up. The little translator didn't give Becker much of a grasp of Linyaari, which was clearly the language and race that Aari belonged to, and the race that had once occupied this planet.

 

The coin dropped after Becker had more sleep under his belt. This planet was the one with the horns. The horns that had been mistaken for a very personal horn belonging to the Lady Acorna, the unicorn girl. That must be her race. Linyaari. The same as this guy.

 

Except this guy didn't have a unicorn horn. Maybe only the girls did? Nah-quite unwillingly, Becker looked more closely at the injury to Aari's forehead. Then he threw up what was left of the last handful of cat food. Oh, great, pretty soon he'd be hacking up hairballs, too.

 

But what he had seen, when he looked, was that there was a place where Aari probably had had a horn. Now it was a deep, partially scarred-over crater that gave the guy the appearance of having a crushed forehead.

 

Aari saw him looking and pulled the matted hair down over the wound as far as he could, shaking his head and weeping again.

 

"Aari, buddy, what happened here? What happened to you?

 

"Khieevi," he said, and then made motions where his horn should have been that made Becker want to vomit again, only there was nothing there to vomit, just as there was nothing more on Aari's forehead for anyone to torture him with.

 

"How in the hell did you get away? How did you survive?" Becker asked.

 

"Vhiliinyar," was the only Linyaari word Becker heard and then, the funny thing was, he sort of understood the rest of what had happened without actually being aware of anything Aari was saying. At first he thought that the universal translator gadget was actually working both ways, and then something made him realize that he and Aari were reading each other's minds-and a third mind as well.

 

RK very carefully sunk a single claw into Becker's leg and Becker knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that RK could hear and understand the thoughts of both of them and could have transmitted thoughts, too, if he'd wanted to. The cat just preferred body language. As far as he could see, RK wanted Becker to try to learn Cat. It was beneath a cat's dignity to speak human Standard, Becker figured. Then it hit him.

 

"Hey, you're telepathic! And so are we, when we're with you!

 

Aari shook his head and picked up one of the horns, then made a sweeping motion with his hands, and an exchanging motion between his head, Becker's and RK's. Then he pointed to his own forehead, made a negative swipe with his hand, and hung his head.

 

"So we understand each other telepathically because of the horns, huh?" Becker asked.

 

Aari sighed deeply, shook his head to indicate that wasn't the case, shrugged, and looked perplexed. RK sunk his claw into Becker's leg again and fixed him with another stare, which to Becker's somewhat rattled brain seemed to say that RK had been reading his mind all along; he just didn't much care what Becker thought. Becker guessed he was reading the cat because-well, he had always read the cat, really, but now he had nothing better to do so he noticed.

 

Aari smiled a little, and Becker could tell the Linyaari was reading him. Aari projected a few careful images that showed him with his horn, communing wordlessly with other people that looked just like him. So, he had been telepathic when he had his own horn. Fair enough.

 

Becker didn't ask again what had happened to the guy's horn but Aari grimly showed them how it had been when the Khieevi were about to finish him off and, having broken his body, excised his horn in a particularly slow and painful way. He backtracked to show them how he had been captured. Aari had stayed behind during the Khieevi invasion to help his brother, who had been stuck in this cave, badly injured, too far away from the spaceport for them to get help from the ships departing with all of their people during the great evacuation. Aari had been unable to reach him in time to heal him.

 

The Khieevi had captured Aari when he was out gathering rope for the rescue, and had begun long, long tortures of their captive, all the time probing, probing, as if trying to feast on his grief. They had captured some of the translator boxes from previous diplomatic missions-LAANYE, Aari called them-and used them to communicate with him, to interrogate him, though they surely learned little that could be of help to them. What he knew that they might have wished to know, he never told.

 

Aari did not speak of his brother, or of the new planet his people had found. The foremost thoughts in his mind were grief. His brother would be dead from his wounds by now, so he grieved, and grieved more as the Khieevi destroyed him, along with his planet. He grieved for the loss of his people, for the simultaneous destruction of his own body and the body of his home world, grieved at the pain, and the memories of better times. And all the time the Khieevi stood by jeering and gloating over their methodical ravaging of the beauty and life force of a planet and one of its children, the only one within their grasp.

 

"Did they kill all those other people, too?" Becker wanted to know. "I found all those horns."

 

"No," Aari said, and Becker felt triumph in the thought as Aari carried a light to the back of the cave. It was filled with horns and bones, carefully arranged into individual skeletons whenever possible. "These are the bones of my Ancestors. When you landed the first time, you discovered our graveyard. The residual power of the horns kept that area living when the rest of the world was destroyed. The Khieevi never knew of this sacred place, and I did not tell them. They found me some distance from it.

 

"When the instability they caused in Vhiliinyar by their destruction caused the planet to drive them from its face, leaving me behind for dead, I dragged myself back here, and slept among the horns. Most of my wounds were healed-you cannot imagine the shape I was in before then. I did not resemble anything Linyaari. But the Khieevi had done something to me that prevented the horns from truly healing me, though nothing could block the process completely.

 

"And so-" His eyes rolled slightly up, to where his horn had been. "And so even the healing power of the horns did not make me truly whole again, for among the Linyaari healing rests not only in the horn but in the guiding intelligence and empathy of the healer. After the Khieevi tortured me, I was incapable of participating in my healing. The horn merely knit together that which was broken. Except for my own horn. All of the horns of our dead could not give me back my own horn.

 

"Still, the healing was enough that I could gather a few of the horns that lay on top of the ground and return to the cave. But the Khieevi had held me a long time and my brother had lain injured for a long time, waiting for my return to rescue and heal him. He was with the Ancestors, beyond the power of the horns to heal."

 

"But even without your horn, you can still read minds and everything, right? 'Cause you were telepathic before and-"

 

"The horns are like-um-things on the heads of insects?" Aari put his hands up to make antennae and Becker supplied the word. "They transmit our thoughts but the ability is in the Linyaari. Without my own horn, I cannot make myself heard. I do not know how. But surrounded by so many, many horns, I have many antennae. You have antennae, too, and Riid Kiiyi."

 

"I get it. I think," Becker said. "So, tell me, why didn't you let me know you were here when I came the first time?" Becker said. "I would have helped you. I could have taken you to your people at their new place."

 

"You were robbing graves," Aari said with a little shrug. "I thought you might be Khieevi of another sort. Besides, I feel shame-at my own appearance. I do not wish to see my people again-well, more precisely, I do not wish for them to see me as I am now. They will shudder to look upon me. But I could not let the bones of our Ancestors be defiled any more. So when you left, I disinterred the Ancestors, and brought them here to a new place."

 

"That's why there weren't any horns there. Well, look, Aari, it's a good thing you did that because that gal you saw kicking the shit out of me? She has some use for the horns, and I can almost guarantee you it isn't a happy one. Good thing your home world here decided to pop off a few explosions "

 

Aari pointed to himself again.

 

"You did that?" Becker asked. "How?"

 

Aari walked to the back of the cave and picked up something that was obviously a very nasty weapon. He pointed to it, said, "Khieevi," and made a booming sound, then set it back down.

 

"Is there anything to eat around here, by the way?"

 

"Oh, of course. Excuse my rudeness." Aari bent down, there was a tearing sound, and he returned with a big handful of grass.

 

RK put it better than Becker could have. He looked at the grass and meowed piteously.

 

Aari looked crestfallen and again Becker caught an impression of overwhelming shame.

 

"You will starve because I cannot feed you that which you need to sustain life. Riid Kiiyi will starve also," Aari said.

 

"Not if we can help it. We just have to find a way to get back into the Condor. Kisla-baby tap-danced on my remote."

 

The three of them returned to the former graveyard. The grass was dying already, turning brown and brittle without the power of the horns. Becker found the pieces of his remote where Kisia had left it. It was smashed so badly even he couldn't fix it.

 

They tried a couple of horns but the horns didn't seem to work on electronics. However, Becker did have some emergency backups. Not easy ones, not convenient ones, but he had them.

 

By standing on Aari's shoulders, he was able to grasp a tail fin and haul himself to within reaching distance of a particular area near the hatch. Touching that, he whistled the bar of "Dixie" that was the opening code. An encoder implanted inside the hull translated his whistle into electronic code. Then all he had to do was slide back down the tail fin and drop to the ground before the robolift descended on his head.

 

He and RK climbed aboard and chowed down. He grabbed the spare remote he had stashed in the ventilation duct, and then he and RK returned to the surface with a bag of freezedried veggies for Aari.

 

The Linyaari was busy hauling loads of bones to the Condor.

 

"I must set aside my shame now and ask you to take me to narhii-Vhiliinyar, the new home of my people. I must take the remains of our forebears with me. This world has become unsafe even for the dead."

 

For Markel, the Haven's ventilation system was home sweet home. He had hidden in it and made his way around the ship after the Palomellese bandits had killed his father.

 

Trained in warfare or not, the Starfarers did have one advantage over the Red Bracelets, and that was that they knew their ship. When it became clear they were caught in a trap, Markel had naturally suggested the ventilation system as a hiding place for the younger ones and the ships "guests." He, Johnny Greene, and Khetala, along with the Reamer family and Starfarers under the age of five, would hide in the ducts from Decks A to D, which could be blocked off from the rest of the ship and supplied with their own oxygen.

 

Of them all, only Markel realized that this section was also where many of the bandits had been gassed to death while trying to pursue him, Acorna, Calum Baird, and Dr. Hoa after Markel had rescued Acorna. As he lay flat in the duct, not speaking, hardly breathing, with perhaps a hundred other bodies lying in the same fashion down the length of the ducts, he thought he could still smell the lingering pong of the poison gas they had used. But, of course, that was ridiculous. It had been many months since the Palomellese had been overwhelmed, gassed, or spaced.

 

He waited for the cries of his shipmates below-for 'Ziana and Pal to shout orders, a surrender, anything. Their faces had appeared on the comscreen and so his friends could not be hidden from any possible attackers, lest their enemies realize they were not dealing with all of the Starfarers. But he heard very little from below-no screams, no shouts, just sighs and slight shuffling sounds, before the boots of the enemy tramped across the Haven's decks and retreated again, even more heavily.

 

The bay vibrated with the noise of other ships taking off. And still no noise from below.

 

Markel had positioned himself strategically above the supply lockers, a bit separated from the others so that if he was discovered, it might be presumed he was alone. Or if the others were discovered, he might not be, and would be able to help them escape.

 

Johnny Greene was above his duty station, the computation and navigation room. Khetala, Reamer, and some of the more mature children were placed among the younger children, to keep them quiet. Not that there were many among the very young who couldn't fight and think extremely well under pressure. But the little kids were also the smallest and the most easily captured.

 

Markel took a deep breath and lifted the seal that was also the entrance to the room below. The acrid stench of some kind of gas caused his eyes to water and made him feel sleepy. He managed to wrestle the seal closed, and let his drowsiness pass while he thought about what to do next.

 

He didn't know what kind of gas it was, though judging from his own reaction, it was supposed to knock people out, if not kill them. There were gas masks in the lockers. If he could hold his breath until he could access one of the masks and put it on, then he could get masks for the others. He could also check out the status of their shipmates and see what damage was done to the ship.

 

He would have liked to have communicated this plan to Johnny but the distance was great and time was short. Before they'd hidden, they had all agreed they would wait until they heard from him, or at least send someone to check on his position before anyone else acted. He was the acknowledged expert vent rat of the crew. Admiral of the vent rats, even.

 

The vent rat admiral held his breath and opened the seal again. Quickly, he dropped down, letting the seal close behind him as he slipped out so it would not allow much of the gas into the system where his shipmates hid.

 

The maneuver was tricky and cost him precious seconds. The greenish gas draped the room heavily but Markel held his breath and lay on his stomach, crawling for one of the lower lockers. The air was always better close to the floor, in case he had to breathe before he got to the lockers. He figured he was going to have to. He couldn't see the lockers from here. The vent opened into the middle of the room and the lockers were along the sides.

 

Then his hand, outstretched to help him swim-crawl through the miasma, touched something soft and fleshy-warm. He heaved himself up so his eyes were level with his hand. Annella! Annella Carter lay there, knocked out by the gas but still breathing, though very shallowly. And as he drew closer, wondering how on earth he would manage to hold his breath one more second, he saw that she held a gas mask in her outstretched hand. Her other hand, holding two more masks, lay near an open locker door. He knew at once that she had grabbed the masks to get them to him and the others in the ventilation system, but had already breathed too much gas. It had knocked her out before she could get her own mask on.

 

He fitted a mask over his face, then put one on her. After he got masks to Johnny and some of the others, they could clear the ship of this gas and work to wake her up, if the mask didn't do the trick. But right now he had to try to save the others. Carrying as many masks as he could hold, he ducked out into the passage and down the next one which led to the computation/navigation center.

 

He saw no more bodies, living or dead. The door to the locker area was concealed behind some pipes, so the enemy had missed it-and Annella-when they boarded. He wished he knew what had gone on while they were in hiding. Really, he'd have to talk to Johnny about rigging the vents with visual surveillance equipment in the future. Maybe bunks and hot and cold running water and battery powered lights, too. He grinned at his own wild ideas.

 

Tapping on the vent, he waited until it was pulled open and shoved a mask up at Johnny, who took it, then reached back for the other masks. The vent closed again-Markel assumed everybody was masking up. Johnny and other masked shipmates finally began dropping through the ceiling. Markel directed them to the lockers, to gather more masks for their remaining shipmates in the vents.

 

All of this was done in eerie green silence. The only sounds on the ship were clanking chain sounds of opening and closing locks, seals, and hatches, and the soft sound of Markel s shipmates' phantomlike movements-or maybe elflike movements, in the case of some of the smaller kids.

 

Market himself made for the main hatch, warily, laser cannon in hand, alert for any intruders who had remained behind. But none had. Nor had they left behind any of his other friends. The gas was even thicker outside the ship than it was inside. He closed the hatch behind him and went to search for the ventilation control of the docking bay. He didn't locate it, but he did find the pressurized transparent control shed. This was not full of the gas. Once inside, he was able to remove his mask as he studied the controls, finding by trial and error the panel that opened the overhead portal that allowed ships to take off and to dock.

 

This he opened. The green gas was sucked into the vaccuum of space. When all tinge of green was gone, he closed the portal once more and adjusted the oxygen, pressurization, and ventilation fans. The air in the bay was soon breathable. He returned to the ship, opened the hatch, and allowed the bays vented fans to pull the gas from the interior of the Haven. Johnny Greene called softly from the open hatch. "Rocky used the healing horn to help Annella. She'll be grand now."

 

"Fine. Nobody's tried to kill me for at least ten minutes. I don't think much of anybody's left here."

 

"Good. Then maybe we should take advantage of that hospitality the general offered."

 

With Johnny's help, Markel raided the airlock adjoining the bay, and two of the adjacent, unattended rooms. With the general and his troops gone, the place was virtually deserted. Johnny found station security headquarters, and took out the guard. There was only one. He had been watching reruns of the Haven's, capture. For a few mesmerizing moments, Johnny and Markel stood over the body of their unconscious captive and watched first Nadhari Kando, then their shipmates, being gassed and dragged or carried aboard the general's flagship, now painted to look like a Federation Forces vessel. So that's what those footsteps had meant. Thoroughly angry now, Markel and company had disabled the monitors and raided the unattended areas of the base. They took all the weapons and food they could find, and-as an afterthought on Johnnys part-any uniforms they found lying around. They also removed all of the pressure suits from the lock. Johnny downloaded a copy of the flagship's course from the computer in the security room. The security room guard was still unconscious, so they tied him up and took him along.

 

It had taken them three trips back and forth to the Haven and about forty-five minutes to accomplish all this, before Markel, loaded with the last of the booty, returned to the Haven. Johnny, wearing one of the purloined pressure suits, opened the canopy and boarded the Haven through the air lock. Once they were well away from the generals compound, Johnny adjusted their course to follow that of the general's flagship.

 

Becker had never felt awe for anyone except his dad in his whole life until he met Aari, but his respect for the maimed Linyaari grew on the journey from the old Linyaari home to the new one. Aari knew exactly how to get there. In spite of having endured tortures that would drive anyone else insane, he had kept the memory of the Linyaari escape route, drummed into him since boyhood, not only intact, but also secret from the Khieevi. He tidied up the Condor, which was, thanks to Kisia Manjari, almost vacant. Becker still had the money she'd paid him back on Kezdet, money that had nearly emptied his ship. Come to think of it, Becker was almost willing to bet Kisia's credits were somehow fraudulent. He didn't trust anything about that venomous little psycho.

 

After cleaning the holds, Aari had reverently placed each Linyaari skeleton, from the most recent one of his brother, to the most ancient fragments, side by side throughout the ship. Becker helped him until Aari saw the android. Both men realized just how useful that android could be in the current situation. The horn would not work on its electronics, which Becker had already mostly repaired, but did a great job on shredded plastiskin. Soon the reprogrammed, aesthetically pleasing, and now very helpful KEN640 was back in business as official assistant keeper of the Condor's charnel holds. With KEN640 s help, every skeleton was loaded aboard the Condor's holds. Aari slept there every night among the bones of his ancestors.

 

Away from those holds, Aari had a tougher time talking to Becker. He was trying hard to pick up Standard and Becker was trying hard to pick up Linyaari, and Roadkill wasn't interested in speaking anything except Cat. Which meant that Aari and Becker indulged in a lot of communication through body language and charades. But that was more of an exchange than Becker usually had with the cat. Becker was enjoying the trip and the company.

 

RK apparently felt the same way. He showed Aari the sort of kitty cat affection he had not thus far deemed appropriate to bestow upon Becker. He sat on Aari's lap and took to sleeping beside him in the Linyaari graveyard. The KEN unit came in handy for changing the litter box. He was not the brainiest droid in the universe, but he was rehabilitated, thanks to Becker's new programs, and no longer said things like, "Do you wish me to tear his arm from his socket now, or would you prefer I punch out one eye in a painful and maiming, yet not lifethreatening, manner, Lady Kisia?" It had taken Aari and Becker both a lot more work to get KEN640 over some of these socially unacceptable utterances. These guys might be computers on feet and have opposable thumbs, but the computer was only there to operate the feet and thumbs in a useful way. KEN'S processor was an idiot compared to, say, the ship's computer.

 

KEN was also somebody who could play gin rummy with Becker when Aari was feeling antisocial, which happened fairly often. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why a guy who'd been left behind by his people, who felt he'd failed to take care of his brother who died while the guy himself was being slowly tortured to death by alien invaders who were also destroying his home world-why a guy like that might need a little down time once in a while. And Becker was a rocket scientist, albeit an idiosyncratically privately tutored and self-taught one.

 

Aari didn't spend all of his unsocial time in pity-party mode, however. His Standard improved by leaps and bounds as he watched the store of ancient films and clips stored in the ship's computer, as well as read the hard copy books.

 

"Did you see this one, Joh?" he asked, pronouncing Becker's first name with a sort of a whuff through his nostrils. Aari was brandishing the How to Care for Your Kittycat book. Becker noticed that RK for once was not clinging to the Linyaari like a fuzzy leech.

 

"Yeah. Skip the part on interfering in a feline's sex life. I tried it and RK was not amused. That cat on a bad fur day could give those Khieevi bugs a run for their money."

 

Aari looked puzzled and retreated to the now-cleared-of debris berth in the newly organized crew's quarters to pursue the cat care trends of several hundred years ago.

 

Becker hardly recognized the Condor. The KEN unit had tidied up the ship so that things were stored and catalogued and there was actually room to move around. Becker wasn't at all sure he liked it. The other way had been sort of cozy.

 

After a while he found that having two other-well, one and a half other-people on board was distracting, so he had the KEN unit turn itself off between bouts of housekeeping. And Aari was busy studying or brooding (or both) a lot of the time, so that wasn't too much of a problem. Becker's real adjustment was that RK was spending most of his time with Aari and Becker missed the onery feline.

 

He was thinking that he had been a real sucker to think that because the cat tried to rescue him from Kisia and her men that it meant the animal harbored any affection for him. Why, he showed his fuzzy puny side more to Khetala on first acquaintance, or to this Aari guy, than he ever did to Becker. As Becker was thinking this, he felt a familiar pain in his thigh and looked down to see RK sitting there, switching his tail back and forth, and looking expectantly up at Becker.

 

As soon as Becker paid attention, the cat sprang up to his shoulder, lay against his neck and purred with a noise that rivaled that of the rustiest rattletrap engine of an outmoded junker ship. "Aw, RK. I didn't know you cared."

 

RK backed down and proceeded to rub his face all over Becker's, marking him in one of the less objectionable ways the cat had of performing that task. And it occurred to Becker that he really hadn't previously actually solicited the cat's actual affection-theirs had been a more rough and ready relationship. Man-to-man or cat-to-cat as it were, depending on the viewpoint. Of course Roadkill loved him. Otherwise the cat would have found himself new quarters the first time the Condor docked.

 

Becker suddenly realized he was also thinking a lot like a cat and he looked at RK suspiciously. The cat, whose fur was lightly coated with white dust from the Linyaari boneyard, blinked back at him three times and intensified the purr.

 

Thereafter on the journey, the cat spent a little more time on the bridge and after a while so did Aari, asking Becker questions about the things he was learning and trying out words on him, getting his accent corrected. Becker, in return, tried to learn Linyaari words and phrases. The little box, a LAANYE in Linyaari, took only a bit of tampering with on Becker's part, with the technical assistance of Aari, to translate in both directions.

 

Meanwhile, they came within shouting distance of narhiiVhiliinyar. "Shall I hail them or will they be less freaked out if you do it?" Becker asked Aari. "My accent isn't as good as it should be yet."

 

"I will speak if only you will not turn on the visual projector," Aari said. He had stayed with the bones for days on end the first time he got a look at himself in Becker's shaving mirror. "I do not wish to frighten my people."

 

He did anyway.

 

Becker got his first visual of a Linyaari female when the communications officer, a white-skinned, white-haired girl with a pretty shiny spiraled horn growing out of her forehead, said, "Please adjust your visual transmission. Condor. We are not receiving you."

 

"This is Aari of Clan Nyaarya, narhii-Vhiliinyar port," Aari repeated. "Our visual projector is temporarily out of service. Request permission to land."

 

There was silence, while the communications officer presumably conferred with someone else, and then her skeptical voice said, "Aari of Clan Nyaarya was lost to us during the evacuation of Vhiliinyar prior to the Khieevi attack. Please adjust your transmission and properly identify yourself."

 

Aari's voice was tight as he said, "I have been imprisoned on Vhiliinyar by the Khieevi but escaped them, and have been rescued by the captain and crew of the Condor. I have recovered the bones of our forebears from the sacred cemetery, to save them from plundering and bring them back to their children for reinterment. Now please give us permission to land so that I may rejoin my family."

 

"Really?'"The communications officer forgot to use the official language and lapsed into vernacular Linyaari. "You actually escaped the Khieevi after they captured you? I'll have to apply for official permission but-oh, welcome home, Aari! Everyone 'will be so happy to see you!"

 

By the time she came back on screen, the Condor's fuel supply was running dangerously low.

 

The communications officer's face was closed again as she said, "Aari, the ship may land long enough for you to meet a greeting committee who validate your identity, but all nonLinyaari personnel aboard the vessel must remain aboard and the vessel itself must depart immediately after you have been identified."

 

"Tell her we're out of fuel," Becker said.

 

"The Condor will need to refuel," Aari said.

 

"Permission denied," the communications officer said.

 

"Gimme that thing," Becker said, and took the portable transmitter from Aari. "Look, lady, I know your people have been through a lot," he said in the best Linyaari he could muster. "Aari explained all that to me. But he's been through whatever you people use for hell himself, and my crew and I went through a lot to get him here. The least you could do is have the common courtesy not to make us take off again without enough fuel to get to the next stop."

 

Another long silence before she returned to say, "Permission to land granted. Prepare to be boarded upon docking."

 

The Condor was forced to land in a field outside the regular port, as all of the docking bays were hollowed into deep ovals, the wrong shape for the ship's alien tail. Becker sent down the robolift. He was busy talking to Aari and didn't notice RK scooting out down the emergency cat flap chute. The cat depressed the exit mechanism himself and landed neatly on the deck of the lift, thereby forming his own greeting committee.

 

Aboard the Condor, Aari was letting Becker know that he was just as glad the inspection committee was going to come aboard instead of the other way around. He was seemingly as afraid to meet his people again as he had ever been of the Khieevi.

 

Becker turned on the outside visual and saw Roadkill being lowered with the robolift. Four of the white unicorn people, three females and one male, and two brown male ones plus one small female spotty one, stood below watching as the cat joined them. The little spotted one clapped her hands but was held by one of the white females, while another gently reached onto the lift to receive RK, who jumped up to meet her. While the women were occupied, the white male and the two brown ones climbed onto the lift. They did not look happy about it.

 

In the middle of the night, Thariinye appeared in the flap of Grandam's pavilion, insisting that Grandam, Acorna, and Maati all rise, dress for a long walk, and hurry with him to viizaar's pavilion immediately.

 

When they got there, VHzaar Liriili's eyes showed white all around the pupils, and Acorna could smell her fear, strong and goatishly acrid.

 

Grandam asked, "What in the name of the Ancestors is wrong?" None of them asked why the problem couldn't wait until morning.

 

"An alien ship is entering our atmosphere," Liriili told them. "It refuses to transmit visuals, but the person who initially contacted us claims to be Maati's brother Aari, who was missing at the time of the evacuation along with Maati's other brother, Laarye. You know as well as I do, Grandam, that it's absolutely inconceivable that anyone escaped the Khieevi or the destruction of the planet."

 

Acorna cleared her throat. "I escaped."

 

"What?" Liriili asked and Acorna read her clearly to mean, "How dare you interrupt?"

 

"Everyone presumed all were lost when my parents' ship exploded, but I escaped. Perhaps Maati's brother did, too."

 

Maati, who had never known her brother, glanced agitatedly from one of the adults to the other, her sleepiness completely overcome by the excitement.

 

"I believe it is a trick," Liriili said.

 

"How can that be?" Grandam asked. "No one knows of Aari and Laarye except a few of us."

 

Liriili shook her head violently. "Everyone we have sent into space has disappeared without so much as a hailing," she said. "I can't help but believe they have come to harm. If they haven't actually fallen into the hands of the Khieevi, then they've run afoul of some other race, one that seeks to know us. Our people may have been interrogated for anything that would get the captors past our defenses."

 

"Yes," said Grandam. "That may be true. But it may also be true that somehow Aari has found his way home. Though I can't think how."

 

"In an alien vessel with a very bad-tempered alien with an atrocious Linyaari accent, according to Saari, the duty officer at the space port. Here is a tape of the transmission."

 

She played it for them.

 

"That's a human!" Acorna said.

 

Liriili glowered at her. "I thought that might be so. One of your people. Who is it?"

 

"How should I know?" Acorna asked. "It doesn't sound like any of my friends."

 

"It doesn't?" Liriili was surprised. Acorna was a little amused in spite of herself. The viizaar sounded like the old joke that -went, "Hi, I'm Mirajik. I'm from Mars." "Hi, I'm Sarah from Earth Prime." "Earth Prime? Oh, say, I have a friend from there. Do you know John Smith?" The vllzaar seemed incredulous that since Acorna knew some humans they would not be the same ones currently on the "doorstep" of narhiiVhiliinyar.

 

"No," Acorna said, trying to keep both the amusement and her own excitement out of her voice. It would be good to hear Standard spoken again. "But if you need an interpreter, I'll be glad to help in any way I can."

 

"Very good of you, Khornya," Grandam said. "I'm sure that's why the viixaar included you in this group. And I am here as the elder and Maati because if this is indeed Aari in our midst, she should be there to greet her brother. And Thariinye?" The last was a question aimed at Liriili.

 

"Thariinye also speaks the tongue of Khornyas adopted people and can serve as a second interpreter."

 

Acorna made a noise of protest. What Liriili meant was that Thariinye was supposed to report if she was translating truthfully or not.

 

"I am keeping this party small," the viizaar continued. "A couple of the other young men will accompany us but there is no need for everyone to know about this until we have determined the nature of the intrusion. I have asked my vice-vit.zaar to be prepared to evacuate the city in the event that we are being invaded again, however. I can only hope we can prepare for our escape in time."

 

"How about the ships Khornya and I saw the other day, Liriili?" Thariinye asked. "I am a qualified pilot. I could certainly fly any of them. And I can organize a crew among the elders who have retired from active duty."

 

"I hope you will not be called upon to try, but it is a noble thought," Liriili said.

 

"Before we go running off in all directions, I think we'd better see what's coming our 'way," Grandam said sensibly. "There's no need to alarm the Ancestors yet. Besides, even in an emergency, the Ancestors move at a stately pace."

 

"Yes," Thariinye agreed. "So stately a pace that a full invasion could wipe everyone out before we arrived at the spaceport."

 

Liriili, with a slight nod to acknowledge the jest-and that only because it came from Thariinye, Acorna thought inclined her head in agreement and they set out, the vllzaar, Grandam, Thariinye, Maati, and two young males, presumably as a security presence.

 

Watching the ship land, Acorna relaxed. The tail looked Federation, but that was a Mythenan toxic waste chute if she ever saw one sticking out the bottom, and the hull itself was composed of a strange patchwork of metals, not to mention the somewhat eccentric structural design of the nose. Where the hatch should have been was what looked like a pocket of some sort. As the ship landed, it caused the ground to quake. The engine sounded as if it was about to fall to pieces. (That is no battleship, Liriili,) she said with a smile, in thought-talk. She was getting much better at it, fortunately, since verbalizations would have been drowned out in the roar of the landing. (It is not any one sort of ship at all. It looks like a junker to me.)

 

(The alien aboard claims that it is out of fuel,) Liriili replied. (He demands that we refuel it.)

 

(I'd believe him,) Acorna said. (That vessel looks like it H needs all the help it can get.)

 

(It could be a trick,) Thariinye said. (To lull us into complacency.)

 

(It's working for me,) Grandam said. (And-does no one else feel it? I have a definite impression of a Linyaari aboard.)

 

(I felt that, too,) Liriili said. (But there is something wrong about it. Something terribly wrong.)

 

The noise stopped and another series of sounds began, with first a thunk, then a whoosh, and then, slowly, the hydraulic hum of a platform being lowered out of the Mytherian toxic waste chute.

 

Suddenly, Maati clapped her hands and pointed. "Oh, look!" she cried aloud. "Look at the furry little alien! He must have come so far in that big old ship! I'll bet he's hungry, as well as needing fuel." She ran over to a patch of fairly healthy looking grass and pulled it up, along with some purple flowers Acorna had learned were very tasty.

 

Tears formed in Grandam's eyes and her voice choked a little as she said, "The little alien reminds me of a pahaantiyir." Acorna caught a thought-picture of a furry cat-like being.

 

"It does, doesn't it?" Liriili asked, sounding teary herself. "I had the dearest little pahaantiyir when I was at home, but it ran away just before the evacuation and I couldn't find it in time."

 

Maati was reaching forward, coaxing the "alien" with her bundle of succulent grasses and flowers. "You'll find these delicious, alien entity," she said politely.

 

"I doubt it," Acorna said. "That looks to me very much like a Makahomian Temple Cat. They are carnivores, I believe."

 

The cat gave her an indignant look and daintily stepped forward to sniff the flowers, then began to eat one. Just one. All of the Linyaari watched it with awe. It sat back on its haunches, surveyed its audience complacently, and began to wash.

 

Acorna reached over and lifted the cat into her arms, then handed him over to Maati. The youngling squealed with delight as the creature snuggled against her neck and then settled into purring.

 

"The alien likes me!" Maati said