"And this time you've never heard of Delszaki Li and House Harakamian. When I can think what they'd hold Hafiz up for, much less Mr. Li, my heart fails me."

 

"You've made a very good point."

 

The AcaSeckl shivered, if a metal ship can be said to do such a thing, as she was locked into place aboard their captor.

 

"While I can't be a pet, Calum, I can be a Didi," she said, and was off down the corridor, shouting over one shoulder, "You be the pet, this time, Calum. Just bright enough to speak when spoken to."

 

He reviewed that in his mind as he felt other things happening to ?????????????, like the clang of metal against the main hatch. They were unlikely to be able to break through, but what if they decided to blow or shoot the hatch off? Better to surrender and maintain the ship intact. He quickly keyed in a code and turned off the system with the special switch he himself had installed. Let 'em try to break that, he thought with some satisfaction.

 

Then he switched on the exterior speakers. "Wait a damned minute, willya?" He flipped off the security lock on the hatch. Anyone could open it now from outside. "I'm coming. I'm coming. Doan like no one messing up the ship. My Didi'll get back at me if'n you do."

 

He was at the hatch when the first of the Starfarers showed up, and he did not like the look on this surly bunch of musclebounds at all.

 

"Hey, boys, take it easy. The Didi's coming." He waved them on in as if he weren't the least bit impressed by their menacing appearance.

 

The leader backhanded him with such efficiency that he careened from side to side of the narrow passageway before falling in an embarrassing heap to the deck.

 

"Really!" came the sultry remonstrance from an Acorna Calum didn't recognize. He blinked, as much to clear the shock of that backhanded blow as to make sure his eyes still functioned. "Was that necessary? Poor Calum doesn't have many brains anyway, and the ones he's got don't need to be rattled. He'll do whatever you tell him anyway. He's been trained to."

 

The attention of the heavies was immediately focused on the vision in black. Calum vaguely remembered Judit, Mercy, and Acorna giggling over some of the outfits that had been concocted to either emphasize or hide her horn. This outfit was not only skintight, but the high collar disguised the long fall of Acorna's silvery mane. It was cleverly attached to the ravishing black hat which sat at a jaunty angle on Acorna's head. The peaked front completely hid the horn and almost covered her right eye.

 

"Let me introduce myself: Badini, the Didi ofKezdets best..." she paused, her voice heavy with significance, ". . . establishment. You wouldn't happen to have any children you consider excess baggage, would you? They certainly didn't down there." She pointed a contemptuous gloved hand down, indicating Rushima, which they had so obviously just left. Acorna's gloves effectively disguised the differences in her hands, and her cloven hooves were hidden within the apparently stack-soled boots just visible under her long pantaloons.

 

"What's a Didi?"

 

A disembodied voice echoed outside. "Bring them aboard. I want to question them if they've been on Rushima," said a woman's voice.

 

"Anything you say," drawled Acorna's imitation Didi Badini in what Calum decided was an excellent imitation of the real bonk-shop owner's voice.

 

With an elegant swaying step, Acorna the "Didi" made her way past the first of the guards, deliberately brushing against him in such an enticing fashion that Calum hoped she wasn't overdoing her role.

 

"I suppose you'd better come, too," she said, deigning to notice Calum just before she went through the hatch. She put lust the right inflection in her voice to suggest to anyone listening that Calum was of no importance whatever.

 

Of such little importance, in fact, that when he had been given the most cursory glance by the hard-faced woman standing slightly ahead of two obvious henchmen, he was immediately hauled away, probably by the man who had backhanded him. As his collar was tightly held by whoever kept pushing him forward, he couldn't be sure. But he was pushed down a few miles of antigrav tubes to the bowels of the enormous spaceship and shoved into a bare cell. It was equipped with two slabs of some plastic, strapped up against opposing walls, a sanitary appliance, and that was all. Not even a water supply.

 

"Nor any Drop to Drink," he murmured, then reminded himself that this cell was likely bugged. So he released the fastening on one slab and sat down on it. And began to worry about Acorna. Could she pull off her fancy-dress persona? And what good would it do? These people were the type who'd think nothing of spacing superfluous bodies. He was suddenly not so happy to have been cast in the role of "expendably unimportant."

 

"WHERE did you say you came from?" asked one of the three facing her.

 

"Kezdet," Acorna promptly replied. "I'm looking for . . . replacements."

 

"Replacements for what?" the woman asked, but the first man laughed.

 

"Dirtsiders need certain types of entertainment I'm sure this woman provides, Nueva."

 

"Oh. And you had no luck on Rushima?" This seemed to amuse the woman.

 

Acorna snorted contemptuously. "If it isn't flooded out, its desert or burned out. Not what I was toFd to expect," Acorna said indignantly. "No one would even come out to speak to us, no matter where we landed. Ruined one outfit in the wet, and another has sand just driven into the seams." She let her voice flatten with annoyance. "Wasted time and fuel. As I said, I'm Didi Badini. ..." She cocked her head, as if she expected to be informed of her interrogator's name.

 

"Welcome to the Haven, Didi Badini. I am Captain Nueva of the Starfarers."

 

"You wouldn't happen to have a few excess . . . children, or females ... or even that sort of male type ... I could relieve you of?" Acorna said.

 

"We've . . . sort of ... relieved ourselves of the excess."

 

That was when Acorna realized she and Calum were in big trouble. Maybe she should have remained Acorna DelszakiHarakamian, and worth a sizable ransom.

 

"Really," she replied as if amused at such a mutual circumstance, "then, if you'll just return my . . . my little friend, we'll be on our way. I really do need to find a few replacements, you know. Tastes get jaded so quickly."

 

Nueva made a motion, and two of the guards behind her grabbed Acorna by the arms. She could have thrown them off easily enough, being far stronger than she looked, but unless she also had Calum, displaying any of her discreetly concealed abilities was futile and possibly dangerous to them both. As she was turned and taken off in the direction Calum had been hauled, she saw that the AcaDeckl was tightly held by deck clamps fore and aft.

 

"Let's see how quickly your tastes jade," Nueva said, with an unpleasant laugh.

 

Over her shoulder, Acorna saw Nueva signal a waiting group of men and women, carrying various kinds of testing equipment and tools, to board the ship.

 

Acorna didn't think that Calum would have forgotten to disable the AcaSecki before he'd opened the hatch. Of course, a personality like Nueva-and she made Kisia Manjari seem angelic in comparison -would have ways of extracting the information she -wanted.

 

Nor was she, as she had half hoped, flung into the same cell as her guardian. Five of the doors on the narrow aisle she was pushed to were blue with force-field lights. So another timeconsuming puzzle would keep her from being totally jaded. Insane, maybe, but not jaded. Did they fill the cells in order? Or had Calum "een pushed into the first empty one . . . since this Nueva person had boasted of relieving herself of excess personnel?   After using the sanitary appliance, -with a deft but concealing shift of her pantaloons, Acorna unfastened one of the two slabs and lay down on it. She also decided to keep in character. She didn't doubt for a moment that anything she said would be monitored. So why had they separated her from Calum? Two people in the same fix would certainly exchange information. Oh, dear, perhaps she had laid it on a bit thick that Calum was useless. At that moment she would have given anything to be comforted by her "uncle."

 

She was roused from a restless sleep by a hissing noise and, as she lay prone on the comfortless slab, her face was turned to the metal ceiling . . . and the open vent. A thin, mournful face •was framed within the vent. A grubby thin finger was placed across the lips of a tear-stained and very dirty face. But Acorna was not in a mood to quibble; she welcomed any friendly contact right then.

 

The child slowly let a rope down through the opening. She stood on the slab, thinking to assist by being closer to the vent. But instead the kid made violent gestures for her to refasten the slab to the wall.

 

As if she'd never been there. Good thinking. There seemed to be just enough rope to reach her outstretched hands.

 

If this if all the've got, we'll never reach Calum even with the slab down, she thought.

 

She heard a soft, interrogative "Mmm?" from above, as if her rescuer was afraid to say out loud, "Come on, what are you waiting for?" Somewhat dubiously, Acorna gave a tentative pull on the rope. The thin youngster who was her unexpected savior couldn't have enough muscle to pull her up, light as she was. But he had tied the rope to something reassuringly secure. Hand over hand, she pulled herself up, grasping his hand as she reached the frame and angled her shoulders to the diagonal of the vent. Despite that, she scraped her arms badly getting through.

 

There was only the light from the narrow vent to see with. It reflected off a tube wall that wasn't very big, so she had to sort of slither the rest of her body out of the cell. Her rescuer quietly replaced the vent grill, screwed the fasteners back in, and began to re-coil his rope. Once more he put his finger to his lips, then began to wriggle along the tube, looking back once to indicate she was to follow.

 

Fortunately, Acorna's gown was made of a fabric much more durable than it looked, but the fashionable boots that hid her oddly shaped feet were very clumsy and might make enough noise to be heard. How she finally got them off she never knew because it involved contortions of her lithe body she'd never had to make before, even in her self-defense exercises. Lying on her back, she sort of inched her feet up to where she could grab the boots and untie the laces. She would have loved to abandon them right there, but it seemed unwise to leave this proof of her escape route. Turning back on her stomach, she managed to tie the boots around her waist to keep them from hitting the tube walls. "Good idea," her rescuer approved in a bare thread of a whisper. After that they made better, and much quieter, progress along the tube. She wondered once or twice if her blood pounded more loudly than her body slithered, but no alarm was sounded.

 

She did sneak a peek through the other vents, but Calum was not in any of the three cells she could see into. The apathy of the detainees did nothing to reassure her about his safety.

 

They came to an intersecting tube, and the boy swung his body expertly to the left and wriggled down it. How long she followed him in this snakelike fashion Acorna had no idea, but suddenly they were in a much wider place-wider by comparison, at least-and she could sit without hitting her head on the ceiling. She was breathless and dry-mouthed from all her exertion.

 

"It's safe enough here. We can talk now," her savior said, but his voice was only a faintly raised whisper, warning her that their "safety" was only relative.

 

"What about Calum?" she whispered back.

 

"Who?"

 

"My . . . pilot."

 

The boy shook his head. "Must have been held in another area. I didn't see anybody but you and some of our own people."   Acorna's heart sank at this information, but she tried to put a brave face on it. "We must search for him," she said. "But first, I should thank you for rescuing me. I am Acorna. ..." She let her voice trail off as she could not decide how else to identify herself. Was it safe to tell this unknown rescuer of her connection with the houses of Harakamian and Li? It might be better to find out a little more about him first.

 

"I'm Market Illart. My father . . ." He gulped. "They ... the ones who caught you . . . they're not Starfarers, not really. They were refugees we were helping out, and then that Nueva had a coup and spaced practic'ly all of the First Gen. I couldn't do anything, they'd locked the cabins. I couldn't do anything," he repeated, his voice rising dangerously.

 

"No, of course you could not," Acorna said at once, though she was not at all clear on the situation-except that her rescuer, having shed his self-confident air, was clearly only a boy, a lost youngling in need of comfort. Despite, or perhaps because of, her sympathetic reassurance, Markel suddenly crumpled into sobs, even though he tried very hard to suppress them.

 

Immediately Acorna transferred herself to his side of their refuge and pulled him into her arms. Despite the hat, which had somehow remained in place through all her recent gyrations, she could touch his head with her concealed horn, to help relieve his anguish. The hands that he held to his face to muffle his sobs were bruised and bloodied as well as filthy. She could, and did, heal them. If he was to be of any further assistance to her, he needed to be whole. She left the dirt, having no water anyhow to clean him up. That reminded her of her own thirst.

 

"I'm terribly sorry, my dear," she said, hoping that he could feel the sympathy and reassurance she longed to give him. "How long ago did this happen?"

 

"Days, weeks, months it could be. It ... it isn't easy to keep track of time up here." His voice wobbled dangerously.

 

"No, it certainly wouldn't be," Acorna agreed at once, "and I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for rescuing me."

 

"I had to, if I could. I'll do anything I can to get back at them for my father." He pressed his lips together as if holding back another outburst of unmanly sobs. "And they're going to make you tell them how they can get control of that ship of yours. It's a beauty."

 

"How would you know that? "

 

Markel's eyes lit up, and for a moment he seemed to have put aside his grief and his too-adult mannerisms, to be a normal cocky teenager enjoying a chance to boast of his expertise. "Oh, I know every tube and conduit in this ship. I can go anywhere, and I can even listen in on their corns. They think they're so smart. Well, they're not all THAT smart. I even know where they came from. They got on board the Haven by pretending to be Palomellese political refugees, but what really happened was Palomella decided to dump its worst criminals and scarnmed us into taking them on. That Nueva was running an extortion racket on Palomella, and now she's trying the same thing on the Haven. If only I'd warned Dad before-" He broke off and swallowed hard.

 

Acorna realized he was fighting back a sob, but the gesture still made her thirsty. She tried to moisten her mouth by running her tongue over the tissue, but she really needed some water. She thought rather wistfully of all the water they had so casually left behind.

 

"You wouldn't possibly have access to some water, would you?"

 

"Ha! I have access to anything I want," Markel said. "For all the good it does ..."

 

Acorna sensed that he needed bolstering up, needed to think more about what he could do and less about the past that he could not change.

 

"I'm very thirsty," she said wistfully. "And, when I think of the floods there were down on Rushima. ..."

 

He reached behind his back and pulled out a water bottle, complete with nipple, the kind used for free-fall supplies.

 

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Acorna said, and there was no need to feign pleasure for Markel's sake. She enjoyed a long, luxurious drink of the water; it tasted stale and metallic, and she would have liked to purify it before drinking, but she didn't want to insult the boy.   "Go ahead," Markel urged when she paused after that first restorative drink. You can have all of it," he added with a casual flick of his ringers. "I've got more whenever you need it. Are you hungry?"

 

"Why, I am. Don't tell me you can find food, too! Is there anything you don't know about this ship?" She exaggerated her admiring tone slightly and saw the praise work on Markel as the water had done on her, restoring the parched tissues of his soul. "Only ..." she thought to warn him before he made promises he wouldn't be able to keep, "... I cannot eat meat; only grains and vegetables."

 

Markel looked slightly relieved at this statement. "That's as well because it's much easier to snitch plants than anything else, like cooked food. Finish your drink. We're not far from the 'ponies."

 

Acorna's stomach made a joyful noise she was certain would echo down the tubes, but Markel had already turned to lead her to food. She slipped the bottle into one other boots-as long as she had to drag these things along, at least they could be useful as carriers. The laces were long . . . maybe if she could add them to Markel's rope, they'd be long enough to reach Calum.

 

Over the other reeks of the ship, Acorna smelled vegetation: lots and lots of different kinds of vegetation, and the slightly chemical smell that her sensitive nostrils could identify as 'ponic nutrients. She wondered wistfully if the seedling chard she had planted on the Aca^ecki would ever leaf for her.

 

"Be very quiet now," Markel said, once again more mouthing words than actually speaking, as he deftly inserted a tool and withdrew the fasteners of a much larger grill.

 

The smells were almost unbearably enticing to Acorna, but she waited on his signal to enter after he had done a preliminary prowl round on hands and knees. The scent of chard drew her like a magnet, and it was fortunate indeed that it was nearer to her than the root vegetables he was deftly, and cleverly, harvesting. She noticed that he was careful to take only the small ones that were likely to be culled anyway. He took carrots and turnips and potatoes and several other brightly colored things that she did not recognize. Hybrids, probably. She  carefully augmented his selection with chard leaves, then some lettuces, and one head of cabbage, stuffing what she could into her other boot. She was glad she hadn't been wearing the boots for very long before using them as food and water carriers.

 

The surreptitious harvest didn't take long. Both Markel and Acorna had nimble hands and were agile on their hands and knees. They gathered up their booty and retreated to the tube, and Markel refastened the grill behind them. He beckoned for her to follow him some distance away from the 'ponies unit before he signaled her to stop and start eating. Which was perfectly understandable, for carrot chomping could be heard if one was listening for it. Even, perhaps, if one was not, because she was chewing as fast as she could. She took chard next, then experimented with the dark red thing he handed her, and that was good, too. Well, almost anything would have tasted good to her at that point.

 

After those sorely needed restorative mouthfuls Acorna thought again of Calum. He, too, would be hungry and thirsty. If only she knew where he was being held!

 

She tapped Markel's shoulder as he was chewing away at a raw potato and indicated she wanted to speak. He nodded but cautioned her -with a finger across his lips to speak quietly.

 

"My friend will have no food or water. If only you could figure out where he is being kept, could we get to him with something to eat and drink?"

 

Markel considered and finally gave a sharp nod. "He'll be in the secure area," he whispered, "where they keep the important prisoners."

 

Acorna's heart sank. "I tried to make them believe he knew nothing."

 

"Didn't work," Market told her, "or they'd've tossed him in the holding cells like they did you. It'll be a lot harder to sneak into the secure cells-but you're right, we gotta try. Even if we can't break him out-and I ain't promising, those cells are a lot tougher-we can prob'ly slip him a water bottle and some greens. He'll need it, too! Sometimes they 'forget' to feed the folks in detention. I hate it," he whispered. "I keep thinking, what if somebody dies, and I could have saved him . . . but some of the ones they throw in the cells are Palomellese. If they found out I was free, they might sell me out to gain favor with Nueva."

 

Acorna's heart ached at the decisions that had been forced on the boy, decisions that would have been heartbreaking for a mature adult. "Well, I can assure you that neither Calum nor I will sell you out - no matter what happens!"

 

Balaklire, Unified Federation Date 33.05.17

 

Once she got over her shock at being surrounded By unicorn-people instead of facing just one, Karina realized that she might really be onto something here. The entire rest of the populated galaxy thought that Acorna was the only one of her kind. But here were four more of the unicorn-people-and she was the one who had been Chosen to act as their guide and interpreter! Once it had been established, with a great deal of pointing and head tossing and shrugging and mane twitching, that none of the four around her was Acorna, Karina was able to guess that they were looking for Acorna. It was strange, the way their meaning seemed to come into her mind if she just let them say their strange nasal words and didn't try to understand. The trick seemed to be not to think about it, to convince the busy part of your head that you were actually thinking about something else and Just sort of accidentally overhearing their conversation.

 

In the first minutes on the unicorn-people's spacecraft, Karina found that trick quite easy to pull off. Everything was so different, so ... magical? Or just alien? She couldn't decide. The soft, flowing draperies they wore, the glowing translucent horns on their foreheads, the couches where they reclined so gracefully, even the gentle radiance that lit the interior of the spacecraft all spoke to her of a Higher World guided by thought and love, the Upper Realm she had so long been seeking to contact. But when one of them went through a slitted opening into another part of the spacecraft, she saw a board covered with twinkling dials and long projecting levers that had not been made for any human fingers to manipulate. That made her nervous, so she decided not to think about it but to concentrate on boosting her psychic awareness so that she could communicate better on a pure and spiritual level.

 

But every time she achieved the kind of calm that was supposed to bring connection with one's spirit totem and access to higher levels, she lost that sense of almost understanding what the unicorn-people were saying. It was most irritating and not at all what she would have expected.

 

(Do you have enough data from its thought-images to use the LAANYE yet, Melireenya?)

 

(Not quite, though I have learned that it is a she-creature.) (Had to be, with those engorged mammaries. Don't they hurt?) (Well, those could be the result of some kind of illness. They certainly don't look natural, do they? But her images are distinctly feminine . . . what I can read of them. You've noticed how weak her transmissions are? And every time I think we're communicating, something breaks it off and all I get is this image of a long, pointy crystal-see?)

 

(Maybe she's trying to tell us that they use something like that to amplify their naturally weak thoughts.)

 

(Good idea! I hadn't thought of that. Shall we make one?) (Might as well try it. If we have to build the data for the LAANYE by pointing our horns at things and listening to her grunt their names, it'll take forever.)

 

Something heavy and sharp-edged dropped into her lap and interrupted Karina's meditations and earnest efforts to establish communion on the spiritual plane.   "Hey!" she exclaimed, opening her eyes. "Be careful what you're tossing around, will you - Ohhh. ..." Her indignant comment died away into a long gasp of awe and wonder as she lifted the ten-inch, doubly terminated quartz crystal. "Now where did you get that, I wonder?"

 

(Well, that came through loud and clear. She doesn't like us dropping rocks in her lap.)

 

(She likes the rock, though. Look how she's holding it!) (Great, we can generate as many of those as we need from the spare-parts assembler. Maybe we can use them as trade items. Go on, now, get some more complete utterances from her. The LAANYE needs syntactic data as well as semantics, you know!)

 

(Barbarian! Can you say . . . shit, I've lost her again.)

 

Holding the quartz crystal, Karinawas deep in meditation, imagining the flow of energies that moved in a stream of golden light through the crystal, into her hands, through her body, and out to embrace the Guides around her. She imagined so effectively that she was completely unaware of the thought-images directed at her by Melireenya.

 

(We got a burst of transmission when we gave her that crystal. Maybe she wants another one.)

 

(Maybe we should just drop something heavy on her foot and see what she says.)

 

(Thariinye, when are you going to grow up?) After a bit of tinkering, the spare-parts assembler was able to produce not only quartz crystals but also a number of other crystalline mineral specimens. They started with the varieties of quartz, showering Karina (gently) with rose quartz, amethyst, and citrine; then, for variety, Thariinye adjusted the assembler to produce other silicates such as tourmaline and iolite, orthoclase and microcline. He was particularly proud of a large, tabular orthoclase with a bluish white sheen in two directions. Their biped seemed impressed by it as well.

 

(She likes the feldspar group. I got a lot of good data from what she said that time.)

 

(Of course! Look, she's wearing a feldspar; maybe that's her totem.)

 

So moonstone, labradorite, anorthite, and other feldspars dropped into Karina's open hands until she was all but buried in their silvery shimmer, and Melireenya turned the LAANYE settings from collection mode to analysis mode with a sigh of relief.

 

(That was a job and a half! These beings can't concentrate at all!)

 

(Oh, well, it's done now. Let's eat while it's analyzing, then we can put the LAANYE in sleep-teaching mode and in a half turn we should be able to talk to it, I mean her, with mouthnoises.)

 

(What do you suppose she eats?)

 

(I hope she likes sprouts.)

 

Karma wasn't the least bit unhappy to be offered a vegetarian meal. Although her hosts worried back and forth at each other about the poor variety of foodstuffs and the drab flavor of shipgrown fruits and greens, Karina found the meal, at least, to be everything she would have imagined spiritually advanced beings to ingest. She had been a little worried that the unicornpeople would be too spiritually advanced to require any nourishment beyond a little water. The salad they offered her, full of crisp greens, its flavor set off by a tangy dressing of ground seeds that tasted a little like mustard and more like dill, reassured her on those grounds. She wouldn't have minded a tofu brownie or some sprouted-grains cake for dessert, but the bowl of fruits and berries was a reasonable alternative. The little brown berries proved surprisingly sweet and embarrassingly juicy-the first one she bit into felt like an explosion of sweetness in her mouth and startled her into a minor coughing fit. After that she took the berries with respect, to offset the tart flavor of the yellow thing that wasn't exactly an apricot, and found that the combination made a reasonably satisfying dessert.

 

After the meal they showed her a tiny cubicle, high enough to accommodate the unicorn-people but barely wide enough for Karina, and after some puzzlement she worked out what the facilities were for and how she could use them. That solved another problem she'd been trying not to worry about and left her feeling quite confident that she would be able to handle anything else that came up. And after all the excitement and that really very filling meal of salad and strange fruits, she was quite tired and more than willing to lie down on a couch in the main cabin when they dimmed the lights in there.

 

(I'll keep watch this shift,) Khaari volunteered. (She can sleep on my couch, and you three can use the LAANYE. I don't really want to hurt my head learning another barbarian language anyway.)

 

(Khaari! We must all be able to negotiate with these people!)

 

(Why? Somebody's got to stay with the ship, and I nominate me because I'm the only one who can navigate you out of here.)

 

(Self-thinking is un-linyarii.)

 

(Huh! I'm Liinyar, and I'm doing the thinking, so by definition it's linyaru.)

 

(This younger generation,) Neeva sighed toward Melireenya. (We would never have talked like that. There's no telling what Thariinye and Khaari will do next.)

 

(So maybe it's a good idea Khaari doesn't learn their language. In fact, we might be better off if Thariinye didn't either.)

 

This last comment inspired Khaari to take her turn with the LAANYE after all, sleeping on a reclining chair in the control cabin since the barbarian female was snoozing on her usual couch. As for Thariinye, he was already stretched out on his couch, wearing the headset that connected him with the LAANYE. He hadn't even waited to make sure the barbarian was comfortable . . . but the light snores issuing from Khaan's couch reassured Neeva and Melireenya on that score. With a mutual glance that spoke more eloquently than their thought-images on the subject of this impulsive younger generation, they, too, donned their headsets and settled for a strenuous night of sleep-learning.

 

By the beginning of the next shift, when Khaari brought up the lights in the main cabin, they could talk to Karma in her own tongue.

 

Which was very nearly the same as knowing the Basic Interlingua used for trade, diplomacy, and war in all the worlds inhabited by Karina's people.

 

It was easy enough to explain, now, that they were relatives of Acorna's who had been searching for her.

 

(This is not the entire truth,) Neeva fretted. (It is even an untruth, if we allow her to believe-as she surely will-that we came to this portion of the galaxy in search of our lost little one. Should we not tell her of the Khieevi, and that we came to warn her people and seek alliance with them?)

 

(All things in their proper time,) Melireenya replied. (Remember how the people of that first world were so frightened that they closed themselves within an impenetrable shield? If those harboring 'Khornya (for so Linyaari tongues had rendered her name, turning it into something pronounceable in their language) should do the same, we might NEVER get her back!)

 

(First we must find our 'Khornya,) Thariinye agreed. (Think, Neeva: she will surely tell us all we must know of these barbarians, so that we can judge whether they are khievii or linyarii, whether we wish to make alliance with them or to disappear before they can attack our worlds.)

 

The unspoken interchange went so swiftly that Karina was not even aware of any pause in the conversation; she was still exclaiming in delight over how quickly they had picked up her language.

 

The Linyaari envoys were equally delighted when Karina confirmed their hope that Acorna was to be found here, on the lunar base to which the shuttle had been bound.

 

"I had a Lattice note from her, out of this node, just a few days ago," she told them. "Oh, then you are acquaainit-acquiintee-You know our little 'Khornya?" Neeva asked eagerly. "How does she? Has she been well treated here?"

 

Karina looked down. Much as she longed to claim acquaintance with Acorna, was there any point in doing so, when a few hours would prove the claim false? "We have not met in person," she evaded, "only in correspondence. But our auras are attuned." Surely a Lattice note from one person and an acknowledgment from the receiver constituted a correspondence?

 

"Then she . . ." Neeva fumbled among unfamiliar words. Their shapes in her thoughts were blurry and poorly defined;

 

could the LAANYE be malfunctioning? "Your karma is joined with hers . . . she is expecting you?"

 

Karina gazed soulfully at the heap of moonstones in her cupped hands. She had been fondling them and playing •with them ever since she awoke.

 

"Will she be conceerin ... worriid," Thariinye substituted the easier-to-pronounce word, "that you were not on the shuttle?"

 

"Oh, no," Karina said unguardedly, then tried to retrieve matters. "That is," she said with her tinkling laugh, "we didn't have a definite arrangement. We just left it that if I did not hear from her that this was not a good time, I would be coming to Maganos within the next few days. Synchronicity, you know"- she waved her plump little hands vaguely-"all will manifest for the good of all; we need only maintain the appropriate space in our hearts. But I am quite sure," she said earnestly, "that she is looking forward to finally meeting me on this plane."

 

"Plane flies through atmosphere," Thariinye said, puzzled. Atmosphere is not on this moon."

 

Karina laughed again. "I meant, on the physical plane. We have long been close on the spiritual plane," she said.

 

(What is she talking about? Do these beings move through different dimensions?)

 

(They appear to exist in three dimensions and move along a rourth at a fixed rate, just as do we and all other entities,) Khaari told him. (You must have been confused by some idiom of their language. What is the Linyaari for what she said?)

 

(I don't think you can say it in Linyaari.) "I hear you," Thariinye said aloud to Karma, having picked this up from the LAANYE as an all-purpose phrase meaning, "I don't know exactly what you mean, but let's not argue about it."

 

Rafik's worries about Acorna grew to monumental proportions when he reached direct-communications range of Maganos Moon Base and got no satisfactory answers to his queries. All he wanted to know was that Acorna was still there and unharmed. All he got from the corn techs working the boards at Maganos was static, missed connections, and finally a bland statement that questions about Acorna were to be passed directly to Delszaki Li.

 

"Fine," Rafik said, "patch me through to Mr. Li's suite."

 

But Delszaki Li was napping ... or in a private meeting . . . or investigating some new workings out of reach of the base-toship communications system ... or simply not to be found at the moment, depending on when Rafik tried to contact him and which technician was asked to forward the message.

 

"I don't believe it," Rafik said flatly when for the second time he was told that Delszaki Li was visiting the new mine workings on the far side of Maganos. "The man's old and paralyzed and confined to a hover-chair, he's not going to be hopping around Maganos like a performing flea!"

 

"Mr. Li has a very good hover-chair," said the com tech. "State-of-the-art. And, uh, the light gravity here means that he has more energy, of course. Less, umm, strain on the muscles, you know?"

 

"Ten thousand bazaar dogs and Shaitans take the hoverchair!" Rafik shouted into the mike. "He doesn't USE those muscles, what difference does gravity make?"

 

"Transmission unintelligible, please moderate volume," the tech said. "Signal fading ..." Her voice slowly dissolved into a crackle of static. Fuming, Rafik decided that he would just have to wait until he landed on Maganos. Then he would See For Himself.

 

Even landing took longer than usual; a vessel of unfamiliar design, whose pilot seemed completely unfamiliar with standard docking facilities and commands, was just before him in the queue and held up docking for everybody else.

 

"Sorry about that, Uhurii," said the breezy voice of the secondshift guidance-control officer. "These idiots just ahead of you in the queue come from some backstars subspace where apparently nobody flies by the regs; according to the pilot they just make it up as they go along. She's having a hell of a time following my instructions-keeps saying, 'I hear you,' and then doing something completely different."

 

Rafik had a moment's regretful thought for the ancient days of the First Prophet, when in some parts of Earth the Book of the Prophet was interpreted to mean, among other things, that women were not allowed to drive.

 

When he finally docked, he was in a tearing hurry to reach Delszaki Li's private quarters and much too worried to care about the very odd design of the ship that had held up the queue for so long, or the plump little woman in fluttery lavender draperies who was clambering down an exit stair much too steep for her short legs. He waved at the lunar-base guards and was passed through on sight, without the formalities of identification and checks for contraband that held up strangers arriving at Maganos Base. An old friend of his from the days at MME was now overseeing the Beneficiation and Extraction Department and let him take a slightly illicit shortcut and hitch a ride on a conveyor belt that was supposed to be carrying pulverized material to the oxygen-extraction plant, allowing Rafik to arrive at Delszaki Li's quarters shortly after docking and a good ten minutes before he was expected there.

 

"Where IS she? Is she all right?" he demanded as he pushed through the iris door, too impatient to wait for it to retract its flexible membranes fully.

 

Gill and Judit were sitting in the anteroom, holding hands. Judit looked as if she had been crying; Gill turned red at the question.

 

"There is no reason to suppose Acorna is in any difficulty," Judit said.

 

Gill swallowed. "Of course not. Acorna can handle anything that comes up, and Calum . . . well, Calum is very smart, you know, Rafik."   "Calum," Rafik said, "doesn't have the common sense the Prophets would give to a canary, and if we're relying on him to keep Acorna out of trouble, no wonder Uncle Hafiz was worried about her! WHERE IS SHE?"

 

"Hafiz?" Judit exclaimed. "How did he find out?"     '

 

"Find out what?"

 

"Well..." Judit gestured helplessly. "What was he worried about?"

 

"Don't know, can't find out now." Rafik explained about the garbled message he had received just before a planetary shield closed down all travel to and communication -with Laboue.

 

"And you think there may be some danger to Acorna? "

 

"Whatever it means," Rafik said, "it can't be anything good. Communication and trade are the basis of House Harakamians wealth. With Laboue closed off like this, Uncle Hafiz can't check the odds on any of his, umm, interplanetary operations, or keep tabs on the competition, or do any of his other, umm, normal financial and commercial procedures. He wouldn't have done this unless something out there had really scared him." He thought this statement over for a moment. "In fact, I wouldn't have said there was anything that could make Uncle Hafiz nervous enough to forgo a quarter percent profit on the Skarness Relay . . . which he will have lost through not being there to authorize a credit exchange before the news of the Relay s failure came through the regular communications channels."

 

"Hafiz has advance information on the Skarness Relay?" Gill asked, impressed. "How does he work that?"

 

Rafik grinned. "You know the Singing Stones of Skarness, in his garden? They're not just a curiosity-they're a communications system. Hafiz broke the code. Those rocks know what's happening on Skarness, no matter where in the galaxy they happen to be."

 

"How?"

 

"How does a clam in an aquarium in the desert know when it would be high tide if the desert were underwater?" Rafik shrugged. "They know, that's all. At first the Stones weren't all that useful, because they aren't interested in human affairs-they think we move too fast and die too soon to be studied-but Uncle Hafiz got one of them to make a small side bet on the Relay with him, and now they're all following it. He'd sent to tell me to lay off all our bets just before that last message and the Shield closing down . . . but without his authorization, I couldn't do it."

 

"Delightful as it is to learn these details of sporting events," Judit said, "I for one should like to find out a little more about what has brought you here in such haste. You don't know what the threat was?"

 

Rafik shook his head. "Not precisely. But it must have come from space, not from one of his competitors on Laboue, or there'd be no advantage in invoking the Shield. So we don't need to worry about Yukata Batsu or any of that southern continent lot. Uncle Hafiz has effectively divided the universe into two separate boxes," he said somberly. "One box contains Laboue, the other holds the rest of the universe . . . including whatever threat motivated him to take this step. And whatever it is must concern Acorna."

 

Judit drew a deep breath. "Then . . . perhaps it's for the best that things have turned out as they have. Don't you think. Gill?"

 

"Could be," Gill agreed. "After all, if even we can't find her, what chance is there that these mysterious enemies will do so?"

 

"CAN'T FIND HER?" Rafik echoed in shock and outrage. "What-how-Shaitan-begotten spawn of a cretin, you can't have lost the girl on a lunar base this size!"

 

"Rafik, you really must make an effort not to pick up your uncles habits of speech," Judit reprimanded him.

 

At the same time Gill said heavily, "Not on the lunar base. Off it. She and Calum have done a bunk. With a little help from certain other people," he added, giving Judit a dirty look. She flushed but made no attempt to defend herself.

 

And in chorus, the two of them explained to Rafik how a series of delays in the preparation of the AccSecki had so frustrated Calum and Acorna that they not only took off before the ship was ready but failed to follow the navigation plan Calum had filed, so that by the time their getaway was discovered, it was impossible to follow them.

 

"Impossible?" Rafik repeated, raising his straight dark brows a fraction of an inch.

 

Gill gestured helplessly. "You know Calum. He's not only a brilliant mathematician, but a devious s.o.b. There are innumerable ways to navigate space from here to the Coma Berenices quadrant, and trust Calum not to take the most logical-the one in his filed nav plan-nor yet the least logical, because/ we checked that already. There's absolutely no way to predict -what path he will have taken."

 

Rafik would have disputed that, and had already asked for star maps on several scales to be displayed, but his study of the possible routes to Coma Berenices was interrupted by the announcement of a visitor for Acorna.

 

Not being privy to the shortcuts Rafik had used, nor anywhere near as quick on her feet as he was, Karina had taken quite a while longer than Rafik to reach Delszaki Li's headquarters. That she was there at all was tribute not so much to her increasingly confident statement that Acorna had invited her as to the Linyaari ability to soothe and calm the minds of those physically close to them. Neeva and Melireenya had risked showing themselves to the guards on duty at the docking station just long enough to project calming thoughts of "I haven't seen anything unusual" and "This is a friend of Acorna's."

 

Once she entered the interstices of the lunar base, though, Karina had to make her own way without the help of the Linyaari projections. She had done remarkably well already, ascertaining from "casual" conversations with the people she encountered that either Acorna was to be found with Delszaki Li, or that gentleman would be able to tell her where she was. No one saw any reason to question Karina's statement that she was a friend of Acorna s and an expected guest; if she had not been able to show some valid reason for visiting Maganos, she would not have been allowed past the docking facility, would she? And her statement that she had impulsively come by private transport rather than by the regularly scheduled shuttle both explained why she hadn't been met and gave her an aura of wealth and luxury that helped to smother any doubts. But here, in the anterooms to Delszaki Li's private quarters, she met her match.

 

The secretary-receptionist who guarded Mr. Li's privacy knew Rafik by sight and had passed him through without question. But Karina he did NOT know-and he was as disinclined to admit somebody who was not on the list of accepted visitors as Karina was to give up so close to her goal. The resulting altercation drew first Judit's attention, then Rafik's, and finally Gill's. They opened the iris door in time to hear Karina "explaining" with some heat that she and Acorna had been in correspondence for some time, that they were closely linked on the spiritual plane, and that it was now their destiny and the will of the stars that they should also be together on the physical plane.

 

"Stars didn't send me a directive," the secretary said, deadpan.

 

"Oh, Lor'," Gill groaned, "it was bound to happen sooner or later, but why now, on top of everything else?"

 

"What was bound to happen?" Rafik asked plaintively. Since reaching Maganos he had continually found himself two steps behind the latest events-only to be expected -when he had been absent so long on House Harakamian business, but nonetheless a galling situation to a man used to making his fortune by the timely use of information.

 

"Nutcases," Gill answered, retreating back into the room behind the secretary's station to make his explanation. "People heard about the healings Acorna did on Kezdet, you know. Can't keep something like that secret. We've put it about that her healing abilities have faded as she matured, but that's not enough to deter the really determined nuts. We've also spread rumors that she's at half a dozen different houses Mr. Li owns in different systems. I think I know how this one got onto her, though-tell you later," he muttered in an undertone as Judit opened the iris again and went through to the secretary's station.

 

"I am so sorry to disappoint you," Judit said sweetly, "but Just now Acorna is ..."

 

The pause was fatal to her good intentions.

 

"She's not seeing visitors," Rafik said firmly.

 

At the same moment Gill said, "Not on the base. She's gone to visit old friends."

 

And, just too late to stop herself, Judit said, "... terribly busy." They're all lying! Something is terribly wrong! Karina's shock and outrage, undiminished by any conscious attempts to focus or channel her psychic abilities, came through to the anxiously waiting Linyaari as clearly as a minor explosion. (Oh, my head! Tell that female to damp her modulations, will you?) Thariinye complained.

 

(I can't tell her anything,) Melireenya thought, rather acidly. (She thinks you're in charge, remember?)

 

(She recognizes natural brilliance when she sees it.) (Hmph. She probably comes from some culture that has a peculiar caste-ranking system. Maybe they're graded by physical height.)

 

(In that case, she must be pretty low-caste. I've been looking through the screens at the others other race who come in and out here. And have you noticed-)

 

(Not now, you two!) Neeva put in. (Melireenya, you're supposed to be monitoring the female . . . Khariinya. What's happening now? Who are "they," and what are they lying about?)

 

(I don't know. That was the first I heard from her since she passed those guards at the exit from this docking area. I'm trying to get back in touch now. . . .)

 

Karina had meant to demand to see Acorna, but some impulse she did not recognize made her ask first, "Who are you people, anyway?" She followed that -with her own questions. "Why won't you let me see Acorna-and why are you lying about it?"

 

"None of your business," Gill said firmly. "Only people on the list of approved guests are admitted to this suite, young lady. You're not on the list-so I strongly suggest you leave now, before we call Security to have you put out."

 

Karina felt the secretary's mocking eye upon her. She was sure she was turning red with embarrassment, but she stood her ground a moment longer.

 

"I must see Acorna. Truly . . . you don't understand . . . and I can't tell anyone but her . . . but it is not just for my own sake. There is something she must know. Oh, please!" She was almost in tears. "Please, you don't understand, its terribly important. If she knew, she'd want to see me, I just know she would."

 

"Darlin'," Gill said more gently, "I'm sure it's important to you, but there's just no way you can see Acorna. I'll tell you the absolute truth: she's not on this base, and we don't know when she'll be back." He took Karina's hands in his. "Word of honor," he said, looking into her face with those piercing blue eyes that must have persuaded ever so many silly girls to believe whatever he said.

 

And he radiated truth and sincerity this time, whatever she had felt from him before.

 

The silver-set moonstone at her throat was cold and dull. And try as she might, Karina could not persuade herself that she "felt" Acorna's presence anywhere near them.

 

"I... I see," she said dully.

 

Declan Giloglie's blue eyes blazed with a triumphant light that renewed all her suspicions. Karina consciously breathed deeply and thought of Peace and Love. "Well, in that case," she said, "I suppose I may as well go on. I certainly don't want to waste my time looking for somebody who's not even here!" The tinkling laugh was a little flat, and her voice trembled slightly, but that might be put down to disappointment rather than to the sheer fury that possessed her.

 

(She's absolutely furious now, but I can't tell what about. The silly twit doesn't think, she just stirs the brain-bits around like a nut-and-root stew, you never know what's going to bob up next.)

 

(Is she in trouble? Where is she?)

 

(How should I know? She doesn't look, either. You can't transmit images of your surroundings if you never look at them properly. All I can see in her mind right now is blue.)

 

Karina widened her own eyes and looked straight into Gill's until he released her hands and stepped back. "Well . . . that's that then," he said. "Sorry for your disappointment."

 

Karina visualized herself floating in a cool blue cloud that absorbed and masked her utter fury.

 

(Shit! Now I've lost her completely!)

 

As the door to Delszaki Li's private suite closed behind him, the secretary looked at Karinawith a touch of pity.

 

"You're not the only one with a sob story, you know," he advised her, not unkindly. "Take more than that to get in to see Acorna . . . that is, it would if she were here," he added, remembering Gill's story. Not being privy to Acorna's unheralded departure, he took it for granted Gill was lying to protect her privacy. "You've struck out-better go home. They'll call Security if you hang out here, you know."

 

"I haven't the -" Karina stopped herself before she could disclose her dilemma. The fact was that she didn't have her fare back to Kezdet, much less to her home planet. Everything she owned and as much as she could borrow had been barely sufficient to pay her way this far.

 

But she did, she reflected, have private transport ... of a sort. And she did owe it to the Linyaari to go back and tell them . . . well, perhaps not exactly what had happened . . . they wouldn't understand the nuances; she would be false to the underlying spiritual truth if she told them the bald literal truth, wouldn't she?

 

"You are quite right," she said instead. "I shall return to my personal ship at once."

 

On the way back, she concentrated on her breathing until she had attained a state of spiritual tranquillity in which she was no longer deceived by the superficial appearance of events and felt quite able to convey the basic truths of the situation to her Linyaari friends.

 

She'd thought of exactly how to phrase it, too. "She's being kept prisoner!" Karina announced on her return to the ship. She was breathless not only from the climb but from the irritation occasioned by having to push her way through a growing crowd of curious onlookers who were fascinated by the gilt scrollwork and trompe 1'oeil scarlet-and-emerald ribbons painted as if they -were flowing across the body of the ship.

 

"Have you seen our 'Khornya?" Neeva asked, pronouncing the newly learned words slowly and carefully.

 

"Acorna, not Kornya." Karina sank back onto one of the couches in the main cabin. "No, I told you, they're keeping her prisoner. There's an absolute brute of a man guarding the rooms, he won't let anybody in, and a red-bearded Viking giant who tells the most terrible lies you ever heard. Would you believe it, he actually tried to convince me that Acorna wasn't there at all! And the other two gave quite contradictory stories."

 

Neeva frowned in concentration as she tried to follow this burst of speech. "But you said she was expecting you . . . had invited you to visit her. Why would she go away? "

 

"That's just it." Karina sat up. "I don't for a minute believe she has gone away. One of the others said she was sick, and another said she was busy. Obviously they are all lying. I don't know why, but they are determined to prevent Acorna from speaking with anybody outside their little group. Why, for all I know"-she cried, too indignant for caution-"she may never even have seen my first fifty-six messages!"

 

"Your what?" asked Neeva, now thoroughly confused.

 

Karina remembered that she was supposed to be a close friend of Acorna's. Well, she was. On a spiritual level. "Never mind, that's not important. The important thing is," she said, enunciating clearly, "there is something very sinister going on, and I intend to find Acorna and rescue her from these people!"

 

All four of the Linyaari looked at one another for a long time. Karina had the oddest feeling that a very intense argument was going on, though none of them actually said anything. She half closed her eyes and tried to sense their auras. Breathe slowly, she reminded herself. LLften to your breathing, <i till the mim), expand your awarene,f<).

 

It had been a very trying morning. Perhaps she would be able to still her mind and expand her awareness more effectively lying down. . . .

 

Karina fell peacefully asleep while the Linyaari debated their next step.

 

(It is brave and generous of this Khariinya to offer her services further, but we must not accept.) Neeva was firm on this. (Bad enough that we have fooled with the minds of those people on the shuttle, making them forget that their flight was interrupted. We must not go on to put this one at risk from her own kind.)

 

(Besides, she hasn't accomplished much so far.) (She has found where 'Khornya is being held, and has ascertained that she is a prisoner. That is enough to go on. One of us will have to free her.)

 

(Oh, dear, oh, dear. I see more fooling with their minds coming up.)

 

(We are going to have to do that in any case. Have you looked at the screens showing us the docking area recently?)

 

(Of course not, I've been trying to understand what Khariinya was saying.)

 

(The other barbarians are behaving oddly.)

 

(So? It's not as if we knew what was normal behavior for them.)

 

(I think they are curious about our ship.) (Why? It's a nice unobtrusive vessel, nothing gaudy.) (Not by their standards. Look at the other ships docked in this facility.)

 

Neeva studied the views in the screens and had to concede that Thariinye had a point. Although the Linyaari vessel was not dissimilar in shape to the barbarian ships, the other ships were so ... well, so dreary! Naked metal and blind ports; nothing to disguise the ungraceful lines of thrusters or to decorate the long plain sweep of the main body; and above all, no color, not even a discreet touch of gilding or a splash of crimson to delight the eye.

 

And by now, quite a number of the short, hornless bipeds were gathered so near to the Linyaari ship that the screens offered only a foreshortened view of them, pointing and talking excitedly among themselves. (Perhaps they are admiring our tasteful decor,) she suggested without conviction.

 

(I'm afraid it is more than that,) Melireenya agreed reluctantly with Thariinye. (Nobody would choose to make ships look so dull and plain, so it must be that they do not know how to protect painted surfaces against atmospheric abrasion or meteorite damage. This ship must be quite an oddity to them.)

 

(How could a race be so sophisticated as to travel in space, colonize many systems, even build bases on airless asteroids such as this, and still remain ignorant of the first principles of surface shielding?) Khaari demanded crossly. (It is not logical!)

 

(Whether it's principle or taste,) Neeva told her, (we are obviously too conspicuous. I am afraid our attempt to make unobtrusive contact has not been successful.)

 

(We had better not allow them to board ... or even to pay any more attention to us.)

 

(I am afraid you are right.) Neeva suppressed a sigh of disquiet. Start bending the ethics of the Linyaari, it seemed, and there was no limit to how far they might get bent. The other three envoys had assured her that the only questionable action they would have to take was to make the crew and the other passengers on the space shuttle a little bit unclear about what had happened mid-flight. But just by being here, they had already exposed the hornless bipeds to a superior technology. Now one of them would have to leave the ship in order to exert a calming presence on the people who were obviously so curious about it. And who knew what that might lead to?

 

(Don't worry, Neeva. I'll take care of everything,) Thariinye thought blithely.

 

The base of Neeva's horn ached. Thariinye would not have been her first choice to take on the task of calming the hornless ones . . . but it was a small task; what difference did it make who did it? Still, her forehead ached as though the horn were warn"ig her of calamities ahead.

 

And it might have been right, for Thariinye did not stop at showing himself long enough to establish his influence over the bipeds near the ship. Cloaked in his projected cloud of (You haven't seen anything unusual) and (Everything's all right), he went down all the way to the ground level and casually strolled among the bipeds there. The little group gathered near the ship was breaking up now, the members of the group moving away briskly in different directions as if they had suddenly remembered something they were supposed to be doing and couldn't imagine why they were wasting time staring at what was, after all, just another spaceship of the hundreds that docked at Maganos.

 

Melireenya chuckled at the sight. (Thariinye must have added a bit of "Urgent business" to his projections, to clear them out so fast!)

 

(I wish he wouldn't. We shouldn't fool with their minds any more than we have to. And-Thariinye! Where do you think you're going?) The young fool was following several of the bipeds toward the guarded exit from the docking facility.

 

(Quit worrying, Neeva!) Thariinye s images, slightly weakened by distance from the ship, were nonetheless sharp enough to convey a sense of slight irritation. (We agreed that one of us must find 'Khornya, did we not? And since I have already expended the effort to cloud these bipeds' minds into believing that I am one of them, why should I not go on into the base and seek out 'Khornya right now, before her captors have time to hide her elsewhere?)

 

(He may be right, Neeva. Khariinya's visit may have alerted them.)

 

(But you do not know where she is! The base is large. . . .)

 

(Not large enough to hide another Linyaari. I shall simply wander until I sense her presence; then I shall ask her how she is held and what would be the best way to free her. I am not entirely stupid, Neeva.)

 

And since she could not think of any better plan, Neeva let him go without further protest.

 

During his first minutes inside the base proper, Thariinye kept letting his calming projections slip as he was distracted by the oddities of this alien construction, then hurriedly projecting extra soothing feelings to relax and distract surprised onlookers. AS he cataloged the alien peculiarities, he left behind him a trail of slightly perturbed base workers who had the vague feeling that they'd just forgotten something very important, or that something -wonderful had almost happened and if only they'd been looking carefully enough they might have seen it.

 

The corridors connecting the docking facility to Maganos Central, and that central complex to other parts of the shielded base, were so dark and low that Thariinye felt almost as if he were exploring a mine. After cracking his head on a projecting air vent and catching his hom a really painful blow at a slit-opening door of unfamiliar design, he learned to stoop slightly, walk slowly, and watch the way ahead very carefully for obstructions.

 

The high dome of Maganos Central, with its seemingly extravagant aerie of scaffolding in a spiderweb design spirahng to the top, was as much a physical relief to Thariinye as a shot of oxygen would have been. But the design itself distracted him for dangerous moments. The spirahng web of scaffolding was hung with green plants that dangled invitingly downward, and in the light gravity of this moon he could easily have jumped high enough to browse at will. What was this place-some sort of cafeteria?

 

A gasp from a passerby reminded him to maintain his cloaking shields. (You haven't seen anything unusual) he projected, with a hint of (urgent business somewhere else) to hurry her on her way.

 

The female trotted off and later told her partner in Shipping and Receiving that she'd seen the most amazingly handsome young man just coming into Central, she'd have stopped and tried to chat him up if they hadn't been so behindhand with the monthly report; whereupon her partner gave her a very odd look and said that the monthly report wouldn't be due for another six shifts, and did she think she might be coming down with something?

 

Retreating to lean against a gently curved wall, Thariinye maintained his shielding and watched the barbarians hurrying back and forth until he concluded, with some reluctance, that the greenery must be merely an atmospheric purifier and not a buffet. At least, nobody else was nibbling on those tempting new leaves.

 

(Thariinye, you greedy pig! You're supposed to be looking for our 'Khornya, not thinking about brunch!)

 

(Yeah, yeah, but Neeva, you should just see these plants!) But, reminded of his duty, Thariinye tore his gaze from the succulent new shoots and leaves just above eye level and mentally felt around the central complex for some sense of another Linyaari.

 

He could sense nothing but the tangled, muddy undertow of a thousand alien minds muttering away, each in its separate little shell, and most too weak and garbled to be intelligible, with here and there a feeling highlighted by surprise or strong emotion:

 

Oh, Jussi, why did you leave me? . .. grubble grubble grubble .. . payday's next shift, then I can get OUT of here . . . grubble grubble grubble . . . Lukia, Lady of Light, help me now!

 

Startled, Thariinye swiveled to look at the source of that last thought, a grubby kid weaving between the adults so rapidly that Thariinye would have lost him but for the strength of his projections. The words meant nothing to Thariinye, but the image of a radiant Liinyar girl in white-silk robes that accompanied them riveted him.

 

A sudden thought of "Saints preserve us, what's THAT!!!" accompanied by an image of himself enlarged to ten feet tall and glowing with a strange radiance, reminded Thariinye to maintain his calming projections while he edged through the crowd after the urchin who had so obviously been thinking about a Liinyar girl. He still could not sense any trace of another of his kind in this crowded, smelly base, but that child must have seen 'Khornya at some time, to have formed the image so clearly.

 

The miner who'd called on the saints stared after Thariinye but could see nothing unusual among the swirling streams of passersby. Ramon Trinidad mopped his forehead and decided not to mention to his mates that he'd had a vision of Acorna. They already teased him enough because he had a small icon of the Virgin of Guadeloupe superglued to the dashboard of his operator cab at the loading station; if he told them he'd been seeing visions, he'd never live it down. All the same, it must mean something that the Lady had appeared to him like that, all in a blinding flash it was, and then vanished. She must be warning him that he'd been marked out for something special.

 

Ramon Trinidad marched down the corridor to Mining Ops HID more jauntily than he'd moved since coming to Maganos. At first he'd thought this job, training kids from the gutters of Kezdet to operate lunar mining equipment, was high pay for light work; then he'd considered resigning and telling Personnel that he was a miner, not a kindergarten teacher; then he'd actually begun to like some of the kids. Besides, they didn't laugh at him for invoking the protection of the Virgin and the saints each time he took a group of them out into the long, lightly shielded corridors of the active workings. The kids had their own saints ~ Lukia of the Lights, Epona, Sita Ram.

 

The urchin whom Thariinye was following was also headed for Mining Ops HID, and praying desperately that he'd get there well ahead of Ramon Trinidad; so the image of Lukia of the Lights kept lighting up in his thought-patterns, guiding Thariinye like a flashing beacon.

 

Bored by Rafik's intense study of the star maps which were projected all over the walls of Delszaki Li's office, Gill stood up to stretch his legs and wandered over to the one wall not devoted to mapping the outer reaches of the explored and unexplored parts of the galaxy. Rafik had been unable to commandeer this wall because it was filled with vid-screens on which, at any moment, random scenes of the moon base were displayed. Although no one's private quarters were invaded, Delszaki Li took great pleasure in observing all other parts of the base in operation, from the children's school to the outermost mine workings. Before the progress of his disease had robbed him of the ability to control a touch pad with his right hand, the display had been designed for him to call up whatever views he desired. When touching the pad became too difficult for him, the engineers had offered to make the display voice-controlled like his new hover-chair, but he had refused, indicating that it was too tiring for him to issue unnecessary commands and that he would prefer a random display which he did not have to control. Now the images on the more than twenty screens changed constantly, on a randomly activated timer, giving a constantly varying panorama of Maganos Moon Base activities.

 

Gill stared unseeingly at an image of the glittering dome over Maganos Central, with its overarching glass panels and its garlands of greenery, until it shifted to a view of the bakery attached to the cafeteria, where a cook was setting out trays of fresh pastries in preparation for the shift change, then to an overhead shot of the four major mine workings viewed from a camera atop the central dome. The random changes depressed him, reminding him of the inexorable progress of Delszaki Li's nervous paralysis, and he wondered whether Acorna would return in time to see her benefactor once again. Her image was so clear in his heart that he thought for a moment he was imagining her on one of the screens before him; then his shout surprised Rafik into dropping the laser pointer with which he had been tracing one of the AcaSeckl's possible routes on the larger star map for Pal and Delszaki Li.

 

"What in the name of the Djinni Djiboutis -" Rafik began before remembering Judit's request that he not swear like the descendant of twenty generations of Arab-Armenian rug merchants.

 

"What are you playing at, Gill? We're trying to get some work done over here, if you don't mind!"

 

"Acorna," Gill croaked. "I saw her ... on one of these screens. She's not gone, Rafik; she's right here on Maganos!"

 

"She can't be . . ." Pal said, and then, ". . . can she?" Here on Maganos, and concealing herself from him? The thought was almost too painful to bear.

 

"I saw her, I tell you," Gill insisted. "She was right..." He dropped his hand; the screen he pointed at Was now showing a row of children chanting the Basic alphabet with hand signs for each letter. "Here," he said, "only it wasn't the school, it was some damn corridor, and the bloody automatic timer had to shift scenes before I could identify it."

 

"There she is!" Judit cried, pointing at a screen in the far upper right section of the wall.

 

"That's one of the new workings," Gill said, "somewhere in III."

 

At the same moment Pal said, "But that's not Acorna." The picture switched to an image of the docking facility. "Damn that bloody automatic timer, can't we turn it off?" Gill demanded. "And are you out of your mind. Pal? Just how many six-foot people with golden horns do you think we've got around here?"

 

"More than one, evidently." Pal folded his arms with the gesture of a man who is not to be shaken from his opinion, no matter how impossible and illogical it may seem to the rest of the world. "I would know Acorna among a thousand of her kind. ..."

 

Gill snorted. "How do you know? You've never seen a thousand other kind."

 

"I would know her," Pal insisted quietly, "and that is not my lady."

 

Judit had turned away from the screens to look through Delszaki Li's desk. "Judit!" Gill bellowed. "What are you playing at? Get over here and watch the screens. I need some backup in case she appears again! No, first tell somebody to hustle down to III... no, I don't know which subsection, there aren't but six open, surely we've got enough security people to cover all of them? Why are you fooling around looking for office supplies, girl? We've got an emergency here!"

 

"Is searching for manual controller," Delszaki Li put in, his dry and slightly amused whisper cutting through the fog of Gill's emotional bellowing. "My suggestion. You countermand?"

 

Gill stared. "It still works?"

 

"Override," Li whispered. "Useful if I wish to see something longer than five seconds . . . but someone else must push pad, now."

 

Judit scrabbled through a clutter of carved jade tokens, laser pads, used betting slips, fact-flimsies with access codes scrawled on the back, and unlabeled datacubes, and finally held up the control pad with a cry of triumph.

 

"Try all the workings off III," Gill directed her. "You'll just have to flip through them until we come. ..."

 

"Silly," Judit said, "we've got a lot more than six screens to choose from, let's look at them all."

 

With shaking hands, she tapped out the code for the cameras in IIIA, B, C, D . . .

 

"THERE SHE IS!" cried Gill and Rafik.

 

"No, she isn't," Pal insisted.

 

Mr. Li whispered a command, and his hover-chair carried him across the room to float before the screen showing Mine Working HID.

 

"There he is!" the other kids who were in the training session squealed when Hajnal darted into the open area around Ramon's sledger and slid the last twenty feet, triumphant, stopping himself just inches short of the piles of rough lunar rock that marked the end of the workings. "Didja get it? Didja get it?"

 

"Hajnal, Master Thief of Kezdet, strikes again!" Hajnal boasted, pulling open his jacket to reveal an extremely nervous, long-eared, white-fronted marchare. The marchare squeaked and leapt out of its hiding place with a powerful thrust of its long rear legs. The other children scrambled to catch it.

 

"Ow! It scratched me!"

 

"'At's nothing. Look 'ow it got me on the way here, but I didn't drop it." Hajnal pulled up his shirt and proudly showed the long bloody scratches on his chest and stomach. "Now 'urry up, you lot, and get it into the toolbox in the back of Ramon's operator cab. I seen Ramon coming this way. Ain't gonna believe the workings is 'aunted if 'e sees the blasted hanimal, is 'e now?"

 

"Poor little marchare," crooned a girl who cradled the nervous animal in her arms for a moment, petting it until its eyes stopped rolling and the long nervous ears stopped twitching. "Didn't mean to scratch anybody, did you. poor little frightened thing? Hajnal, I don't think we oughter put him in the toolbox, he'll get scared."

 

"If you don't stop petting him, Eva, he'll go to sleep on us, and we'll lose our chance."

 

The little fiends of Kezdets first graduating class had been working on Ramon Trinidad for weeks, trying to convince him the combination power unit and loading station he operated was haunted by the ghost of a mining engineer who'd been killed in an accident so grisly nobody who knew the story was ever willing to use that station again. They gauged their success by the number of holy medals and icons Ramon hung on the device, blamed the miners of the next shift for "losing" most of the icons, and competed to see who could drop the most hairraising hints about what had "really" happened to the mythical dead engineer. But Ramon was beginning to doubt their unsupported stories. It was time for some hard evidence. They were counting on the scrabbling and squeaks of the third-shift pastry cook's pet marchare, concealed in a compartment in the back of the sledger, to provide that evidence. Hajnal, proud of his past as a free thief on Kezdet and no factory slave, had boastfully volunteered to "borrow" the marchare without the cook's knowledge.

 

"It's mean, putting him in that dark little place," another girl piped up. "Let's not. He's so cute!"

 

"Cute," Hajnal said darkly. "Lemme tell you, you wouldn' think 'e was so bleedin' cute if you'd had to carry him through Central under your shirt, and 'im gougin' tracks in your belly every time he startled!"

 

"Sita Ram wouldn't like it," Eva said.

 

"Huh! Lukia don't mind. She 'elped me get away," Hajnal boasted.

 

Eva's eyes widened. All the children seemed suddenly to be looking up, over Hajnals head. Slowly he turned, certain that Ramon had spoiled his plot by reaching the workings before he could conceal the marchare.

 

But it wasn't Ramon who stood behind him, but a being taller and far brighter than the little miner; a being who seemed clothed in light from Her golden horn to the silvery wisps of hair around Her hooves.

 

"Epona," "Sita Ram," "Lukia," whispered the children, and wen they were all over the bright being.

 

"I knew you were here, Acorna, I knew? you wouldn't just leave us without saying good-bye," squealed Khetala, who had known Acorna as a person rather than a vision of goodness. She threw herself on the tall, silver-haired being in an unrehearsed_ and decidedly unwelcome-embrace.

 

"Get off me!" Thariinye sputtered in his own tongue. In the panic of the moment he could not remember the words the LAANYE had implanted in his cortex a few hours previously.

 

There was a smaller girl clutching his tunic, now, marring the elegant drape of the fabric, and a boy jumped up and down and swung from his arm as if he were some kind of climbing toy. Why hadn't that plump little woman warned him that the moon base was full of children? Pre-pubes, their psychic abilities still latent, were not susceptible to the mental projections that could be used to calm adults . . . and apparently that particular developmental factor was true across species, or at least it was as true of these beings as it was of his own race. But he had no other projection, nothing else to try! Frantically he projected (You don't see anything unusual) (Nothing is happening) (Need to get back to work).

 

"But I do see you. Lady Epona, I do! I do!" squealed the smallest girl.

 

Khetala, the oldest of the group, loosened her embrace and backed off a step, puzzled. Why had she thought this was Acorna? It was obviously only a tall miner . . . she squinted . . with silver hair . . . and a horn. . . .

 

"Don't you remember me. Lady Acorna?" she asked, hurt and puzzled.

 

Hajnal was too high on success and escape even to be touched by the projections. "Whaddaya screechin' about now? I know my Lady Lukia of the Lights!"

 

Thariinye gritted his teeth and redoubled the force of his projections, but the children were jumping up and down, shrieking with excitement, and far too hyper to receive the calming influence he was trying to put forth, even if they had been old enough to pick up his mental images. Not only that, but they seemed to be insane. They expected him to cuddle them. They thought he was. . . .

 

Under sufficient stress, Thariinye stopped trying to remember the words of the alien language and just used them without thinking.

 

"Lookh, yuuu hiteli twerpis," he hissed in rage, "I-aam- naat-a-ghiril! See?"

 

And, just as the security guard requested by Gill arrived at the workings, Thariinye yanked open his blue tunic to display irrefutable evidence that he could not be the "lady" these brats were greeting so ecstatically.

 

The guard, unlike the children, was affected by Thariinye's projections; so he saw nothing unusual in the sight of a sevenfoot horned male with a cascade of silver hair falling down his neck. What that male was doing, however, was both unusual and strictly forbidden on Maganos Moon Base.

 

"You'd better come along with me, mister," he said.

 

 

Haven, Unified Federation Date534.05.1S

 

That's Hoa," Markel mouthed in Acorna's ear' as ????? down the vent at the first of the innermost security cells, much smaller and more closely guarded than the row where Acorna had been kept.

 

"Who?"

 

"Ho-A," Markel separated the syllables. "He's the guy the Palomellese spaced my"-he had to swallow-"my father for- to get control of his work. If he hadn't come aboard the Haven, everything would be all right. He's how Rushima's being flooded, burned, blasted, or stormed until they pay Nueva Fallona's gang protection money."

 

"He?" And Acorna looked down again at the dejected, darkhaired man sitting with his head in his hands. What she could see of his skin had a faintly yellow cast that reminded her of Delszaki Li and made her instinctively wish to trust him. "Then why's he here"-she pointed one hand down-"and not up there with them?"

 

"Because he trusted our Speakers-my father and Andrezhuna and that Gerezan." The last name was expelled like a Gurse, and, in the light from the cell below, Acorna could see the tears begin to form in Markel's eyes. He brushed them aside with impatient fingers, taking a deep breath. "He didn't know about what they"-Markel jerked a contemptuous finger upwardplanned. He was scared stiff that the governments of Khang Kieaan, where he used to live, would've figured out that he couldn't just predict weather, he could manipulate it."

 

"Ooooh." Acorna's mind made leaps of conjecture on how that could be used. "So that's what happened to Rushima?" Markel nodded.

 

"But how could Hoa give that sort of power to renegades like them?" Now she, too, pointed upward.

 

"He didn't. He thought he'd be safe on Haven . . . and he would've been, only Nueva and those traitors Gerezan and Sengrat planned a coup and got rid of all the rest of the First Generation. ..." Markel gulped.

 

"Like your father." Acorna laid a sympathetic arm about the thin shoulders, thinking proudly of his loyalty and resourcefulness. "Did you escape before they could . . . you know ..."

 

He nodded. "They don't know the half of what I know about the Haven. I could do anything to this ship . . . sometimes I think I ought to be making more trouble for them, only I don't want to wreck it and kill a lot of innocent people. The other SecondGeneration kids may be pretending to go along, but they shouldn't die for it. I could do anything," he repeated, "if only I knew what to do. ..."

 

In that pause, Acorna softly asked, "Like being able to release the clamps on my ship so we can all get away?"

 

Markel considered, eyeing her, then the lighted vent and the rounded walls of the tube. She didn't think she'd called a bluff:

 

rather she felt, through her arm still about his shoulders, that he was figuring out how to accomplish this.

 

"I'd be glad if you could alert Shenjemi Federation that one of their colonies is being blackmailed. And my planet that I'm being held hostage."

 

Markel gave a little snort, muffled by his fingers. "You're not a hostage, you're a prisoner. They got better things to do than collect ransom for hostages. They can hold up -whole planets for Acorna gulped, happier than ever that she was no longer trapped in that cell, vulnerable. But Calum was still a prisoner. And, if they had no need to take hostages, Calum was in greater peril than she'd originally thought. They'd have to work fast. She was considering priorities when suddenly she saw that Hoa's face was turned up to the vent. She gave Markel a discreet nudge.

 

"Oh, oh," he mouthed back at her, and would have led her away, but she stopped him.

 

"He didn't intend this to happen . . . and he looks ill. I think they've hurt him. Let's free him, too. Maybe he'd know how to stop what they've started. Can we do that? Please?" Market didn't really have any defense against Acorna in pleading mode-especially with her arm around him and the comforting warmth of her soft feminine body giving him the nurturing love he had needed so desperately for so long.

 

"He'll have to be quiet," he said.

 

"I doubt that will be a problem," she replied, and helped Markel unscrew the vent.

 

Dr. Ngaen Xong Hoa's slender frame made it through the narrow vent with no difficulty, but he was so weak they had to help him far more than Acorna had expected; he did almost none of the work of climbing. When he was finally in the tunnel, she realized why he had been so helpless. Even in the bad light, Acorna could see what had been done to the man's hands and arms. Pretending to bend lower to reset the screws on the vent, Acorna made sure her horn touched-through the fine fabric of her hat-both mangled hands.

 

Urgently now, Markel directed them away from the empty cell and around a bend in the tubes and over to the other side of the prison block. At the intersection, he firmly placed Dr. Hoa against the curving side and, finger on lips, indicated that he was to stay put. Dr. Hoa nodded, only too happy to comply. Then Markel beckoned Acorna to slither past the scientist. He put his hps to her ears and spoke low? but distinctly.

 

"We got to get your buddy right away now? because as soon as they see Dr. Hoa's gone, there'll be nine kinds of alarms and searches and stuff. Might not get another chance. Any way you Gan help me locate him?"

 

Acorna closed her eyes. If only her horn had the power of locating people as well as healing them! Maybe it dou, she thought. . . I've never known another of my kirn). How do I know what I can do?

 

She composed her thoughts and tried to visualize Calum's features, but all she could sense was the aura of misery that filled the whole area around the cells . . . and something about . maps? She shook her head, trying to clear it. How could she concentrate on finding Calum when she kept getting this feeling that somebody was lecturing her on how to color a map? It felt as if there was a whole geography class going on somewhere under her right hand ... no, not geography. Strange, half-familiar words floated into her head.

 

"Conjecture . . . lemma . . . simple closed curve. . . ."

 

Weil, how about that!

 

"I think," she said slowly, "he might be in the cell on the far right."

 

Calum was so absorbed in the diagrams he was tracing on his cell wall that she had to hiss several times before he finally noticed-and even then he did not look up.

 

"Just a minute, I'm thinking," he said-and then did a comical double take, looking up so fast that he nearly lost his balance. "Acorna? What the-"

 

"We're rescuing you," Acorna explained patiently.

 

"Who's wel And do you have anything I can copy this down on? I don't want to lose it, and the trouble with drawing diagrams in the condensation on the wall here is ..."

 

"Ten thousand devils fly away with your diagrams and drop them in the dung of the camel pits of Sheol!" Acorna ripped out a variation on one of Rafik's favorite curses. "Do you want to wait around until they come to torture you into releasing the hold on ^as. AcaSeckit Or do you think you could drop your mathematical conjectures long enough to climb up this rope?"

 

Calum gave a dubious glance at the slender rope and the narrow space of the air vent through which Acorna was whispering to him, then looked back once regretfully at the drawings he had traced on the wall of his cell.

 

"Oh, well, I can probably reconstruct it later," he muttered.   The vent opening was a tighter squeeze for Calum than it had been for Dr. Hoa or Acorna, but when he seemed to be stuck fast Markel inspired him by mentioning a few of Nueva Fallona's favorite Palomellese tortures, then commented that if Calum's shoulders were really wedged firmly into the vent his feet would doubtless be at a convenient height for Nueva's attentions.

 

"She likes playing with matches," he said.

 

Calum made one last convulsive effort, freed his broad shoulders, and wriggled upward into the tunnel, clutching the rope.

 

"Oh, well," he said, as Acorna exclaimed over his scrapes, "it's only skin, plenty more where that came from."

 

They replaced the vent, went back around the curve, and collected Dr. Hoa, who was trembling violently in reaction to his salvation.

 

"I am not a man of violence," he whispered in apology. "I am a scientist. .. and I was trying to get away from people like these. Now we are all trapped. ..."

 

Acorna touched his cheek with her horn and the spasms stopped. Toward the end of their passage, they had to tie the rope around his shoulders, and Acorna pulled him behind her, with Markel helping the scientist over the joins and aprons that connected the klicks of interior tubes and conduits. As soon as they reached Markel's nest, the boy picked up his listener, a device that sat comfortably in his ear, and indicated that Acorna should make Dr. Hoa comfortable on the pile of miscellaneous clothing and thermal sheeting behind them.

 

Acorna was glad to oblige. While she was at it, she also assessed the scientist's other injuries and healed them. He had been badly knocked about before the Palomellese even began their systematic destruction of his fingers and hands; she could not blame him for having given them enough information to use his research, nor for the fear and despair that had all but overwhelmed him in the tunnels. But as she soothed his bodily aches, he seemed calmer and more in control of himself. When she was nnished, he caught her by the arm, his eyes once more alive with intelligent curiosity.

 

"Ki-lin?" he asked in a bare whisper that would not reach Markel, occupied with eavesdropping.

 

She smiled and put her finger across her lips as their young guide so often had.

 

He closed his eyes once, indicating he understood, but he also put one frail, healed finger to his lips and then pressed it against hers.

 

She turned to take a water bottle from the rack above her head and handed it to him. Though he clutched the bottle as possessively as any thirsty man would, Acorna did not have to warn him to take small, slow sips and accustom his body to water again.

 

Markel was grinning with delight at whatever he was hearing on his earphone. He kept listening, but occasionally would whisper at what was going on.

 

"They found Hoa missing first, then checked the rest of the cells. They haven't a clue how he and Calum got away, and they got into an argument about it and haven't yet checked to find out that you're gone, too, Acorna. That's as well. Gives us more time to figure. ..." The boy paused, pushed the device more securely into his ear, his eyes blinking angrily. Then he relaxed and smiled again.

 

"I got to meet someone. And fast," he said, taking out the listener and carefully restoring it to its pouch on tube wall. "You stay put and stay quiet," he murmured to Acorna and Calum. He glanced over at Dr. Hoa, shrugged his shoulders, and crawled away with the speed of a spider after an intruder in its web.

 

Acorna saw that Dr. Hoa was asleep, the water bottle securely clutched against his chest with both hands. Briefly she remembered the swollen, distorted knuckles and torn, burned skin she had seen before her healing touch had soothed them. She shivered and tried not to imagine what deliberate cruelty had inflicted those injuries.

 

"I don't much like this," Calum muttered. "How do you know we can trust the kid? "

 

Acorna gave him a chilly look. "For starters, he just saved us both from imprisonment and you, at least, from torture. Then there's the fact that his father was killed resisting the coup that put these people in power-"

 

"So he says. How do you know he's telling the truth?"

 

"Well, we're free, aren't we?"

 

"Are we?" Calum stretched until one elbow banged into either side of the tunnel where they crouched.

 

"Damn!" Acorna exclaimed. "Why didn't I think of asking Markel to send a message to either Shenjemi or Maganos-or better, both?"

 

Whatever could Market have heard that had produced first fury and then humor? Acorna pondered that for a moment. No way to tell now. While waiting, she might as well restore her strength. She took a careful mouthful of water and munched on another carrot as quietly as one can munch a carrot. But they were not vegetables that dissolved even when mixed with her saliva. She swallowed hard, forcing down the half-masticated bits of carrot, so that she could listen once again.

 

After an interminable wait she heard slight noises coming toward them-but they sounded like the movements of a large man, not like Markel's quick, delicate crawl. She threw a blanket over Dr. Hoa in the faint hope of concealing him from whoever had discovered their hiding place, and looked at Calum with wide, frightened eyes. He squeezed her hand reassuringly-at least, she assumed he meant it to be reassuring.

 

With her acute hearing, she registered before Calum did that there were two people approaching them, the smaller one in front.

 

"It's all right," she whispered to Calum, "Markel's bringing someone."

 

"That," Calum whispered, "is exactly what I was afraid of."

 

"Acorna?"

 

She lifted her head, identifying Markel's whisper. The much larger person behind him looked vaguely familiar, yet the feel of him was completely strange . . . she felt sure she had never been in his presence before, yet his face raised some chord of recognition in her.

 

He caught sight of her, goggled and gulped and pointed. Markel looked around, then at Acorna, and he, too, goggled.

 

"Damn," Acorna said out loud. In her hasty attempt to conceal Dr. Hoa, her hat had come off. And her horn was visible.

 

Calum began chuckling. What was so funny about the situation? A moment ago he'd been sure Markel had betrayed them, now he thought it was funny that her horn was in plain sight?

 

"It's all right, Acorna," Calum said, "and so is Markel, ifhe's hanging out with this worthless space drifter."

 

The man with Markel chuckled in his turn. "Might have known if there was trouble, you'd be mixed up in it somehow, Calum. But what were you thinking of to get young Acorna into it?"

 

Acorna gasped in surprise, and the man turned to her. "No, you don't know me, but I've heard plenty about you."

 

"Oh?"

 

"Gill used to send me holos of you, before we lost touch. Even the Brain, here"-he jerked his head toward Calum-"occasionally mentioned you. When he bothered to write, that is!"

 

"You can't be ..."

 

"Johnny Greene, very much at your service, ma'am."

 

Acorna took a deep breath of relief. "Of course! Gill has a holo of you in his office, but..."

 

The man in the holo looked much younger, his head thrown back in carefree laughter. This man's features were the same, but now they were drawn in the lines of strain and watchfulness that seemed to mark everybody who had survived Nueva Fallona's coup on the Haven.

 

"You could have told me," she scolded Calum.

 

"Didn't have time," Calum defended himself. "Look, I didn't know he was going to show up here."

 

Markel looked about anxiously. "Where'd you stash Dr. Hoa?"

 

Acorna reached over and gently raised a corner of the cover to show the exhausted doctor sleeping, the tiniest of smiles in the corners of his mouth.

 

"Is that a relief!" Johnny exclaimed, when he saw the scientist. "I don't know how you did it, Markel. . ."

 

"Very carefully," the boy said, sitting with his arms resting casually on his knees, totally relaxed and very, very pleased with himself. "I got them out through the air vents. They fit diagonally through the openings once I took the grates out. Only this one"-he jerked his chin toward Calum--"needed a little encouragement." He frowned as he took a closer look at Calum. "Say, how'd you stop the bleeding? I could've sworn you lost some skin back there!"

 

"Oh, it was A- " Calum began, then stopped as Acorna gave him a warning shake of the head. It wasn't that she didn't trust Markel, but he was being asked to assimilate a lot at one time. And if something went wrong . . . she refused even to consider that. There would be time enough to explain her unique healing capabilities when they got out of here-and they would! "~a fuss about nothing, as it turned out," Calum substituted for what he'd been going to say. "I sure thought I was going to get scraped raw on the way out, though!"

 

"Markel," Acorna said urgently, "can you get messages out as well as eavesdrop on their communications? We ought to alert the Shenjemi Federation about what's happening to Rushima- and send to Maganos for help, too."

 

"Might could," Markel allowed. "Have to tap the main power lines to boost a message, though, and they just might notice the surge. Lemme check on who's on shift now. . . ." He tapped his earphone back in place and listened for a moment. His eyes lit up like those of a much younger child planning some mischief.

 

"Ooooh, is Nueva furious!" he said. "She's giving all of them what-for and threatening to space the next incompetent who manages to lose a prisoner. 'They'"-Market thumbed his chest bone-"have got to be found. Oho!" And he sat bolt upright a moment, then relaxed again. But the sparkle was gone from his eyes. "Sengrat's just pointed out that I was never accounted for in the original coup . . . and Ximena reminded him that I used to know ways about the ship in the tubes and stuff." The way he emphasized her name warned Acorna that Ximena was, or had been, someone special to Markel. "They really are on Nueva's side; they're not just going along to save their own skins," he said. "Even Ximena ... I used to like her. I don't understand people like that."

 

"Neither do I," Acorna told him.

 

"You're a couple of charming innocents," Johnny told them, 'but I for one would like to know what they plan to do with this information and how Markel thinks he's going to stall them- because I know what that look in your eyes means, kid," he said, ruffling the top ofMarkel's head.

 

"Nueva was just going to send someone through that bis tube, which would have been a fine game of hide-and-seek in this maze. We could've run the searchers ragged," Markel reported. "Then Sengrat suggested they should use gas. He's still underestimating me." Even as he spoke, he was rooting through yet another hiding place and came out with one hand clasping breathing masks and the other emergency oxygen bottles.

 

Acorna smiled. "We won't need those."

 

Johnny shot Acorna a wondering look.

 

"She is Ki-lin," murmured Dr. Hoa, who had awakened during Markel's excited report. "Her horn purifies water and air and heals. Does it not, most gracious lady Ki-lin?"

 

"I am not Ki-lin, Dr. Hoa, but the rest of it is accurate," she said.

 

"See? She has healed my hands and arms from what they did to me." The scientist shoved one sleeve up to show a slightly wrinkled but healthy forearm with a few patches of paler skin replacing the deep bums. "And the rest of me, too," he said with some surprise as he realized he could sit up and move without pain.

 

"And my knuckles," Markel said, eyes wide as he finally noticed. "My knees don't hurt either, nor my back." He looked at Calum accusingly. "Hey-you did get scraped bad, getting through that vent hole, didn't you? And tried to persuade me I'd been imagining it, when the truth is Acorna healed you?"

 

"We thought it might be hard for you to accept," Calum said. "Some people don't believe. ..."

 

Markel looked reverently at Acorna. "Even with a demonstration? What an asset for our side! They're never going to get their hands on you, lady. Not while I can still breathe."

 

"I'll see that's a long, long time," Acorna said.

 

Then Market pressed the earpiece and held up a hand to stop any further talk. "Yes, that's what they're going to do. Ximena is small enough to make a search once the air has cleared up." His face clouded over. "She doesn't want to ... I thought maybe she wasn't as bad as the rest of them . . . but she doesn't care about what happens to us, she's just afraid I'll survive the gas somehow and go after her in the tunnels. I couldn't hurt her," he said sadly, "not Ximena, no matter what she's done. I thought she would know that much, at least."

 

"Well, let's not wait to meet her," Johnny said, changing the subject briskly before Markel's emotions could overpower him. "Markel, can you get us from here to the hangar deck?" He a-lanced at Calum. "I'm thinking that your ship would make a better command center than this tunnel . . . we could send our messages for sure, and maybe even get clean away if Markel can disable the Haven's grapples."

 

"No problem! Can't you see, we're already at Red 32 x Blue 16, all we have to do is take a side route through Blue 16-24 and cut across at the intersection of Green 48 ... well, never mind," Market slowed down as he sensed the bafflement of his companions.

 

"I'm just a simple techno-nerd," Johnny said. "I don't happen to keep a 3-D color map of the ship's maintenance tunnels in my memory."

 

"It's real easy," Markel said. "I'll tell you all about it when we have time."

 

"That," Johnny said hollowly, "is exactly what I'm afraid of."

 

"Huh?"

 

"Never mind!" Johnny gave Markel a friendly push. "Get going, 0 friendly native guide. Lets hit the road ... or rather," as Johnny caught Markel's startled look of warning, "let us make noiseless progress away. Do we need anything you have stashed here, Markel?"

 

"Water?" Markel took down the fabric that had held the water bottles to the wall and it folded out into a sleeveless tunic, the water supplies on the back of it. "Ration bars. My headset. These ... no, too heavy... but I gotta have these," he mused over a collection of tools, rapidly making his selection. He stuffed the necessary items into another backpack, draping thermal covers over everyone's shoulders, even Dr. Hoa's, and then, lifting up a corner of the tube wall, shoved whatever remained into the opening. It took a few hard pushes to get the opening to resume its normal shape. The area was back to normal. Markel had left no signs of his presence.

 

"This way, now," he said, pointing before he took Dr. Hoas hand.

 

Later Acorna would wonder how they had managed that exodus. The healing properties of her horn were prodigious, as well as its air-purifying abilities; but the constant effort of making the air around them breathable eventually exhausted even her. And there were other problems. They did not have the luxury of sticking to the "safe" routes Markel had mapped out for himself;

 

now they had to follow the passageways that held least risk of detection or offered the shortest path to the hangar. Some of the walls they crept through felt cold, others almost unbearably hot and, over one section-the coil to main drive-Acorna went from one member of their group to another, to heal blistered knees, hands, and other portions of their anatomies they could not keep from touching the hot metal.

 

"Lousy insulation," Johnny muttered, as Acorna laid her horn up and down his thigh where the material of his pant leg had been seared away.

 

They rested every time they reached a double tube crossing because there Acorna and Johnny could stand upright and ease their backs.

 

"You do know where you're taking us, young'un?" Johnny asked.

 

"I told you, Johnny Greene, I know this ship like no one else, First or Second Generation. What's the matter, can't you take the heat?" Markel asked so fiercely that Johnny held up his hands in mock self-defense.

 

"Lay on, Macduff," the spacer said with a smothered laugh, "and damned be he who first cries Hold, Enough! That is," he added, "if you and Dr. Hoa can manage, Acorna? "

 

Acorna wanted nothing more than to be through with this claustrophobic journey. She fervently assured Johnny and Markel that there was no need to slow down on her behalf.

 

Markel had indeed known exactly where he was taking them, a storage room for tools on the hangar deck itself. Through the grill on the narrow window, they could even see the Aca3ecki, clamped tight to the deck but still in front of the other smaller vessels that were part of the Haven's force.

 

"And that is their first mistake," Markel said with great satisfaction.

 

As if he hadn't been crawling for days through narrow tubes and inspection conduits, Markel made space on the worktable and started plugging his equipment into some of the power-tool sockets. Everyone else flopped down, exhausted, on the metal floor. Acorna was certain she would retain the honeycomb pattern of the room's floor on the tender parts other anatomy, but it was worth it to stretch out at last. The cramped journey through the tunnels had tried her sorely; for once she envied Calum his lack of inches.

 

"Ha! They haven't found anything, and it's going to take them days to inspect the entire network," Market said. He rubbed his hands together and glanced in the direction of the AcaSeckl. He tried to peer in other directions, but his view was restricted. "Ooops." He pulled back as if someone could have seen his face in the window. "Guards." He peeked out again. "No more than three that I can see. There're usually ten or twelve on hangar duty." Gleefully he washed his hands. "We really have them running up their own . . . sorry." Markel caught himself at Johnny's sharp nudge and shot a quick apology in Acornas direction. "But that doesn't get us out of here."

 

"If we could get to the AcaSecki and power up," Calum asked Markel, "could you patch into the Havens command centers from there and disable their communications and other systems?"

 

"Nothing to it," Market nodded, preening a little.

 

Calum stood, shakily, and pointed at the window. "Lemme have a look?" Markel moved aside. Calum grunted. "You're sure there're only three here now?" Markel nodded. "What we need is a diversion . . . that is, if you can get us out of this storage room."

 

"No problemo," Markel said, and, taking an odd-shaped bit of plastic from a thigh pocket, inserted it into the door. They could all hear the light "snick" as the lock was opened. "Only now what? Soon as I open the door, we're in clear sight of at least two of the guards."

 

"And each of them would like to take credit for the recapture of Dr. Hoa," Johnny said, with a gleam of malice in his eyes. "If you don't mind acting as bait. Doctor?"

 

 

"I owe the universe whatever action will repair my disastrous misjudgment," Dr. Hoa said with a slight bow, "even should it require the sacrifice of my life."

 

"Oh, I don't think it will come to that," Calum said cheerfully, heftmg a length of thick steel bar which he had quitetly "acquired" during their passage through the tunnels. Acorna looked around the supply room and found a heavy mallet, which she swung about to test its balance.

 

"That looks good," Johnny said, reaching for the mallet, but Acorna shook her head.

 

"Find your own weapons," she told him. "I like the heft of this."

 

Johnny's eyebrows shot up, but he made no further protest.

 

"I did mention, didn't I, that she's very independent?" Calum asked drily.

 

"You didn't tell me the half of it," Johnny muttered, rummaging around the cluttered room for something he could use as a weapon. He settled on a length of thin cable that he carefully knotted around a pair of screwdrivers.

 

"I've got a better idea than using the good doctor as bait," Calum said. "Markel, you said you could hack into hangar security and disable the grapples on the AcaSeckil If you did it now, that'd distract them for a moment right when we make our break and give us a head start on getting out of here."

 

"Start opening the door and get ready," Markel said, pressing more key pads. "I got the hangar security on line and . . ."

 

The sound of the grapples retracting echoed throughout the large hangar. The guards went running toward the ship, and Markel and his followers were out of the storage room before the guards spotted them.

 

One of the two guards on the catwalk pounded on a device on the wall before he followed his companion down to the hangar floor. The three guards made straight for the AcaSeckil and the attackers made straight for them.

 

Acorna let her hammer fly at the nearest guard as he lifted his stunner. Her weapon shattered his hand and sent his stunner skittering across the metal floor, right to Market's feet. Markel picked it up and downed the top one on the ladder, while Johnny, coming out from behind the bulk of a small shuttlecraft, tackled the third guard before he could raise his weapon. Calum looked around, puzzled that there was no one for him to attack.

 

"That was too easy," he said.

 

Markel was taking the stairs to the catwalk two at a time, and running along it, checking the unlocked hatches leading into the interior of the ship.

 

"We're secure in here now," he called, and sauntered to the farthest ladder, sliding down it without using the actual steps. The boy had had a lot of practice in such acrobatics. The others followed him in more conventional fashion but with scarcely less haste. Even though until Calum powered up they could not lock the hatches, Acorna felt more secure once she and all her friends were inside the AcaSecki.

 

"Well done, Markel," Johnny said, throwing an arm about the boys shoulders. "But what do we do now? Once they see us leave, they merely latch the tractor beam on us and haul us back aboard. Unless you can disable that. ..."

 

"Yes, that much I can still do," Markel said, "but..."

 

"The AcaSecki's fast," Calum said, "but, even with the tractor beam useless, I'd be surprised if the Haven doesn't have laser cannon and missiles." Markel nodded, looking mournful. "Both- and there's no way I can get into those controls."

 

"You mean there's some security on this ship you haven't worked around?" Johnny pretended amazement, but Markel looked so hangdog that he patted the boy on the back and told him it didn't matter; there was more than one way to skin a cat.

 

"We may not be able to get clean away," Calum said cheerfully, "but we can activate the ship long enough to send out a spurt for help in all possible directions, then lock down again and ... well. . ."

 

They all looked at one another for a long moment, acknowledging that they might have come to the end of this particular road. Their takeover of the AcaSecki was not likely to go unnoticed for long, no matter how cleverly Markel disguised his jamming of the communications between the harbor and the main deck; and they could hardly hold the little ship like a besieged fortress.   "Well, we'll jump through that spacewarp when we come to it," Johnny said with a shrug, accepting the inevitable. "Better get on with it-no telling exactly how much time Markel can buy us with his system manipulations."

 

Calum started the reactivation sequence while Acorna was busy framing a spurt code message, which she thought should so to Maganos, Kezdet (in case Mr. Li was at home), and Laboue.

 

"I'm thinking ofRafiks Uharu, too," Calum said. "Won't take more than three seconds a spurt, and it'll quadruple the chances of one message getting through."

 

"First of all we send one in clear to Shenjemi Federation," Acorna said, and when Calum opened his mouth to protest, she added firmly: "We promised." Calum sighed. "So we did." And looked up the direction code for the Federation. The other destinations he had already long memorized. A low whistle startled them both as Markel, with Johnny Greene assisting Dr. Hoa, came into the main compartment.

 

"This is some ship," Market said, awed.

 

"You can say that again," Johnny added, equally impressed as he helped Dr. Hoa into one of the conformable chairs. "You got a galley on board?" he asked.

 

Acorna pointed.

 

"Is there a shield over the hangar entry, Markel?" Calum asked. "Our messages could bounce right back at us if there is."

 

"I took that off when I disabled the grapples," the boy said absently, far more intent on prowling around the room, running his hands over the soft fabrics and looking into compartments in the furnishings. "There's so much space for everything," he said, standing in the middle of the room, arms outspread and turning slowly around.

 

Johnny came back with a tray full of steaming cups which he offered first to Dr. Hoa and then to the others. "A pick-you-up," he explained. "This ship isn't just a pretty space, its well appointed."

 

"Got your earphone in, Market? I'm about to spurt, and I want to know if they catch it," Calum said.

 

"Gotta be outside for that," Markel said, and headed off to the hatch.   "If they do hear us, get back inside in one helluva hurry, lad, because I'll take off and risk their firing at us; we'll just have to hope that everyone's too busy looking for us to see us," Calum warned.

 

"Gotcha," was Markel's insouciant response.

 

"On my mark," Calum said, raising his arm, "NOW!" He reactivated the ship and waited tensely through the seconds before the corn unit would be ready to function. "Anything on your end, Markel?" After a moments silence, he toggled down the spurt relay.

 

"Wait!" Market cried from outside the ship. "What? You don't-" The boy's cry was too loud to miss, and filled with an unidentifiable emotion.

 

Calum hit the toggle for the spurt relay and punched in the shutdown sequence for the ship in three quick, deft motions.

 

"I'm sorry," he said to Acorna. "The Shenjemi message got through, I don't know about the coded spurt to our friends; it was processing the multiple address list when I shut down. With luck, some of the addresses will have been cleared. Where's Market? What was he yelling about?"

 

As if on cue, the boy wandered in, a dazed and incredulous look on his face. "I think it's all over."

 

"What's all over?" Johnny demanded.

 

"I think . . ." and Markel hesitated, "... I think there's been another coup. Nueva and the others were so busy chasing us, they weren't paying attention to the other passengers. Nueva and her gang've been taken prisoner. I think the Starfarers-at least what are left of them--are back in charge again."

 

"I think we stay right where we are until we know that's what's happened," Johnny said, and gestured for Calum to close the hatch manually. "And let's not reactivate the AcaSecki just yet. If everything's okay, we have plenty of time to let our friends at home know-and if it isn't, we don't really need to alert anybody who didn't notice that one spurt. We'll just listen in for a bit. You can patch in to the bridge using Havens systems, can't you, Markel?"

 

"I think so."

 

With shaking hands, the boy began to do just that.

 

 

Maganos, Unified Federation Date^I.OS.lS

 

hariinye was too stunned to resist the security guard's firm hold on his arm. First the children, then the man seemed to have resisted his projections. Was there some force field in this part of the base that annulled telepathic projections? He sought contact with the Linyaari on board the ship to reassure himself.

 

(Names of the Four First Mares, what have you gotten yourself into now, Thariinye?)

 

(Is this what you consider "having an inconspicuous look round"?)

 

(I told you he was too immature to be trusted with this responsibility.)

 

Wincing, Thariinye closed his mind to further contact. All right, his mental powers were as acute as ever . . . but what he heard from the three enraged ladies on board the ship was not in the least reassuring! He would just as soon take his chances with the barbarians. After all, they were a puny lot; he could crush this man's skull with one kick from his powerful hooves, if he chose to.

 

(Thariinye! You'll do no such thing!)                    ,

 

(I am shamed that any blood kin of mine should even contemplate such a khievii action.)

 

(Much too immature. I told you so.)

 

"Oh, do stop nattering at me!" Thariinye snapped aloud, but in Linyaari.

 

"Don't know what kind of foreign gabble that is, mister," the stolid security guard said, "but iggerance of the law ain't no excuse. If'nyou don't speak Basic, you'll get a interpreter."

 

"You can't take the Lady away!" one of the pestiferous brats around them cried out.

 

"Kid, this guy ain't no lady," the guard said. "Now git on back toyer mining class. I'm takin' him straight to Mr. Li."

 

The tallest girl nodded slowly. "I see . . . this is not Acorna." She glared down the protests of the other children. "I know the Lady, and she is like this one, but. . . different. Mr. Li will know •what to do."

 

The guard hurried Thariinye away before the children could start any more fuss.

 

"What. . . law . . . of yours ... do I break ... by existing . . . in this form?" Thariinye had to concentrate to get the words out;

 

it was a harsh, tongue-mangling language, this "Basik."

 

The guard looked Thariinye straight in the chest . . . about where his eyes would have been if he'd been the same height as this puny biped. So that much of the projection was still working! The man certainly behaved as if he saw nothing unusual in Thariinye s appearance ... so what was it that had alerted him?

 

"I ain't interested in your beoootiful form and figure, mister, and neither are them kids back there. But since you DO speak Basic, you oughta know better than to go flashin' in a public place. Specially kids," he added. "Right down on molesting kids, Mr. Li is, and who'd blame him, seein' what them kids already been through? If'n it was up to me, I'd have you deported without a space suit."

 

The guard s anger lifted his thought-stream momentarily out of the dull "grubble, grubble, grubble" of normal thoughts and gave Thariinye a devastatingly clear image of a tall, handsome, silver-haired biped making sexual overtures to a group of shrieking children, followed by associated images so disgusting he hastily closed his mind against them. He was so shocked that he did not even try to persuade the guard to forget his memories and let him go.

 

(You idiot, Thariinye! They must have a nudity taboo.) (Nobody TOLD me!) (I knew we should have taken longer to study the culture.)

 

"Lucky for you Mr. Giloglie ordered you brought directly to Delszaki Li's private rooms," the guard said, steering them through a side corridor that opened onto an antechamber lined in crimson silk, -with yellow patterns on the hangings. "There's some as would have you lynched for even thinkin' about what you just done."

 

He nodded at ayoung man sitting to one side behind a carved wooden console, and an oval opening in front of Thariinye widened like the pupil of a Linyaari eye to admit them.

 

"Very good, Barnes. You may return to your regular duties now," said a slender, dark-topped biped standing in a tense attitude of expectation just inside the next room, a spacious chamber furnished with soft couches and small tables.

 

Thariinye ducked to get through the oval opening and redoubled the force of his projections.

 

(You aren't seeing anything unusual. I'm really very boring. You want me to go away.)   The dark-topped biped swayed and put one hand to its forehead. The gesture tightened the fabric across its chest so that Thariinye was able to see its enlarged mammaries, large enough to indicate it was of the same gender as Khariinya but nothing to compare with hers. Perhaps it was an immature member of the species ... a nymphet?

 

"I don't know what's coming over me," she said weakly. "I thought. . . but I did see ..."

 

She gazed vaguely in Thariinye s direction with eyes that clearly did not really see him, but only something she would take as "not unusual" in this place. "Excuse me ... do I know you?"

 

"Judit, what's the matter with you?" A large, red-topped biped with an amazing display of facial hair burst through an inner door. "Acorna, where the devil have you ..."

 

This one slowed, and the same confusion crossed his features. "Wait a minute. I thought..."

 

He backed up through the doorway by which he'd entered, glanced up at something, and looked back at Thariinye. "I don't get it," he said, and rubbed his eyes. "On the vid . . . but you're not. . ."

 

The hiss of machinery behind him became louder; the red one stepped aside, out of sight, and a very aged biped mounted on a floating box maneuvered through the doorway. Thariinye had an instant impression of fragile, paper-dry, wrinkled skin around a withered frame, bright dark eyes, and a piercing intelligence.

 

(I deduce some kind of telepathic damper,) the new biped thought.

 

Thariinye sighed in relief. (Then your people can hear with the heart as well as the ears?)

 

(It is not a well-understood talent among those of my race, but the possibility has long been discussed. A sage of this man s people once said that when the impossible has been discarded, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.)

 

Thariinye tossed his forelock out of his weary eyes. If this was the aged being's first experience of mind-speech, why was he taking it so calmly? And how had he figured it out so fast?

 

(You young people are so easily excited.)

 

Thariinye felt the dry amusement in the old being's thoughts.

 

(Confirmation of a long-discussed hypothesis is gratifying, not frightening! As for deductions, I could conceive of no other hypothesis which would account for the fact that your image appears as one like Acorna on the vid-screens, yet all who see you in person take you for a man like us.)

 

(Except those blasted kids!)

 

(My species often claims that children's sight is purer and more truthful than that of adults. Is this then true?)

 

(They're too immature for thought-speech. I suppose you could call that pure-I call it damned inconvenient!)

 

(Ahh. Will be most interesting to learn details of what you call thought-speech. But first things must come first. Let us take tea together, and perhaps you will tell me what you know of our Acorna.)

 

(OUR 'Khornya,) Thariinye corrected firmly, (and it is for your people to tell us what you have done with her.)

 

(There are more of you?)

 

(Introduce us AT ONCE, Thariinye. How could you be so rude? This is clearly not a barbarian but a truly hnyarii being.) (You are so inconsiderate, Thariinye!)

 

The aged biped's dark eyes widened, and he let out a hiss of comprehension.

 

"This is wonderful," he whispered aloud. "Judit, you will please make ready tea for . . . how many?"

 

(There are four of us.) There didn't seem to be much point in concealing their number when this being had so rapidly deduced so much about them.

 

"I don't see what is so wonderful!" said the female addressed as "Judit"-terrible, tongue-mangling name; how would he ever manage to say it?

 

"We speak in mind," the old one said in his husky whisper. "I hnd is much less tiring than manipulating vocal apparatus. You will please learn art of mind-speak as soon as possible, my Judit. Perhaps these new ki-iin will be so kind as to teach you." To Thariinye he suggested, (It might reduce confusion if you were to allow my companions to see yourself in your true aspect.)

 

(How rude, Thariinye! One does not project illusions onto the minds of linyarii beings to whom one has been properly introduced.)

 

(SHUT UP! Oh, sorry,) Thariinye sent to the old one, (not you, my aunt Melireenya. She is the most terrible nagging- well, you'll see.)

 

(I look forward to meeting your companions.)

 

There was a gasp of amazement from the younger bipeds gathered around the old one as Thariinye dropped his cloaking projections and stood before them as himself: a seven-foot-tall Liinyar male in the pride of health and youth, as good a specimen of the race, in his own humble opinion, as they could hope to find.

 

The momentary silence was broken by a slender, darktopped biped -with a facial structure resembling that of the female, but -without the enlarged glands on its chest.

 

"I told you that was not Acorna," it said smugly.

 

(WHERE IS SHE? Oh, sorry. I did not mean to shout at you . . . but we are most concerned for the fate of our 'Khornya.)

 

(Is long story. You wall please to take tea first, then when all are calm we will discuss what is to be done.)

 

Thariinye was chagrined to find that this frail, ancient biped, who claimed to have just now exercised telepathic communication for the first time, was able to shut his mind completely to further queries. The portion of his mind that Thariinye could reach now resembled a wall of polished green stone, so smooth that nothing could adhere to it, so hard that nothing could penetrate it.

 

Once admitted to the innermost chamber, Thariinye understood how these beings had so easily seen through his calming projections. The vid-screens transmitted the input of mechanical image-sensing devices which, having no thoughts, fears, or emotions, could not be confused by the Linyaari art of projecting illusory feelings.

 

(Really, Thariinye. You should have realized that beings capable of some limited form of space travel would have other mechanical devices.)

 

(Huh! I don't recall YOU mentioning the possibility. Aunt Melireenya.)

 

(The boy is right, Melireenya. We are all culpable of underrating these beings and their intelligence. Already we have discovered that their technology, though crude, is effective and that at least one of them is capable of clear mind-speech. They may well have other surprises in store for us.)

 

(Let's hope they have something in store that'll surprise the Khieevi. Latest communications from Home say the invasion fleet is definitely targeting this sector.)

 

(First we get 'Khornya back,) Neeva put in firmly. (THEN we will tell them about the Khieevi. We do not wish to frighten them as we did the first ones we contacted. Thariinye, you are not to discuss the Khieevi until we are with you, do you understand?)

 

(No fear, Neeva. Now that the old one has closed his mind to me, I am having enough trouble saying ANYTHING in this horrible language of theirs. It hurts my mouth to pronounce the words, and they are so dim they never understand anything until I say it three times.)

 

Actually, Judit was pleased that her facility -with languages extended to being able to decipher Thariinye's accent. He had wakened sooner and spent less total time with the LAANYE than the older Linyaari had, and it showed in his difficulty with Basic Interlingua phonemics. Her name was rendered as Yuudhithe" and as for his apology for violating their culture's nudity taboo, well, it was a good thing she'd had some idea what he was talking about, or she never would have figured it out.

 

Once they understood that Thariinye knew no more than they about Acorna's whereabouts. Gill and Rafik were perfectly content to let Judit do the hard work of making conversation with Thariinye and translating his remarks into proper Basic for their benefit, while Mr. Li took one of his quick naps in the hover-chair and conserved his energy for the upcoming meeting.

 

There were fine beads of sweat along Judit's hairline, and she could feel a tension headache gripping the back of her neck before Pal brought the other three Linyaari to Mr. Li's inner room.

 

(At least you haven't gotten into any more trouble while w6 were on our way.)

 

(You can relax now, Thaari. We'll take care of everything.)

 

"Missiter Li," Thariinye said, "allow me to initraduuse mi khomipaanians." He would have gritted his teeth if it had been possible to do so while working his mouth around the harsh syllables of the alien language. Wasn't it just like Melireenya to come swanning in and take over after he had taken the risks and done all the really hard work? "Neeva of the Renyilaaghe, visedhaanye ferilii. Melireenya of the Balaave, gheraalye ve-khanyii. Khaari of the Giryeeni, gheraalye malivii." At least the Linyaari names flowed easily off his tongue, and he did not put himself to the trouble of translating their titles.

 

"Inn your speech," Neeva said easily, "I believe I would be knownn as Enyvoy Extraordinyari. My companyaan Melireenya is our Senior Communyications Officer, and Khaari is our Navighation Officer."

 

Gill nodded stiffly; Rafik bowed; Pal took the envoy's hand and bowed over it, touching his lips to the back of the blunt fingers so like his Acorna's. The pupils of Neeva's eyes narrowed briefly to silver slits, then widened again. The fleeting expression was so like Acorna's that Judit felt tears spring to her eyes.

 

"We are honored to make your acquaintance," she murmured for Mr. Li, unaware that he was already speaking to the newcomers in their own private manner.

 

(Is indeed great honor to be the first of our race to greet others of Acorna's kind.)

 

(Not exactly the first. But that first lot wouldn't even-)

 

(Thariinye!)

 

Delszaki Li glanced at Judit, and she moved closer to him, the better to hear his labored whisper. "Can they understand languages other than Basic?" he whispered in his mother's native tongue, which was a first language for more than half the people of Kezdet.

 

"Delighted to make your acquaintance," Judit said promptly in the same language. Neeva's eyes narrowed to silver slits again.

 

(Honored Li, I apologize. We thought we had learned your tongue already, but I cannot follow what this person is saying.)

 

(Not to be concerned. Takes some time to understand obscure idioms of Basic,) Li responded. He quickly called up the image of the Jade Palace to shield his mind once again, lest the Linyaari pick up some hint of his innermost thoughts. "Judit, be polite to our guests," he reprimanded her, "speak Basic, and slowly."

 

Judit blushed and apologized for her carelessness and gave no sign that she had acted under Mr. Li's orders to begin with.

 

Delszaki Li was severely embarrassed to confess to the Linyaari that he had lost track ofAcorna only shortly before her own people came for her, and he made no effort to conceal his feelings from them. (My house is shamed. I will tell you that we took all possible care for Acorna from day of her finding, but how will you believe this when now she is lost? Descendants of Li will be mourning this day through centuries to come.)

 

When this was said aloud, Rafik interpolated, "Excuse me, Mr. Li, but let us not say yet that Acorna is lost. We know her intended destination - "

 

"But not the route," Gill put in.

 

Rafik's lips twitched. "More than you might think can be deduced from intelligent study of the star maps, Declan Giloglie. Given what we know of the accident to the hydroponics section of the Aca^ecki- "

 

"On't-day ee-bay inay uch-say ay uny-hay oo-tay ell-tay em-thay allay ou-yay ow-knay," Gill interrupted. Lacking the multilingual background shared by Li and the Kendoros, he had independently come to his own conclusion about how best to converse privately in front of beings who could learn Basic overnight.

 

"Why not?" Rafik demanded.

 

Gill glanced at the envoys. "Ee-way on't-day ow-knay oowhay ey-thay eally-ray are-ay," he said. "Ey-thay ight-may eebay ee-thay eople-pay oo-whay arooned-may Corna-Ay."

 

Rafik put his hand on Gill's arm and drew the larger man into the antechamber.

 

"Stop making a bloody fool of yourself with that pig Latin," he whispered. "We've got no reason to mistrust them."

 

"We've got no reason to trust them, either," Gill returned in a furious whisper. "SOMEBODY set Acorna adrift to die in space; until we find out who and why, we're not turning her over to the first funny-looking strangers to waltz in and demand her!"

 

Rafik's lips twitched. "At the moment," he murmured, "we can't turn her over, can we? So while I'm studying the star maps, why don't you sit down with the Linyaari and find out what they have to say about Acorna? "

 

By that time the tea Mr. Li had requested was ready, and the small social ceremony helped to alleviate the strain all parties were feeling. Knowing Acorna's tastes, he had ordered a blend of herbal tea with alfalfa for the envoys, served in the handleless cups favored by Acorna, while the humans, with their more slender and more flexible digits, drank smoky Kilumbemba Oolong from cups with delicate porcelain handles. Melireenya took pains to tell Judit aloud that she had noticed and did very much appreciate this evidence of attention to their tastes.

 

"Is no trouble," Mr. Li whispered, so that humans as well as Linyaari could understand them. "We have learned much from our beloved Acorna. Now we hope to learn more from you. Origin of Acorna is still mystery. Gill, you will tell of finding her?"

 

Gill cleared his throat and briefly recounted their discovery of Acorna, asleep in what they had later deduced was an escape pod, drifting close to an asteroid he and Calum and Rafik had been mining. He downplayed the work the three of them had put into raising the foundling, not to mention the fact that they had lost their jobs and almost lost their ship, to protect her from becoming the ward of Amalgamated Mining and subject to whatever experiments their Linguistics and Psych department could dream up, but his affection for Acorna came through underlying every word and moved the Linyaari envoys deeply. He skipped the tangled tale of her adventures on Kezdet and ended by explaining that Calum had come up with an ingenious theory for locating Acorna's home world and that he and Acorna had just taken off in search of it-unfortunately without filing a navigation plan.

 

(One chance in mitanyaakhi!) Neeva silently exclaimed. (Vaanye could not possibly have foreseen that the explosion would not only transport Acorna out of danger but would bring her to another populated sector of the galaxy . . . and into the hands of these good Linyaari who raised her as one of their own.)