"A diffuse sonar signal is emanating from the area around the planet where the Linyaari escape pod is located, Captain," Mac replied.

 

A strange feeling came over Acorna as she looked at the thousands of tiny blinking lights spread across the sonar screen. She had seen this pattern before. "I know what that is, Captain!" she said. "It's the sonar-blocking signal given out by cloaked Linyaari vessels. One of the techno-artisans showed me how it worked recently."

 

"So," Becker said. "If it's a cloaked Linyaari vessel, what's  that?" He pointed to a substantial and solid blip rapidly entering the sonar array.

 

As if in answer, the corn unit began a "Klick-klack-klickklack-klick-klack" noise.

 

"Khieevi," Acorna and Aari whispered, while Mac said the same word in a matter-of-fact, almost cheerful tone.

 

"Those guys?" Becker asked, peering at the dot as if he could make out the shape of the ship from it.

 

"Scope," Acorna said, and the viewscreen suddenly zoomed so that the mantis-shaped Khieevi vessel was indeed readily identifiable, though still quite distant.

 

"So that's what one of the little buggers looks like." Becker said, quietly, as if afraid they would hear. Meanwhile the klickings and klackings continued. "We seem to have intercepted one of their transmissions. Anybody have any idea "what it's all about?"

 

"Klickety-klack," the Khieevi vessel's message seemed to be tapping directly onto Maati's spinal cord. She sat for a moment with her eyes squeezed shut.

 

"You don't have to close your eyes and pretend they can't see you," Thariinye said, but not as scornfully as he might have. "We're cloaked."

 

"What does the noise mean?" she asked.

 

"I don't know. I didn't hear a lot of their language when we were up against them on Rushima. And I wasn't alone. So far, nobody has gotten enough of a sample into the LAANYE for reliable translations. All our contacts with them have pretty much been at the wrong end of a 'weapon. Maybe it's Khieevi for 'come out, come out, wherever you are.' But don't worry, youngling. We may not be coming out, but we're moving out right now. I'm putting us into the nearest wormhole and-"

 

Maati's eyes blinked open and she reached to intercept his hand on the controls. "But . . . my parents! They're still on  that planet! The Khieevi will get them." A brief struggle ensued, which Thariinye won.

 

He gave her a pitying look and reached again for the navigation controls. "I'm sorry, Maati, but we don't know for sure they're still alive. If so ... well, they've escaped the notice of the Khieevi so far. Perhaps they can continue to do it until we can find help. We-"

 

He never finished his sentence.

 

A heavy blow thudded against the Niikaavri, knocking both of them forward, straining the straps that held them into their chairs. At the same time, the lights on the control panel flared and two blinked out.

 

"Oh, no!" he cried, and punched frantically at the board again.

 

"Oh, no, what?" Maati asked.

 

"Somehow, in that little maneuver of yours, -we turned our camouflage off. They know our position now."

 

"Put the cloaking device back on and move, then!"

 

"I'm trying to, but the ship is not responding!"

 

A bolt of light shot in front of the viewport and they were once more rocked by the force of some sort of energy weapon striking their starboard bow.

 

Suddenly the egg-like ship was spinning dizzily, and the blue planet grew larger and larger in their viewscreen.

 

Thariinye grabbed the corn unit and yelled, as if it could carry across space, "Mayday, Mayday, we are the Linyaari vessel Niikaavri and we are under attack from a Khieevi vessel."

 

Maati thought he had lost his mind. Surely no one would hear them, but then she cried, "Tell them -who we are, Thariimye. In case my parents can hear us. Tell them it's me, so they'll know what happened. Tell them to hide!"

 

I am Ensign Thariinye of clan Renyilaaghe. My second in command is Maati of clan Nyaarya. We are under attack by a Kleevi vessel. Our coordinates are . . ."

 

Maati thought she was hearing things for a moment when the klickings and klackings and sound of failing systems were replaced suddenly by a familiar comforting voice.

 

"Thariinye, Maati, it's Khornya. You've been badly hit. Use the escape pod. We'll pick you up and get us all out of here."

 

Another, harder thud and the ship was spinning dizzily, the blue planet looming larger with every revolution.

 

Maati floated up from her seat. "G force has been cut."

 

"Khornya, the Khieevi! Save yourselves!" Thariinye bellowed into the corn unit. To Maati he said, "No time to deal with it, youngling. Unstrap. Climb into the pod!"

 

The pod was located behind the command chairs. Maati snapped her restraint open and did a handstand on the back of the chair, flipping herself down to the top of the pod and popping its catch.

 

"No sweat, sport," Captain Becker's voice was saying. "We got 'em covered."

 

"Thariinye, the escape pod," Khornya said again.

 

Maati climbed inside the pod. She suppressed a nervous giggle. The zero G popped her up to the top.

 

"Oh," Thariinye said, and she saw the top of his head as it swrveled to take in the wildly flickering console lights, the sparks flying from the board at many points.

 

Maati waited. It felt like forever. She felt sick from the spinning and thought that the stars swirling past the viewport looked like what she'd thought she would see in the wormhole.

 

She heard the snap of Thariinye's restraint, and saw his feet, then his legs as he bounced over the top of the chair and off the deck.

 

Maati held on to the pod lid with one hand and grabbed his foot with the other, pulling him in. He was barely inside the pod when all of a sudden the canopy slapped closed and locked, and they felt a bump as gravity returned, but increased fivefold, pressing the pod against the deck.

 

Thariinye pressed the release button to eject the pod and activate the recirculating oxygen supply. Oxygen flooded the ood with a hissing sound, but they were still stuck inside the ship. The ejection mechanism -was malfunctioning, just like everything else on the ship! And the gravitational force was so strong they couldn't pop the hatch again to see why the pod had failed to eject.

 

Thariinye's heart boomed against her ear.

 

"It's okay, Thariinye. The pod will help protect us during a crash. They're amazingly resilient, you know."

 

His breath rasped in and out a few times.

 

"Unless, of course, the ship burns up on entering the atmosphere or we're smashed in the wreckage when it slams into the planet," Maati said, and realized that what she was voicing was Thariinye's thought. He hadn't said a -word. What a time for her psychic powers to kick in!

 

The pod insulated them a bit from the noises around them, but she knew they -were still inside the ship because she hadn't felt the explosive acceleration that would indicate the pod had separated from the mother ship. They were still stuck.

 

(I could open the hatch and . . .) she thought she said aloud.

 

Tharnnye hugged her close to his chest. "Not if it's stuck, you can't. I'll keep hitting the firing mechanism. We'll just have to hope that the relay decides to engage before the crash-or maybe even during."

 

(Oh, no, we're trapped!) Panic welled up inside her and tears began to flow from her eyes. She couldn't spend the pitiful traction left of her life cooped up in this tiny shell. She couldn't. She just couldn't.

 

Then suddenly it was as if they had hit a bump. They felt themselves sliding and then their pod was launched so that at rst they were flying, then dropping.

 

(It will level out, won't it?) she asked. Or did she? They were wrapped so closely in each other's arms that it was no  -wonder she could suddenly hear his thoughts and he could hear hers.

 

(Yes,) he said. (But I am doomed anyway. Even if -we survive the crash and the Khieevi, Liriili will kill me for stealing and losing her newest ship.)

 

Becker jerked his thumb backward, gesturing for Aari to surrender the command chair. The Condor's hiding place behind one of the moons kept it out of range of the Khieevi ship's sensors, giving the crew a little breathing space to make plans.

 

Aari got up, but gave the captain a level look. "I am fine, Joh. The Khieevi no longer freeze my ability to think."

 

"I know that, buddy, but you don't know my bird like I do." He clasped his hands, intertwining his fingers, straightened his wrists and flexed his knuckles, then shook both hands out and applied them to the buttons. "Let's deploy those Winding laser cannons we picked up last year."

 

"Sorry, Captain," the computer said, "but you have not yet found the right mountings to affix them to the gun ports."

 

"Oh, yeah. Then fire the Apatchipon micron splitters."

 

"You have not been able to fashion suitable ports, Captain, to accommodate both the micron splitters and your latest hull modifications.''

 

"Well, I've had all these people around and-okay, so we'll just go for the plain old atom blasters Dad installed years ago.

 

"You removed those and stored them, Captain, when you traded for the Windigi laser cannons."

 

"Fraggit! So what have we got? Spit? We fired the last big load of cargo into Ganoosh's bird and we haven't acquired enough new stuff yet to do any good." He shook his head and said, "I guess we could board 'em and go mano a mano with the side arms and laser rifles. It worked on Rushima."

 

Acorna leaned forward, "You used the tractor beam before, Captain. How much will it hold?"

 

"A bunch more than we've got to throw at these buggers," Becker replied. "This was supposed to be a nice, simple cargo run. . • •" He and Aari exchanged long looks. Acorna did not care for the grim set of Aari's jaw or the glazed, doomed look in his eyes. Nor could she bear to think of Thariinye, much less Maati, at the nonexistent mercy of the Khieevi. She had sensed some difficulty with the pod before their ship crashed, but she had no true reading of what it was.

 

"Joh, listen to me and do exactly as I say," Aari commanded, interrupting Acorna's train of thought. His voice was clipped and hard and she was amazed to see he had appropriated Becker's side arm, and was raising it in Becker's direction. "You have an operational shuttle in Bay Two. You will take Khornya and Riidkiiyi and board the shuttle now. I will give you five seconds to clear and then I will ram the Condor into the Khieevi ship."

 

"Over my dead body," Becker growled, whipping around in the chair to face Aari. "That's mutiny."

 

"Over your stunned body if necessary, Joh. Khornya, you understand this is the only way to save Thariinye and my sister, don't you? The Khieevi killed me long ago. I live only to prevent them from doing to others what they did to me. So unless you wish to lose your horn to them as I did, and worse, you and Mac will take Joh and Riidkiiyi now and evacuate."

 

You're not gonna crash my ship!" Becker said belligerently, his jaw stuck out.

 

Ir you will all just listen to me for a moment," Acorna interjected. "Aari, give the captain back his weapon. We will need the ConSor to rescue Thariinye and Maati and your par61118. I have a better idea. Remember in that old vid, when the evil western agricultural workers dragged the good quick-draw waITlor the indigenous inhabitants had hired to save them?

 

Tksy dragged him through cactus, and over hardened trails, a  he was much the worse for wear as a result. I remember thinking that actually it was highly unlikely he would have survived, especially maintaining his headgear as he did, had the event been an actual occurrence rather than a fictional one. Well, it seems to me that we could do much the same thing here. The atmospheric rim on this planet is quite dense and the gravitational pull strong. If the tractor beam will hold the Khieevi ship ..."

 

"Gotcha, Princess! You're brilliant!" Becker spoke to the computer. "Okay, Buck, engage the tractor beam. Hook onto that big, nasty piece of salvage off our starboard bow." He chuckled and said to his crew members. "Heh-heh. This is a great idea! They can't shoot us or anybody else while they're locked onto the tractor beam's gravity -well."

 

The beam locked onto the Khieevi ship and hauled it toward the Condor until it vanished from view beneath them.

 

"At least, I don't think they can, unless they got some new technology that lets them." Becker continued in a slightly more worried tone as he maneuvered the beam so that the Khieevi was in tow behind and at an angle from the Condor, riding between the salvage ship's belly and the planet's rim.

 

The klick-klack noise on the com unit was now loud, angry, and very obviously intended for the crew of the Condor.

 

"They are telling you to surrender, Joh. They have us in their pincers," Aari said. He was baring his teeth, and it was not a friendly grin. Acorna reached up without thinking to wipe the sweat where it was suddenly dripping off his chin. He touched her hand lightly, his fingers stroking hers once, regretfully. She knew from the touch that he still could not imagine they -would come away from this encounter alive, much less unscathed.

 

"Strap down, crew," Becker said.

 

Acorna grabbed RK and strapped him in with her. Aari and Mac did likewise in the seats Becker had scavenged so that  the entire crew could be together on occasion-though none of them had thought that such an occasion as this would ever arise.

 

"Buck, give us a visual of the cargo in the tractor beam, Becker told the ship's computer." Once he could see the Khieevi ship, Becker accelerated and the Condor shot toward the blue planet, past where the enemy vessel had originally hovered while watching the crash of the Linyaari craft. The screen showed the mantis-like ship dangling beneath the Condor's belly, while the klicking and klacking from the corn unit rose in volume and variation. Threats, no doubt.

 

Becker dove and the blue planet grew larger and larger, until its vaporous cover seemed ready to swallow the Condor. "Manual," Becker said, and pulled back on an actual lever among the buttons of his control panel, with the effect that the Condor's nose swooped up, slinging the Khieevi ship behind it.

 

Acorna felt a bump as they changed course, and on the screen the Khieevi ship jumped and shook as it dipped into the atmosphere and was pulled out again. Becker did this three times. Diving and swooping, and-at the end of each swoop- a bump. As they pulled up, the pressure of acceleration pressed all of them to their seats. RK's lips pulled back from his teeth in a fierce grimace, as did Aari's. Acorna -would have laughed but her teeth were bared, too. Only Mac's face remained just the same, robotic flesh impervious to the force. Acorna's stomach could not decide whether to go into her throat or her legs, and the variations in gravity made her lightheaded and giddy.

 

Just as the Khieevi ship bumped the third time, Becker commanded, "Disengage tractor beam, Bucko. We're gonna play a little game of crack the ship."

 

The Khieevi ship -was flung wide from the Condor and skipped three more times against the resistance of the outer atmosphere, almost as if the ship was a flat rock and the atmospheric rim was a pond. But the ship wasn't solid, and the Mantis's legs and antennae broke off with the first skip, while  large cracks appeared with the next before it plunged spinning toward the surface. It disappeared into nothingness as the Condor flew deeper into space.

 

"Whoa, Buck," Becker said.

 

When the Condor had slowed, Becker returned to the atmosphere and reversed thrusters. The Condor's screens were picking up signals from the Lmyaan escape pod as well as several from the Khieevi ship.

 

The planet appeared even bluer than it had from the air as the ship approached the surface.

 

Acorna didn't know she was humming until Aari asked, "You are singing-is it your death song?"

 

"Gill used to sing it sometimes," Acorna said. "It is an old Terran folksong of military origin."

 

Becker laughed and sang in a gravelly and tuneless voice, "Off we go, off into the wild blue yonder."

 

 

 

 

Seven

 

Thariinye?" Maati said. "Tharnnye, we've landed. JVly arms are pinned. Can you open the canopy?"

 

His heart still beat in her ear slow and steady. He was alive, anyway. "Thariinye, are you okay?"

 

He blasted her other ear with a loud snore. She elbowed him in the ribs. "You fell asleep! We could have been killed and you fell asleep!"

 

He stirred and groaned. "Not asleep. More like unconscious, I think."

 

"Unconscious people don't snore. You were snoring." Where are we, anyway?" he asked, changing the subject. "I don't know. But it feels like we landed. That was too much of a thump for us to be still in space. Can you open the canopy?"

 

What if we have landed on some hostile planet where there is only nitrogen to breathe?" he asked. "If I open the canopy, we die."

 

Look at the sensors, you dope. The air's fine. Remember, "y parents lived here for long enough for the Niriians to find roem. They must have breathed the air and still survived. And if you don't get us out of here, I wet my pants now and we both die of hunger or worse later anyway," she said. "Do you just want to sit here and wait for the Khieevi to snatch us?"

 

"Okay, you've got a point." He opened the hatch. While he was at it, he turned off the locator beacon. "Don't know who'll be looking for us, do we?" he asked. Through the open hatch, they saw periwinkle blue sky, lacy fronds of vegetation, one sun and half a dozen moons simultaneously, and some large and very beautiful birds with blue and green iridescent plumage soaring above them.

 

"How could you fall asleep -when the Khieevi were after us and maybe even got Khornya and Aari, too?"

 

"I couldn't do anything about it, could I? When you are older and more experienced, youngling, you will learn to utilize whatever quiet moments you can grab from the constant excitement of a spacefarer's life to conserve your energy and mend any damage done by life's travails."

 

"Right," she said, and tried to sit up. The pod moved under her, bouncing up and down. "Whoa, stop!" she said, and looked over the edge to see what was causing the motion. Lacy, fernlike growth held them in the air. "Thariinye, look. These are the tallest bushes I have ever seen!" All around them and high above them, blocking off the view in most directions, other lacy fronds fanned briskly back and forth.

 

He sat up, too, and the pod rocked even more perilously.

 

"They're not bushes, youngling. These are treetops. Can you climb down? If the branches support your weight, then maybe they'll support mine. I don't think we're up very high. All of the other trees appear to be higher."

 

She leaned over the edge and touched something solid, big enough it let her spread her whole hand. Thariinye leaned against the opposite side of the pod to balance it as she felt her way along. When she was sure the support was wide enough for her to step out on, she did, slithering her belly, pelvis, and legs over the side to follow her outstretched hands and arms.

 

She crawled along the limb on hands and knees, peering through the fronds to try to find more sturdy branches. When she reached the trunk, she had to lift more fronds to find the way down. "No wonder it wasn't very tall," she crawled back to Thariinye.

 

"Be careful, you'll . . ." "Oooops!" she cried, windmilling her arms as she let her legs shoot out from under her.

 

"Maati!" Thariinye cried, and toppled the pod reaching for her. It fell from the nest of fronds and landed below-about three feet below. Thariinye had covered his head with both hands anticipating the crash.

 

Maati laughed and laughed, and stood up. The fronds and the part of the trunk still in the ground rose only as high as her waist. "Gotcha!" she cried, clapping her hands. "We broke the tree when we landed and its branches cushioned our fall!" "Brat," Thariinye grumbled, extricating himself from the pod.

 

"Now what, 0 experienced spacefarer?" Maati asked cheekily.

 

"Standard protocol is to stay near your pod," Thariinye told her. "Which would be a good idea if Khornya and her crewmates are looking for us."

 

'But a bad idea if they lost out to the Khieevi, and it's the monsters who are looking for us," Maati said.

 

"Yes," he admitted. "I know what we can do," Maati said. "Oh, you do? Who put you in charge of the mission?" "The same power that put you in charge," she replied, We're in this together. If I get saved, you get saved. If I get caught, you'll-"

 

If I get caught I'll try to make sure they don't know you're alive,' Thariinye told her with unexpected gravity.

 

Right. Well, all I need to do is climb up one of the taller "ees, if it's climbable, and look around. I can maybe see where the wreckage of our ship is and if anybody is checking it out. That is the first place anyone will look for us, and it isn't like we can't tell our friends from our enemies in this situation. One look, and we'll know what to expect."

 

"Why, that's a very good idea. You learn quickly, youngling."

 

Climbing these trees was easier said than done, however unless you were one of the small blue-furred scampering things constantly running up and down trunks and through the underbrush. The trunks were smooth and thick-it was the broken off end of the trunk that Maati had crawled along when she first left the pod. But the frond branches were not very strong and snapped under the pressure of even Maati's small feet.

 

She made it halfway up one of the trees, and that was as far as she got. She felt around for handholds or footholds but found none.

 

Thariinye called up to her from below, "Keep going."

 

"Can't," she said.

 

"Well, what do you see from there?"

 

"More trees. But I think the ones over that way," she pointed to the west, "are on a hill, maybe. And there is some kind of clearing at the top. If we could go climb that hill, we could see more." When she'd pointed, she'd let go of the tree with one hand, and transferred all her weight to her other hand. That put more pressure on her grasping hand and the frond she was holding broke. While she was searching for another, her feet bore too heavily on the fronds she stood on, and those broke as well. She slid precipitously down the trunk, catching her shipsuit several times on protruding fronds on the way down. It was a sturdy synblend and didn't tear, but Maati wasn't so sure the skin beneath the suit was as undamaged.

 

"It'll take us farther from the pod," Thariinye said with a sigh. "But that might be a good thing."

 

"I don't think we ought to talk so loudly anymore either," Maati said. "In case the monsters hear us."

 

(We wouldn't need to talk at all if you weren't such a baby,) Thariinye grumbled.

 

She punched him lightly in the side with her balled-up fist. (I heard that.) Then after a beat, (Hey, do you think we could contact Khornya and my brother mentally from here? Or maybe even my parents? I can do that, can't I, now that I'm able to send and receive?) The last was thought quite proudly, and Thariinye received an image of a grownup Maati.

 

(Not if they're still too far out in space or too busy to listen-engaged in battle with the Khieevi, maybe,) Thariinye sent a withering thought. Maati realized that this was a frequent behavior with him. The idea had not been his and therefore he was trying to make it sound "worthless.

 

(It doesn't hurt to try, though,) Maati pointed out.

 

(Unless, of course, the Khieevi can read our thoughts and find us from them,) Thariinye said. (In case they folio-wed us down here.)

 

(Oh,) Maati said. (Yeah. Okay. I'll shut up. Back to the hill, then.)

 

They were nearly there when they heard the -whistling, roaring sounds. They scrambled quickly to the top of the hill and found the clearing in time to see the wreckage of the Khieevi ship falling from the sky, splashing into a sea some distance from them. They could make out the -wreck of their own ship on the shore.

 

"At least if we lost our ship, they did, too," Maati said.

 

"I suppose that's some consolation," Thariinye agreed. "The Khieevi ship was -wrecked-maybe Liriili can blame the Khieevi ror the whole mess, instead of me, if we live long enough to have to confess it." And then he pointed. For once, even he was speechless. Maati could see why.

 

Also tumbling down from the sky, but in much better shape than the larger ship had been, was a small Khieevi shuttle. As it fell, two figures could be seen emerging from it, trailing some sort of membrane behind them that caught the air and sailed them gently to the ground.

 

Maati, seeing the bug-like creatures alive for the first time, even at a distance, was filled with horror and loathing. Tears began trickling down her cheeks as she looked up at Thariinye.

 

"They landed somewhere over there," he said, pointing toward the beach. "So I think we should run in the opposite direction as far and as fast as "we can."

 

"Yes," she said, "But-but-Thariinye?"

 

"What?"

 

"If their ship is crashed and in pieces and only two of those creatures are getting out, does that mean the ConSor won?"

 

"We can't take that chance, youngling, though by the Ancestors I hope it is so. We are no match for even two of those creatures. Quickly now."

 

He didn't have to tell her twice.

 

The Linyaari ship lay broken in two like a giant egg that had hatched its chick. It was nestled deep in a beach of aqua blue sand, beyond which cerulean blue waters stretched to the horizon. Wreckage from the Khieevi ship was scattered like bits of large and particularly ugly seaweed on the surface of the water and along the beach, carried in by the waves. Behind the beach was a range of blue dunes and, beyond them, the fronds of a forest of graceful fern-like trees beckoned the Condor to land.

 

Once the ship had done so, Acorna released her restraint and RK's.

 

"Conditions are hospitable, Captain," the Buck Rogers voice of the ship's computer told him. "That blue stuff that looks like sand, is. The other blue stuff that looks like the water is. Salt water, though, so take your desalination and purification unit.

 

The temperature is sixty degrees Fahrenheit with moderate winds at three point two knots. The air is breathable, even fragrant, by human standards."

 

"Are there-life forms?" Aari asked.

 

"Other than here? How should I know? I'm a ship's computer, for heaven's sake, not an anthropologist. My heat and motion sensors are picking up something, but it could just be all that wreckage out in the water."

 

The scanners showed what Buck was referring to more precisely. Becker salivated at the sight of all that salvage.

 

Aari was more sober. "Does it show if there are any live beings there?"

 

Becker shook his head. "Don't know. My scanners are for salvage, mostly."

 

"I hope Thariinye and Maati were able to make it to the escape pod," Acorna said with a little shiver that made her skin twitch. "I don't think anything else would have survived that crash."

 

Becker said, "Look at the ship. I don't see any obvious signs of them or the pod in the wreckage. They're here somewhere. And if that's the case, Princess, we'll find them. What I'm hoping is that none of those stupid bug things made it to a pod."

 

"Their ships don't have pods, Joh," Aari said. "Their carapace protects them against many things that would kill others."

 

"What about that large shuttle-shaped piece of debris over there, captain?" Mac asked.

 

Rrrrrowwsst!" RK responded. Cat says it's Khieevi," Becker told them.

 

"We heard him, Joh," Aari said soberly. 'Well, from here I'd say it's not as badly wrecked as the Khieevi ship." He indicated the fragments of the ship floating ^ the water. "We can at least hope that any occupants are in ^e same fragmentary state as their transportation," Becker said.

 

RK bolted for his personal exit and they heard his claws scrabbling as he slid down the cat chute to the ramp that led to the robolift.

 

"We better get moving," Becker said. "Cat seems to have to go real bad. Must be that pretty blue sandbox out there just itching to have a Makahomian cat scratch in it. Aari, you get that Khieevi earthmoving weapon you brought along as your dowry. I've got the locator and laser rifle," he said, hefting a sleek and deadly looking weapon the length of his forearm.

 

"And I have my own array of attachments, Captain," Mac said, opening his forearm to display the corkscrew, can opener, knife blades, scissors, magnifying glass and other small equipment that were standard with his particular model.

 

Acorna made a side trip of her own. Taking a slight detour to an otherwise empty storeroom, she gathered up a lightweight titanium cargo net she had spotted earlier in the journey.

 

"Good idea, Princess," Becker said when he saw it. "We'll be able to net us some salvage from that Khieevi ship for sure."

 

Thus armed, they boarded the robolift and headed down. Acorna felt something sticky on her shoes. She took a closer look at her shoes, then at the source of the problem. "Mac, when we get back here, I want you to scrub the lift down. It's a mess from the plant sap on that planet where we picked up the piiyl."

 

MacKenZ looked surprised-probably because she was talking about minor housekeeping matters now, when so many more important things were at stake-but didn't say anything. Clearly the robot had never learned the trick of keeping fear at bay by concentrating on the trivia of life. Maybe robots didn't ever feel that kind of fear.

 

Once the robolift set down, however, Becker regarded the outside of his ship with disgust, too. "Those damn plants slimed my hull! Look at that! What a mess."

 

"Joh," Aari said softly, nodding to redirect the captain's  attention to the halves of the Linyaari ship. "What if Maati and Thariinye are in the wreckage?"

 

"If they're there, they'll be easy to find. We'll know soon enough what the situation is. No sense borrowing trouble. Princess, anything to add here?"

 

"I was-receiving some impressions toward the last, before we picked up the Khieevi, that the pod might have become stuck in the ship. If so, they could still be alive but trapped in the wreckage in the pod."

 

"We must reach them before the Khieevi do," Aari said.

 

"If there are any Khieevi left," Becker said. "Come to think of it, maybe we'd better try to head the bad guys off at the pass even before we check the wreckage."

 

"There are Khieevi here," Aari said. "I can feel them."

 

RK, back up and tail brushed, apparently agreed with him.

 

They made their way cautiously down the beach, weapons at the ready. Acorna felt a little foolish trailing behind, preoccupied by the feeling that she knew Maati and Thariinye were here somewhere-alive-but she couldn't tell where. She only had a vague sense of them. Why couldn't she at least reach Thariinye? She couldn't shake the feeling that her friends were alive, but in trouble.

 

They saw wrecked Khieevi shuttlecraft lying in the dunes, broken up but considerably more intact than the Khieevi ship, lying in the dunes further up the beach. Something brown lay crunched around the edges, and a green fluid tinted the blue sand turquoise.

 

"Any Khieevi who survived were most likely in that shuttle," Becker pronounced. "Look at their ship. I doubt they could live through a wreck like that. The ship is toast, but the shuttle-well, that looks like it was spaceworthy till the last minute. No convenient vacuum or decompression to kill all the occupants for us."

 

As they drew nearer they saw movement and heard a sound  that made Acorna's skin twitch-the klick-klack she had heard so often on Aari's video. The light wind carried a terrible stench-rot combined with vomit. RK stopped, dug his claws into the ground, and hissed like a tea kettle. Aari's steps slowed. Becker surged ahead like a missile, Mac outpacing him with nonchalance in the face of danger that only an android-particularly one who had once been the face of danger himself- could achieve.

 

"It appears we've got a live one," Becker growled as he rounded the dune where the shuttle lay. "Though it's half buried under that shuttle. It's not going anywhere fast. I'll just put this cockroach out of its misery,"

 

"Please, wait," Acorna said. "We must question it. Aari knows their language, at least enough to get something useful out of it. Perhaps we can get more from the LAANYE. We have to find out if this ship was alone or if others will be coming, where the main swarm of Khieevi is now, and where they are heading next. If my people are threatened again, they must know at once."

 

Aari found his voice and his feet, and in six more strides stood beside Becker. Acorna approached cautiously, curiously. The creature snapped its mandibles and reached for Becker with its pincers but the captain sidestepped smartly and beckoned for Acorna to give him the cargo net.

 

She wondered suddenly why it had occurred to her to bring it. Then she glanced at Aari and saw him smiling at her with both approval and triumph. That was it, of course. Aari had sent her the suggestion. He thought he. couldn't intentionally send any longer, but he was clearly mistaken. He had certainly just done it. Why hadn't he asked her aloud, she wondered? It would have been a reasonable request. How odd.

 

Aari was carrying the very large and heavy weapon which he'd retrieved when his torturers fled the death throes of Vhiliinyar. He trained it on the monster. Maybe that was it. Acorna  had been the logical one to bring the net-but, still, he usually communicated with spoken words. She looked up at him again, frowning this time, but he was concentrating on the Khieevi.

 

"Okay," Becker said. "Aari, Acorna, and I are going to capture this thing. When we have the net over it and solidly anchored, Mac, you maneuver the shuttle off its leg and thorax, okay?"

 

"Yes, Captain."

 

Acorna was the only one who could use two hands, but fortunately the creature was trapped and rather badly injured by the crash. Much of its back end was crushed beneath the shuttle, from what she could see. It still gave her cold chills to be this close to a live Khieevi, no matter how much was wrong with it. When the android lifted the broken piece of the shuttle from the back of the Khieevi and tipped it aside, the Khieevi struggled mightily against their titanium net, but in vain. Mac then aided his crewmates in finishing netting the monster's hind parts. The monster klicked and klacked and gnashed its mandibles at them as best it could through the impediment of the net, but they paid it no attention. Finally it -was well wrapped enough that they could risk transporting it.

 

"Now, then," Becker said. "We'll put him in the brig and Mac can stay and guard him while the LAANYE collects language samples. As mad and as noisy as this beast is, we ought to get enough stuff to be useful. As long as he doesn't have any friends to scream for, we should be fine. I'm told they kill their wounded, so the fact that he's alive means he's probably alone. men, Aari, buddy, while that's going on, you and me are going to excavate that egg ship and make sure your little sister and that idiot punk she's with aren't trapped inside."

 

'I'll start searching through the debris while you're gone, and I'll broadcast that we're here, Captain," Acorna said. "If our friends are nearby, and conscious, Thariinye will hear me and he'll let me know where they are."   "Good idea, Princess. We'll be right back with the plasma cutters."

 

Acorna climbed inside the half of the egg that should have contained the bridge. She could see the lower edge of the crushed viewport sunken deep into the damp sand. The sea was licking at the wreckage now, wide wet fingers teasing loose bits of smashed equipment and carrying them out and back with each wash of the waves. She wondered about tides-was the wreck in danger of being flooded? Perhaps, with so many moons arrayed about the planet, that wouldn't be an issue. Maybe they would all cancel each other out, gravitationally, instead of amplifying the movement of the seas. She could hope so, anyway.

 

The shadows were growing long now. Becker and Aari would not have much more daylight. She began throwing everything she could over the side of the ship facing away from the water. Becker -would certainly want his salvage. Nothing faintly resembling the bridge was visible yet. Fragments of burnt and ripped pavilion fabric passed through her hands, as did a mane comb, and the shards of a mirror. Acorna saw her own slender face reflected back in the device. She hadn't realized she was •weeping until then.

 

(Thariinye? Thariinye, answer me if you can!) she thought as hard as she could. But everything within the ship was still. The only movement was the settling of the rubbish as it shifted beneath her feet, and the lapping of the waves against the ruined hull of the ship.

 

She heard the Condor's robolift descend again. Becker and Aari soon arrived carrying the plasma cutters with them. At Becker's signal Acorna climbed back out of the shell. Becker gave her an inquiring -waggle of his eyebrows, but she shook her head sadly. She had been unable to make contact.

 

The men worked until -well after dark, seeing by the light from their cutters. At one point, Acorna went up on the robolift  and turned on an exterior floodlamp Becker had rigged above ,t for nighttime salvage expeditions. The shadows it cast made t look as if the two men were mining the pits of darkness, their grunts and the raucous scorch and sizzle of the saws adding to the general impression of demonic digging. The tide had risen and the wreck was beginning to flood. The men were waistdeep in water, so that they had to dive as well as cut. Meanwhile, Acorna carried salvage to the robolift.

 

She made mental calls to her friends from time to time, pleading for Thariinye to answer, but she felt nothing, heard

 

nothing. Not then.

 

When the men were up to their necks in water, Becker finally threw his plasma cutter onto the beach over the broken hull of the shell ship and hoisted himself out. "C'mon, Aari. We're going to have to wait for the tide to go out. If there's anything there to see, it's too far under water now. Maybe the tide will shift some of the junk still there so we can see more."

 

"My little sister might be in there, Joh. A child."

 

"Maybe, but I doubt it," he said. "I'm betting that she and Thariinye were smart enough to get out." He looked toward Acorna but all she could see -were the whites of his eyes and his teeth. "You sense anything from in there yet, Princess?"

 

She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "It is possible the pod broke free -while we were discussing how to destroy the Khieevi ship. Thariinye and Maati could have escaped then."

 

The three of them climbed onto the robolift. RK had stayed aboard the ship during the salvage operation. "Our new guest better hope they escaped, or be prepared to tell us where they are. Aari, I've got a few questions I want you to translate into their kilck-klacL"

 

"Certainly, Joh. I can ask questions, but I do not think the Khieevi will answer. They have never answered questions. The Linyaari sent ambassadors to them and the only answers we ever received to our questions were vids of the ambassadors  being tortured as I was. But those ambassadors never escaped. Our people met their deaths in those vids."

 

"Nasty stuff. Well, maybe your people asked the Khieevi right questions, but didn't ask in the right way. You Linyaari have got a few scruples that don't particularly apply to me. Aari, I want you to give Mac a little language lesson. He learned how to ask questions when he worked for Kisia Manjari. I'm betting our guest will be real happy to tell us anything we want to know before Mac is done with him. But we're still going to need you to translate. You folks are pacifists, I know. Is this going to bother you?"

 

Aari bared his teeth until they -were -whiter than his skin in the light of the two moons. "No, Joh. It will not bother me."

 

The sole Khieevi still alive and free on this planet cut a swath through the fern-like trees. At first it was a low swath. The creature was a bit stunned from his emergency departure from the shuttle, but it managed to properly decimate the undergrowth in the approved style. The Khieevi scoutship crew had expected that the strange craft that destroyed theirs would come for them on this planet, trying to protect the fragile little onehorns in the decorated space-borne food container. But the strange ship hadn't been fast enough. The Khieevi had made short work of the one-horn ship, and would have done the same to the strange ship had it not taken them by surprise and used unfair and totally uncalled for tactics to wreck them and cause the deaths of all of the other swarm members but the navigator and the self of the Khieevi who now ate Jits way through the forest floor.

 

That self-the inquisitor-had heard the klickmgs of the navigator for miles and miles, but the inquisitor -was not about to go back. The navigator had been half squashed -when the shuttle fell on him. The navigator would be recycled into food soon. The inquisitor -would see to it.

 

 

 

 

10S

 

The inquisitor had a communications device. It would be difficult to activate without the ship's power to fuel it, but organic activation could be implemented in an emergency such as the current one. It had only to reach a high point on the planet, arrange indigenous ingredients in a certain proportion, and chew, and the resulting chemical reaction would provide carrying power for the message the Khieevi wished to transmit.

 

The mission would not fail. The Khieevi swarm would come to this planet and find plenty and prosperity for another short time, and then all of the neighboring worlds and all their viable foodstuffs would also fall to his race's relentless mandibles.

 

Meanwhile, the other scout ships would search out other areas. But the inquisitor's sole purpose now was to notify its swarm of its own location, the location of the food, and the loss of the ship.

 

That, at least, was its sole intended purpose until, after eating its way through the undergrowth, it found at its very jaws a one-horn device, small and compact and shaped like a food container. To the inquisitor's regret it was empty, but the one-horns who had occupied it had left a trail of broken plant matter, scent, and vibrations. The inquisitor chomped its way after them up a steep hill and down it.

 

At the top of the steep hill, it looked at the seashore below it and saw the navigator being lugged down the beach by two hornless two-leggeds into the strange ship. The navigator was still alive and klicking. Not for long, the inquisitor was certain. mat information would be noted when the inquisitor broadcast the next report to the swarm. It continued eating, tracking the missing one-horns.

 

As nighttime fell, the inquisitor was very full, but unsatished. It had a need to smell alien one-horn blood. To see it flow. /vs it ate its way downhill into a little valley, it saw how to lulhll that need, too. Leaning against a tree, apparently sleeping, was a one-horn. The inquisitor closed on its prey.

 

 

 

 

The healing retreat in the hills of the Ancestors, under their gentle, probing care, was meant to erase all pollution, all contamination, all taint, all pain, all shame left behind from the dreadful ordeal the Linyaari spacefarers had faced. The process could go on for days, weeks, months, years, by Standard reckoning; a ghaanye or many, by Linyaari reckoning.

 

However, the deep healing had barely begun when personal attendants began handing the supplicant pilgrims their wraps and saying, "Go home. You are needed in Kubiihkhan."

 

Grandam had never known of such a thing to happen in all her life.

 

Have -we done something wrong?" one of the younger crew members from the liliura asked. "Are we being cast out because our taint is too great?"

 

'Don't talk nonsense, child," the personal attendant said. Didn't you hear Us? You are needed. And as for being cast °ut, how can We possibly be casting you out when We are coming with you?"

 

Back in town, Liriili had been fidgeting, forgetting to graze, pacing until her feet were quite rough and sore, walking up  and down the road to and from the spaceport. The viizaar had no messenger since Maati had vanished, though she had little to do for the moment except wait. Wait for the Khieevi to find them again. She did not know what to do. Now recovered from her anger, she told herself she had done a service to Thariinve and Maati. When the Khieevi came here, those younglings at least would be spared. If they hcu)n't alreaSy been coruumeS, a small voice inside her head pointed out. She ignored it.

 

Walking down the road from the spaceport, where she had once more been checking with the com-shed officer of the day, refusing to believe that the remote reports to her office were frequent or rapid enough to alert her in time for an attack, she saw the stream of her people, two footed and four footed, flowing down from the hills on the opposite side of the bowl-shaped valley containing Kubiilikhan.

 

Alarmed, disturbed, frightened, and yet, somehow, relieved as well, she returned to her office to await the return of the pilgrims-and of the Ancestors.

 

The thought of questioning of the Khieevi prisoner bothered Acorna. Despite her fear and loathing, she knew she would not be able to watch without wishing to heal any hurts inflicted upon the Khieevi in the line of questioning. She also knew that trying to heal the destructive monster was not reasonable.

 

She could, however, feel its pain from two decks away. Despite Becker's threats to the contrary, no one had touched it since it had been brought aboard and .its net locked into place where cargo nets were normally strung up. It hadn't been necessary to lay a hand on the creature. It was answering their questions sporadically, in between spasms of pain. But it was dying. She could feel it dying.

 

The feeling was so intense, it was as if she could feel herseli dying, too. She couldn't stand it any longer. She had to leave  she'd be forced to interfere with what Becker was doing. A^J they needed the information he -was extracting. She abandoned the bridge for the robolift, stopping on the way to tell the others what she was doing-that she was going to see if the tide was out yet, and if it was, she'd load some more cargo. She'd also continue calling for Thariinye and Maati while she was at it.

 

She got a "Yeah, ummm hmmm, okay," from Becker. Aari and Mac were totally absorbed by the Khieevi's rapid-fire klick-klacking'.

 

The door edged open for a moment and the impression of the pain within staggered her. RK pushed himself through the door, flipping his tail up along his back as the hatch automatically snapped shut behind him. With a light leap, he was on her shoulder.

 

She scratched his chin. "Thank you, my friend. It will be good to have company."

 

Ghostly blue vapors billowed across an indigo sky and the turquoise light of two of the planet's moons strobed across the sea, the beach, and the forest beyond. Sand skidded against Acorna's ankles and calves. Out here she could still feel the captive Khieevi's pain, but distance helped attenuate it. It also helped knowing that none of her crewmates was inflicting the terrible torture; they were only taking advantage of the monster's agony to obtain answers that might save her people, and any other creatures whose path the Khieevi crossed.

 

She breathed deeply of the night air. The fragrance of the sweet and spicy grasses and the fernlike trees, exotic and cit^sy, filled her nostrils. She realized she hadn't grazed yet that ^y, and was hungry. She didn't worry about venturing beyond "e dunes. Her Linyaari navigational instincts gave her an excelent sense of direction, and the light of the two moons above  her was sufficient to see her -way to the grasses between beach and forest.

 

She was relieved to put some distance between her and the Condor now. When she had eaten, she would return, see what progress her friends had made, and, if they -were finished, ask them to let her examine the prisoner and tend to its wounds. She had not offered to tend to it so far out of fear that once she healed the thing, one of her friends would then have to reinjure it, in all likelihood, to obtain the vital information they needed. This could well be one of the very same Khieevi who had caused the death of her parents, but it was against her nature to cause or endure the suffering of another living creature. It -was against Aari's nature, too. Despite what the Khieevi had done to him, she could not help but feel that participating in actual torment of another creature, even one of the species who had all but destroyed him, would impede his inner healing, perhaps even prevent it altogether. He, more than she, was born and bred to the Linyaari •way, which was nonviolent.

 

Back on the beach, Aari had brandished his Khieevi weapon with authority and deadly intent, however. She didn't blame him or judge him for that, but it worried her that he had undergone such a tremendous change, one that -was completely contrary to his upbringing.

 

She tested the grass with her horn-it was suitable for her to eat. So she took a mouthful of grass. It was peppery, not quite what she had in mind. She searched for another plant and found, growing sparsely among the peppery sort, a little reed with nodes on the stem. The nodes had a pleasant sour tang that offset the sweetness of the reed. They, too, were edible, and much tastier. She searched selectively for these, while RK slithered through the grassland as though he were a large jungle cat stalking prey.

 

She visualized Maati, who had been practically her only  friend from narhii-Vhiliinyar. The child was just approaching puberty-funny, enthusiastic, lively, hard-working, inquisitive. She pictured Maati's soft pale brown skin and white and black spotted mane and feathers, her brilliant smile, short nose, and wide golden eyes below her little spiraled horn. She thought of Maati's immediate acceptance of Aari and her unquestioning love of her long-lost brother. The child's sadness and disbelief at being left behind by the ConSor when it had taken both her newly found brother and her friend away. They could have brought her along, even though Liriili had objected violently when the subject came up. If they had done so, Maati wouldn't now be lost, maybe dead, along with poor Thariinye, who, although he -was about the same age as Acorna, had not had as much experience or adventure in his life as she had, and so was still rather callow. Irritating, conceited, and arrogant, but not a bad fellow, really.

 

Her thoughts were anguished and regretful. She especially worried about her little friend, so sensible and knowledgeable about Linyaari ways but more willing than any to help a stranger. (Oh, Maati, Maati, I am so sorry, youngling. I thought you should stay with Grandam. I should have listened to your own thoughts more and not tried to decide for you. . . .)

 

(Khornya? Khornya! You're here! Oh, Khornya, come quickly. I can't find Thariinye and there is something awful out here in the bushes. Please, Khornya. I'm scared.)

 

(Maati! It's all right. I'm here. Where are you?)

 

(Looost!) The thought was a long 'wail.

 

(I'll come and get you. Just keep sending and I'll find you and bring you back. Can you see the beach from where you are? Can you see the Condor7)

 

(No, I'm in the woods and it's dark and Thariinye was right ^re standing guard while I slept. Now he's gone and the noises ^e terrible, Khornya.)

 

(Can he read you? Have you tried?)

 

(No. I think he must be unconscious. Knocked out, maybe )

 

Acorna was galloping through the grass now and into the trees, following Maati's thoughts as if they were spoken words tracking them to their origin.

 

The footing was treacherous in the dark but she leaped over bushes and roots. She had to pause frequently, however, to listen again for Maati's thought.

 

(Keep sending, Maati. I can't follow you unless I can read you.)

 

(I'm sooo tired, Khornya. And I'm almost afraid to think too loud for fear whatever it is that's thrashing around out there will hear me like you do.)

 

(I understand, dear, but if I'm to find you, you have to keep sending. If whatever it is hasn't bothered you yet, it probably can't read us.)

 

Acorna was halfway up a steep hill when she slipped and fell in a trail of slime. As she picked herself up again, she saw that she had fallen on the broken branches of what must have been brush. The raw ends of the branches were sharply severed at just above ground level for a long swath as wide as Acorna was tall. Where the foliage had been, a trail of foul-smelling slime covered the ground.

 

From the smell, she knew this -was a Khieevi trail, the creature eating, digesting, and excreting as it went. No wonder they could trash entire planets in such a short time!

 

Had the wind not been from the sea, and blowing the smell of the slime away from her, she easily would have picked it up earlier. Now she had a spoor to follow and she lost no time scrambling after it.

 

(Maati, I think it is a Khieevi who has Thariinye. Stay right where you are and do not make a sound unless you know it is me. Have you moved since he disappeared?)

 

(No, I was too scared of the things out in the bushes.)

 

(Okay, then, that is good. Just stay put. Somewhere right  near you there is a trail of broken brush and smelly Khieevi  slime.)

 

(Eeewww, is that what it is? I thought maybe this planet  just smelled really bad in some places.)

 

(No, that's Khieevi spoor. They excrete as fast as they eat, apparently. You sound stronger. I'll be with you in a bit.)

 

Acorna scrambled further up the hill and down it, following the trail until, though she hadn't heard from Maati in some time, she suddenly caught a very loud thought. (Ouch! You stepped on me!)

 

Looking down, at first she saw nothing but more pale blue brush but then she saw, white and lustrous among the leaves, a face. She stared.

 

(Maati?) she asked uncertainly.

 

"Yes, it's me, Khornya," Maati whispered, and rose to her feet and threw her white arms around Acorna's neck so that Acorna's nose was buried in the girl's silvery mane. (But you look-) "Oh, yeah!"

 

(Think it, youngling. We don't know how near danger is.) (I m star-clad now. Like the new me?)

 

(Why should I not? I liked the old you. You are beautiful! So let's keep you alive, shall we? I need you to follow the slime trail back down the hill and through the woods-your nose will help you if you get off track. When you get to the beach, you'll see the Condor. You need to get Aari and Captain Becker's attention and have them come to help Thariinye and me--)

 

(And leave you alone? Thariinye won't be any help. I can't read him at all. Something's happened to him. If that's a Khieevi, you need me.)

 

IvK bounded up to them and sat down, seemingly to wash, though he kept his ears cocked slightly back, as if he was lisening to the their nonverbal conversation. At some point in "elr Journey, he had departed from Acorna's shoulder and  taken off on his own explorations. Probably -when she began galloping.

 

(It L) a Khieevi. And it will be no trick to find it and Thariinye. The trail is extremely clear. Just go back and tell the others that we'll need their help. Meanwhile, I will try to keep the Khieevi from harming Thariinye anymore.)

 

(What if there are other Khieevi?)

 

(Captain Becker will know if there are. He has been questioning an injured Khieevi that -we captured. He'll be able to tell us how many of these things we're facing. I need that information very much before I tackle freeing Thariinye. And I'd like you somewhere safe from this one,) Acorna said simply. And turned toward the slimy trail. But Maati wasn't done yet.

 

(You said you'd come for me,) Maati reminded her. (You were thinking all those nice things about me, and how you and Aan should have let me come with you. I'm not just a kid, you know. I'm smart. I could help you. What if I get caught on the •way to get the others? What if I get lost?)

 

(Just follow the trail.)

 

(You're only one person. You need help, too. -You know Thariinye won't be much help. We could hear him if he was in a position to help us. You know, you didn't treat me like such a child back home.)

 

Acorna hesitated. She didn't want to put her young friend in harm's way but, then again, maybe that thought was a little ridiculous. Maati had already survived the •wreck of her space vessel and eluded capture by the Khieevi once today. It was entirely possible, if the Khieevi were on this planet in force, that the ship was no safer place than trooping with Acorna through the forest.

 

(Very well. You can come with me. But thought-speak only. And stay behind me.)

 

(Okay.) Acorna felt Maati searching for RK, but the cat  had vanished. Maati was a little worried, so Acorna sent her the calming thought that if anyone on the face of the blue planet could look out for themselves, it was that cat. Then they pushed forward, along the broken trail the Khieevi had left behind them, hoping against all hope that Thariinye was still all right.

 

The Council meeting -was brief. Liriili had been questioned. The accusations against her by comshed personnel and by Thariinye's many mourning soon-to-be-lifemates were verified, and a proposal was made for her dismissal. The evidence was examined, including a copy of the broadcast from the CorQor that Liriili denied had ever been received. One of the com-shed officers, who was also one of Thariinye's lady friends, had concealed copies of the pliyi transmission and Thariinye's translation of it, which she had taken from the com-shed before Liriili had given orders to have them destroyed. That was right after the vuzaar had told the com-shed officers to stop transmitting anything at all from the planet for dny reason. Not only did the young officer realize that Liriili had tor some reason allowed Thariinye and a child to go into space alone, but she recognized that the piiyi had great implications for the Linyaari, and that the people must know about it. The combed officer had been about to set off for the hills herself to fetch tne spacefarers when the pilgrims came streaming home.

 

The Council had not been kindly disposed to having the brining of a possible Khieevi threat withheld from them for no reason, no matter what Liriili thought. (??ed note.  not quite correct)

 

After the matter of Liriili had been discussed, the Council was expanded to include Neeva, Khaari, Melireenya, and several of the ambassadors and high teachers and merchants and officers from the returned fleet.

 

In lieu of Liriili, Grandam now presided over the Council. Liriili faced them from the opposite side of the table where she'd sat for so many years, wearing her "Everything is in order, business as usual" face.

 

Grandam could not help but smile. "Liriili of Clan Riivye, ^iizaar of Kubiilikhan, you stand accused of treasonous acts against your people and your -world. We will not ask you how you plead. You of all of us are most skilled at concealing your thoughts, one reason we felt you -would make a good administrator. But you have betrayed not only the trust of your people, but my personal trust to you of the life of a young and parentless child, as well as the life of a brave officer of our fleet."

 

"It -was not my fault!" Liriili said. "I told them not to go. I told them-and this is perfectly true; any of you can read me-that we must not transmit further communications to the salvage ship that sent the piiyi message to us, for fear of the Khieevi tracing the signal back to us. It is perfectly standard procedure. I have saved us all by my actions and this is the thanks I get? That you hold me responsible because two feckless and rebellious young people stole our newest and finest vessel and took off on a pointless and dangerous joyride against my express orders?"

 

"Enough!" Grandam bellowed. "You knew very -well that the Condor had sent the piiyi here for translation-a translation Thariinye completed before the children departed. There is a record of the conversation in which he informed you of his translation. You knew at that time that there was a good chance of communicating with the Condor so that Captain Becker, as well as securing the safety of his ship and crew,  could warn our allies of the impending threat without. Yo did nothing."

 

"Allies!" Liriili snorted. "Look at the Starfarers if you thin we have allies! Did our so-called 'allies' not turn over our fines ambassadors and officers, teachers and traders, to enemies wh imprisoned and abused them?"

 

"They -were deceived," Grandam said. "But you, Liriil were not deceived. You knew that the Condor and our allie could have been notified of the threat long before the Khlee\ were likely to be close enough to trace them. You knew tha Thariinye also knew this, and that neither he nor Maati wouli allow harm to come to Khornya, Aari, or to Captain Becker i it was in their power to prevent this. You even knew, Liriil that the piiyi contained evidence of the probability of the sui vival of Kaarlye and Miin of the Nyaarya clan, Maati's an' Aari's parents. All of this information was problematic for yoi And so you deliberately ordered the children to do nothing knowing that they -would be forced to disobey you, and tha they-and all those -who depended on their information-woul be lost."

 

Liriili felt a sharp pain in the middle of her back and sh was Jabbed forward so quickly she fell to her knees. "I didn know that. How could I know for certain? All of you spacefaren as usual, were off someplace else -when decisions had to b made immediately. I did what I thought was best for the peopl( Licluding you. And is this the thanks I get for my dedicatio to duty? Some thanks ..."

 

She was weeping now with rage, -with fear, -with indigne lion, for she half-believed -what she was saying herself, as Grar dam well knew, or she could never have said it.

 

Oh, Liriili, my poor granddaughter," Grandam Naadiin ^id, pushing past the Council table behind which she had bee sitting and kneeling to put her hands on either side of Liriili  •wet face. Liriili stared rebelliously back at her. "We have been aware of the flaw in your makeup since you were very young you know. You, of all of us, are best able to conceal your thoughts. You alone are capable of, if not lying, at least twisting the meaning of your thoughts to a degree that makes them difficult to read. We decided when the old Viizaar passed on to the land of the Ancestors that this-difference-in your makeup need not be a flaw, but could be used for the greater good of all. And you are correct. In general you have been an excellent and conscientious administrator.

 

"Much of the fault lies with us for not realizing that your- specialness-separated and isolated you, not only from the rest of your people but from the truth within yourself. Now we do not punish you, child, but seek to recompense you for the harm we have allowed you to do to yourself as well as to others. You must face the truth of your actions, if not within yourself, for you seem to be incapable of doing so, but by seeing for yourself the consequences."

 

Liriili was very easy to read now. Caution was trying to displace fear and disbelief in her mind as Grandam retreated to her official position, sat, then rose again, in unison with the other Council members.

 

"Liriili of clan Riivye, you are relieved of your duties as Viizaar of Kubiilikhan and administrator of narhii-Vhiliinyar by the High Council after consultation with and in accordance with the advice of the Ancestors. You are reassigned to duty as a junior shipman on the Balakiire, under the command of vifeShaanye-feriui Neeva and Melireenya. Your mission will be to pursue the information obtained from the pliyi, to attempt to warn the Condor of the peril contained in it, to ascertain the whereabouts and ensure the safety of Thariinye and Maati and the Niikactvn, to determine the whereabouts of Kaarlye and Miiri and rescue them or at least retrieve the data in their landing pod, and to  warn our allies of the Khieevi danger, even if by issuing such a warning you allow the Khieevi to trace a signal back to the Balakiire. Vi^e()haanye-feriiU Neeva and her crew have volunteered for this mission, and have agreed to take responsibility for you. They are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, if necessary, to accomplish this mission. You are hereby dismissed into the custody of the Neeva, her crew, and the Balakiire, and may the wit of the Ancestors and the Grace of the Friends preserve you all from harm."

 

The prisoner -was in unbearable pain. Aari had decidedly mixed feelings about the fact. His need for revenge was at odds with his hatred of seeing anything, even a Khieevi, suffer so. But there was one comfort to be found in the hold of this ship, as terrifying a place as it was right now. The prisoner was klacking out all the information Aari demanded, but neither Aari nor Becker nor even Mac, who had been quite prepared to "slowly disassemble" the Khieevi, had laid a finger on the creature. Whatever was causing the Khieevi so much agony, they weren't responsible.

 

Instead of disassembling it, Mac was rapidly processing the information he was given about Khieevi klackings by Aari and the LAANYE to help interpret Aari's and Decker's questions into simulated klacks and to interpret the answers.

 

The thing lay within the cargo net on the deck, and the net s couplings were securely fastened to the bulkhead. The monster was going nowhere. Aari was grateful the despicable creature's form was somewhat obscured by the grid of the net. •Is titanium strands pulled tightly across the creature's protrudlng Gyes, restrained its pincers, and bent one antenna flat against ^e side of its bulbous head. The putrid smell Aari had first ^ticed out by the Khieevi ship now filled the hold and seemed 0 grow worse and worse as time went on. Becker remarked on tne green icor draining from beneath the netted Khieevi.

 

"It's messing itself, it's so scared," he said. "Scared?" Aari asked. "A Khieevi? Scared? Of us?" "Sure. You were scared, when we found you for the first time, weren't you?"

 

"Naturally, but I am not a Khieevi." "Let me tell you a little something about people, buddy, any kind of people," Becker said. "These creeps," he gestured to the Khieevi, "they like to hurt anything they come across just to watch it squirm. It's how the buggers think. So when one of them gets caught and put in the same position as its victims, of course it's going to figure we'll do the same to it. Only difference is, we're after information. According to you, when you were a Khieevi captive, they didn't seem to care all that much if you said anything or not. They just liked to hear you scream, right?"

 

"Yes, Joh. I never understood any of that." "Well, understand this. As afraid as you were, this critter is even more afraid. Because to do to someone what the Khieevi did to you requires being a real lily-livered son of a gun at heart. Yessir, these Khieevi may look like bugs, but they're all piles of pure cowardice with legs, if you ask me. Cowards and bullies, every one." Becker threw his arms around and let his voice ring to make it heard above the piteous but irritating high-pitched sound the Khieevi was making. Aari had never heard the bug-like beings make that sound -while he was among them. Though perhaps he might have heard the sound, or a variant of it, coming from himself.

 

"Now, Aari, if you have any more "questions, ask away. Mac, you follow and see if you can fill in any blanks for him"What will you do. Captain?" Mac asked mildly. "I'll be thinking up threats and-uh-persuasions, Becker said.

 

"Very well, Captain. Aari?" "Mac, ask it what it was doing here, how many others like  it there are close by, where the main fleet is, and the location of the homeworld."

 

Mac manufactured the klacking sound of the Khieevi, using his mouth alone. Aari was impressed.

 

The Khieevi let forth the high-pitched whining sound  once more.

 

"Tell it we'll stop the pain if it gives us the data," Becker instructed Mac, his jaw clenched tightly, his teeth bared in what was an indisputable display of hostility-a hostility Becker seemed to be reveling in.

 

Aari, on the other hand, was not enjoying his position. He had certainly thought he -would enjoy giving back to a Khieevi what the Khieevi had done to him, but instead he felt filled with loathing-for himself. He was now doing a Khieevi thing. He might as -well be one. But the information was important. He put the thought on hold when he realized Mac -was speaking, and not in klacks this time.

 

"Theirs was a scout ship. The Khieevi have many such ships. Their mission was to locate a likely world with the proper atmosphere and nutrients for consumption by the horde. The horde's main fleet has already been notified that this being's ship had located a large number of suitable worlds, including this one, due to a lucky conquest of a scout ship of a twohorned race."

 

Mac turned to Becker and said, "That -would be the Niriians, surely? You understand, please, that many of the concepts this creature expresses can be interpreted only loosely. Fortunately, because of the remaining programming from my former i^er, I am quite conversant with the basic content of this create s thought and language patterns and can assure you that "y interpretations are fairly accurate. The Khieevi have a lot l" common with Kisia Manjari."

 

And so it -went. To minimize the misunderstanding or trance of lying on the part of the Khieevi, ("Well, for pity's  sake, Aari," Decker said, "any critter who would do to you what these guys did is certainly not going to stop at a little lt£\") Becker insisted on asking the same questions over and over in many different ways.

 

Mac said, "You are very good at information extraction Captain Becker. Have you been in the business before yourself?"

 

"No, but my dad was great at giving pop oral exams on the subjects I was supposed to be learning when I was a kid " Becker said. "I never could put anything over on him. Who knew it would come in so handy? So let's go over it all one more time ..."

 

Aari found himself sweating during the questioning, remembering himself in the Khieevi's place and hearing the squeal ooze out of the creature along with the stench.

 

At some point during the questioning, Khornya stopped by. When she left, Aari noticed that RK was no longer in the room with them. By then, among them, they were trying to explain to the Khieevi that they wanted the coordinates of the horde fleet and of the Khieevi home planet, as well as the codes that would allow them to crack Khieevi communication devices.

 

The thing had just given them a useless string of babble that none of them could decipher when the stench suddenly became much worse, the klacking much more muffled, and the squeal thinner, higher, shriller. Then, suddenly, all was still.

 

Mac kicked at the creature. "I think it is unconscious, Captain."

 

"Sissy," Becker said. "We never touched it. Some people will do anything to get out of having to answer a few simple questions."

 

"Joh, you told it we would stop its pain if it told us what we wished to know," Aari said.

 

"Looks to me like the pain has almost stopped," Becker said.

 

"No, it is worse. The thing is dying. We must have Khornya heal it. I would but-1 cannot."

 

"Ain't it just too bad for old klacker here that they took out your horn, then?" Becker said, and Aari felt a flash of anger  toward him.

 

"We must call Khornya back in to save it, Joh. It may ^ye _ more information."

 

"Hmm, true. You look like you can use a break anyway, buddy. Go ahead then. Get her."

 

Aari left quickly. He was surprised to see that he had to call the robolift to return to the deck for him to descend. Its deck was stickier than ever, despite the heavy traffic, and when he tried to move his feet made a sucking sound. The patches of sap were -yes, they actually were larger than they had been when he and Becker ascended to the ship with the prisoner. He bent down, curious, to touch the stuff. It seemed innocent enough, but when he tried to right himself, he found that the hand he had been using to steady himself on the deck stuck to it. He lost his footing and fell, getting sap all over the front of his shipsuit. He unstuck himself and regained his balance with some difficulty. He also resolved to clean the deck as soon as they had disposed of the prisoner.

 

As the lift continued to descend, he saw that the bright blue day had become indigo night, lit only by the pale blue moons. The wind soughed through the tall sapphire grasses. Khornya was nowhere to be seen, but as he looked, he suddenly heard a raucous "Mrowl" and saw RK bounding across the field between the beach and the woods.

 

As soon as the cat saw him, RK turned and leaped back in the direction from which he had come. Sprinting a few steps, •\J^ turned and stared meaningfully, his gleaming eyes twin molten gold coins. He mrowled again and Aari followed, reluctantly. rle had planned to take a slight detour and try to clean off the ^icky, irritating sap with sea water, but the cat was trying to  lead him to Khornya, of that Aari was certain. "Where is she Riid-Kiiyi?" he asked.

 

RK ran another few feet and glanced back again, mrowling for Aari to follow him. The cat was conveying a sense of urgency that worried Aari. Through the long grass and to the ferny trees, Aari followed the cat's lead. Khornya. The cat was leading him to Khornya. She was in some sort of trouble, perhaps wounded, or maybe she had found Maati and Thariinye and they were 'wounded and she had sent the cat back for help and-

 

Aari smelled the Khieevi spoor before he was actually upon it. Old and cold, it had hardened to a nasty shiny trail. The Khieevi. The Khieevi had Khornya.

 

He vomited what little food he had eaten that day into the underbrush. Returning for Becker now was out of the question. Every moment counted-he remembered -what the creatures had done to him and his blood ran cold at the thought of Khornya in their clutches. Precious time would be lost if he went back to the ship-moments Khornya would pay for in unimaginable pain if the Khieevi did indeed have her. Somehow, somehow he had to find her, to free her, to protect her. No one must go through what he had. Especially not Khornya-beautiful, graceful, gentle Khornya. So kind. So caring. Practical and intelligent too and very strong, but no one could hold out against the Khieevi. That they should have a chance to break her into pieces as they had him was unthinkable.

 

Perhaps he couldn't yet feel what he, sensed she -would have liked him to feel for her-he still felt hollow inside, numb and cold, when he wasn't filled with pain and fury. He had nothing to give to someone like Khornya. But he owed it to her to make sure she lived to receive it from someone else someday.

 

He followed the spoor uphill and down again and then into  another section of forest, up another hill. He did not notice when the cat disappeared once more.

 

But when he heard the screams, the steady jog with which he was following the sign lengthened to a full gallop.

 

As far as Acorna could see, the problem was not  finding the Khieevi. The thing was not stealthy.

 

Its excremental trail led straight to it. The only problem was how to get the better of it before it could harm Thariinye.

 

They found Thariinye first. He was at the end of the trail, wrapped up in the end of the trail in fact, pinned by a hardened twist of it to a tree. In the chill of the night air, his breath made a vapor, so they knew he was not dead. But neither of them could pick up any thoughts from him, not even a snatch of dream.

 

The Khieevi stood slightly uphill from him, its moondrenched shadow falling over them, mingling with the shadows 01 the trees. Its bug eyes were lifted to the moons, its head bobbing. Two of its legs tended what seemed to be some sort or electrical contraption. Sparks flew periodically between its legs and the machine, while two more of its legs burned a bit °i the excrement, with predictably nauseating results. After each bit of legs had gone through the ritual, the pincers made a series of klacks, much like the Morse code Acorna had learned on the mining ship.

 

Maati and Acorna thought at the same time, (It's callingthe mother ship. We have to stop it.)

 

(Free Thariinye first,) was their next simultaneous thought. Maati saw Acorna's teeth shining in the dark-humor and hostility mixed.

 

(Work your way behind the tree, Maati. See if you can get him loose from that stuff. Here, take my laserknife. I'll see if I can create a diversion.)

 

(Okay. Be careful, Khornya.)

 

The two split up, and Acorna circled wide in the forest and up the crest of the hill to one side of the Khieevi, who was actually within a slight clearing. Peering at the creature through the trees, she could see that it was busy with its work. Still, she had the feeling it was only trying to make contact, not that it had achieved its goal. Its pauses were to adjust the machine, not to listen. The Khieevi creature must be stopped before it brought an entire invasion force down upon them.

 

She needed to draw him off, away from whatever it was he was using to communicate and away from Thariinye and Maati. And she needed to have a plan to get away herself, if possible, once they were a safe distance from her friends. She thought for a second, took a deep breath, and started moving.

 

She picked up a stick, flung it at the creature, and raced off down the hill at a diagonal from Thariinye's position.

 

"Neener neener neener!" she yelled at the Khieevi, using an expression she'd picked up from the kids on Maganos Moonbase as she galloped down the hill. She glanced back to see if it was paying attention.

 

It gave two hops and was almost upon her.

 

She took off at a dead run, thundering down the hill, screaming at the top of her lungs, with the Khieevi hopping behind her, covering two or three yards with each hop.

 

(Khornya, run!) Maati cried inside her head. (I can't get  through this stuff without Thariinye's help. And I can't wake Thariinye.)

 

(Try harder. Use your horn if you have to.)

 

(What if I hurt Thariinye?)

 

(Better that than what the Khieevi will do to him.)

 

Thinking and running at the same time was not easy. Acorna stumbled across a broken tree and fell sprawling among the branches. In two short hops the Khieevi was practically upon her. She dove under the fronds and wriggled her way to the trunk, then hopped up and tried to run again, only to find her leg wouldn't -work. Sharp pains -were running up it.

 

The heat and stench and klack of the Khieevi were all around her as she tried to squirm and touch her horn to her leg.

 

The huge bug appeared nightmarishly dim through the fronds as it jumped-and landed on her hurt leg.

 

Acorna had not cried out for help, mentally or aloud, because she did not wish for Maati to run to the rescue and try to fight the Khieevi. But the sudden pain was so intense she let out a piercing scream.

 

"Hey you! Big old bug!" Maati sang out, followed by Thariinye yelling, "I'm over here, you slimy hulk of a feces machine!"

 

The Khieevi stepped back for a moment, uncertain. Then Acorna could swear it bared what passed for teeth in that gaping maw, and deliberately brought its foot down again on, well, on the area where her leg had been, because she had pulled the broken limb out of the way.

 

"Maati, you silly child, run!" Acorna cried.

 

"Don't you hurt her again, you dung-eating pile of-of dung!" Maati yelled. Footsteps ran in closer.

 

"Maati, no," Acorna screamed. And so did Maati. Acorna Gouldn't see what happened, but she heard a crunch and a yelp, wen a sound as if the air was being let out of something.

 

'You pick on little girls, you bag of excrement!" Thariinye hollered. "Why not tie me to a tree with your slimy trail again!"   He profited by Maati's example because his voice grew a bit fainter and Acorna heard the sound of his feet crushing brush as he retreated. The Khieevi gave a hop-and she was free. At least for a moment.

 

Bending from the waist she rubbed her horn against her leg once she had the bone properly aligned. The pain eased at once, but she was forced to concentrate on the healing of the limb rather than on anything around her. She had no idea, for a precious few moments, whether or not Maati was living -whether Thariinye had escaped capture while leading the Khieevi from her, or even if the Khieevi was about to step on her head this time.

 

As soon as the pain stopped and the bone had knitted, Acorna raised herself up to see the Khieevi grab for the dancing Thariinye with its front pincers. Thariinye screamed, and Acorna grabbed the nearest object-a rock from the ground beneath her-and threw it at the Khieevi.

 

The big insectoid was not so quickly fooled this time. It grabbed Thariinye and began slashing at him with its razorsharp pincers, leaving gruesome wounds on Thariinye's upraised hands and arms. Acorna leaped across the fallen trunk of the tree and pounded on the carapace of the creature with her fists -while her old shipmate's heart-rending cries rang in her ears.

 

"Let go, let go, let go!" she bawled.

 

The Khieevi did let go, and Thariinye, bleeding from many wounds, fell like a limp doll very close to Maati's still form. Acorna turned and ran.

 

The Khieevi rounded on Acorna, its pincers snapping. Only a single tree hung between them. Then, with a chomp and a noisome burst of gas, the tree -was gone. Acorna turned and ran, leaping over the fallen tree this time, putting it between herself and the Khieevi. She dashed past frond after frond, only  to have them vanish down the Khieevi's maw to reappear behind the creature as another smelly bit of trail.

 

The Khieevi seemed to smile as it took its last bite from the tree trunk, taunting her with its deliberate progress as it ate away her only barrier. She kept moving, mentally calling to Maati and Thariinye, hoping to hear a response but urging  them to lie still.

 

The Khieevi finished the tree trunk. Acorna backed up against another tree. It followed her slowly, taking first one chomp and then another from fronds she thrust between them. It was clearly enjoying the game.

 

She shrieked as a pincer came within a centimeter of her face. The Khieevi snapped at her, then brought its pincers up again, close to her horn. She dodged and tried to dive between its lower legs.

 

All at once, from the corner of her eye, she saw a white blur. The Khieevi fell over backward, a Linyaari form bearing it to the ground, surrounded by its flailing legs and pincers.

 

(Khornya, run!) Aari's voice was mental, but far from a whisper. (Get Joh. Get weapon. I will keep it here as long as I can, but you must save yourself and my sister.) (You can't fight it alone, Aari.) (No, but I can Delay it. Go!) (It will kill you!) (I am carrion already.)

 

She ran through the woods screaming for Becker, screaming Ae names of her fallen friends.

 

Much to her surprise, Becker and Mac, brandishing weapons, bounded toward her through the woods, Becker yelling, "Where is he? Point and duck!"

 

She turned and ran back toward Aari, who, much to her ^rprise, was raising himself unharmed from among curled ^leevi legs and pincers. The creature made no attempt to stop him or damage him. Instead it stayed on the ground, emitting  the same high-pitched "eee-eee-eee" sound their prisoner had made back on the ship. Decker paid none of that any attention at all. As soon as Aari -was clear, Becker pressed his rifle against his hip and fired. A huge crackling hole opened up in the creature and it was still.

 

The echo of the shot had not yet faded when a pair of Linyaari figures carrying what looked like strips of metal came running over the hill. (Maati? Aari? By the ancestors, are they ()ea()1)

 

Acorna grabbed Aari's arm and heard the mental call when she touched him. (Mother? Father?) he said, stunned.

 

Maati sat up, groggy. "Did somebody call me?"

 

Acorna released Aari and moved to kneel beside Thariinye. Her old shipmate did not look up, but she could see he was breathing. His shipsuit was a bloody mess. One of his hands dangled from a scrap of skin protruding from his sleeve. A chunk was missing from his right cheek and one of his eyes •was swelled shut, the lid and brow lacerated. His horn was an inch or so shorter than it had been.

 

"Thariinye!" Maati cried, and rose to her hands and knees to do a very fast crawl to Thariinye's other side. "Oh, no, look at his hand."

 

"Maati? Baby, is that you, all grown up?" the male Linyaari who had appeared during the fight asked.

 

Maati's face rose to look at the two tall Linyaari strangers. Once she got a good look at their faces she ran to them, crying. "Mother? Father? Help us! Thariinye's hurt bad. He made the Khieevi fight him so it wouldn't kill me." She dragged her parents back to Thariinye's side.

 

"My goodness," her mother said. "The young man certainly is in a bad way, but this young lady is doing a fine job or healing him. Maati?"

 

The male Linyaari gently shoved Acorna aside and bent his  own horn to Thariinye's hand. "Allow me, my dear. This boy was little more than a toddler when we left narhii-Vhiliinyar. And now he's been wounded protecting our little girl."

 

Acorna willingly surrendered Thariinye's care to the man. She was weary beyond belief from her own ordeal, but she needed to see to Aari. He hadn't appeared to be greatly harmed by his own encounter with the Khieevi, although he had been locked in its multilegged embrace. But there had been something odd about their "parting."

 

Becker and Aari were both bent over the corpse of the Khieevi, studying it.

 

"The Khieevi -was dying when you shot it, Joh. It could not hold on to me. See how its legs are curled?"

 

"Lead poisoning -will do that to you," Becker growled.

 

"Lead poisoning? Where was the lead?" Aari asked. "You used the laser canon."

 

"Figure of speech," Becker replied.

 

"Aari, are you hurt?" Acorna asked, looking him over careful. "The front of your shirt-it's a mess."

 

Aari looked down and said with satisfaction, "Khieevi blood, mostly. You or Thariinye must have wounded the creature before I reached it. I had no -weapons."

 

"Neither did we," Acorna said. "We weren't expecting trouble here." She knelt to examine the dead Khieevi. Gingerly, she touched its chest along the edge of the wound made by Becker's laser cannon. "What is this? It's not the same color as the Khieevi blood."

 

"Oh-that's from me," Aari said, "I fell in the sap on the robohft when I left the ship. It was all over the front of my ^ipsuit."

 

Acorna tried to remove the sap with her finger but it had ^tually sunk into the Khieevi's carapace. In fact, she saw as ^e pulled some of the sap aside, it had eaten away a portion or the creature's shell-like protection.   She looked up at the two men who were frowning down watching her. "What became of the other Khieevi?"

 

"It was dying when -we left the ship," Aari said. "I came to get you to heal it."

 

"Did you harm it?"

 

"No-no, we did not have to harm it. It seemed to ... believe we were harming it, though, and we let it think so," Aari said.

 

"We really were going to let you heal it up, honest," Becker said. "As soon as -we got all the information we needed. Figured maybe the scientists could study the thing-" He tried to sound innocent. Acorna knew? that Becker had just thought of the scientists studying the Khieevi. He had been very much against healing its wounds. "Maybe it was hurt worse in the crash than we figured. It told us what we wanted to know and then- really, pretty conveniently-it keeled over. Aari was coming to get you to see if you could maybe heal it or something."

 

Both men looked very uncomfortable. Acorna looked from one to the other. "I don't think it was the injuries in the crash that killed that prisoner-and I suspect this one was mortally wounded from the moment Aari jumped on him."

 

"You jumped that thing, buddy?" Becker asked Aari, clapping him on the back. "Way to go. I didn't think you had it in you. Not bad for a pacifist."

 

"You miss the point, Joh. Khornya just said I killed the Khieevi. How did I do that, Khornya?"

 

"The sap on your shipsuit," Acorna told him.

 

"Ye-es," Aari said. "Yes. That makes sense. I remember the first time we saw the sap. It killed small insects preying upon the vines in the home-world."

 

"Yeah, the plants thought -we were a bug, too," Becker said. "They slimed the Condor, trying to get through its shell. Lucky us, it didn't work."

 

"The sap probably only destroys selected organic sub stances. Judging by the results, I would guess that the polysaccharides in the Khieevi's chitin carapaces are susceptible to it, Joh," Aari said.

 

"Good. Anything that eats up Khieevi shells is fine by me," Becker rejoined.

 

Acorna glanced over and saw Maati and her parents were helping Thariinye stand. His clothing was still bloody, but he was moving the fingers of his formerly injured hand, and all of the gashes and gouges were cleaned up. His horn, however, remained shorter than it had been.

 

Aari deliberately turned his back on the Linyaari quartet as he, Becker, and Mac began pulling another of the titanium cargo nets around the dead Khieevi. Acorna, panting and catching her breath, stared at his back, and shook her head. He was clearly not going to fall on the necks of his long-lost parents and rejoice at their presence. In fact, it looked like he was going to avoid dealing with them at all, if he could.

 

Miiri-Maati and Aari's mother-was the first to discover the rash on Aari's hands. While Aari's palms -were now mostly cleaned of sap, they were red and itching, swelling in places. He kept pausing in the journey to rub his palms on the legs of his shipsuit. His mother, who had been trying to run along beside him to talk to him, noticed.

 

Aari tried to ignore his mother but Acorna stopped him, turning to rest a hand on his arm, raised his palm and examined it. I had an itchy red place like this on my finger just now, from where I examined the sap on the edge of the Khieevi's wound, but I put it up to my horn and it healed. Let me see if I can help you," she said, lowering her horn to Aari's palms and touching them lightly, first one hand and then the other.

 

The pain he was in was all too evident in his rigid posture and the look in his eyes. Finally he let out a sigh of relief and gave her a look half of irritation, half of gratitude.

 

"That sap, which eats into the Khieevi shells and kills them in short order, apparently merely causes an allergic reaction in our species," Acorna said. "It's irritating, but the sap doesn't appear to be lethal to us."

 

"Mac," Becker said, "-when we get back to the ship, priority one is for you to scrape all that sap off the robolift and collect it, then stow it in one of the unpressurized cargo bays. I want samples of it analyzed as soon as possible. This stuff could be useful."

 

The next few hours were a blur of activity. Maati and Aari's parents thought-spoke with the other Linyaari while everyone worked, telling a little bit of their adventures while stranded on this planet. Their survival here was a testament to both their courage and cleverness. But Maati had so much to say to her mother and father that she chattered away like a magpie, using her newfound telepathic abilities. So, consequently, most of the conversation centered on Maati's recent escapades, rather than on her parents doings since they left their home-world in search of their children. And, despite the need to reconnect with the -wanderers, there was too much to accomplish to truly do justice to the occasion. All the Linyaari, as well as the remaining crew of the Comfor, bent their backs to the tasks at hand. They wanted to load both the crashed Khieevi shuttle and the remains of the Nilkaavri aboard the Condor, as well as any other cargo they could reach or Mac could -wade out to retrieve. The main Khieevi ship was simply shattered, most of the resulting fragments of debris too small to be of interest even to Becker, though they salvaged what they could.

 

(Why are we bothering with this trash right now?) Kaarlye, Maati and Aari's father, asked Maati. (Don't we need to get in contact with our people? The Khieevi were here.) The parents, without time to sleep-learn standard Galatic from the LAANYE, could make no sense of Becker's or Mac's thought  patterns, though RK-as always-managed to make himself understood.

 

(I will see what I can find out,) Maati told him.

 

"Captain," Maati said in Linyaari, following Becker down the beach until -when he turned back to pick up another piece of salvage he nearly stepped on her. "If the Khieevi are scouting this area and the swarm is near, shouldn't we leave this stuff until later and return to narhii-Vhiliinyar to warn the people ~ "

 

Becker tried to answer, first in Standard, then in the broken Linyaari he had picked up from Aari. Before Kaarlye's confusion became total, Acorna hurriedly translated Becker's answers as physically transmitted by Maati.

 

"Well," Becker said, "except for finding you and Thariinye here, we haven't had any communication from your planet since we sent the pilyi data, honey. We told 'em to get back to us with a translation, remember? I don't think they're listening to us, and I'm sure they're not talking to us. I don't imagine that's going to change now, even though -we've got things to tell them. I hate to say it, but for all we know, the Khieevi could be there already, maybe even been there and left.

 

"That monster we -were able to question only knew the position of the fleet as of the last transmission he'd received, which was days ago. If it helps, as far as the prisoner knew, the Khieevi -weren't on your -world yet at that time. But -we dont know what's going on at your home, nor can we give them any solid information other than the warning about the iMueevi maybe being in the neighborhood that we already sent-you know, the one that made you and Thariinye go hur"ing into space? We gave your people that warning when we fansnutted the piiyi contents-though from what you've told us about that horse-faced vilsmar of yours, it might not have °Re any good. All we can really add to our first broadcast is at we've found your parents here. Whatever's happening back your planet, our help's too far away and will arrive too late  to change anything. That's why I'm not in any hurry to talk to  your planet.

 

"Right now, I'm more worried about us. That bug we talked to told the rest of the bugs exactly where this planet is, and how rich it is in Khieevi food. The swarm could be on their way here, for all we know. We could have a lot of time, or -we could have very little, before they arrive. My scanners don't show anything, but that's not conclusive. So that's why I -want all the salvage we can manage to get aboard the Condor before we take off. If the com system in the Khieevi shuttle is undamaged-it looks pretty good to me-and if we can turn it on and get it working, there's a chance it could still be getting signals from the fleet, which would tell us where they are, and maybe even where they're going."

 

So everyone pitched in and worked for hours gathering the cargo and transporting it to the ship. After they got it all stacked ready to stow, they watched Mac open his forearm and extract a paint-scraping tool. Then the android punched a button just under the skin of his wrist that switched him to what looked like a holovid on fast forward. With rapid sweeps, he cleaned the robolift of sap and stored the sticky stuff carefully in one of Captain Decker's ceramic yogurt containers-after first evicting the yogurt and cleaning the dish, of course. "What am I to do with this, Captain?" Mac asked. "Stow it in one of the outer holds, not a temperaturecontrolled one. The sap was doing just fine out there in the cold vaccuum while we traveled here. I don't want to mess with a working system. Great stars and asteroids, -will you look at my hull?" The ConSor was normally a silvery metallic color but now was covered with broad trails of the yellowish sap as vines would cover a quaint cottage. "I guess this stuff "was frozen in space and is having a field day here thawing out."

 

Acorna stopped relaying his words to the non-Standardspeaking newcomers, and suggested, "Captain, -we should make  certain none of the sap is left behind since it is alien to this ecology, and may greatly damage it."

 

"I was gonna say that next," Becker told her. Once the lift was cleared and they were sure no sap remained on the ground, everyone helped load the cargo. Mac returned from stowing the sap and carried the heavier items such as the nearly intact Khieevi shuttle. Becker cast a regretful glance at the hull of the Linyaari vessel. "I really want to take that with us, but I can't justify the time it would take to grab it, disassemble it, and stow it. Well, I guess since you guys came with it, it's not really salvage anyway."

 

Acorna thought he was going to cry in his mustache at leaving such a valuable item behind, so she patted his arm and said, "When the crisis is over. Captain, we can always return for it."

 

"That's right," he said, and brightened up immediately. She translated for the newcomers again and Kaarlye said, "Yes. Perhaps when he returns the captain could retrieve our escape pod as well. We're very fond of it. It saved our lives, you know."

 

I think -we'd all like to know how you came to be  here and what has happened to you since you left narhii-Vhiliinyar," Acorna said much later to Kaarlye and Miiri. Becker, RK, and Mac were manning and catting the helm. Aari and Acorna led their new guests to the hydroponics gardens to graze.

 

"There's not much to tell really," Miiri told her. "We left as soon as Maati could be cared for by someone else." She ran her hand over Maati's mane. "You do understand, my dear, that we didn't think we would be gone long, and we didn't wish to endanger you, should the Khieevi still be in the area of our old home. We hoped somehow our boys-you, Aari, and-"

 

"Laarye died. Mother, -while I -was a prisoner of the Khieevi," Aari said. "I'm sorry. I couldn't save him."

 

"Yes," she said simply. "I felt it."

 

(Did you feel me, too, Mother? Did you feel my suffering?) At his mother's shocked look, the stolid, mildly bored look Aari wore as a mask left his face and he, too, looked shocked. "I didn't say anything," he said a little pleadingly to Acorna. She let out the breath she had sucked in when he spoke to his mother.

 

(You used thought-speak, as you did with me earlier -when the Khieevi attacked me.)

 

(I-did not think anyone could hear me. I did not realize-)

 

(I heard you,) Acorna said. (I heard you this afternoon •when the thing -was attacking me. It gave me courage, knowing you were coming.)

 

"I heard you, too, my son," his mother said. The light in the hydroponics gardens was dim now, simulating nighttime to give the plants a rest. The air smelled sweet and fresh down here. The rest of the ship'd had a very pungent odor when the six Linyaari boarded. Even though Mac had dragged the Khieevi corpses into another outer hold, and cleaned the sap and the Khieevi blood from the decks, the Condor reeked. Of course, the Linyaari horns cleansed the air. But it still seemed like the dead Khieevi could stink up the place a little faster than the Linyaari horns could clean it.

 

This area of the ship was something of a showplace, one Acorna and Aari had worked hard to bring into being. They had draped drop cloths from the bulkhead above the space so that they resembled clouds and sky. The ship's artificial lighting now shone down on them, filtered gently by the "sky." All six Linyaari were squatted in grazing posture, in a circle, staring at each other through eyes shining with the reflection of the simulated moon. A little enclosed pond Acorna had created to make the area nicer as -well as to maintain the humidity needed for optimum plant growth sent rippling shadows across the billowing drop-cloth clouds.

 

"I heard you across the galaxies, Son. I heard your brother die and I heard your screams," his mother said. "Why do you think we left Maati with Grandam and returned?"

 

"To join me in the Khieevi torture chamber?" he asked. Aari's bitterness -was all too visible then. He could not choke it down, and Acorna knew that this was some of the buried pain she'd been unable to touch in him. "What a waste that would  have been. You would have done better to have parented Maati, even if you hadn't given up on Laarye and me."

 

"Hear me," his mother said. "I heard you. We came when we could."

 

"She heard you," his father said, his face solemn and his eyes deeply sad. "She screamed at night along with you. She lost all sleep and appetite as she endured with you what you endured. Did you. not hear her as our enemies killed not only your brother Laarye, but the twins she lost before she carried Maati?"

 

Acorna gazed at Miiri more closely. She was very thin, but then, Linyaari -were inclined toward slenderness as a rule. Her eyes were a beautiful copper color, but set deeply in her head. The color and texture of her skin -were not good. Not sickly- her lifemate would have healed her if it had been merely an illness that troubled her-but unhealthy nonetheless. Strain had etched deep lines from her nose to her mouth, and other lines formed a diamond with points at the base of her horn and the bridge of her nose.

 

"And you, Father?" Aari asked. "You felt nothing."

 

"You know I have very little of the empathy that is your both your mother's gift and her curse. I concentrated on sending. Sending you the directions to our new world, suggesting ways to escape, and praying to our ancient friends that somehow you would be saved, that Vhiliinyar itself might cast out the invaders and preserve my sons."

 

Aari looked aghast. "But-I did know how to get to narhiiVhiliinyar. Were we not all programmed that way?"

 

Kaarlye shook his head, his mane flying and settling again, briefly silver in the lamplight, a slight whuffling snort emitting from his nostrils and lips. "Of course not. I am a strong sender."

 

Aari looked abashed for a moment, then defiant. He inclined his head briefly in acknowledgment.

 

"But-you had me," Maati said, almost wailing.

 

"Yes, youngling my own," her mother said, stroking her cheek with the back of her fingers. "We had you. It was your birth that delayed us. Grandam would not permit me to move, she kept me sedated with good herbs and sang me soothing songs through the night and a circle of women laid horns on me for hours a day until you were safely into the world. But then, oh Maati, my love, we haS to go. With you there to carry on the clan name, safe with Grandam, we had to go find your brother. I heard him no longer, you see, once you were born. And yet I had not felt his death. As terrible as his torment had been, I knew what it meant "while it continued. It told me Aari lived and he felt and that I was in contact with him. But then he was lost and I did not know what to think. I could not feel him, I could not-"

 

"My horn," Aari said, touching the slightly indented scar on his forehead. "They had taken my horn. It nearly killed me. No doubt the loss also . . . lessened . . . my ability to transmit to you, Mother."

 

"Yes," his father said. His mother could not speak for the tears choking her. Acorna was rapidly wiping away her own. Maati sniffled and snuffled. Thariinye, strangely quiet, put his arm around her. Maati's mother also held her daughter close. Acorna laid a hand on Maati's knee and one on Aari's. He lifted her hand and held it against his face for a moment, bending his head to press it between his jaw and his shoulder. His face was damp, but she thought it was perspiration rather than tears. This confrontation was very painful for him, but a good pain, she hoped, a healing pain. Aari's nerve endings burned with life again.

 

"To lose a child to untimely death is almost the worst thing there is for a parent. To know a child is being deliberately and terribly injured is even •worse. But when I lost you, when I didn't know where you were or what was happening to you, to know you were there but not to feel you-that was unbearable.

 

Had it not been for the twins, and then Maati, we -would have left to find you long before we finally departed."

 

Miiri reached out to Aari, but he flinched away from her touch. She withdrew her hand and rested it on her knee. Raising her chin, she continued her tale. "When -we could, -we flew back to Vhiliinyar. We maintained radio silence lest the Khieevi trace the signal. But our old home planet had been violently altered, and it seemed it was now fighting back. From our vantage point in low orbit -we could see that the beautiful greens, blues, and purples of our world were gray and black now, with angry red sores and craters all over. The seas had dried up, leaving behind cracked and broken soil, and where once streams had flowed through mountain meadows the barren riverbeds flowed instead with magma from the ravished peaks. Indeed, many of our mountains had hurled themselves into the heavens, erupting violently. One of these eruptions destroyed our spacecraft before we could raise our shields. It came from nowhere. We took heavy damage. Knowing that the ship was likely to break up at any time, -we headed toward the nearest habitable planet. As we approached the atmosphere of this world, we barely had time to slip into the pod and eject before the ship was destroyed. We landed here, much as Maati and Thariinye did, the pod's sensors guiding us to a safe landing. Here there was food and water, and breathable air. We survived and waited for rescue, so that we could continue our search for our son." Mini's voice grew small and stilled, her hands clasping and unclasping on her knees, her eyes dropping from Aari's.

 

Acorna, her hand still in Aari's, with her other hand took one of Miiri's and joined it with her son's. They did not clasp hands, but they touched. Miiri raised her eyes again and searched Aari's.

 

Kaarlye took up the tale. "There was little we could do but survive, and wait, and hope that you would somehow free yourself from the Khieevi. And here you are."

 

He ruffled Maati's hair. "And here you are, too, our beautiful daughter, starclad and a young lady now."

 

Aari's hand clutched his mother's now, and Acorna slipped away as the family reunited. Thariinye sat there watching, so quiet it was hard to believe he was Thariinye.

 

Acorna joined Becker on watch. Mac had shut himself down to conserve his batteries. RK sat cleaning himself, warming his underside on the lights from the console. The piiyi that had played constantly on the corn screen was blessedly shut off for the moment.

 

Becker looked around as Acorna slid into the chair beside his.

 

"Family reunion stuff, huh?" he asked.

 

Acorna nodded, feeling happy but subdued. The emptiness that was in Aari was filling in like a dry spring after a dam had broken, and to a lesser extent, the same thing was occurring with Maati. It made Acorna feel wistful, wishing that perhaps her own parents had escaped somewhere, could rejoin her. But no, she did not feel that would happen. She had not known them, had missed them as a baby only long enough for dear Gil, Calum, and Rafik to learn her Linyaari baby names for mother and father, and then she had been wrapped in the loving care of her three "uncles" who -were actually her fathers, and all of her other new friends, who were her family. Now she had an aunt and a planet and so much more-and she did not begrudge Aari finding his parents and learning of their continued love for him and Maati. And yet-

 

Becker leaned over and patted her shoulder. "Makes you wonder, doesn't it, Princess?"

 

"What?" she asked. Becker was better at reading thoughts than she'd realized.

 

"What your own folks were like, what it would have been like to be with them, you know. I knew my mother a little- she was a scientist someplace, I'm not really sure where. I was  about three "when there were a lot of explosions and gunshots and she fell down with blood all over her and then I was taken to the slave farm on Kezdet. Maybe it's because I -was only three then, but what I remember most about it was, it was boring being with my mom. And one thing about Dad-Dad Becker, I mean-there was nothing boring about him. I don't reckon I've missed anything, come to think about it." But she saw, in his heart, where that creek in him "was still dry, 'waiting for the dam to break and water it.          ,

 

And she knew that in spite of all of her friends and her adopted parents and her real Linyaari kinfolk, she had a similar dry creek inside herself. But dwelling on such things was pointless. Besides, she had work to do. She looked out at the stars and asked, "Where to now, Captain?"

 

For the Balakiire, tracing the signal to the blue planet -was not difficult. The coordinates had been on the piiyi, and the NiikcLavri's ion tracings led straight to the planet. But none of the crew was prepared, as the Kalakiire began to home in on the beach where once the Condor had landed, for the site of the Niikaavrl's broken shell, lying open to the elements as if some massive chick had hatched from it and abandoned it there.

 

They saw wreckage bobbing in the sea as well, and washing up onto the beach. After a closer look at it, Neeva recognized some of the fragments as coming from a Khieevi vessel. A quick trip back to the ship to consult the scanners gave no indication of a continuing Khieevi presence on the planet. From there it was just a matter of figuring out exactly what had happened. Beginning at a debris-littered indentation in a sand dune, they followed a trail of Khieevi excrement. Liriili was given the honor of walking in front, •which she did with the poor grace Neeva expected of her. The broken trees, the large, coagulated pool of blood surrounded by many other blood-stained fronds and ruined trees and crushed leaves, drew a low, painful groan from all them. They followed the trail further up a hill, until  they came to a place where a tree was surrounded by broken heaps of the solidified dung. They searched farther still, and found that beyond this last hill, the woods thinned once more into a low marshland of reeds, and beyond that stretched the "wide blue sea. Only a few pieces of debris bobbed on the -waves on this side of the landspit. But tucked up next to the trees, in a small clearing that showed signs of occupation, lay an eggshaped vessel covered with a symbolic design. Liriili gasped as if this came as a surprise to her, which of course it should not have done.

 

The Linyaari made their way to the shuttle and examined it.

 

"This is the design registered to the . . . the ship Kaarlye and Miiri took when they went in search of their sons?" Neeva asked.

 

Liriili nodded reluctantly.

 

"You are sure?"

 

Liriili's eyes were reddened and slightly bulging, as they had been since the return of the pilgrims and the ancestors. She had not been a pleasant shipboard companion. No number of Linyaari horns could cleanse the atmosphere of her energy field, which was so discordant as to upset the harmony of even such a close-knit crew as the Balaklire's.

 

"I should know," she said hollowly. "I watched that transmission and checked over the information Thariinye had gathered from the files over and over again. It's not as if I made my decision lightly, you know. I was doing as I always have done, acting with the good of our people in mind, and this is the . . ."

 

"Yes, yes," Khaari, who was not a diplomat, said shortly. "Thariinye and Maati's ship lies in pieces, and we have found traces that indicate the Coru)or, containing Khornya and Aari, was in the vicinity of the armed Khieevi ship that wrecked the Niikaavrl. Khieevi spoor is all about, and here is the pod belong ing to Kaarlye and Miiri, but this -whole situation is still all about how badly misunderstood you. are."

 

Liriili gave her a sullen look and sniffed. "Whatever . . . but since everyone you've mentioned except the Khieevi -who made these trails are no doubt dead, perhaps -we could end this futile mission and return home?"

 

"I'm surprised you want to," Neeva said. "In your place I would be considering a long mission that sent me to the farthest galaxy imaginable, preferably one where no one ever heard of me."

 

"That is your nature," Liriili said. "It is not mine. I am not a spacefarer."

 

"You are now," Melireenya said. "I can't believe you can look at all of this without some feeling of compassion, some sadness perhaps, even remorse in the case of Maati and Thariinye."

 

"If you think the arbitrary decision of a council influenced by an influx of my enemies is going to make me feel guilty, you are very much mistaken. I did what I thought best for the good of the planet. If harm befell anyone because of my decision, then it is the Khieevi who are at fault, not me."

 

Khaari rummaged in the pod and pulled out the tiny capsule that kept a record of its flight.

 

In the ship's shuttle, they did a low flyby circling the planet. Though they looked carefully, they never found another biped lifeform on the planet's surface, dead or alive.

 

Back in space once more, they discussed what should next be done.

 

"We must -warn our allies of the impending Khieevi threat," Neeva said.

 

"The same -way they warned us of the fake Federation troops?" Khaari asked -with a trace of bitterness lingering from that betrayal.

 

"Those enemies -were only human beings," Neeva said. "Bad  ones, admittedly, but still merely human. And they tricked our allies. It "wasn't right, what happened to our people as a result, but letting the Khieevi overtake any civilization without -warning would not be right either."

 

"I suppose not. Should I begin a broadcast?" "No!" Liriili said, "You will lead them straight to us, and from us to narhii-Vhiliinyar."

 

Neeva sighed. "I'm afraid I have to agree -with you, Liriili. No, silence is still necessary this close to recent Khieevi depredations. I'm afraid we must deliver at least the Erst of our warnings personally."

 

They returned to their ship, docked the shuttle, and plotted a course that would take them toward the inhabited planets closest to their homeworld.

 

The ConDor transmitted broadcasts on all channels to all worlds and spacecraft within range about the Khieevi threat. The Linyaari response to their message proved to be typical- not a single reply came from any of the planets they'd targeted. But three days and a two wormholes away from the blue world, Acorna was startled and delighted to see Calum Baird's face on the corn screen and to hear him say, "This is the Acadecki, Con<)or. Read you loud and clear. Acorna, what in the cosmos are you and that ;unk ship up to now? Didn't we teach you better than to play with the Khieevi? They're not nice."

 

"Roger, Calum," Acorna said, baring her teeth at her beloved foster father, who was likewise baring"his teeth at her. Before they could say more, however, other faces and signals replaced Calum's in quick succession.

 

Becker, hearing the unfamiliar voices, came running to the bridge, followed quickly by Aan and their Linyaari guests and Mac.

 

"Damn, are we back in the Federation already?" Becker  bellowed. "We musta taken a wrong turn at the last wormhole. I told you that was a left, Aari."

 

Aari, who was used to Decker's odd expressions said, had picked up a couple of them himself. "I am sorry, Joh," he said. "I must have done the wrong thing while attempting to determine which turn signal to activate."

 

Maati stared wide-eyed at the faces on the screen, while Kaarlye and Miiri looked alarmed and Thariinye began translating with only a trace of his former pomp.

 

The younger male had changed his attitude quite a bit since being captured by the Khieevi. At first, right after he'd been rescued, he had retreated into himself, uncharacteristically tremulous and reticent. All Maati's goading, Becker's scolding, and Acorna's kindness couldn't reach him. But Aari had been wonderful with him, encompassing him in an exclusive wordless empathy extended from the first and heretofore only Linyaari to survive capture by the Khieevi to the second. Thariinye had responded to Aari's help with relief and something like hero worship. He'd had a taste of -what the Khieevi were capable of, and couldn't begin to imagine what Aari's ordeal had been like. The bond was clearly healing for them both.

 

Aari had begun to speak with his parents and Maati of his time alone and with the Khieevi on Vhilnnyar. Some of what he described was new to Acorna and even to Becker. Now that all of them had had such a close shave-Becker's description, but an apt one-with the Khieevi, everyone understood Aari's experiences much more fully. They were horrified for him, of course, but their reaction was one of grim comprehension, not shock or squeamishness.

 

With his new air of self-assurance, Aan faced the parade of faces on the com screen with a degree of comfort he'd never exhibited in the past.

 

Once everyone had been hailed, Acorna switched back to  Calum. "Delighted as I am to see you, what are all these ships doing here?" Acorna said.

 

"We re en route to join Ha£z and his caravan at the House Harakamian Moon of Opportoooonity," Calum said, deepening his voice into a parody of a Scottish brogue. "It's on that moon you used as a base of operations to rescue the folks Ganoosh and Ikwaskwan captured."

 

Becker chuckled. The wily Hafiz's lust for trade reminded him of his own for salvage. "His timing coulda been a little better," Becker told Calum. "According to-uh-our informant, this whole sector will be crawling with Khieevi before long. On the other hand, if the old pirate had waited till later, there wouldn't have been anybody to trade with, so we'll just have to deal with it, I guess. I presume you're up for a bit of haggling over rescuing the galaxy once again?"

 

 

 

 

Caravan Harakamian had come to rest at its destination after sailing through vast distances of space. Along the way it stopped at various watering holes and oases to refuel and pick up a few forgotten but essential supplies, experts in various fields, security personnel, and general shopping. Its space-going "camels" were fat with the finest cargo by the time they arrived at the desolate moon.

 

In less time than it took the genie to build the castle of Aladdin, Hafiz and his colleagues in commerce had erected a gigantic trade center. Hafiz used his own hologrammatic magic to disguise the envirobubbles as giant Linyaari pavilions, such as those described to him by Acorna and Aari. From the inside the bubbles were all blue sky and flying birds, -waterfalls and forests and mountains in the distance. In the foreground was the flowering vine of goods and services, the commercial center that House Harakamian erected solely to attract the Linyaari and their allies to what Hafiz fondly hoped would be an exclusive trade agreement.

 

Calum Baird had taken charge of leading a second expedition of technicians who set up relays between the new sector and the old one, specifically Laboue and Maganos Moonbase.

 

Rafik, Gill, Mercy, Judit, Pal, Johnny, and Ziana ensured that the kids who came from Maganos Moonbase and the crew of the Haven were given all possible learning opportunities. Some of the older children were now of age for university training. Those whose brains had been damaged by deprivation or who had been kidnapped into slavery so young that they were still catching up on their educations remained on Maganos Moonbase in the care of trusted teachers and some of the more gifted older children. They would help coordinate future supply caravans, and the transmission of orders from the new Moon of Opportunity, as Hafiz had dubbed his trading colony.

 

Dr. Hoa's weather wizardry created a climate both varied and pleasant, cycling through a temperate change of weather every thirty days. With the resident botanists, he came up with species well adapted for several days of warm rain with intermittent hard rain, interspersed with brilliant warm sunshine, followed by crisp autumnal days that caused the special trees to turn bright red and gold and drop their leaves before the snow that fell only on the lawns and in the mountains on the recreational portion of the moon, where residents and guests were provided with skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, sledding, and ski lodge activities.

 

In another part of the resort area, specially tailored palms swayed above a "white sand beach onto which surfable waves glistened and slid under sailable winds. Provisions were made for the alien recreational activities Hafiz had knowledge of as well, vine swinging (for the Limurian jungle dwellers), mudrolling (for the Porcinian beings of the Greater Ursine constellation), and of course, high and low gravity events-long distance jumping sports and soil diving among them. Hafiz's brochure promised that more exotic entertainments would be offered later.

 

His hologram wizardry also made the hotels playgrounds for both the children and the sophisticates, offering a variety of  fantasy-oriented suites and facilities, even holographic houris. He was a bit surprised that Khetala, who had been reeducating former pleasure house employees, took it upon herself to visit the holographic harems of the houris. While there she attempted to convince the denizens they were being exploited and should perhaps take up courses in accounting or business management to empower themselves.

 

That was his first inkling that perhaps his colony was beginning to seem a bit too frivolous for some of his associates. But of course, the guest facilities had to be in place before the university and healing centers could be completed.

 

Karina ordered up the initial hologramatic ambience for the healing center. She also spent a fortune on crystals, candles, gauzy draperies, drums, incense, amorphous music, and real greenery and fountains. Hafiz was allowed to embellish her setting with his holograms, but she insisted on the genuine article as far as plant life and water features went, "for the ozone and the extra oxygen, beloved. One doesn't get that from a simulation."

 

A large portion of that pavilion was kept barren however, awaiting the arrival of the first Linyaari trade partners, who would of course have their own specifications.

 

Thus was all in readiness for the first trading partners. Hafiz and his staff waited. And waited. And waited.

 

Signals had been sent on all frequencies to all planets in the sector. Calum Baird and his technicians finished their work installing the appropriate links and relays to allow swift communication with Maganos Moonbase, Laboue, and all other previously known Federation worlds, moons, and space stations. But until Calum and his fleet intercepted the Condor's signal, not a single response did the newly created facility receive.