The dust whispered on the hull like distant static, above the other sounds-abrading away, Pyanfar reckoned; but their vanes were canted edge-on to it, the observation dome and lenses were shielded, and that was the best that they could do. So The Pride exited this fringe of Urtur with a little polish on her hull. They made what speed they could through the muck at system-edge.
Meanwhile—
Meanwhile they crammed shoulder to shoulder into the galley. They had already extended their table with a fold-out and a let-down bench end when na Khym became permanent. Now they squeezed a few inches each and got Tully in, a company of seven now, unlikely tablefellows. But Tully was still wobbly in his moves, his hands shaking as he gulped cup after cup of carbohydrate-laced gfi and nibbled at this and that; while Khym—Khym ate, plenty, for one who had been wobbly-sick half an hour ago. Pyanfar shot glances his way—misgiving (he bade fair to make himself sick) and halfway pleased (he had lasted the rough ride, by the gods, and gone white-nosed as he was to galley duty, and was on incredibly good behavior.) There might not have been another male at table for all the attention Khym paid between his plate and the rotating center-section with the serving-trays.
There was silence at table, mostly—a little muttered discourse as Tirun and Chur and Haral brought their vane-problem to table with them, and worried it like a bone. A little “have this,” and “try that,” from Hilfy who tried to slip a little more substance under Tully’s ribs.
No harrying, no pressure—take it slow, she thought. And: Keep him calm, keep everything low-key . . . the while she watched him relax at last, their old friend, old comrade. It was as if he had—finally—come back to them the way he had been, easier and finally letting go—Time then to talk of things, when he might tell them the truth. Perhaps they had cornered him, pushed him too much, assured him too little. Perhaps he felt the panic in the air and only now felt easy. Perhaps now there would be truth.
“Your House send you?” Khym said suddenly, looking straight Tully’s way, and sent her heart lurching past a beat.
Tully blinked that into slow non-focus. “Send?” the translator queried, flat-voiced . . . O gods, trust indeed, wide-eyed innocence. “Send me?”
“I don’t know that they have Houses,” Pyanfar said, and found her fingers flexed and the claws out. Khym tried the situation. She knew him. And she knew Tully. Of a sudden the silence round the table was absolute. She wanted to stop it, to shut it off, and there was no way, no way with Khym in bland, smooth attack-mode. Hunting, gods rot him. Pushing for reaction, the crew’s and hers. “Don’t use big words. Translator can’t handle them.”
“House isn’t a big word.”
“Stick to ship-things. Technical stuff. You don’t know how it comes out the other side.”
“Say again,” Tully said.
“I asked who sent you.”
“# # send me.”
“See?” said Pyanfar. “You get a word it won’t make sense.”
“Name home,” Tully said. “Sun. Also call Sol. Planet name Earth. Send me “
“He does talk.”
“So,” Pyanfar said. Her ears pricked up despite herself. “Sun, is it?”
“Where are we?” Tully asked. “Ur-tur?”
“Urtur. Yes.”
He drew a great breath. “Go Maing Tol.”
“Seems so. By way of Kshshti. You know that name?”
“Know.” He moved his plate aside a handspan and touched his strange, thin fingers to the table surface. “Meetpoint—Urtur—Kshshti—Maing Tol.”
“Huh.” He had never known much of the Compact stars. Not from them. “Goldtooth teach?”
“Mahe name Ino. Ship name Ijir.”
“Before Goldtooth got you, huh? How’d you find Goldtooth?”
He looked worried. Or the translator scrambled it. “Go Goldtooth, yes.”
“You with him long?”
“#?”
“Were you long time in Goldtooth’s ship?”
Perhaps it was the tone of her voice. His eyes met hers and dived aside after one frozen instant, reestablishing contact perforce.
“Where did you meet Goldtooth?”
“Ino find him.”
It did not satisfy her. She sat and stared, forgetting the bite on her fork, not forgetting Khym at her elbow. No fight; don’t pick a fight, no trouble while Khym’s in it. The strictures crawled up and down her nerves.
“You come how long ago?” Geran asked.
“Don’t know,” he said, glancing that way. “Long time.”
“Days?”
“Lot days.”
He could be more precise. He knew the translator’s limits. Knew how to manipulate it better than he did. He picked up the cup and drank, covering the silence.
Perhaps the rest of the crew picked up the undertones. She thought so. There was not a move at table. Only Tully.
Their old friend.
She reached slowly into the depths of her pocket, hooked the small, thin ring with a claw and laid it precisely on the tabletop. Click.
His face went a shade further toward stsho pallor, and then he reached for it and took it up in his flat-nailed fingers, examining the inside band. His eyes lifted, that startling blue, wide and dreadful.
“Where find?” he asked. “_Where find, Pyanfar?_”
“Whose?” She knew pain when she saw it and suddenly wished the ring back in her pocket and them less public than this. A kifish gift. She was a fool to have suspected anything but misery in it, a double fool; and having started it there was no way to go but straight ahead.
“Mahe got?” he asked. “Goldtooth?”
“Kif gave it to me,” she said, and watched a tremor come into his mouth and stop, his face go paler still if it were possible. “Friend of yours, Tully?”
“What say this kif?”
“Said—said it was a message for our cargo.”
The tremor started again, harder to control. No one moved at table, no one on left or right. For a long time that lasted, with the dust rattling on the hull, the rumble of the rotation, the distant whisper of air in the duct above their heads. Water spilled from Tully’s eyes and ran down into his beard.
“Friend, huh?” She coughed in self-disgust and shoved her plate back, creating a stir and a little healthy living noise. Scowled at the crew. “Want to get that vane fixed?”
“Where get?” Tully asked before anyone could move.
“Kif named Sikkukkut. Ship named Harukk. Who did it belong to, huh?”
His mouth made a sudden straight line, white-edged, as he looked down and put the ring on.
It was too small. He forced it. “Need #,” he murmured, seeming to have nothing to do with them or here or now.
“This kif,” she said, slipping the words past while the shock was fresh. “This kif was at Meetpoint, Tully. He knew you’d come to us from Goldtooth. He knew our way ahead was blocked. What more he knew I have no idea. Do you want to tell us, Tully? Whose is it?”
The blue eyes burned. “Friend,” he said. “Belong friend stay Ijir.”
She let go a breath and shot a look past a row of puzzled hani faces. “So Goldtooth hedged his bet, huh? You come to us. Your companions go somewhere else. Where?”
“Kif got. Kif got # Ijir.”
“Then the kif know a gods-rotted lot more than you’ve told us. What do they know, Tully? What are you up to, your hu-man-i-ty?”
“They ask help.”
“How much help? Tully-what are you doing here?”
“Kif. Kif.”
“What’s going on?” Khym asked from her left. “What’s he talking about—kif?”
“Later,” she said, and heard the breath gust through Khym’s nostrils. “Tully. Tell me what’s in that paper. You tell me, hear.”
“You got take to Maing Tol.”
“Tully. Gratitude mean anything to you? I saved your mangy hide, Tully, more times than I ought.”
He gave back against the seat. The eyes set again on hers with that tragic look she hated. “Need you,” he said in hani words, a strange, mangled sound that confused the translator to static. “Friend, Pyanfar.”
“_I_ ask him,” Khym rumbled.
“No,” she said sharply, and felt an acid rush in her gut, raw panic at the potential in that. She brought her clenched hand down on the table and rattled dishes. Tully flinched, and she glared. “Tully, You talk to me, gods rot you. You tell me what those papers are.”
“Ask hani come fight ship take human.”
“Make sense.”
“Want make trade hani-mahe.”
“Truth?”
“Truth.”
The eyes pleaded for belief. It did nothing for the feeling in her gut. Wrong, it said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. For kif trouble alone the mahe might have asked the han direct. Trade—was the lure, and there was something in the trees.
She shifted her eyes past his shoulder to Haral, wise, scar-nosed Haral. Haral’s ears canted back and her mustache drew down with the intimation of something odorous.
But there was nothing profitable in pushing Tully. Trust. They had a little of it. There had been a time he had staved off kif for months, led his interrogators in circles despite torture, despite the murder of companions. Tully had held out. More, he had escaped, off a kifish ship. That was no fool. And no one to be pushed.
“Vane,” she said with ulterior motives. “Go.”
“Aye.” Haral moved, shoved Chur’s shoulder. Hilfy and Geran shifted to clear the seats and Tully got up.
“Get the galley cleared,” Pyanfar said- “Tully. You just became juniormost. Help Hilfy with the galley. Khym—you fetch and carry on the bridge. Whoever needs it.”
“I want to talk to you,” Khym said, unbudged.
“No time to talk.” She turned her head and met his scowl with her own as he stayed put on the bench, still blocking her way out. “Look, Khym, we’ve got a vane in partial failure. One of us may have to take a walk after it yet. You got a question that tops it?”
His ears went down in dismay.
“Out,” she said.
“We could go to Kura, couldn’t we?”
“No. We can’t. Can’t shift course again this side of Urtur—we’re in the dust; we’ve got a vane down . . . .The last course change gods-rotted near killed us, you understand that? I haven’t got time to discuss it.” She shoved and he moved. She got up and looked back at him, at Hilfy and Tully who were gathering dishes at furious speed. But Khym lingered, a towering hurt. She gathered up her patience, took him by the arm, walked him to the privacy of the bridgeward corridor. “Look, Khym—we’ve got troubles.”
“Somehow,” he said, “I figured that.”
“Kshshti’s mahen-held,” she said. “Barely. If the kif have Kita watched they’ve likely got something in at Kshshti. But there’s help there or the mahendo’sat wouldn’t send us that direction.”
“You trust what they say?”
She looked behind him, where one stark-pale human hastened to hand dishes off the table and close doors.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Go.”
“You don’t put me off, Py.”
She gave him one long burning look.
“Chanur property,” he said. “I do forget.”
“What do you want, Khym? I’ll tell you what I want. I want that gods-rotted vane fixed. I want us out of here. Are you helping?”
He drew a long, long breath and cast a look over his shoulder in Tully’s direction. “Pet?”
“Shut it up. Right there.”
The ears that had half-lifted sank again. “All right. That was low. But for the gods’ sake, Py, what have you got yourself into? You can’t make deals outside the han. They’ll have your hide. That Ehrran ship-=”
“Noticed that, did you?”
“Gods, Py!”
“Hush.”
He coughed. Caught his breath. “Chanur property. Right.”
“Did you expect different?” She jabbed him hard. It took a lot to get through a male’s skin when he had that look in his eyes. “Are they right?”
“Who’s right?”
“The stsho in that bar.”
His nostrils dilated, closed, dilated, and his nose went pale round the edges. “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“Hilfy back there. You hear a question out of her?”
He looked over his shoulder, where Hilfy was closing cabinet latches, click, slam, click, one after the other; and Tully was folding the table up. He looked round again and his ears were flat.
“Go help Tirun,” she said.
“I asked a question.”
“No. You questioned, and by the gods that’s different. You want Haral’s rights, you by the gods earn them.”
He brushed past her and stalked off bridge-ward. And stopped, about half a dozen paces on—faced her, to her relief and her dismay. At least he had not retreated to his cabin. And gods, not more argument.
He stood there. Cold, deliberate protocol.
“Help Tirun and Haral,” she said. “The rest of us haven’t got a deathwish. That vane’s got to be fixed.”
That was the way, mention the word. Dead, dead. Death. Hit him between the ears with it. Her stomach churned.
“Fine,” he said, bowed, turned and talked off, a massive shadow against the lights of the bridge beyond.
She spun on her own heel and walked back into the galley proper, to Tully and Hilfy, who stood idle. “Out,” she said to Hilfy, and Hilfy scrambled past her. Footsteps pelted bridgeward.
Tully stood trapped against the cabinets, leaned there with elbows on the counter behind him.
“All right,” she said, “Tully, I want the truth.”
“Maing Tol.”
“I scare you, huh? Maing Tol, Maing Tol. Listen to me. You don’t play stupid. You gods-rotted well understand me. You wanted to talk. You wouldn’t give me peace of it. So talk. And keep talking.”
Maybe the translator garbled that. He had that look.
“Talk, Tully. You want to be friends, by the gods you deal straight with me.”
“I sit,” he said, and ebbed down onto the mess table bench as if his legs would no longer hold him.
“Truth.” She came closer in his silence, leaned both hands on the table and glared into his face. “_Now_, hear?”
He flinched. He smelled of fear and human sweat, like when she had held him, when his heart had beat so hard she could feel it like hammer-strokes. She reached out pitilessly and pinned his arm with claws out. “You risk my crew, Tully. You risk Chanur. By the gods you don’t lie to me. Where you come from, huh?”
“Friend,” he said.
“You want I rattle your brain?”
He drew several rapid breaths. “Maing Tol. Go Maing Tol.”
She stared, at arm’s length from his face, stared a good, long while. “You come find me. Need, you say. Need what? You talk, now you talk, Tully. Need what? Number one fool? Where you been, Tully?”
“Human space. Want come. Want, Pyanfar.”
“So you come to the mahendo’sat.”
“Mahe come human space.”
“_Goldtooth?_”
“Name Ino. Ijir.”
She drew a long, long breath. “Doublecrossing bastard.” Meaning Goldtooth, mahen trade and a towering great lie.
“Say again.” Blue eyes looked at her with vast worry.
She lifted her hand from his arm and patted his face ever so gently, claws pulled. “Keep talking. More. How did this Ijir come into the business, huh? Was it trading in human space.”
“Human ship—“ He made diagrams on the tabletop. “Human. Kif. Mahe. Not good go so- kif. Three human ship. Gone. Not see. Not come home. Try go stsho. Mahe come-go.” He drew route-pictures, mahen traders reaching human space. “_Ijir_ come. Say want bring human come talk mahe. Want I come. I, Tully.” His mouth twisted in a strange expression. “I small, Pyanfar. Human lot mad. They same send me. I small. Mahe think me big. Want. Take. Human think me make trouble. Shut up, Tully. What you know?” Another intersecting line as Ijir moved out of human space toward the Compact. “Gold-tooth come. Lot talk, Ino, Goldtooth. Goldtooth want talk me, not talk lot other human, other human lot mad.” He drew a great breath, looked up at her as if to see whether she understood his babble, and there was pain in his expression.
“Politics,” she said. “And protocols. Same there, huh?”
He blinked, confused.
“Go on.”
“Goldtooth want talk me. Want me go Goldtooth ship. I say go find you, you friend, good friend. Not know Goldtooth. Want help. Want you talk these mahe.”
“That bastard.”
Another blink of skyblue eyes.
“So,” she muttered, “the mahe wanted you, huh? And set up a rendezvous. Wanted you. Someone they could talk to. Someone who would talk, huh? What about that paper? What’s in it? Why Maing Tol?”
“I spacer.” Tully’s mouth trembled in that way he had when he was upset. “I never say I #, Pyanfar.”
“What about the paper, Tully? Whose is it? What’s in it?”
“_Ijir_ meet Goldtooth, he say make paper—same paper human on Ijir got—“
“Copy the paper, you mean.”
His head bobbed vehemently. “Same. Yes. Say he take me go find you, go talk stsho, go bring paper Maing Tol, help human-“ He held up the hand that bore the ring. “Kif got them. Kif got Ijir, got paper same you got—“
“How long time?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” His look grew desperate. “I ask come hani, ask, ask many time. Goldtooth friend? He friend, Pyanfar?”
“Good question,” she said, and puzzled him.
She reached and patted his shoulder, tapped him with a clawtip. “Safe, understand. Tell me. Why Maing Tol? And why me?”
He shivered, palpably, and reached across the table to grip her retreating hand, ignoring the reflexive jerk of claws. “Big trouble. Lot human ship, lot go Maing Tol soon.”
“Across kif space? There’s knnn out there! How many ship, huh, how many human ships are you talking about? Three? Four? More than that?”
“Paper say—we make stop kif come human space, take human ship. But Goldtooth say me—Goldtooth say—think now maybe not kif got human ship. Maybe knnn.”
“O good gods.” The heart sank in her. If there had been a bench under her she would have sat down. As it was she just stared.
“Goldtooth say message got go Maing Tol make stop mahe, make stop kif, go fight—“
“_Fight?_ Gods-rotted humanity can’t tell knnn from kif?”
“Not.”
“Well, for the gods’ sake you know knnn.’ Did you teJI them, did you telJ them the difference?”
“_Who I? They don’t hear. Shut up, Tully. I’m small person, small, not #, Pyanfar!_”
“Gods and thunders.”
“Pyanfar—“
“Lunatics!”
“Goldtooth friend?” he asked again. “I do good?”
She stared at him a long, long time and he just looked scared. Scared and on the other side of a half-functioning translator. And the gulf of other minds.
“Goldtooth’s mahendo’sat,” she said flatly. “And he’s got a Personage breathing down his neck. They went to get you, friend, because they wanted trade. I’ll bet on that. And those human ships weren’t getting through. Ijir’s no common trader, no way. They wanted to get you to a rendezvous—find out what humanity’s up to. That was the game. But they found out too gods-rotted much and now Goldtooth’s scared. Scared, understand? Kif, the mahe can handle. But if knnn have their small black feet in this—o gods, Tully—you lunatics.”
“Got lot ship come—lot, Pyanfar. Got fight kif, got make stop knnn.”
“_No one fights the knnn_! Gods and thunders, you don’t pick a fight with something you can’t talk to!”
Wide eyes looked back at her in distress.
“Where’s Goldtooth, Tully? You know?”
A shake of an uncomprehending head.
“Huh.” She shoved back from the table feeling her knees gone jellylike. And still that blue-eyed stare was on her. Lost.
Don’t go to the han, Goldtooth had said; and Beware of Goldtooth-from Goldtooth’s stsho ally—
With Vigilance in the selfsame port.
Suspicions occurred to her, vague and circular, that the han ship might have gotten wind of the clearing of Chanur papers, of mahen money passed to stsho—
that that ship’s presence and Goldtooth’s might have had connections Goldtooth would not say . . . _han_/mahen consultations. Stsho like Stle sties stlen, with slippered feet well into it. . . .
And self-interested betrayals, at more than financial depths—
Knnn. Gods, stsho the ultimate xenophobes, and knnn the ultimate reason . . . living right next door—living, or traveling, or whatever it was knnn did with those ships of theirs.
Perhaps, hani had whispered, stung by stsho references to the mahendo’sat bringing hani into space to balance kif—
perhaps a great deal that the stsho knew came from methane-breathers. Tc’a were likely. But had limbless serpents originated their own tech?
Or had chi, who might be parasites—or slaves—or pets—to the tc’a? Not likely.
Goldtooth had reason to run scared. And being mahe he had done a mahen thing: he had gone for the contacts that he knew. Same as the whole mahen species had: bring Tully. Go get him. While with trouble in the offing Goldtooth had wanted her. Not the han. Not Ehrran. The han knew the mahendo’sat, by the gods: it was why the law existed against taking foreign hire. Mahendo’sat went for Personage. For the Known Quantity. They set up powers. Tore them down. Tied hani rules in knots and brought down powers by ignoring them in crises.
Here’s unlimited credit-friend. Tell us what you know. Same as they worked on humans.
Send for Tully.
Gods, they’d drained him dry. Even kif had failed at that.
(_I do good?_ Tully asked. With that blue-flower stare.)
They had her by the beard, that was sure. Had her, and maybe Stle stles stlen himself.
Until humanity launched ships at the Compact, and knnn objected.
“Trouble?” Tully asked.
She lifted her ears, turned on him the blandest of looks. “We’ll fix it. Just go back to your quarters, huh?”
“I spacer. I work.” He patted his pocket. “Got paper, Py-an-far.”
He did. That was truth. Citizen of the Compact, licensed spacer. More mahen maneuverings. He could not handle controls. He needed a pick to reach the buttons and he was illiterate in hani.
So they locked him up below and shoved him this way and that. He had looked for better from them. Gods knew he must have looked for better.
“_Na_ Khym’s aboard,” she said, feeling the flush all the way to her ears. “Male, Tully.”
“Friend.”
The flush went hotter. “As long as you aren’t in the same room, fine. Go where you like. Just stay out of his way. Males are different. Don’t argue with him. Don’t talk to him if you can avoid it. Just duck your head and for godssakes keep your hands off him and us.”
Blankest confusion.
“Hear?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Get.” She turned him loose and watched him go for the bridge.
She waited for the explosion—realized she was waiting, claws flexed, and drew them in. There was the dust-whisper, high-pitched with their velocity, reminding her of movement, of The Pride’s hurtling toward a jump she had to make now.
No way out but that.
The bridge lights were still on, with all of them snatching sleep where they could, going back to quarters for rotating breaks and coming back to the paper-snowed number-two counter, while the dust whispered and the occasional impact of larger fragments hit the hull. (“We’ll shine like a new spoon when we get through this,” Hilfy had said early on; “We’ll be cratered like Gaohn,” Tirun had replied, which they were not yet.) The dust screamed now and again, _V_-differential. Now and again The Pride’s particle-sensors and automated systems sent the trim jets into action, little instabilities in G which put a stagger into a walk down a corridor. Now and again The Pride’s scan showed her something major and the ship moved to take care of it.
But hani work went on too. And human: a section of the comp still had the working light on that meant Tully was still at it, doing what he could do—working away with linguistics from his terminal in his quarters. He hunted words. Equivalencies. Fought the translator into fewer gaps and spits. Learned hani. That was what he did, far into the hours.
And Khym, shambling red-eyed and shivering from out the corridor-errand to the so-called heated hold: “Got the stores moved down,” he said, and cast a worried eye over boards he could not read, at backs turned to him and work still underway. “Go on to bed,” Pyanfar said. “Hot bath. You’ve done all you can.”
“We’re still in trouble, aren’t we?”
“We’re working on it. Go. Go on. Need you later. Get some sleep.”
He went, silent, with one backward, worried glance.
She sighed. Heard other sighs from crew, rubbed her aching eyes and felt a twinge of shame.
“Suppose he secured that?” Tirun wondered.
“He’ll remember.” But there were his habits in galley—dishes left, a cabinet latch undone. She walked over and keyed in security check. All doors showed closed and a sense of panic still gnawed at her.
On the monitors the numbers still rolled up bleak information. Constant operation. No matter what they tried. They went deeper into the dust, into the well, and station information showed four kif docked, one loose and outward bound, two mahen freighters and six tc’a miner/processors.
Bad odds.
“Gods rot.” From Haral.
Another theory failed.
“Go on break,” she muttered, back on the bridge the third time, finding Tirun still in the huddle of three heads round the console: Hilfy had changed with Chur; and Haral was back after shift with Geran; while she had stood two straight herself. “Gods rot it, Tirun, didn’t I tell you get?”
“Sorry, captain.” Tirun’s voice was hoarse, and she never looked up from the papers and the moving stylus. “Got this one more idea.”
She subsided onto the counter edge, steadied herself through another of The Pride’s attitude corrections. She gnawed at her mustaches and waited, wiped her eyes. The stylus scratched away on the paper.
“There’s the YR89,” Haral said, putting out a hand to point. “If it went—“
“Huuuh.” The snarl was hoarse and vexed and Haral got the hand out of Tirun’s way. Fast. Scratch-scratch went the stylus.
More silence. The dustscream on the hull grew louder. The Pride corrected. There was a resounding impact.
“Gods rot!” (Hilfy.) Ears went down in embarrassment. She ducked her chin back to her arm on the counter-edge and tried to pretend former silence.
Tirun shoved a strip under the autoreader. The slot took it. Lights rippled as if nothing at all were wrong. Tirun’s shoulders slumped.
“Anything left untried?” Pyanfar asked.
“Nothing,” Haral said quietly.
“It’s a ghosty thing,” Tirun said. Her voice cracked. Her ears flagged. “I can’t turn it up.”
“Stress-produced?”
“Think so. Always possible the unit was rotten. Remember that fade at Kirdu.”
Pyanfar heaved a breath and stared at Tirun, reading that grudging mistrust of an unclean system. “We’ve still got one backup,” she said.
“We’ll be down to none at Kshshti. Enough for braking. If we’re lucky.”
Pyanfar thought about it. Thought through the whole vane system. “Back to the regulator,” she said.
“You want to replace that Y unit?”
A long, long worming up the vane column, with The Pride yawing and pitching under power. A long, dark solo job fishing a breaker out of the linkages, where the system was already in failure. From inside-because the particles would strip a suit.
“No. I want all of us to see Kshshti, thanks.” She drew a deep breath. “We put in for repair when we get there, that’s all.”
Noses drew down. Ears sank.
“Well, what else can we do?”
“I’d try the column,” Hilfy said.
“Hero’s a short-term job, kid.” And to Haral: “We go on schedule.”
“If it would get us—“ Hilfry said.
“_I’d gods-rotted put Chur up that thing if it’d work: at Jeast she’d know the system._”
Ears sank; shoulders slumped.
“If someone gets killed up there,” Tirun muttered, “gods-rotted lot of trouble getting you out of the works. Might fry the system along with you. Captain’s right the first time.”
“Sure takes out the Kura option,” Haral said.
“Huh,” Pyanfar said. “_Isn’t_ an option.”
“There’s Urtur.”
“There’s Urtur.” She let go a long, long breath and thought about it as she had thought about it the last ten hours. Spend days on Urtur. With five kif, two mahendo’sat freighters and six tc’a who were apt to do anything. Or nothing, while the kif blew them apart or boarded.
“The mahendo’sat,” she said, “want us at Kshshti. Goldtooth does. You looked at that scan image? You want to bet Sikkukkut’s not passed the word along?”
“Kif got the dice,” Haral said. “No bets. You get anything out of Tully to tell us what this is?”
Pyanfar slumped against the cabinet back and stared at Haral. “Big. Real big. You want to hear it? Mahendo’sat tried to get humankind in the back door. Humans lost some ships. I think this Ijir’s a hunter-ship. It went in and got Tully—typical mahen stunt. They wanted to figure out what was going on and they wanted Tully in their hands. He’d talk. He’d trust them. He’d tell them anything they asked.”
“O good gods,” Hilfy murmured.
“That’s not the end of it, niece. Humanity wanted to send their real authorities to the mahendo’sat, I’m guessing, because they had trouble. Mahendo’sat wanted Tully, because they have trouble. Here it gets complicated. I think this whole thing’s touched off the knnn.” No one moved. Eyes dilated to thinnest amber rings. “I think,” Pyanfar said, patiently, quietly, “humans failed a promised trade, mahendo’sat investigated, sent a ship—humans from their side blame the kif, and Tully’s not high up enough that humanity would’ve told him much beyond that. He couldn’t know the knnn angle. So the mahendo’sat got Tully and rendezvous’d with Goldtooth at some point beyond Tvk, I’m guessing. For questions. Gods know. Tully said the delegation was vexed that Goldtooth wouldn’t talk to them; just to him. And Goldtooth took him aboard alone, Ijir went for Maing Tol, Goldtooth went gods know where, and meanwhile our papers miraculously got cleared, when stsho had refused us for months, and Goldtooth and we together ended up at Meetpoint.”
“So did the han,” Hilfy said, and Pyanfar looked her way and blinked. The thought leapt to her mind too, two points connecting.
“Stle stles stlen.”
“The stationmaster?” Haral asked, hoarse and fatigued, but her ears pricked sharp.
“Might well be. The han called for consultation; our papers bought back by one side or the other -- Someone wanted us in this. Feels like mahendo’sat. Feels like Goldtooth himself. We’re his Known Quantity. But so’s Stle stles stlen. Theoretically. I wouldn’t lay odds on anything right now. Someone got things moving. Gods know the stsho took our money to clear those papers, but maybe they took everyone’s, who knows?”
“Gods-rotted situation,” Haral muttered.
“Twice over if Ehrran’s in it,” Tirun said.
“Where’s Goldtooth headed?” Hilfy asked.
“I asked Tully that. He doesn’t know. He says. Likely he doesn’t.”
“He came through here,” Haral said. “Kura? Kita? -- Kshshti-bound?”
“We think he came through here,” Tirun said. Her voice cracked. “I’d not lay odds anything’s right-side up with that son.”
“Bait-and-switch,” Pyanfar said. “Gods-rotted mahe’s slippery as a kif. No, I don’t swear that message wasn’t put in before he got to Meet-point. Or by some outbound agent. Alarm’s being rung down from Meetpoint to Urtur to Kshshti, that’s what, and we may just think we’re the wavefront.”
“That knnn at Meetpoint—“ Tirun said. “Not forgetting that.”
“We can’t do anything about it. Except get out of here.”
“And stay in one piece,” Haral muttered. “Kshshti’s a long jump.”
“We can make it. Even if we blow that vane. Distance may blow it, but it’ll help us too: we’ll come in with marginal V. We can stop, at worst. At best, it wasn’t the Y unit and the vane will hold all the way.”
“It may and it may not,” Tirun said. “If it’s that. One of those goes ghosty, gods, you don’t know whether you’ve got it or not. Ever. It could hold to Kshshti and we could lose it at Maing Tol when we’ve got higher V.”
“One thing I want you to do. Put that whole vane over to backup from the board up. In case we’ve got a ghost in another unit. Let’s just clear all the original systems. Can you do that in four hours?”
“Can,” Tirun said.
“Not you. You get some sleep.”
“I’ll get it,” Haral said.
“We give up that Y-unit to third redundancy?” Tirun asked. “Could have damaged it when that regulator went backup. If that’s sour it’ll sure take that linkage out.”
She thought about it. Thought about going no-backup-at-all, which was how desperate it was.
“No,” she said. “I’ll dice with the number two. What we’ve got aboard-if nothing else-we can’t risk on that kind of throw. It’ll get us there with something left. That’s all we dare try.”
“What have we got aboard?” Tirun asked.
“Message from humanity to Maing Tol and Iji. Translator. Message from Goldtooth to his Personage. Gods know what that is. About the knnn—most likely.” She drew a deep breath and considered the chance it involved the hem. Alliances. Doublecrosses. “All systems to number two and we jump to Kshshti on schedule. Tell Chur and Geran what we’re doing when they come on duty.”
“Not the menfolk?”
“Gods, don’t worry them. Tell them we fixed it all.”
“What—“ Hilfy asked ever so quietly, “what about Tully if we go lame at Kshshti? We’ll be stuck at dock. Gods know the kif—“
“What we do, imp—We get ourselves to Kshshti and whatever happens, by the gods, we put him in mahen hands. Let them worry about him. Hear? They’ve got two hunter-ships to their account. Let them take it.” She stood up again. “Get some rest. All of you this time.”
“Aye,” Tirun murmured in what of a voice she had left. Hilfy stared at her open-mouthed.
“Nothing else to do,” Pyanfar said to her. “_Nothing else_. He’s worth too much to take chances with. That message is. Understand? We’ve had it. That vane’s got us.”
“We go in like this we could be down a week!”
“So we take our damage. We can cover the bill. We’ve got that. We’re done, imp. Finished.”
“I could make it,” Hilfy said, “up that column and we’d have that unit replaced.”
“Wrong. Chur would have to do it. She’s smallest. And she’s not fool enough.”
There was silence but for that. That and the dust.
She got up and walked away, staggered a little as she reached the corridor and The Pride corrected course again.
She had another, chilling thought and turned, pointed at Haral. “No way this kid tries it. You sit on her. Someone goes up that column I’ll space her. Hear?”
“Aye,” Haral said.
No one followed her. Presumably they were clearing up the paper. Closing down. Her eyes blurred with exhaustion and she refrained from rubbing at them as she passed Khym’s cabin.
She thought of going to him. She had not—not since Hoas. It was not her time; had not been, then. Such niceties went by the board with them as they had in her world-visits. But sleep would not come easy with the dust, the small shifts of G that went on constantly: and he might be asleep; and there would be questions if she waked him.
Did you fix it, Py?
She opened her own door and walked in, sat down at the desk and methodically cleared the clutter of her own work away.
Course-plottings. Calculations every way she could make them in hopes of getting another dump-and-turn that would turn them off toward Kura and hani space, without breaking them down at Urtur and stranding themselves here with the kif.
None were feasible. And if they were—if they were, knnn notice fell on hani thereafter.
Goldtooth, you mahen bastard. Seeing to the safety of his own, that was sure.
So she handed the package back again: Here, fool mahe, you take it. Good luck. Run fast.
And Tully—
She rested her head against her hands. Gods, gods, gods.
Knnn.
And the failsafe that was Ijir, whatever else it had been, with its humanity aboard, and just gone backup.
Kif had it, gods help them. Kif would take them apart, mahe, humans, everyone. Tully knew, who had spent time in kifish hands, who had gone to hani for help because he heard them laugh once, across Meetpoint docks.
Gods rot Sikkukkut and all kifish gifts.
They were out of it, that was all. Whatever gain or loss there was yet to be made, The Pride had gone her limit. So they should be glad to be out of it. A vane down. They could not jump The Pride again. They rolled the dice for Kshshti. That was gambling all their lives. At Maing Tol the odds went up, that it would not hold for braking.
Hero’s a short-term job, kid.
So what was stung, that they had to give up and lay back and let others do what hani failed at?
And hand Tully on alone to mahendo’sat?
“All secure,” Haral said, beside her, at her post. “I take her, captain?”
“I’ll take this one,” Pyanfar said, and reached and settled her arm into the brace. She glanced up at the reflection of the rest of the bridge, crew in place, Khym in his observer’s post.
Fixed, they had told him. And his face had lightened, trusting them.
Fixed, they had told Tully, who was harder to lie to, being spacer himself. And he had drugged himself into a haze by now, as his kind had to do.
“Starfix positive, Maing Tol,” Haral said.
The dust whined over the hull, constant but thinner now. “Going to dust up Kshshti a bit,” she said. “Can’t be helped.”
Haral rolled a glance in her direction, a stark, stark stare. “Can’t be helped,” she said.
Sudden silence then, as the jump field began to build and the shields came up.
They rode their luck this time.