IV

An eerie quiet persisted on the docks. A few blackbreeched Ehrran clan personnel were visible in vantage points, armed with rifles; .doubtless a few such were not visible at all; and there were two more Ehrran crewwomen stationed up inside the ramp, guarding The Pride’s airlock and accessway. Less ominous and more, a solitary, AP-wearing mahendo’sat slouched her way up to her captain in specific. Sleekly black, gold glittering as Jik himself, she had half an ear missing and a bald streak on a burn scar down her jaw.

Jik spoke to his crewwoman rapidly in some language they both shared, of Iji’s great multitude. “A,” the woman said, and with her hand on the AP gun’s butt, moved off again into shadows near the gantry.

“Khury,” Rhif Ehrran muttered to her aide, “get back to the ship; take charge. And if we don’t get back, get home directly and make a thorough report to the han.”

It was Enaury hani the Ehrran spoke; Pyanfar caught it: so would Geran, but not likely anyone else. And Pyanfar ducked her head and rubbed her nose-better say less than one knew than more, she reckoned. With the han deputy it was certainly the case. There were already mounds and mountains of reports aboard that ship, to the delight of Chanur’s enemies when Ehrran got back to Anuurn and that collection of complaints got to the han debating floor-

And a certain stsho check was on its way to a mahen bank at Maing Tol, if it had not gotten there already. When that hit the desk of a certain Personage-

The han’s deputy had not discovered that small matter yet.

Nor had Jik.

Pyanfar lifted her head and the oncoming kif welcoming committee looked almost friendly in that light.

They did not turn in at the same corridor as before. The half-dozen kifish guides brought them further and further down the open dock, and the paper and ammonia smell even surmounted the cold in this sector. The light was dim and murkish orange-gold, the only visual warmth in the gray and black of their surroundings. The signs were kifish, in crawling, dotted script.

Kifish ships were docked along the row at their left; kifish dens lined the right hand, deserted and quiet, which lent no reassurance at all. The hair prickled down Pyanfar’s back as more and more of the horizon unfurled; it went all bristled as all the missing kif suddenly showed up past the curtaining overhead girders of the station’s curve-a dark mass ahead, a gathering of thousands on the docks.

O gods, she thought. Her legs wanted to stop right there; but Jik had not even hesitated, nor had Ehrran-perhaps they waited on her, on Chanur, who they thought had been this route before.

“More of them than last time,” Pyanfar said, breaking the spell of caution. “Gods-rotted lot more of them.”

Jik made some sound in his throat. A noise grew ahead, like nothing she had ever heard-clicking and talking all at once, the roar of kifish speech from thousands of kifish mouths together. And they were obliged to walk through this congregation. She was conscious of Khym at her back, hair-triggered; of Haral and Tirun and Geran, steady as they came, And Rhif Ehrran and her handful; Jik striding along with legs that could match a kifish stride and instead kept pace with theirs, holding their guides to a hani pace.

She slipped the safety off her rifle as the scene came down off the upcurved floor and straightened itself out in the crazy tilting of things on station docks. It became flat, became distinct as hooded, robed kif standing about, became kif on all sides of them, close at hand, turning to stare at them as they passed with their escort. A clicking rose-“Kk-kk-kk. Kk-kk-kk.”  Everywhere, that soft, mocking sound.

Kif territory for sure. Outnumbered, out-gunned a thousand times and three. If it got to shooting here-gods help them. Nothing else would.

And if they had to enter one of the ships at dock to do their bargaining- they were in no position to protest the matter.

The kif guiding them brushed other black-robed, hooded kif from their path like parting a field of nightbound grass; and indicated a double-doored passage into a dark like that other dark hole, into a place thicker with kif stench and the reek of drink.

Kokitikk, the flowing sign above the door proclaimed-at least the symbols looked like that. Entry prohibited, mahen letters said. Kifish service only.

Gods, that would keep the tourists out.

“Meeting-hall,” Jik said.

Kifish noise rose about them as they entered, noise from tables at either hand. There was a clatter of glasses-the smell of alcohol. And of blood.

“Gods save us,” Geran muttered. “Drunk kif. That’s the last.”

Pyanfar walked ahead, rifle at carry, keeping close by Jik’s side. Rhif Ehrran caught up with a lengthening of her stride. There were chairs all about of the sort Sikkukkut had used;  there were lamps and smoking bowls of incense that offended the nose and sent smoke curling up against the orange, dirty light. Kif shadows, kif shapes-kkkt, they whispered. In mockery. Kkkt.

And their half-dozen kifish guides drifted ahead like black specters, clearing them a way. The muttering grew raucous. Jaws clicked. Glasses rattled with ice. There were red LED gleams about the fringes of the hall, rifle ready-lights.

“It’s a gods-cursed bar,” Rhif Ehrran said.

The crowd opened out, creating a little open space. In the midst were kifish chairs, a floor-hugging table.

A kif sat alone at that table, beneath a hanging light.

Its robed arm lifted and beckoned.

There was a stirring all about the room as kif rose from chairs for vantage.

“Sit down,” the kif at the table said. “Keia.” It was Jik’s first name, his true one. “Pyanfar. My friends-“

“Where’s Tully?” Pyanfar asked.

“Tully. Yes.” Sikkukkut moved his hand, and kif about him stirred. There was-a mahen shout, unmistakable; a yelp of something in pain. “But the human is no longer the only matter in contention.”

The dark crowd parted near doors to the rear; and those doors opened. Dark shapes not kif were thrust forward and held fast-mahendo’sat prisoners, some in kilts, several the robes of station officials. One had badges of religious; importance. And a solitary stsho, pale, its gossamer robe smudged, its pearly skin stained with kifish light and smeared with dark patches. Its state was dreadful; it swayed and kif held it on its feet.

“A,” Jik said. “So the stsho leave Mkks got reason.”

“Mkks station,” Sikkukkut said, “is mine. Its officials have formally ceded it to me in all its operations. Sit and talk, my friends.”

It was Jik who moved first, walking forward to settle himself on one of the several black, insect-legged chairs that ringed that table. Pyanfar went to Sikkukkut’s other side, and set a foot on the chair seat, crouched down seated with the rifle over her raised knee and canted easily at Sikkukkut. There was one seat left. Rhif Ehrran filled it. Haral and Tirun moved up at Pyanfar’s back; Khym and Geran and the rest of the Ehrran hani close about the table, with a wall of kif behind.

“You let folk go,” Jik said. He opened a pouch one-handed, took out a smoke and fished up a small lighter. It flared briefly. Jik drew on the stick and let out a gray breath of smoke. “Old friend.”

“Do you propose a trade?” Sikkukkut said.

“I not merchant.”

“No,” the kif said. “Neither am I.” He made a negligent move of his hand, and Pyanfar caught a whiff of something else, something strange and hers and scared, half a breath before another white thing was shoved into view through the wall of kif. Tully crashed down with arms on the table-edge between her and Sikkukkut. “There. Take him as a gift.”

Pyanfar did not stir. Hunter-vision was centered only on the kif, the trigger under her finger, with the rifle against her knee. If Tully raised up too far, Tully would be in the line of fire. It was intended. She knew it was. She adjusted the knee and the rifle into a higher line. Sikkukkut’s face, this time. “You want your hostage back?”

“Skkukuk? No. That one is for your entertainment. Let’s talk about things of consequence.”

Rhif Ehrran’s ears had pricked. Jik let out a great cloud of smoke that drifted up and mingled with kifish incense. “We got time.”

“Excellent. Hokki.” Sikkukkut picked up his cup from the table and filled it with something that reeked like petroleum and looked rotten green. He drank and set the cup down, looking toward Pyanfar. “You?”

“I’ve got plenty of time.”

“Even before Kshshti,” Sikkukkut said, “even before that, at Meetpoint, I had converse with Ismehanan-min. Goldtooth, hunter Pyanfar calls him. I advised him to avoid certain points and certain contacts. You’ll have noticed that the stsho vessel has deserted us now.”

“Same notice,” Jik said dryly.

“You’ll have noticed a certain distress on the part of this stsho who remains with us-kkkt, perhaps you would care to question this one. A negotiator, gtst claims to be-“

“You tell,” Jik said, puffing a cloud of smoke. “You got something drink, friend kif?”

“Indeed. Koskkit. Hikekkti ktotok kkok.-“ A wave of his hand. A kif departed. “Were you always at Chanur’s back?”

“No, not. Crazy accident I come Kshshti. Friend Pyanfar say she got trouble. So I come. Bring this fine hani.” A nod Ehrran’s way. “You remember, a?”

“Meetpoint,” Sikkukkut said. The long-jawed face lifted. There was no readable expression. “Yes. This hani was dealing with the grass-eaters.”

Rhif Ehrran coughed. “By treaty, let me remind you-“

Sikkukkut waved his hand. “I have no desire for treaties. Operations interest me. Chanur interests me.”

“Hunter Sikkukkut, there’s been a persistent misunderstanding of hani channels of authority.”

O gods, Pyanfar thought, and felt sick at the stomach. Hunter, indeed. Rhif Ehrran demoted the kif in a word, in front of his subordinates.

“It seems mutual,” Sikkukkut said, with equanimity and heavy irony, and pointedly turned his attention from Ehrran. “Hunter Pyanfar, I will speak with you. And my old friend Keia. When did we last trade shots? Kita, was it?”

“You at Mirkti?” Jik asked.

“Not I.”

“Kita, then.” Another puff at the stick. Jik flicked ash onto the floor. “We got shoot here?”

“Mahen bluntness.-That thing is a foul habit, Keia.”

Jik laughed, replaced the smokestick in his mouth. “True.” He glanced aside as a kif approached him with a glass. He sniffed it and drank. “Mahen. Nice stuff.”

“Ssskkt. I appreciate it now and again.”

“What got?”

“My business? Very serious business. Mahen interference. Stsho connivance with hani. This humanity-“ Sikkukkut reached down and lifted Tully’s chin. “How are you faring’.’ Are you well, kkkt? Understanding this?” He let go and Tully kept his head up, white-faced and sweating and incidentally in the line of fire till he slumped and rested his arms on the table. “This humanity is a problem. Not alone has their presence disrupted trade: we do not, ourselves, depend so much on trade. . . . kkkt? But stsho do. Stsho fear any thing that comes near them. So the balance of the Compact is upset. And when that balance tilts, so agreements fall; and when agreements fall, so authorities give way - so there is disarrangement. This is our perspective. And our opportunity. Akkukkak first brought this creature into Compact space. Had it been my doing, of course, I would have fared better, kkkt?”

“Akkukkak dead. Lot dis-arrangement, a?”

“We trust that he is dead. The knnn are unpredictable. Perhaps he will turn up in a bazaar in some trade - but let us assume he is out. Presently there is Akkhtimakt. Akkhtimakt styles himself hakkikt, holds Kita, disrupting traffic - “

“ - make lousy big trouble,” Jik said.

“Have you dislodged him?”

“I maybe do. Maybe not. Why you raid Kshshti dock?”

“Ah. Now, there you are mistaken. The Kshshti Personage has a traitor on the staff - “

“Not got now.”

“Kkkt. You redeem my opinion of you. But this spy was Akkhtimakt ‘s operative, not mine.”

“Ummmn. You same got spy at Kshshti?”

“Not now. But then I did. When the human was crossing the docks - Akkhtimakt’s agents moved to seize him. And I, fortunately, foreknew it. So I was on the hunt as well. Kkkt. Would Kshshti have fared so well in that firefight if kif had not fought kif on that dock? Mahendo’sat have me to thank; I believe thank is the expression - at any rate I stepped in and gathered up the prize before Akkhtimakt’s agents could seize it. There was no negotiating there, at Kshshti, with everything astir, with every probability Akkhtimakt’s agents would presently report all this - I am discreet no longer. By this intervention at Kshshti I have challenged my rival openly. Now I contend with him. And I surmised correctly that you would follow me, hunter Pyanfar, as soon as your ship could move.”

“What’s the deal?” Pyanfar asked.

“You might, you know, put the safety on that thing.”

“Huh. Might. But I’m comfortable, hakkikt.”

The snout wrinkled in what might be humor. “You don’t trust my word.”

“The deal, hakkikt.”

“Ah. Kkkt. Yes. In simplicity: I have chosen Mkks as my temporary base. And my motives and yours coincide.”

“Do they?”

“Kkkt. There are fools at large. Many fools. Stsho seek a way to prevent humankind from going through their space. Stsho connive with hani-am I right, deputy?-against mahendo’sat, who would wish to bring humans through at our backs, for reasons not lost to us. How quickly Keia distracted me when I mentioned stsho negotiators! But we know. To gain a foothold at Meetpoint, mahendo’sat route humans through tc’a space. Unwise. Vastly unwise. Stsho will not tolerate this any more than the other-and the very possibility of a human route approaching their territory or even their neighbor and ally tc’a-agitates them beyond rationality. Akkhtimakt operates with the fist. I, with the knife. Akkhtimakt wishes humans barred. But I am, among kif, your friend. Our motives frequently coincide. Is this not a better definition of alliance than friendship?”

Jik let out a puff of smoke. “You wrong, friend. Human got own idea. Damn stupid. But they want come through.”

“They have urging. Do they not?”

“Who know?  Tell you got number one serious thing, methane-breather upset. We got trouble. Kif got trouble. Not all profit, either side. A?”

“You are willing to deal.”

“Maybe.” Another puff of smoke. “What you got I want?”

“Mkks.”

Jik flicked ash. “A. Now we talk kif logic.”

“ You understand.”

“Sure thing. You no trade. Maybe give gift. You give me Mkks. I then got plenty sfik.  make good ally, a? Maybe do something more.”

“Take Kefk.”

Jik’s heavy brow shot up. The stick hesitated on its way to his mouth. Arrived. “So. Maybe.”

Take Kefk. Only take the only kifish gateway to Meetpoint, the one kifish channel to the biggest trading point in the Compact-a major station and probably the most sensitive spot in kifish space outside Akkht itself. Pyanfar kept her ears erect with the greatest of efforts, kept a bland look on her face; and counted the kif and her ally stark mad.

“You think it possible,” Sikkukkut said.

“I got allies. You got same. We go take Kefk.” Jik took a final drag on the stick and drowned it in the dregs of the drink. “Personnel this station take back jobs. Then I take Kefk. You want?”

“Wait a minute,” said Rhif Ehrran. “ Wait a minute.”

“I talk to her,” Jik said without a look in that direction. “Got same good friend Pyanfar, one tough bastard hani. You want Kefk, fine. You get.”

“Alliance,” Sikkukkut said. “Myself and your Personage.”

“You got.”

“It’s more than talk we’ve got to do,” Rhif Ehrran said.

“The han deputy wants to know her advantage in this,” Sikkukkut said. “But hani have allied with kif before. The deputy knows whereof I speak. Hani have formed various associations.”

Pyanfar slid a glance Ehrran’s way; the deputy’s ears were down.

“What,” Ehrran asked, “does the hakkikt know about hani allied with kif?”

“One word. Tahar. Does that interest you?”

“Where is Tahar?”

“In service to Akkhtimakt. Moon Rising is one of his ships and Tahar one of his skkukun. Not high in his estimation- but of some use to him.”

“Gods rot,” Pyanfar muttered, and looked at Sikkukkut herself.

“A hani famed for treason-treason, is that not the word?”

“It’s close enough. Where is she?”

The kif shrugged, smooth as oiled silk. “Where is Akkhtimakt? Now does confrontation interest you?”

“She do fine,” Jik said, studying the ice in the glass, in Rhif Ehrran’s silence. “What say, hakkikt?”

“Ssko kjiokhkt nokthokkti ksho mhankhti akt.” Sikkukkut waved a hand. “The station personnel are free to go.”

“A.” Jik twisted half about in his chair,  leaned back within view of the mahendo’sat and stsho. “Shio! Ta hamhensi nanshe sphisoto shanti-shasti no.”

There was babble. The stsho shrilled; and the mahendo’sat left the kif s hands and headed for the door, walking at first, then moving with increasing speed. The stsho ran, fell, scrambled up and fled through the chittering crowd even before the mahendo’sat.

Jik turned around again when the jam in the doorway had cleared. He pulled another stick from his belt and lit it. “How many ship you got?” he asked.

“Here? All kif here are mine but one. And that one is disabled; its crew-is presently rearranging its loyalties.”

“Fourteen ship. We got three. No problem. Akkhtimakt maybe come Kshshti; maybe come Mkks. Not good you stay here, all same. Advice come free, a?”

“So Mkks will fall again-if Akkhtimakt comes here.”

“He not stay. Got no reason stay.” Another expansive puff of smoke. “He quick learn we go Kefk, a? So he come. He leave Mkks, come Kefk number one quick, pay you visit.”

Wrinkles chained up Sikkukkut’s snout. “So by aiding me you aid Mkks.”

“You right, friend.”

“Hunter Pyanfar, where are your loyalties in this?”

“Myself. My crew. My friends. Jik wants us there, I don’t doubt we’ll talk about it.”

“So. And a promise. Will you keep it?”

“Thought kif didn’t have the word.”

“You do.”

She scowled. “I do.”

“Then take your human as a gift. Join us. I will give the orders in this attack. I will personally provide you information on Kefk defenses.”

“Jik?”

“You promise. Got no problem.”

She shot Jik one long, burning look. But he did not look her way, studying instead the contents of his glass. She looked back over the rifle barrel balanced on her knee.

“Jik and I will talk about it.”

“You go,” Jik said.

“Huh,” she said.

“She promise.”

“Excellent.” Sikkukkut unfolded upward from his chair. There was a stir among the kif. “You are all free. Take that as my gift.”

He drew back. Blackrobed kif surrounded them.

“Tully.” Pyanfar reached out and nudged Tully with her foot, her rifle in both hands. “Tully. Up. We get you out of here. You walk, Tully.”

He gathered himself up, holding to Sikkukkut’s vacated chair, and stood wobbling on his feet. No one said anything. Likely Rhif Ehrran was choking on what she wanted to say about the situation, but it was not the time or place for it. Pyanfar stood up and let her rifle hang at carry, laid her hand on Tully’s bare, claw-streaked shoulder. It was icy cold. There was a deep and healing wound on his arm. Come on,” she said. “With us.”

He walked. Geran took his arm with her left hand, her right on the butt of her pistol. Jik was up-he had the stick still in his mouth, and drew yet another puff on the foul thing. Rhif Ehrran was on her feet and drew her own crew into retreat.

It was a long walk through the silent kifish crowd to the door, a slow one, at Tully’s pace. But they made it out into the comparatively bright light of the docks, the atmosphere laden with oils and volatiles that hit like a gust of fresh air after the closeness of the meeting hall.

Khym walked along with them, Haral out in front. Tirun carried her rifle left-handed to keep Tully on his feet, with Jik and Rhif Ehrran bringing up the rear. Pyanfar cast a look back: gods, Jik was puffing on that filthy thing all the way and scattering ashes as he went. But kif kept hands off them. There were stares from the crowd outside, and there was muttering, but nothing worse.

“You get quick you ship,” Jik said, as Pyanfar fell back to walk beside him. “Got lot work, hani, lot work.”

“It’s your intention to go through with this,” Rhif Ehrran said.

“Number one sure. You want wait here, say hello Akkhtimakt? Got also other big trouble. That stsho go out from here. Maybe go Kshshti-maybe instead go Kefk, a, on way to Meetpoint. Maybe talk too much. Stsho lot talk. Not good thing we get compli-cation. Stsho make same, a? Go.”

“There’s a limit to what treaty makes me liable to. We’ll discuss this, na Jik.”

“Fine. Same time you lay course. We do same. I tell you, I bet some kif leave here, go Kshshti. They tell Akkhtimakt what happen here at Mkks, we got small time. Akkhtimakt got fast ship. Same got trouble with kif maybe go Harak. Same trouble stsho go Kefk-lot smart, stsho: maybe got rumor already Akkhtimakt come Kshshti, so run damn quick go Kefk, go Meetpoint’-maybe Tt’v’va’o, maybe Llyene- Bet Sikkukkut lot unhappy not stop that ship.”

“You’ve stopped coinciding with han interests.”

“A. Then maybe wish you goodbye, lot luck. Akkhtimakt eat you heart.”

“You foul this up-“

“-he eat mine. Number one sure, hani. Akkhtimakt want me, long time.” He put his hand amid Rhif Ehrran’s back and hastened them along. “Best we move, a?”

“Kefk, for the gods’ sake,” Pyanfar muttered.

“Easy stuff.”

“Then why for the gods’ sake hasn’t Sikkukkut done It?”

“Sfik.” Jik took the stick from his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke. “Need sfik, make convince other kif, a? Now he got us. We all got lot sfik, le-gi-ti-macy, a?”

“Lunacy,” she muttered.

“You run, good friend?”

“Gods rot it, you’d find some reason why not.”

Jik grinned and put the stick back in his mouth. “You owe me. When Chanur ever default on debt, a?”

“Gods rot your hide.”

She strode along by him, cast occasional looks back, as Ehrran’s crew did. Gods, get us off this dock. More and more kif appeared along the way, all chittering and chattering among themselves. Our allies. Gods!

And Tully limped along at his own pace, doing the best he could.

There was the safe area ahead, that portion of the dock under surveillance from their own guns. They reached it, and Pyanfar looked back. The kif had not followed them across that imaginary line . . . thank the gods.

“We’re safe,” an Ehrran crewwoman said. Ehrran crew stood out from cover on the docks; a few of Jik’s were visible.

“We’re all right,” Haral said by pocket com, now that they came in range of The Pride’s dockside pickup. “Haral speaking. We got him. He’s all right.”

Some answer came back. Pyanfar did not hear. She saw Rhif Ehrran sweep a signal to her own crew as they passed the dockage of Ehrran’s Vigilance,-not a signal to turn in there, but to come with her. Rhif Ehrran lengthened stride; and stopped Tirun and Tully and Geran at the foot of The Pride’s docking area, with a grip on Tully’s arm. “The human’s safer in our keeping,” Rhif said. “We’ll take him.”

“No,” Pyanfar said, overtaking. “Gods rot it, Ehrran, we’ll discuss it somewhere else. Get out of the way. We got kif back there-let go of him. He’s had enough! Gods fry you, that’s crew you’ve got your hands on.” She launched a blow of her own and it brought up short on Jik’s out-thrust arm.

“I take,” Jik said. “/ take, hear.”

“By the gods you don’t. No! He’s listed crew of mine. Gods rot you, let him go-“-as Haral decked an Ehrran crewwoman and mayhem broke loose, one brawling knot with Tully in the midst. Pyanfar elbowed Jik and shoved her way in as Khym did.

“Out!” Khym yelled, a male hani voice, that shocked echoes off the overhead; he dived amid the mess and snatched Tully to himself. He grinned at Ehrran, ears flat, with Tully crushed against his chest.

It stopped, it all stopped.

“I’m crazy,” Khym said. “Remember?”

And it was in Pyanfar’s own head that he truly might go berserk. She opened her mouth, shut it. Tully was not struggling. He held on, fists clenched in the fur of Khym’s shoulders. And Ehrran waited for the bloody bits and pieces to start flying. Male and male. Tully hanging in Khym’s grip like an unstrung toy.

“He’s Chanur crew, isn’t he?” Khym rumbled. “Like me.” He swung Tully up into both arms, the rifle swinging loose from his elbow-good gods, the safety off on a gun fit to hole armor plate. Tully’s head lolled back, his limbs suddenly gone loose. “We going inside, captain?”

“Move it,” Pyanfar said. Her heart started beating again.

“Hnhunnh. Excuse me.” Khym walked deliberately through Ehrran’s ranks, swinging to clear Tully’s legs.

“Chanur,” Rhif Ehrran said.

“I know. You’ll file a protest. Get your crew out of my crew’s way, or they’ll be picking fur out of the filters all over Mkks.”

“Damn fool,” Jik muttered. He pinched out his stick and dropped it into a pouch. “Move! You think we got no witness?” He jerked a hand toward the watching kif, far off down the dock. “What want? Entertain them?”

Rhif Ehrran made an abrupt gesture upward. Rifles clattered out of the way. Her eyes were amber rings around black. Her rumpled mane stood out in curling wisps as if charged with static. “We’ll settle it later, Chanur.”

“Fine.” Pyanfar led her own crew through, lingered at the rail of the upward ramp and turned her head to see nothing happened behind her. The Ehrran crewwomen stood stock still. Ker Rhif herself stared with ears flat, promise in that look. Geran came last, not without a backward glance on her own. “Get in,” Pyanfar said in Geran’s slight hesitation: Need help? that delay implied. Geran went; she followed, and as they came into the accessway she remembered the Ehrran guards in lowerdeck. “Gods,” she muttered, and started running, sweeping the crew with her.

Khym had gotten to the airlock with Tully in his arms. The hatch stood open; and two Ehrran guards stood there with rifles uncertainly in their hands and panic in their eyes.

“That’s all right,” Pyanfar said equably, taking her breath. She pursed her mouth into a cheerful smile for the guards, all innocent of the fracas outside. “Hold your post. Come on, Khym. Need help with him?”

“He doesn’t weigh much.” Khym shifted his arm to roll Tully’s head up against his chest as they went on through the lock and into the inner corridor. Tully moved, a limp wave of his hand. “Py-an-far.”

“We’ve got you,” Haral said, gently disengaging Khym’s rifle from his arm, taking the weapon to herself before it blew a hole in the overhead. “No more worry, Tully, we got you.”

The lift worked as they walked on into main corridor. Hilfy came out and headed for them at a run

“ He’ s all right,” Geran said.

Hilfy slid to a worried halt in the face of Khym and an evident Situation; but Tully reached out his hand and she took his arm, Khym or no. “Hil-fy-“ Tully tried to grasp her arm, awkwardly, with Khym’s holding him and walking again. “Hilfy-“ -over and over again.

“Huh,” Pyanfar said. It was good to see Hilfy’s ears up, her eyes bright like that. As if something was repaired. “Gods, get him to bed. We got other problems.”

She leaned back against the corridor wall when Khym had taken the whole Tully-business away. Across from her Tirun sagged, standing on one foot. The wound Tirun had gotten at Meetpoint two years ago, the wound they had never had time on that voyage properly to treat-gods, they ran scared again. She thought of Chur, patched together at Kshshti. Like The Pride itself.

“Kefk,” Haral said, going to lean against the wall beside her sister. “That’s going to be one bitch, captain.”

She listened. Geran overtook them and joined the lineup, the several of them. She felt numb. Her gut hurt from long walking, and from the earnest desire to break Rhif Ehrran’s neck. “Gods rotted right one bitch.” She shoved off from the wall and walked along the corridor toward the lift, alone.

Gods, the worry and the trust in Haral’s eyes. Oldest of her friends and truest, Tirun next by a year; Geran and Chur after that by two. Five hani, with a few gray hairs round the nose mid aches when they ran; a young fool kid. A stray human and a hani male past his prime- There had been a time, when she had gotten into this, that she had had ambitions-trading deals with mahendo’sat and humans, to repair Chanur’s financial damages; get the ship up to standard-well, that much she had done. And The Pride had altered outlines, wider vanes, alien systems that would put a kink in Chanur’s enemies for sure-if it came to a conflict in space.

But there were other kinds of enemies-like on the debating floor of the han, when the Rhif Ehrran stood up to declare charges and bring Chanur down.

Khym, gods, Khym-she hugged the moment to herself, his defiance of Rhif Ehrran on the docks. But it cost. It would cost plenty when Ehrran and Vigilance got home. Chanur had staked much on this dealing with outsiders; risked too much. Chanur had become like The Pride itself, half-hani, with alien outlines. Foreign wealth bought those changes. but go home again? See her clan-home again? Deal again as hani and not some mahen agent bought and paid for?

She pushed the lift button. Turned. The crew had stayed where they were down the corridor, not following. Maybe they sensed her mood. She beckoned and Haral saw and brought the others.

Another hani ship had gotten cut off from hani kind two years ago: Tahar’s Moon Rising. Moon Rising served the kif nowadays; and time was when she would have gone for Tahar on dock or in open space and known that she was right.

The lift arrived; her crew did. Another thought occurred to her and sent the wind up her back. “We’ve still got that kif aboard,” she said.

“We can throw it out,” Tirun said. “We’ve got what we want.”

Pyanfar thought about it, her claw hooked into the lift-switch. But small alarms went off in everything she knew about the kif. “Sfik,” she said. She let them into the lift and got in after. “If we turn it out, we lose a sfik-item, don’t we, whatever by the gods that means. Status. Face.”

“What’s that kif want we do with it?” Geran asked in disgust.

“What he did with Tully,” Haral surmised in the general silence as the lift went up. “Maybe worse. What’s a kif care? It’s to salve our pride, that’s what.”

A chill spread through Pyanfar. “Gods.”

“Captain?”

“He talked about a kifish ship not his,” The lift stopped and the door opened. “Rearranging its loyalties. He said.”

“That kif’s one of Akkhtimakt’s?” Haral guessed, right down her own track.

“Bet you.”

“Good gods, what do we do with the son?”

Pyanfar walked out and threw a glance over her shoulder on the way to the bridge, to Chur. “If you figure out what a kif’s mind’s like, let me know. It says it belongs to Chanur. If we let it go we lose sfik. And we got a stationful of kif at our throats if we do”

“We could space it,” Tirun muttered longingly.

“We could give it to Ehrran,” Geran said.

Pyanfar looked back, short of the bridge door. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard yet.”

“We do it?”

She bit at her mustaches, gnawed and gnawed. “Huh,” she said, storing that thought up. “Huh.” And walked into the bridge.

“Kefk?” Chur asked, turning her chair about.

“I got him for you,” Khym said, huge, disheveled, hands hooked into the waistband of a tatty and snagged pair of brown breeches. His much scarred ears were slanted halfback, his scarred nose ducked in embarrassment. Hilfy came and fussed his mane into order, and the ears came up, there, in that room with another male, with Tully lying still on the bed and witnessing all of this.

“You were marvelous,” Hilfy said.

“Huh,” Khym muttered. “Huh. He smells awful. So do I.” And with one shrug of his great shoulders he meandered out into the corridor.

Hilfy shivered then. And she thought of killing kif, which had become a constant, burning thought with her.

“Hilfy.” Tully made an attempt to get up from where Khym had disposed him, on his own bed in his own quarters, on a coverlet soiled with blood from his poor back. She looked his way and he made a face and tried to stand. He sat down again, hard, and caught himself on one elbow.

“Gods.” She snatched at the pocket com she had and punched the translator channel through. “Tully. Lie still.” She came and put the com into his hands, so that he could speak and understand, with that unit to relay to the computer on the bridge.

But he let it fall and grabbed her about the shoulders and held on, just held, the way he had done when he had been hurt; or she had; or the kif threatened to separate them. “It’s all right,” Hilfy said. She held to him, which she had done in their dark cell when he could understand little more than that. “It’s all right. We got you. No more kif.”

He lifted his face finally and looked at her, alien and awful-smelling and his mane and beard, his handsomest feature—all wispy gold when it was clean; but it was all tangled. His strange eyes were reddened and spilled water down his face-kif-stink hurt her eyes too, and his rags of clothes were full of that and kifish incense. “Pyanfar,” he said, “Pyanfar-friend these kif?”

“Gods, no.”

Tully shivered, a shudder apt to tear his joints apart. She held him tight, talisman of her own safety. She was aware of his maleness as she had been aware of it in their prison on Harukk, in a vague, disturbing way; but Anuurn and home and men were very far away-excepting Khym, who was enough to remind her of such things though he was Pyanfar’s, and far too old. As for Tully, whatever humans felt, it was complex and alien and gods knew whether he even thought of her as female.

But someone should defend him. Hilfy had known all her life that men were precious things; and their sanity precarious; and their tempers vast as their vanity. Na Khym was- well, exceptional; and gray-nosed and sedate in age, whatever Pyanfar believed. Young men were another kind. One made a place for them and kept all unpleasantness away; and they wore silks and hunted and made a woman proud. They fought only when their wives and sisters had failed, when disaster came. And they were brave with the bravery of last resort, no craft-no one expected slyness of males. Not when the madness took them. Not when they were young.

Her Tully was clever. And brave. There had been a time kif had laid hands on her and Tully had thrown himself at them, clawless as he was. They had batted him aside, but he had tried to defend her till they knocked him senseless.

And she could not reach him then. That hurt with more than the pain of the bruises it had cost. They had drugged her. And she had been helpless when they took him to question. “Chur’s all right,” she said-remembered to say, for he had not gone up topside yet to learn it. “Tully, she got out.”

He looked at her and blinked. “Chur safe.”

“Everyone.”

He made a sound, wiped his face and ran his blunt fingers through the tangles of his mane. “# # #,” he said, something the translator mangled. He edged one foot and the other over the side. “I # crew. I crew, Hilfy, go work-Want work- understand.”

He got himself on his feet. He wobbled in the process, caught his balance on her offered hand, then: “Bath,” he said. And headed that direction.

She understood that.

“I’ll wait for you,” she said.

So they were all a little crazed. She felt like collapse herself and felt the dizziness a lump on her skull had left. But The Pride was close to moving. They would be pulling out and getting out of this; and she had undergone one long nightmare of jump in kifish hands- shut below, trapped belowdecks, with no sense of where they went or where they were or when they would die.

They were at Mkks, Chur had told her. And a host of other things-like a deal struck at Kshshti station, that had sent Banny Ayhar hellbent for Maing Tol with messages; and brought Jik and Vigilance with them-improbable alliance, but a useful one.

Jik’s got some piece of Ehrran’s hide, Chur had said, in the long waiting for results. He flashed some paper at her at Kshshti and she caved right fast. He’s no hunter-captain, that Jik, no way that’s all he is. He’s got connections-got us out of port, used that fancy computer on Aja Jin and laid us a course that put us straight into Mkks, all three, neat as you please. We went out on our mark and by the gods we were on when we came in. Got that new engine pack back there-

Chur had showed her that, working the cameras aft; and the sight of their tail assembly on the vid had sent a shiver up Hilfy’s back.

The Pride had changed. Had become something else since they pulled into Kshshti.

Like her. And she would have wished to see the old outlines back there and to have felt she had come home to something known and never changed.

Pyanfar friend these kif?

Hilfy conjured scenes-things Tully had seen and she had not when Pyanfar had stayed alone in that room of kif; and again when Pyanfar had gone in after Tully with Jik and Ehrran and all the crew but herself and Chur. So, gods, why would he even ask?

True, they had a kif aboard. Tully did not know that. The presence set twitches in Hilfy’s lip, and a shudder in her bones. The thing was down the corridor. Just a few doors down and around the bend.

She sat on Tully’s bed and hugged her arms about herself, wishing as she had not wished since she begged to go to space and got a doting father’s leave-She wanted her home again, and safety, and not to see what she wanted now to do. Better hunting in the hills, that kind of killing. A clean kind. Find a mate. She was due that in her life. Have the grass under her feet again and the sun on her back where no hani she might meet would understand what kif were or the things that she had seen.

Tully staggered out again, naked. There were wounds on him that seeped blood; bruises, bruises and burns and every sort of abuse. She carried like scars. He hunted a drawer for another pair of Haral’s cast-off breeches and came up with what must be the last.

“Need help?” she asked.

He shook his head, a human no. He sat down and tried with several attempts to get his leg in. He rested a bit, waved her off, hanging on the chair edge; and finally succeeded one leg at least.

The door opened, unannounced. Chur stood there, all bandaged as she was. Her eyes widened; her voyages-ringed flicked back.

“Chur,” Tully said, and got the other leg; and contrived to stand up and pull the breeches on and pull the drawstring in with now and then a grasp at the chair back.

“Gods-rotted little we haven’t seen of each other,” Hilfy muttered with a little shrug at Tully and a heat about her ears “Him or me. It’s all right, Chur.”

“You all right,” Tully said. He left the chair and reached out both hands for Chur. Chur winced instinctively;  but did not grab, only took her hands and clasped them in his own. “Chur, good to see you. Good to see you-“

“Same,” Chur said. Her mouth pursed in a gaunt smile and Hilfy got to her feet. “We’re some sight, aren’t we?”

“We fine,” Tully said, with simplicity that ached He grinned, tried to stop himself, got his face into a hani pleasantness. “Chur, I think you got dead.”

“Got dead, no-“ Chur cuffed his cheek ever so gently “Gods, they chewed you up and spat you out, didn’t they?”

Hilfy flinched, leaning on the chair, “Let him sit down for the gods’ sakes. You too. What are you doing here?”

“Got a small break. They’ve got data coming in up there’ Tirun’s on it-thought I’d take the chance to come down and see you while I had it.”

“We’re going out, are we?”

Chur’s ears went down.

“Aren’t we?”

“Got some little deal going,” Chur said.

“Who? deal?”

“Jik. We got this-well, we got this pay-off we got to make. Jik’s asked us to go to Kefk. He’s talked Ehrran into it.”

“Gods-be.” Hilfy’s claws dug into the upholstery and she retracted them. Fear. Stark fear. She knew it in herself, that flinchings had been set into her, bone and nerve, forever. “What’s at Kefk but kif? We still following this willy-wisp of human trade?”

“Some other kind of deal,” Chur said. Her ears stayed at halfmast. The white showed at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know clearly what. Captain’s back and forth with Jik.”

“Go Kefk?” Tully asked. He wobbled over against the wall and stood there holding himself on his feet. “Kif? Go kif?”

“What deal?”

“Jik’s deal,” Chur said. “Hilfy-we bribed you out.  don’t know what’s up, but it’s certain we’ve got trouble on our tail and we’re clearing out of here to lead Akkhtimakt off Mkks in the likely case he comes this way. We got two kif headed for a showdown at Kefk and Jik’s taking sides. Mahen politics. And we’re in it.”

“Gods, no!” The room went black-tunneled. She thrust the chair skidding on its track and headed doorward, dodged Chur’s hand.

“Hilfy-“ Chur’s voice pursued her.  “Hilfy!”-Tully’s, that cracked and broke.

“In a mahen hell,” Hilfy said to everything in reach, and headed for the lift.

V

“We got Ehrran agree,” Jik’s terse message had said, scantly after Jik could have gotten back to his ship and put the call through. (“Good gods,” Haral muttered then. “What kind of blackmail’s he using?”) (“Must be good-“-from Tirun.) And straightway from Jik: “ We got hakkikt send comp feed, lot interesting stuff. We run through library. You take, we make check.”

And arriving with that feed from Sikkukkut’s Harukk: “I Sikkukkut send a gift. Kefk is not Mkks. You will discover this. We leave port in twelve hours or less.”

“Aja Jin,” Pyanfar protested at once, “that’s a short turnaround. I know we’re pushing, but gods rot it, we haven’t got relief.”

“Sorry,” Jik said. “Got do. Try, friend. We got problem.”

“What problem?”

“Like vector on that stsho.”

“Went to Kefk, huh?”

“Damn right.”

Gods be.” She raked a hand through her mane, leaned  both elbows on the console, feeling the tension behind her eyes. -

The com kept up a steady crackle of kifish chatter and mahendo’sat, the station central offices still in kifish control, but with a few mahendo’sat speaking now from dock offices. The boards rippled systems-lights with the feed from Jik’s Aja Jin, which was filtering Harukk data through its own computer and checking it against records before sending it on.

“I’d like to have a look at that comp system over there,” Tirun said. “One gods-rotted complicated son, I’m betting, the way it put us in here.”

“Better do it twice,” Haral said, “that’s all I say. Khym- get that thing, will you? Help him, Geran. He’s got it fouled somehow.”

“It’s gone. I’m sorry. I lost it out of records.”

“What’s one more bill?” Geran said.

Two crew down. Chur was not up to more work and Hilfy was R&R with Tully belowdecks, while the accessible universe wanted through the com system with individual complaints.

“We sue,” was a frequent note.

“You gods-rotted optimist,” Pyanfar yelled at one mahe more persistent than the rest. “Send your lawsuit to Maing Tol and I by the gods hope it gets through!”

Then she wished she had held her peace. Her hands shook and there was a hollow feeling at her gut that going hyper-ac after jump was guaranteed to do to a body. She ate concentrates, drank, and it did no good.

They had to sleep, no matter what; they all had to go off-shift and get some rest, and Jik’s communications streamed in without letup.

“Gods-rotted mahe’s got no nerves,” she muttered. “He had a relief crew while he was inbound. Probably had a five-course dinner. What’s he think we are?”

No one answered that.

And: “Gods,” Geran muttered when the course plan and the Kefk information began to take shape. “That son’s mean.”

“That’s before we even get there,”  Haral said.  “I’m betting there’s more surprises in that system that kif doesn’t want to show us.”

“Not taking that bet,” Geran said.

There was no jump-point on their way to Kefk, no point of mass where three ships up to no good could come in, go dead silent and rest and sleep a while. The route was just two stars in each other’s gravitational influence; The Pride would ride its own jump field and Kefk’s pull directly in with a vengeance. Three stars, counting Mkks and Kefk  and Kefk 2: Kefk was a close binary; and that made for difficult navigation at best.

“Six ships go in with Sikkukkut, Jik, and our friend Rhif,” Tirun said. “We get the tailguard post.”

“Alone with seven kif,” Geran said. “Gods, what a party.”

“Beats going first.”

“How much interval we got?”

“Not by the gods enough.” Haral took furious notes and Pyanfar’s comp slot spat out a paper.

All she could think of was sleep, the chance to lay her aching bones on a mattress and let her mind go ... while they sat on a kifish dockside with a kifish strike force likely inbound at their backs from either of two enemies . . . kifish authorities at Harak or Akkhtimakt’s ships off by Kshshti. They hoped Akkhtimakt was no closer than Kshshti.

Gods only knew. If an attack caught them like this, if Akkhtimakt came to Mkks before they left or got up to speed, they were sitting targets with their nose to station and no way to get up to V in time-the same thing they had done to Ihirukk and all its allies.

It took no mindreading to know the practical reason why Jik wanted out of Mkks in a hurry.

But other things occurred to her: like the chance Jik knew things he was not saying, about operations in progress elsewhere; the absolute surety that Sikkukkut did.

There is fire, hani. From Llyene to Akkt to Mkks. Even Anuurn..

Even Anuurn.

And Vigilance agreed to join in an act of unvarnished piracy.

/ surmised correctly that you would follow me, hunter Pyanfar, as soon as your ship could move.

So why us? Gods and thunders, what have we got either side wants but Tully? And Sikkukkut gave him back. Jik could have laid claim to him. And Jik backed off.

Why did Sikkukkut want ms in this?

Kif in the washroom. Kif all about. Threatened lawsuits pouring in, because a hani merchant was easier to sue than a han deputy or a mahen hunter ship; and, gods knew, the kif.

“We just got a transmission from Vigilance,” Haral said. “Official notice we got a complaint filed.”

“Tell ‘em eat it.”

“Captain.”

“No, don’t tell them that. Acknowledge.” She shifted her attention to another board where a systems check had just blinked clear. “Number two vane is clean.” She verified Tirun’s check, punched the test of number three and got back to the Kefk system data.

The schematic showed armed guard stations. Three of them at Kefk. And the robot navigation beacon in the jumprange gave no inner-lanes data to incoming ships until it got a ship ID; and if it disliked what it got, it would blank out entirely. That meant dumping speed early to avoid collision, and risking collision even at that reduced velocity. And without that incoming V they were sitting targets for anything those guard stations decided to throw at them. Gods, it was lunacy.

“It’s sure something to run with clean equipment,” Tirun said. “I’d gotten used to alarms.”

“Huh.” Pyanfar read an incoming schedule on screen two, blinked it clear, rubbed her right ear. The letters separated in a green haze and came back again. Not a complaint from the crew. A hani male sat over there bone-tired and working keys and grumbling in his throat in a kind of mindless reflex moan that occasionally became a mutter: poor Khym, too well-bred to swear like the rest of them, and doing a crewwoman’s job with a woman’s steady concentration, side by side with Geran. “Give me your information,” his litany ran, impeccably delivered. “I’ll get it to the appropriate officer.”

And: “I’m sorry, that’s not quite possible.”

The lift worked-Pyanfar turned the chair half about to glance down the corridor, nervous reflex with a kif aboard and Ehrran crew on guard in The Pride’s airlock.

Hilfy was coming bridgeward in some haste. Ears back.

Eyes dark, when she had gotten past the door.

“Aunt. What’s this Kefk business?”

Pyanfar swung the chair all the way about in Hilfy’s direction and leaned her head back on the cushions. Nobody came onto The Pride’s bridge and used that tone to her. But Hilfy-Hilfy wanted latitude lately, Pyanfar gave it. “We’re going there, yes. Got a bit of business to take care of.”

“Kif business?”

Her own ears went down. She saw the fracture-lines in Hilfy, the unreason. And said nothing for a breath.

“Well, is it?”

“Jik’s business. Look, we got a bill to pay, niece. A godsrotted big bill.”

“To whom?”

“Jik, for one.” In spite of herself her heart raced, her ears lay back, her claws jerked half out of sheaths and gouged the upholstery. “Jik. You think I got the influence to pull a mahen hunter-ship and a han deputy in here to help us bail you out without some tradeoff? You’re expensive, niece.”

That slapped young Hilfy in the face. The whites showed  her eyes’ corners. Her nostrils dilated. “What do we do, then?”

“What we do-“ Pyanfar’s voice cracked, utter weariness. She waved a hand. Hilfy wavered there on her feet in no better condition. It was madness. All of them were that tired. “What we do, niece, is what we’re set to do, whatever we’re set to do. Yes, we go into Kefk. I don’t see we have much  choice. Debts are being called in. We don’t doublecross Jik. Even Ehrran’s going on this one. Don’t ask me why. To spy, that’s gods-rotted sure. For us, it’s what I said. Debts. We got you out. Best I could do.”

“We’ve got a kif on this ship.”

“Not my choice.”

“What is, lately?”

She did not believe for a moment she had heard that; and then her muscles moved, one convulsion that took her from the chair. And Hilfy backed up, stood there with her ears flattened and dismay on her face, as if she did not believe she had said it either.

Khym climbed from his chair; his ears were back; and that was trouble on two feet.

“How much territory do I give you?” Pyanfar asked. “What are you due, huh?” Down the corridor the lift doors had opened again. Chur and-gods-Tully both were on their way to the bridge, faster than either of them ought; while all about the bridge there was a dire silence, whisper of leather as crew turned in their chairs. “You got some particular recommendation, niece?”

“No.” The word got out, finally. Chur and Tully arrived on the bridge, all but carrying each other at the last.

“Maybe you better go back on break,” Pyanfar said. “We’ve got work to do.”

“Gods rot it, aunt-“

“/ got you out! Gods and thunders, Hilfy Chanur, you want to argue method with me?”

Tully pushed off from the counter edge-feckless, fever-crazy, wandering between two mad hani. But he stopped there wobbling back and forth with panic in his eyes.

So she understood then; and had a look at the way things had been among the kif. So all the crew did. Further things she did not want to surmise. Hilfy took Tully by the shoulders and carefully set him to the vacant side, where Khym was not, back in Chur’s keeping.

There was deathly silence after that, with only the beep and flash of unliving things.

“Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, and sank into her chair. “Hilfy-“ -hearing those beeps and the chatter of incoming printout. “We’re all tired. We’re not up to this. Other ships have got other shifts, crew to spare-Geran, put a call over to Jik. Tell him fry his gods-rotted schedule; we’re going offline. Hilfy: when we picked up Jik, he’d had a skirmish with the kif somewhere. He’d twisted Akkhtimakt’s tail, right well. We don’t know where Akkhtimakt is right now, but he wants our hides, no question of it. Sikkukkut swears it was Akkhtimakt’s agents blew Kshshti docks to blazes and made a grab for you and Tully-“

“Does it matter which gods-rotted kif-“

“Shut up and listen. Sikkukkut grabbed you instead, for his own reasons. And it doesn’t call for gratitude. Just common sense. Akkhtimakt’s agents ran from Kshshti. They’ll have gotten back to him; and that means we’ve got precious little time. Chances are there’s one of Akkhtimakt’s spotters hovering about Kshshti system. It’s hard to find those kind of things till they transmit. And if that’s the case he’ll find out where we went the minute he skims through Kshshti system, he’ll get the whole story of what happened there before he dumps speed, and gods help them if he stays to settle things with them. We don’t think he will. We think he’ll come for us non-stop. But we can’t bet on that. We also have a report that earless stsho that just ran out of here took the Kefk route home, to spill everything gtst knows in the process, don’t doubt it. We’ve got problems here, niece.”

“We’re within a one-jump of Maing Tol or Idunspol, for the gods’ own sakes! What happened to getting Tully there? Where did that priority go?”

“With Banny Ayhar, from Kshshti. Prosperity couriered Tully’s packet on, with a human-language translation tape, updated. If Banny didn’t run into something, that packet’s already at Maing Tol. Or will be.” Her mind had trouble with trans-light figures, tired as she was. “We’re faster than we were. And think of this-if you’re so concerned for Tully’s welfare. If we do take him to the mahendo’sat at Maing Tol, they’ll grab him sure. Why’d you think I wouldn’t give him to Jik out there? They’d lock him up and go at him till he’s spilled everything. You want that for him, huh? Maybe he still knows something. Maybe I’m crazy not to get him off my hands; but I’m not doing that to him. It’d kill him, after this. Hear? They’d never let him loose.”

“You were ready enough to turn him over at Kshshti!” Hilfy yelled, and over at her side there was a constant drone from the translating corn-unit at Tully’s side. His eyes were dark and wide.

“That was before,” Pyanfar said, “gods rot it, before the thing blew up, before we-“

“-ended up in debt. Admit it. He’s for sale. He’s expendable if it gets us out of hock. That’s what you’re holding out for! A better gods-be deal!”

“Mind your mouth, whelp!”

“Well, isn’t it the truth?”

“Gods and thunders, no, it’s not. Not-“-since that hall, she thought. Not since she went into a kifish stronghold after him. And had a look at how it was. “Not any more, it isn’t.”

“So we ally with them? Risk all our lives when we’re within a one-jump of mahen space?”

“We got a debt. Like you said. And it’s mahen space. Under mahen law. Mahen politics. You want to walk into it, throw ourselves on their charity? You want to gamble everything you got on someone else’s priorities?”

“I thought we were falling-down grateful to our allies here. I thought it was debt. Them to us. Now it’s something else.”

“Maybe if I gods-be knew what it was, niece, I wouldn’t be going along with this. Mahendo’sat go on status. You want Jik killed, do you? Want him to go-and what happens to his Personage then, and what happens to his friends, like Goldtooth and like us? We got interests in this. And they don’t call for blind trust.”

“We’re not a warship, aunt!”

“No,” she said. Her gut hurt. Missed meal? Missed sleep? Raw fear? “We’re a trading ship without a cargo, in debt up to our noses, and the han deputy’s got enough in her files to ruin us, the stsho at Meetpoint are bound to send their own complaint back to the han-I don’t trust that bastard Stle stles stlen further than I can see him; and we got a kif loose who’s got us down as number one target in the whole gods-forsaken universe. Akkhtimakt wants to be head kif over all the kif, and if he makes it you can make your own guess what our personal chances are. So you want to know why I take alliance with the mahendo’sat?”

“You don’t think they’ll let us have fair chance at any human trade. They’ll double-deal us, they will, all our precious allies, first chance.”

“I expect they’ll try. They’re good at that. But right now they’re all the credit we’ve got. You want to go to Maing Tol, try to limp the long way back to Meetpoint to bail out our cargo-what with, niece? Go back to Anuurn and try to argue away all the charges in the han? When this gets back, your father’s going to have challenges; every whelp with ambitions is going to try him, Ehrran’s going to make double-sure of that-and Kohan’s getting old, imp. He can’t take everyone. That’s the way it is.”

“So we risk The Pride?”

“That’s the way I choose.”

No one moved. Hilfy stood there trying to catch her breath. There was a persistent beep from com.

“What we do,” Pyanfar said, “we take the rest we’re due. We back up this lunatic mission of Jik’s and we guard the deputy’s blackbreeched backside. And we hope to all the gods Goldtooth’s in reach. The best we can do is keep the mahendo’sat well-disposed. Sikkukkut’s only normal crazy. You got out alive. What I hear about Akkhtimakt I don’t half like. That kif’s got a real grudge against us. Sikkukkut’s only half mean- that’s the truth, niece. Listen to me. You want Akkhtimakt to be the great hakkikt, the one that unites the worlds, the leader the kif have been waiting for since they discovered piracy? Or you want Sikkukkut, who at least has limits? Maybe we have got a personal stake in this kif fight, huh?”

“So we let Sikkukkut into bed?”

The coarseness set her ears back. “We don’t let the bastard anywhere. Yes, we made a deal. It benefits both sides.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ve had that bastard’s hands on me, I’ve had drugs and shocks and every lousy trick that kif could think of-gods know what all they did to Tully: he couldn’t even tell me-You want me to approve this deal?”

“No. I don’t. I didn’t ask.” She rested her head back. “I  just tried to let you know what happened. You want to ride this one out in quarters, go on. You’re due the rest. I don’t recommend you get off here at Mkks. It’s going to be real hot here in a little while. Real hot, about the time the word gets Id Maing Tol and to Akkt. We’re talking about the mahendo’sat losing a star station, hear? Or the kif taking one. And no one’s just real happy. You’re not alone in troubles. Gods know what the mahendo’sat will do or how good Jik’s credit still is back home. We’ve lost any backing we might have had from the han. All we’ve got is Jik. And Goldtooth. And if they go, we’ve got nothing. Nothing. Chances are they’ll double-deal us just the way you say. But if they go-chances are the Personage they work for goes down; and there’ll be a new Personage. New deal. New policies. I’m not sure we’d like that. I’m not sure even Ehrran would.”

Hilfy’s shoulders fell. She had a look of pain. The beep from com went on. It was her station. She waved a hand in defeat and went over and picked up the earplug, pushed the button. “Pride of Chanur,” she said to someone. “Com officer speaking.”

Hilfy sat down. Back turned. Got to work.

“Tully,” Pyanfar said. She held out her hand and he came over to her chair. He gave her that blue-eyed, thinking stare. But he took her hand gently as he had learned; and she curled her claws round his hand, not enough to prick his soft skin. “Go below. Go rest. It’s all right. It’s all right, Tully. It’s just a discussion. It’s just talk. Go on below and rest.”

“I’m crew. Scan tech. I work,”

“You’re mincemeat; and you can’t read our boards, let alone work our controls without a probe. You want to work? Go get some sleep. You work later. Go.” She freed her hand and gave him a swat on the rump to send him off, but Tully failed to move. Khym was standing there watching all of this. It set her teeth on edge. Her husband. This male. And an adolescent with a gut-deep hurt and gods knew what notions acquired in a kifish cell. “We all go off duty and get some rest. Sleep. Food. AH right?” A second swat, clawtips out. He did move, startled-like, and looked back at her in shock. “Get,” she said in a no-nonsense way, ears back; and he backed up.

“Aunt,” Hilfy said. Business voice, sane and sensible. “It’s Aja Jin. Captain’s compliments and he’s got a problem. He says he’s got to talk to you direct. He won’t take no. You want to talk to him?”

“I’ll take it.” Anything-anything-to maintain Hilfy’s quiet. “I can guess.” She swung her chair about. “Tully; Khym; Chur, Geran; get out of here, get fed, get to bed. Now. Move it. Hilfy. You too.-One other thing, Hilfy.”

“Aye?” Defensively..

“Kif says Tahar’s friendly with Akkhtimakt.”

“Moon Rising?” Hilfy’s eyes widened.

“Since Gaohn. Makes sense, doesn’t it? She played close with Akkukkak; after Gaohn, where else could she go? Vigilance is real interested. Thought you’d like to know.”

“Gods rot. Aunt-“

“Mind that language. You’re back in civilization, niece.” She punched the contact in as Haral switched it, a solid stream of mahen exigency in her ear. “Gods-be, Jik-“

“-time. You got take comp feed. What you want, wait Akkhtimakt, wait Harak kif?”

“What you want, my crew loses it in jump?”

“Got no damn time this rest. I got same station authority my neck, got same want board ship. I got explain kif you want sleep, a?”

She raked her mane back and flicked her ears. Rings chimed, light and constant. “Then I’ll explain to the hakkikt, friend. You want that?”

A moment of silence from the other end. “/ talk hakkikt. Damn.”

“Thanks.”

“Before sign off, maybe get comp feed through. Deal, a?”

“No! My crew’s gone the limit, understand? No more!”

“We got stsho run go Kefk.”

“We can’t do it, Jik.”

“I send crew.”

“Not on my deck, you don’t. No way.”

“You want I come over there explain? We got stationer trouble, got urgent request we clear dock, got big fear, Pyanfar. Got kif trouble. What I say to kif? Sorry, hani got take nap?”

“Explain all you like. I got fall on my face, bastard. I’m out, through; whole crew’s going offshift.”

“Got finish comp feed.”

“Twelve hours. Then we do it.”

“Nine.”

“Eleven.”

“Damn, hani, this not merchant deal. Nine. Nine all we possible got. We cover you tail that long. Listen.”

“Nine,” she muttered. “Nine.” She punched the contact out, turned the chair and got up.

Hilfy and Chur had gone. Khym and Geran. But Tully lingered, alone against the bulkhead door frame, hands behind him.

Looking at her.

“Scared you, huh?”

“Pyanfar.”

“I’m not mad at you. I give you an order, na Tully, you move, hear? Did I say get?”

“Pyanfar.” He stood his ground. His mouth was set, his eyes showed panic. But he stood away from his wall and came as far as the observer seat-came further suddenly and flung his arms about her. She hated that. But it spoke more than Tully could. She patted his head, pushed him back and looked at him.

Trust. Gods knew he had no reason.

“You’re a gods-be fool, Tully.”

“Hilfy say you come.”

“Hilfy’s another.” But it touched her all the same. And what had he thought when she left him with Sikkukkut? What had he believed then-not being hani, not being kin or anything but trouble to them? “You go rest, huh? We take care of you.”

“I don’t go kif.”

“No. You don’t go to the kif. Not to anybody. We keep you with us.” She thought things over and poked him with a foreclaw to get his attention. “We got a kif aboard. Hilfy tell you that?”

“Kif-on The Pride?”

“Prisoner. Name’s Skkukuk. Know him?”

A shake of his head. “No. # # prisoner?”

“Missed some of that. Sikkukkut gave him to us. That’s where we got him. You don’t be afraid, huh?”

A second shake of his head. “Hilfy-Hilfy-want # say- she # kif.”

“Missed that too. She’s not happy. I know that. But we take care of her.”

“She’s good. Good.”

“I know that too.” She cuffed him gently on the arm. “They get some food for you?”

“Not want.”

“Not want. Come on.” She took Tully by the arm and led him across the bridge. Stopped and looked at Haral and Tirun, whose eyes wept dark streams from exhaustion. Her own watered. She wiped at them. “Get-off duty.”

“You,” Haral said.

“Me,” she said. “I am.” She held Tully by the wrist and headed up the gentle curve to the galley. Behind them, chairs hummed and there were sounds of switches thrown.

There was activity in the galley: Geran and Khym had gone that way, and gods, she ought to have flinched at dragging Tully in there with Khym, but she was beyond it all. “Sit down,” she said to Tully, and he did that, in the nearest spot, took the cup Geran put into his hands-Geran’s own. He drank. “Going to have to take some food down to Hilfy,” she said. “And Chur.”

“I will,” Geran said, and dumped more into the brewer as Haral and Tirun showed up and went over to haunt the counter and rummage the supplies.

“Here. You need it.” Khym shoved a cup into Pyanfar’s hands. “Sit down yourself.”

“Huh.” She subsided onto the bench and drank the steaming cup from both hands, set it down and wiped her mane back from her face.

Com beeped. .     

“Gods rot,” Haral said, and took it from pocket com. “Pride of Chanur: you got our recording; we’re on shutdown. Is this an emergency?”

“/ have a personal message from the hakkikt. / am waiting at your dockside.”

“Gods and thunders,” Pyanfar moaned. “Kif.”

“Don’t go,” Khym said. “Send it away.”

“You can end up regretting a thing like that.” She swallowed a massive gulp of gfi. “Tell it come up. Tell Ehrran’s guards let it pass. I’ll deal with it below.”

“Kif,” Tully said softly. His alien eyes shifted this way and that in evident alarm. “Kif come-“

Pyanfar signed for quiet. Haral relayed the message.

“It’s coming up,” Haral said. And with a lifting of her jaw. “You know those gods-be Ehrran are going to report this business.

“I know.” Pyanfar stood up. “You coming?”

“I’ll come,” Khym said.

“No sense all of us going. Just monitor from up .here. Wouldn’t want to give the impression we were worried, would we?”

“Maybe Sikkukkut’s sent to get that kif back,” Haral said, when they were riding the lift to lowerdeck.

“It would solve a problem. I’d give it with ribbons on. But I don’t have any hope.”

The door whisked open. They walked out.

The kif was already in the corridor, a dark shadow against the lights, arms tucked out of sight in its capacious sleeves.

So was Pyanfar’s hand in her pocket, finger curled about the trigger of her pistol. Haral’s too, she reckoned.

The kif bowed as they approached. She neglected the courtesy.

“Well?”

Dark, thin hands came empty from the sleeves. It was a tall one, impressively tall. A silver medal glinted on its chest, multifaceted.

“You come from the hakkikt?”

“Hunter Pyanfar, you will never learn to tell us one from the other.”

She looked more sharply. “Sikkukkut?”

The hakkikt spread his hands, palm outward. “Messengers are not to be trusted in this, hunter Pyanfar. And doubtless they would miss nuances. There will be a computer feed; are you getting it?”

“Relayed from Aja Jin. Yes.”

Sikkukkut lifted his head to stare down a long, soft-skinned snout. Veins stood out about it. The eyes were bright. “You have confidence in your allies.”

“Let’s say our interests coincide.”

“You have too much sfik to coincide with their interests.”

“Is this a deal of some kind?”

“I have offered gold.”

“Doesn’t interest me.”

“And you a merchant.”

“Not in every kind of goods.”

“Your human would not speak for me. Not a word.”

“Huh.” She drew a deep breath, ignoring the ammonia smell.

“I didn’t try too hard. But doubtless his comrades on Ijir talked to Akkhtimakt when he took that ship. And what would they tell? That humans are determined on trade links . . . which will destroy the Compact? Annoy the methane breathers? Distress the stsho? Do you see the forces ranged against you, ker Pyanfar? Your own han is against you. You ally yourselves with mahendo’sat, and you know their motives.”

“Tell me them.”

“To diminish us. To bring in yet another species at our backs as they brought hani to shield their left Hand. On Ninan Hoi there are listening posts. Mahendo’sat turn their ears to space beyond Ninan Hoi; they send out probes constantly hoping for some other contact they might use. They have their hands in everything. Like my old friend Keia.”

“Friend, huh?”

“Our interests coincide. He wants me to defeat Akkhtimakt, disliking Akkhtimakt’s immediate objectives. I want the same, of course. So should you.”

“Maybe I do.”

Sikkukkut’s snout wrinkled and unwrinkled. “Kkkt. Let us assume we are allies. Remember this at Kefk. Should things no amiss, come to me.”

She stared at him a long, long moment. “That what you’ve come to say?”

“I find you of interest.”

“Gods, thanks.”

More wrinkles. “You are ingenuous. You have enemies at home.”

Her ears sank. “What’s that got to do with here and now?”

“Much to do with the future. Will you sell me this human?”

“No.”

“What will you do with him? Tell  me.   I confess to curiosity.”

“I don’t know I’ll do anything. He’s crew.”

“Hani perplex me. But you’ve promised, haven’t you? You’ll give me Kefk.”

“Jik said as much. Does it take a private deal with me?”

“I offer you pukkukkta on all our enemies.”

“Revenge I don’t need.”

“Do you not? Tc’a sing your name. I have heard it.”

The hair stood up on her back. “Fine. I imagine they gossip a lot of things.”

“Pukkukkta.” The dark lips drew back and exposed keen incisors with their v-form gap; one arm flourished outward, with a flare of dark sleeve. “Hani, there will be a day you want it.”

“What by the gods does that mean?”

But Sikkukkut had turned and walked away, a diminishing blot on the light. He stopped and turned half about, always graceful. “You’ll have to let me out, of course. Friend.”

“Tirun. We got a visitor leaving. Let him out.”

“Aye,” the answer came back. Sikkukkut walked on in serene dignity and Pyanfar tautened the skin at her back to smooth the fur. Muscles resisted and turned the motion into a shiver.

“Gods,” Haral muttered.

“See he gets off,” Pyanfar said; and Haral strode off down the corridor in that direction, where the kif had disappeared around the corner, headed for the lock.

Her hair did not unbristle until Haral reappeared and walked back to join her.

“You record that, Tirun?” she asked of the empty air.

“/ got it,” Khym’s voice came back. “/ wasn’t Mahn’s backroom lawyer for nothing.”

She drew a whole breath and spat out a laugh. It was as if some thunderstorm had blown through The Pride’s corridor and the sun had come out again.

But then Haral froze, looking down the corridor beyond her shoulder.

Pyanfar turned abruptly. Hilfy stood there with a pistol in hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Pyanfar yelled.

“I heard the hatch,” Hilfy said. Too quietly.

“We handled it. Get back to quarters, huh?”

“Aye,” Hilfy said. The safety clicked back on. Hilfy pocketed the gun and disappeared around the corner.

“Why did I yell?” Pyanfar muttered to Haral, to no one in particular. “I didn’t have to yell, gods rot it.”

“She’s all right,” Haral said.

“Sure.”

But she did not get the cold of it out of her gut until she had gotten back to the bridge and into the galley.

“What he want?” Tully asked, worried-looking, half-rising from the table; but Pyanfar pushed him down again, her hand on his shoulder.

“Nothing but nuisance.”

“He give money. Want me.”

“He knows I wouldn’t take it.” She sank down onto the bench and reached for her abandoned cup. So what did he want?

Khym took the cup before her hand got there and slid a hot one into her hand.

“Good,” Khym said.

She looked up at her husband, puzzled.

“Good,” Khym said again, meaning just, she thought, good job. She doubted it. But she sipped the gfi and looked up at him. She saw patience in his amber eyes. Patience he had won the hard way.

“Your cabin’s taken,” she said pointedly.

“Huh.” He looked embarrassed at the invitation when he had realized it. Geran was there. Another male was.

Then he looked pleased in spite of himself. His ears flicked. Cods. Tc’a. Methane-breathers. She remembered the knnn that had paced them out of Meetpoint and the hair wanted to stand up on her back again.

Something he said was important. Something was worth the trip here. Him. Would-be lord of all the kif. Visiting me.

Let us assume we are allies. Remember this at Kefk.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Revenge on all our enemies. Hani, there will be a day you want it.

“Not yet,” she said. She caught the plastic-wrapped confection Geran spun her way on the tabletop. Haral and Tirun blundered back in, hunting gfi and food. She tore the plastic and swallowed the mince in hunks, guaranteed to make for hiccups. She chased it with gfi. “Gods, tofi.” The spice made her sneeze.

“Slow down, for the gods’ sake.”

“What, slow down? We’ve got eight and a half hours to sleep.” She stood up and grabbed Khym’s arm. “Come on, husband. Suddenly I’m in the mood.”

“Gods, Py “

“Who notices? Finish the gfi Come on.”

VI

Eight and a half hours was not enough. The alarm went off like attack and mayhem and universal doom. Pyanfar climbed over Khym to kill it, but there was nothing for it then but to remember where she was and what there was waiting, and to pull herself and her half-conscious husband out of bed and face it.

She faced it in a plain twill pair of blue trousers, common-spacer-like, because they were headed out, and otherside of that jump was likely no time for washup or amenities. She saved her brightest silk pair for after-cleanup on the docks at Kefk.

Healthiest to think in those terms, that there would be the need of red silk trousers and all the finery.

But she did put on the ruby pendant earring, among the others, that winked and shone ferociously in the red-gold sweep of her tufted, many-ringed ear. It advised all who wanted to argue with a rather plainly dressed hani that she held a captaincy. On such a day she needed all the convincing it could lend.

“Feed the gods-rotted kif,” she ordered Tirun when she found her on the bridge.

“Feed it what?” Tirun asked, and forthwith turned her stomach.

“I don’t know: thaw something. Throw a steak through the door. Don’t get near it. And don’t carry weapons.”

“Gods, it’s just one kif. I can-“

“Don’t go near it. How much more trouble do we need on this ship?”

“Aye,” Tirun said, and swallowed all further argument.

They were all up, all functioning: Chur came out from Khym’s former cabin to sit check-out on the bridge; Haral and Hilfy and Geran arrived from below; and Tully came up too, stiff and sore and pottering about the galley with Khym (gods!) and Hilfy, getting breakfast. On the bridge the com-flow started and The Pride began to drink down the information Aja Jin and Vigilance had been awake through the down-watches composing. Haral and Geran and Chur were in Charge there, while Tirun went off to kif-feeding.

“We got a request,” Chur reported, “from Aja Jin. They want conference when you can.”

“Fine,” Pyanfar said, martyred. “Fine. I’ll get to it.”

“Checks are running fine. We just take Aja Jin’s course the way it stands?”

“We take whatever they give us. I’m not quarreling with their comp.” She leaned over Chur’s seat and took a look at station output. It was mahen language again. Mkks began to have the feel of normalcy in its operations.

Any kif on Mkks who valued his Life, she reckoned, was headed for Sikkukkut’s ships. She thought of others of the noninvolved, non-kif, wishing they could have evacuated the entire station. But that was impossible. Mahendo’sat and stsho had to stay and trust the few conventions of non-involvement and neutrality even kif observed in the Compact. Tc’a and chi were safe. Indisputably. And they protected the other, oxy-breathing residents by their own immunity and their insanity.

“What’s our count?”

“Hour three minutes to undock,” Haral said.

“Good gods, they’re going with it, are they?”

“That mahe’s a stubborn bastard.”

“We on count?”

“We’re catching up.”

She put her own board live. Ran a survey of systems and recent com messages.

From Aja Jin: You got no problem, you come in on coordinate number one good. ...

Another optimist, she thought. “Put in a call to Jik.”

“Aye,” Geran said. And a moment later. “He’s not answering.”

“What, not answering? We’re in countdown. Remind him who’s asking, huh?”

Another delay. “Captain, his first is on if you want to talk to her.”

She punched it in. “This is Pyanfar Chanur. Have we got a problem?”

“This Soje Kesurinan. Not got problem. Fix good.”

Unease ran up and down her spine. There was a don’t ask implicit in the mahe’s tone.

(So what for godssakes is the matter?)

“Want me to come over there?”

“No need. All fine, honored captain.”

“Pride out.” She punched it off. Gods, likely every kif on Mkks had access to that com transmission. She caught Haral’s worried look.

“He’s not there,” Pyanfar said.

Haral’s brow wrinkled.

“I’m betting,” Pyanfar said, “he’s not aboard. Geran, get me Rhif Ehrran.”

“Aye.” Geran made the call. “She’s on, captain.”

That quick. So he’s not there, and Rhif’s at the boards.

“Ker Rhif. Letting you know we’re back online.”

“We have your count. We assume it’s accurate.”

“It’s accurate. Do we have a sequencing yet?”

“Can’t this be processed at some other level, Chanur? Or is this a social call?”

“Just wondering, Ehrran.” She broke the contact without the protocols. Looked at Haral.

“He’s with the kif or he’s loose on the docks somewhere.”

“Gods-rotted lousy time to take a walk,”

“I figure he knows what he’s doing.” She got back to the messages. A Mkks consortium lodged protests. A mahen prophet babbled something about retribution and visions. A self-claimed psychic saw humans descending on Mkks in their thousands and bringing some invention that would make antimatter, obsolete-“Good gods, Geran, you screen this stuff?”

“Sorry, captain. That’s the good ones. We got crazier. Thought you’d like the local temperature, huh?”

“They’re scared. Can’t blame them for that.” She tried not to think about it. “Where’s Vigilance’s complaint about visiting kif?”

“They never logged it with us.”

“Huh.” That bothered her. She bit at a snagging underclaw and watched the readout run past. Khym arrived with gfi for everyone on the bridge, regulations fractured. But it was her rule, and she broke it with a grateful sigh.

“I reckon,” Geran said, “they expect us to take a lot of this data during system transit.”

“They better.” She sipped the gfi and looked up again as breakfast arrived, Hilfy with a tray of rolled sandwiches. “Thanks, imp.”

Hilfy glanced at her in a strange, ears-back way as if the little-girl word had jarred. Perhaps it had. Pyanfar noted that as Hilfy turned away and served the rest, with Khym and Tully. Tully’s moves this watch were full of winces. Besides the usual spacer’s breeches he wore a white, stsho-made shirt, likely the last he had. It covered the wounds. His mane and beard were combed and neat. His eyes, always light arid unnerving-quick, darted and danced in a kind of desperate counterpoint to Hilfy’s quiet. He smiled. He looked happy. It had the look of desperation.

Fear of them? she wondered uncomfortably; and then caught Tully’s look at Hilfy’s back, that one glance in which the smile died and something else showed through until Hilfy pricked up her ears in a semblance of good humor- for her, she thought; he wore the cheerfulness for Hilfy’s sake; and the inside-out of it shivered through her nerves. He moved like a woman walking round some man on the edge of his control. Don’t jostle, be pleasant, have your temper elsewhere. Hilfy might see it or might not.

Human instinct?

Or were they tied together, one holding onto sanity because of the other-and Hilfy further gone than she suspected?

“Captain?”

Pyanfar blinked and gulped down a large part of the sandwich, turning to the board. “Thanks.” Data turned up. She swallowed the other half in two bites and punched a key. The nav-system engaged and ran the data. .

“Three quarters hour,” Haral said.

“We aren’t getting checkout from our friends out there.”

“I’m-“ Geran said; then: “We got a call from Aja Jin’s first.”

“About gods-rotted time. What does she have to say?”

There was a stir at her side. Hilfy slid into her seat and started checkout. Tully edged in next to Chur.

“That’s Khym’s seat,” Chur said sotto voce. “Take the one the other side of Tirun’s.”

“Captain, Jik’s on his way over here. So his bridge says.”

“Huh.” Pyanfar’s eyes went to the time ticking away in the corner of main-monitor. Small alarms went prickling up and down her spine. She sipped at the gfi. “Coming up on the half hour mark and Jik pays social calls. Are those Ehrran guards still on watch in our lock?”

“Had a call from Vigilance a few minutes ago,” Haral said. “They say they’re going to pull them out at the half hour mark. I gave them thank-you and told them we’d take care of ourselves from then on out.”

“Gods-rotted pointless anyhow. Gods-rotted Ehrran priggish gods-be punctilious nonsense that keeps an Ehrran ear to Chanur business, that’s what they’re up to. Sealed lock and they’ve got to set guards in it.” Pyanfar’s lip twitched. A thought came through. “That blackbreeched bastard knows something’s interesting in our downside corridor. Never mind what passes through our lock.”

“You think?” That rated a turn of Haral’s head.

“Khym was on guard down there when Ehrran first came aboard. That kif Skukkuk walked up to our ship and never came off; you want to bet no one on the dock saw that? And that Rhif Ehrran hasn’t been sniffing round everyone she can interview on this station? If she missed any of that, she heard me ask Sikkukkut what to do with the bastard: by the gods she knows. Knows about Sikkukkut coming here to talk, And she’s waiting on me to cave in and send some explanation what we’re doing with the kif.”

“File’s got to fill whole banks by this time.”

“Doesn’t it? I swear I’ll give that kif to her.” She gulped the last of the gfi, looked around for someone free to carry it to the galley. Tully sat beside Tirun. Khym was rattling about in galley; latches snapped and thumped.

Tully turned wide eyes on her, blue and holding that perpetual hint of panic. “Trouble?” he asked Chur, with a glance her way.

“Explain it to him.” Pyanfar shoved the empty cup down the security-bin. “I’m going down to talk to Jik when he comes in.”

“Want company?” Haral asked.

“Sit on things here. Who’s going to do that undock?”

“Central says they’ve got crew moving up. Mahendo’sat.”

“Fine.” Pyanfar headed for the door. “Fine.-Get Tully’s drugs for jump. Tully, hear?”

“I got,” Tully patted his pocket. “But kif-“

“Thank the gods. Brains.”

“I work jump.”

“You work, huh? You work it flat on your back. You go to bed, hear? And, Chur, you’re going to quarters on this, from undock out.”

“Captain-“ Chur powered the chair about and opened her mouth to protest.

“You heard me. You’re still! not sound. Haven’t got time to take care of you. Don’t make me problems.”

“I’m begging you this one. Captain. I’m going to be fit. It’s a rough one. / want to be there.”

“Huh,”  Pyanfar said. Thought about it a moment too long and shook her head. “Gods rot it, all right, take duty.”

“I,” Tully said. “I work.”

Another unanswerable stare, blue-eyed this time. His mouth trembled in that way he had when he had gone his limit.

She remembered then she had put a thing in her pocket, transferred from yesterday’s plain trousers. She had meant to give it to him. Now it took on a superstitious feel, like saying no to Chur. She fished it out between thumb and foreclaw and took his hand and laid it there, a small gold ring meant for human hands, not ears.

He closed his fist on the small bit of gold that had belonged to some lost friend. It meant something profound to him. “Where get?”

“Just keep it on your hand this time.”

He put it on- his finger. Looked up again with fever in his eyes. Then he clasped her hand with a fierceness that disarranged joints and claws; she flexed claws out in self-protection, strength opposed to strength, and he let go. “You sit this chair, huh?” You sit here, stay steady, keep Hilfy-gods, keep her thinking. Shame her into it. Don’t let her be a fool, Tully.

“I work, captain,”

“Captain. Huh.” Someone had taught him that. He managed it in hani, confounding the overworked translator, which sputtered through the com at his belt. “Takes orders, does he? Huh. Tully, you watch.”

She walked out.

The lift opened and let her out on the lower main. Tirun was in the corridor. She expected that.

That Tirun waited there with her back against the wall and that trouble-look on her face, she did not expect.

She slowed down, distracted from one crisis for one that confronted her, and Tirun’s ears sank further, tight-folded. “Captain.”

“Spill it.”

“Kif won’t eat the frozen stuff. He wants to talk to you personally.”

She let go a long slow breath. “Wonderful. Tell him we’ll have a long friendly talk at our next port of call.”

“I told him you’re busy.”

“He said?”

“That you were a fool. Captain.” Staring straight ahead, not a twitch of a tightly-folded ear. “I asked who was sitting in the washroom of someone else’s ship. It said hani humor is unsubtle.”

“You leave it the frozen stuff?”

“I left it. Thawed. I could puree the stuff.”

“Kif’s got teeth.” She walked off.

“Captain. I could-bribe a docker, maybe, well, get one of those small live things-“

She looked back, at Tirun standing there with a revolted look. “Reason with it.”

“I tried.”

“Try again.” She headed for the lock, jammed hands in pockets, past the butt of a gun in the righthand one. Gods. Live food. Raw was one thing. Raw and protesting was another.

She entered the short lock corridor and hooked the, recessed button on the panel with a foreclaw. The inner hatch shot back unexpectedly and she glowered at the two Ehrran clanswomen on guard there, who faced her with an aborted leveling of rifles.

“Who you planning on firing on from this side? Escaping crew?”

“Captain.” Politeness must have choked the Ehrran. And when Pyanfar walked through their midst and reached toward the com panel to tell Haral to open up the lock, an Ehrran arm shot into her way: “Captain, begging pardon, but it’s a half hour-“

Pyanfar turned and looked, nose to nose with the Ehrran crewwoman. The ears wilted first, the arm dropped next, and the body went third, a backstep that got the Ehrran not quite out of her reach.

“Haral.”

“Aye, captain.”

“Open us up down here.”

The outer hatch shot back. Pyanfar heard it, felt the chill draft. She still glared at the Ehrran eye to eye. “You,-“ she said to the Ehrran. “You want to walk out there into the access and see if captain Nomesteturjai’s anywhere about?”

“I’m not to leave my post.”

“What? Even if I cycle the airlock? You’re a lunatic.”

“I don’t think it’s a case-“

“-about the same. A lot the same.”

“What, captain?”

“Arguing with me. Get!” ,

They flinched, the pair of them; they both flinched, and then it was too late. Pyanfar took the ground they gave, backed them up against the threshold of the open hatch, and it was suddenly a case of resisting a captain on her own deck or moving from their post. “Out!”

For a moment she thought they would actually stand fast, rifles and all; and her claws came out and her nose rumpled into a grin. But-then one Ehrran’s foot hit the hatch-rim and threw her off-balance. The Ehrran caught herself and backed up; the other did, and then they were both in retreat down the chill yellow accessway.

Pyanfar followed in long strides, one hand on the gun in her pocket-it was still a kifish dockside once around that bend and into the rampway. She heard the thunder of hastening feet on the plates; and when she had reached the right-hand turn she saw a tall mahen figure upward bound toward the black-breeched hani, a mahe garishly dressed in red-striped green and laden with gold chains and bracelets and a monstrous large sidearm slung at his hip.

Mahen guards, far below, held the foot of the ramp. Jik strolled up the center, and the outbound hani caught-step to avoid him and passed him in great haste.

Jik stared back over his shoulder, faced forward and came on with a shrug. “What they got?” he asked with a gesture backward,

“Both ears,” Pyanfar spat. She was shaking-gods, she had been in dockside brawls and barfights and a set-to with her son and never lost her head like that. The peripheries around Jik refused to come clear: hunter-vision had set in. Her ears were plastered tight against her skull and her muscles shuddered. Jik stopped-just stopped, dead still and quiet.

Pyanfar sucked air. Spat in the access way. “You want something.”

“You got time?” Judiciously and from safe distance.

A third spit. “I got time.” The peripheries of her vision began to clear. She jerked a hand back toward the lock, led the way, and as they rounded the turn, she saw Tirun standing there with ears flat and a pistol in her fist.

“Haral said there was trouble,” Tirun said.

“Over now. Get. Haral needs help up there. We got mahen guards outside.”

“Aye.” Tirun went at a run.

“Come on.” Pyanfar brought Jik on through the airlock into the inner corridor, and punched the com panel. “Haral. It’s all clear. Seal both hatches.”

“Aye-“-from the bridge, without comment.

SSSShhhh-t. The door went. Sealed with an electric thunk.

She looked at Jik. Her lip still twitched. She flicked her ears with a jingling of rings. “I tell you, Jik, the han’s changed. It’s changed. Hani used to go where they liked, do what they liked without some gods-rotted government note-taker stalking and lurking-“

“You think you make mistake, a?”

“I think I just made a gods-rotted big one. Mistake!  When’d it get to be a mistake to throw two lousy insolent spies off my deck? When’d it happen, Jik?”

“Maybe-“ Jik cleared his throat. “Maybe you make, Pyanfar. You bring lot strangers to Anuurn. Anuurn hani- they not got used to outside. They scare. Lot scare, Pyanfar. They got hani renegade Tahar go work for kif. You know what think? I think this Ehrran got lot suspicion Chanur got too much power-“

“Too much? We got debts, friend-we got debts up to our noses, my brother’s not getting any younger-he’ll go down one day, and gods even know if it’ll be a Chanur that takes him. My nephews are all fools.” It was too much to say. Far too much already. She shrugged and looked elsewhere down the corridor.

“Chanur got space,” Jik said. “Maybe Chanur bring back thing these world-hani not want, a?”

She slanted an ear back and looked at him then, this hunter-captain who was way, way up in mahen councils. Mahendo’sat had brought hani into space. Given them ships. Created, if hani ever admitted it, the very concept of the han. And Jik understood that. He understood it very well indeed. “You longtime got your hands in every nest in the Compact, mahe-“ She slipped deep into the pidgin, facing wrinkle-ringed brown eyes, a sober, too-wise stare. “You know this Rhif Ehrran?”

She expected a shrug from Jik, denial, some glib answer. Instead: “Maybe Chanur enemy get organize, a? Maybe you watch you back, friend. I make big mistake at Kshshti, bring Ehrran in this thing. Big mistake.”

“I believe you,” she said. “Now I believe you.-What you want here, huh?”

“Want say same thing. Want make sure you not come ‘cross bow with Vigilance at Kefk. I like you one piece, hani.”

“Come here.”

“A?”

She grabbed him by the arm. and brought him down the corridor, around the corner and down again, where the lowerdecks washroom was. She pushed the button and the door shot back.

The kif sat on a folded stack of blankets on the tiles against the far wall. Its robes were tucked close about it. It had dropped its hood. Now its head came up and it rose in one muscular glide and bowed, showing empty hands, before it looked up again.

Courtesy of a killer-kind.

“Is it ker Pyanfar?”

“It’s me. This is the captain of Aja Jin.”

“Sssstk.” A deep nod of the head. “I am impressed. Nomesteturjai.”

“Kif,” Jik said,

“His name is Skkukuk. He says he’s mine. A gift, from Sikkukkut.”

“A.-A noikkhe?”

“Skku nik kktitik kuikkht kehtk tok nif fik pukkukk.”

Why? Pyanfar followed threads of it.

Subordinate, weapon, for pride, revenge- “ Nfkokkth shokku hakhoth nkki to skohut.”

“A,” Jik said.

“Well?” said Pyanfar. “You got kif,” Jik said, and shrugged.

“I am starving,” it said.

She shut the door, laid her ears back and looked at Jik. “What do I do with it, huh? Put it out the hatch?”

“They kill him sure.”

“Well, gods rot it, do I run a charity for kif?”

Another shrug. “Sikkukkut give you crewman. Not number one important. Maybe fellow make mistake-“

“Maybe a crewman whose loyalty’s in question? Maybe even one off that disabled ship?”

Jik’s eyes flickered. “Maybe so. All same, he belong you. You got deal, a?”

“God’s rot, you want him?”

Jik rubbed at his nose. “Tell you truth. That give you sfik away. I friend, say no do.”

“You mean status with that gods-rotted kif? Sikkukkut?”

“Best thing you kill this kif.   Send  same pieces  to Sikkukkut.”

“Huh.”

“No do, a? Maybe you turn him out naked on dock.”

“So they kill him.”

“He same kill few, maybe.”

“I’ve traded up and down docks from Jininsai to Meetpoint, and I’ve never heard the like. You understand it? What’s Sikkukkut up to?”

“I fight kif long time. Long time, Pyanfar. Kif at Meetpoint, they quiet kif. This be border. Dis-pu-ted Zone. This space no one got. Where we go next, this be true kif space. You not see before. Not see before these thing. No hani see-‘cept maybe Tahar. And she lot crazy.”

“You’ve seen Tahar?”

“I talk with her, one time, two. She strange. Lot strange-“ He touched his brow.

“She was strange before she ditched us and turned tail at Gaohn; and took kif money-“

“Hani law.”

“You gods-rotted right, hani law. A lot of hani’d like to get a piece of that ship.”

“Maybe do.”

“Maybe do. Rhif Ehrran was already headed for Kefk when we picked her up at Kshshti. You know why?”

“Maybe you know.”

“I don’t. That worries me, Jik.”

“Worry me too.”

“What’s an honest hani doing going Kefk way? What’s an honest hani know about a kifish system?”

Jik ducked his head and rubbed his nose. “Tell you, hani, few ship I know sometime maybe got rig turn off ID squeal. Sure you not know such thing. Maybe ship also got rig make fake ID to beacon. Vigilance hunter-ship, a? Got lot stuff. Lot stuff. Also maybe know Kefk pretty good.”

“Been there?”

“Stsho been there. Come, go. Stsho know lot stuff. Maybe sell in-for-mation.”

“I’ll believe that. But what’s she doing there?”

“Kefk be Tahar port,” Jik said. “She hunt Tahar. Also- maybe-maybe she got stsho interest. Stsho business. You think, hani: stsho don’t fight. Stsho always hire guard. Who they hire?”

“Mahendo’-“ The suspicion got through. She looked up into mahen brown eyes, murkier and darker than any hani’s. “Good gods, they count us barbarians. They wouldn’t hire hani for anything but-“

“Who else they got hire when got falling-out with mahendo’sat? Hire kif? They not fools. No, maybe all sudden they got idea hani not bad neighbor-maybe all sudden want make good friend with the han. Maybe one day there be hani guard at Meetpoint, not mahendo’sat. Big advantage to hani. To some hani. Lot money. Lot stsho money-and they plenty rich. I tell you truth, friend. I tell you truth. Ehrran want stop all hani make problem this deal. Moon Rising. You.” “You put us in the same-“

“Ehrran do.”

“Gods.” She flung a gesture up, put distance between herself and Jik. Stared at him.  “I tell you, you got lot enemy, hani.”

She stood there a long moment. Jik made his mouth a thin, inturned line, as if more might get out. “What you do?” he asked finally.

“What do I do? What do I do? I ought to gods-be head out of here and leave you and Ehrran to the kif.” “You not do.”

“Try me.”

“No, you not do. Where go? Maing Tol? Han got ‘nough suspicion already. Also-you not stsho. Chanur don’t go hide in fight, wait for thing be better, let friend die. ...”

“Friend!”

“I save you neck.”

“For politics, for-“

“-same good reason, a?”

“Gods rot you, Jik.”

“I try save you now. Want you at Kefk. Need you. Need you stay ‘live, hani.”

She looked off across the corridor. Anywhere else. Jik’s voice was dim. Her ears lay flat against her skull. “So what do I do with the gods-be kif in my washroom, huh?”

“You keep. I want you keep. He yours. He got nowhere to go, a? You got plenty sfik he fight like devil kill you enemy.”

“And if he decides I don’t have?”

“You kill him quick. He offer you weapons, a?”

“Huh.”

“He tell truth. Kif truth.” Jik laid a careful hand on her shoulder. “You keep him lock up tight. A? Later I take. I got reason.”

“I’m sure you do.” Her nose wrinkled. She endured the hand, that was no small weight, and turned and stared up into his face. “So what’s the game at Kefk? What’s Sikkukkut want? He wanted me. Before you ever got into it. He got me to Mkks. What’s he want, dragging me into this Kefk business?”

“You got damn lot sfik.”

“You’re crazy.” She shook the hand off. “He’s crazy.”

“You got think like kif.”

“I’m sure you’re good at it.”

“You friend.”

“Friend, my-“

“Maybe kif play same game like Ehrran.” He shrugged, hands in the back of his belt. “He kif. Kif mind got twists. One, he hate Akkhtimakt. Two, he want take opposite from Akkhtimakt. Three, he got no heart. Got no way understand you not all time mad like kif. You add all up, think like kif. He give you kif advisor-he number one smart: you take kif advice, he hope know what you do. You got lot sfik with him. Also you got tame human.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Kif all time got disadvantage, try predict what outsider do, Sikkukkut lot curious ‘bout hu-man-ity. Same way stsho not understand kif: stsho want make deal with Akkhtimakt, want make same deal with Sikkukkut, same with Ehrran hani, a? Someone eat they heart someday. Maybe Sikkukkut. Meanwhile, Sikkukkut want get me, a? Want also get human. Human be big problem soon. Same tc’a. Stsho-they nothing without make alliance with hani, if they not more trust mahendo’sat. Anuurn hani damn fool get involve in this politic.”

“They’re not the only ones.”

“You born involve, Pyanfar. You spacer hani. You too smart.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You got stake. We all got stake.”

“Like what, like hani do all the fighting and mahendo’sat pick up all the eggs? Same as you and your partner did to me at Gaohn? Same as get me barred from Meetpoint- same as-“

“Pyanfar. We all got stake. This Mkks be half mahen station, a? I go take walk, I talk few people. Learn thing.”

“Learned what?”

An expansive shrug. “Like knnn be upset. Like tc’a big disturb. Chi crazy like always. Like big rumor on methane-side got lot human come. Lot human. Stsho damn upset.”

Mahen visionaries. Prophecies on the com. “Gods-be.” It was there to have been read. She raked a hand through her mane. “Geran said.”

“What say?”

“Rumor’s all over Mkks. Thousands of humans coming. Where are they coming to?”

“I think maybe Tt’a’va’o.”

“Good gods.” Tc’a. Tc’a territory, right up to Meetpoint. “What fool set that up?”

“Kif know. I think they know damn sure.”

“Then what are we getting into at Kefk? For godssakes, Jik- “

“Big game. Number one big game, hani.”

“Game. Gods rot it, human ships have fired at knnn.”

Jik’s jaw dropped. He closed it.

“Tully told me. Now you trade me one, partner. Tell me die gods-be truth!”

“ What you know ‘bout knnn business?”

“Nothing else. Absolutely nothing. But a knnn ship was tracking me directly after Goldtooth gave me Tully; stayed with me when I left Meetpoint headed for Urtur. I lost it. I don’t know where it went. But it was on me. It could have been at Urtur. It might even know I went to Kshshti. Hear? We did have tc’a activity there.”

“Damn,” Jik said. “Damn.”

“Let me tell you something else. I don’t trust that tc’a stationmaster at Kshshti. I don’t know what it heard. I don’t like it, hear?”

“What tc’a do?”

“Do? It was scared witless, that’s what. Mention knnn near it and it went into gibbering lunacy. Avoid, it said. It talked about hani dying at Mkks. It, talked-talked about three sets of kif to watch out for, one of them the kifish home world.”

“I hear this. Not surprise. Homeworld kif wait see who win, a? They not stupid.”

“No, they’re not stupid, just a lunatic mahe who thinks I’m going to play tag with the knnn and politics with the gods-be kif-“

“You listen.” Jik looked her in the eyes and jabbed her in the chest with a blunt-clawed finger. “I tell you truth, tell you truth, hani and mahendo’sat be longtime friend, a? Stsho friend only to stsho, same like kif. We got Sikkukkut, got same this fellow in the loo, a? We got lot sfik, this kif Sikkukkut get some from us; he go be number one kif. Safe kif.”

“I’m not so sure he is.”

“I tell you this: Sikkukkut got same interest we got. He want keep thing lot same like now. Want make quiet. Sure, he lot dangerous. But you respect him, he got sfik, not need kill you. This Akkhtimakt, he oppose Sikkukkut: he got kill all Sikkukkut deal with. That be long list, a? Sikkukkut enemy all- be kif; but I tell you, Pyanfar-lot people be Akkhtimakt enemy who not be kif. Whole damn Compact. Humanity. Where he stop, huh? And we already got knnn trouble. How much trouble we need?”

“They’re all crazy.”

“You hani, you like too much law. Kif, they got Personage. Sen-si-ble, like mahendo’sat. Make life more simple.” He touched her shoulder again. “You see why I want you ‘live? You don’t cross Vigilance, a?”

A clank sounded from outside, the noise of the line connections being withdrawn.

“This fancy ID system I’m not supposed to ask if you got-any chance it can fool the beacon at Kefk?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and gave her an anxious glance. “I not say got.” ‘

“Can you?”

“Maybe I run-little ahead main group. Maybe we get beacon. One good look all I need.”

“Maybe! Kite in there alone?”

“A, got good kif friend, good friend Vigilance follow real close.”

“Sure, sure.”

“Hey, you no worry-you damn smart pilot, a?”

“Sure. No worry. No worry. Gods rot it, that’s a binary system, Jik, and that’s a kif you’ve got to rely on!”

“Got you come.”

“Gods, what do you think I am? You’re crazy, you know that? This whole thing is crazy! You’re going to trip that zenith guardpost all alone out there-“

“Ana be right. You got nice eyes.”

“You-“

“Hey, I got go,” Jik said, holding up his hands. And with a lift of brows: “A.” He reached into one of his belt-pockets and pulled out a small square packet. “Want give you this.”

“What?” Her ears went down flat. “Gods-be, Jik, no more tricks! No more-“

“You take.” He pulled her hand forward and slapped the packet into her palm. “Things go bad you take, run, go Meetpoint, find help.”

“What is this thing?”

“Record. Got same microfiche. You don’t worry.” A blithe mahen grin. “All code.”

“Jik-“

“I trust.” The Pride’s bow rang to a second thump; the ventilation fans died and started up with a different, more rapid sound. They were on their own. “I got hurry, Pyanfar. They take ramp soon.” He started away down the corridor and looked back. “You be smart, Pyanfar.”

“Go on, you’ll miss the ramp.” She pocketed the microfiches and picked up the pocket com. “Haral. Stand by to let Jik out. His people still outside?”

“Still there. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, captain. They’re all right.”

“Huh. Good.” She broke the contact and walked back the other way, not without a misgiving glance at the washroom door.

More thumps from the bow. The dockers were working fast. Anxious to get them out, one guessed.

Pyanfar headed for the lift. A cold lump had settled in her stomach, indigestible.

Gods, gods, and Jik himself never told all the truth Not ever the part that told what he would do.

VII

It was chaos, in the bridgeward corridor as Pyanfar headed out of the lift. Tully was there with Hilfy, doing final latch-check on doors, which meant Khym was busy somewhere and not doing that. Tirun came running to catch the lift door with a covered bowl in either hand.

“Hurry it,” Pyanfar yelled as Tirun darted past.

“Aye,” Tirun said.

“And don’t go in with it!”

The door shut. Upship, Chur was at her cabin door, with Geran; she had a new and tightly wrapped bandage round her middle. There was a crash from lowerdecks, another seal in place. “You sure about this,” Pyanfar said in passing.

“Absolutely,” said Chur.

“Captain,” Geran said in courtesy, and Pyanfar left them both behind, headed bridgeward in long strides.

Haral was at her post, the only one as yet, but Chur and Geran were trailing in at Pyanfar’s back. The boards were Sit and The Pride’s initial systems were all up, with ready-lights on the rest. Pyanfar threw herself into her own chair and powered it about.

“Captain.” Haral acknowledged the command transfer with a dip of her many-ringed ears, never a turn of her head or a missed beat in the routine switch-flicking of power-up. Pyanfar shoved the com plug into her own left ear and leaned, fished the microfiche packet out of her pocket and shoved it in the security bin.

“That it?” Haral said.

“That’s the latest bit of trouble. Gods, I’m tired of mail-carrying. Gods give that Ehrran-“

Khym showed up, from the galleyward-corridor, his hands full of food-packets, his face all cheerful. sons, the ancient curse went. Pyanfar swallowed it and listened to the com. The voice out of central was mahendo’sat, likewise the docking chief talking to them on the outside line. One could believe the universe safe and sane; and then a kif spoke up from down the row, giving them its outbound time.

Khym reached past her to clip the concentrates at her elbow. Three packets, one of water. ‘Thanks,” Pyanfar muttered. And to Haral: “You mark what Jik’s trying?”

“Uhhhn.”

“That’s not on the plan. Something recent. Real recent. Didn’t want to use that system in front of the kif, that’s what, and Sikkukkut wasn’t going to use his-eggs’II get pearls Harukk’s got that equipment too and Sikkukkut won’t use it.”

“That where Jik was, you think? Push-and-shove with the kif? Trying to get them to-“

“Might’ve been. Gods know. Gods know if Ehrran knows what he’s up to.”

“He’s got to fill her in. If she comes in alone with the kif-“

Clang-thunk! The accessway was loose. Crash! The grapples from Mkks station retracted. They had their own grip on Mkks and they were against the docking boom: that was all that held them now.

“He didn’t want to tell us,” Pyanfar said. “He wasn’t going to. You get all that business down there on tape?”

“Hhhuun, yes. Want it logged?”

Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches. “It’s enough to give Ehrran our skins. No. But don’t erase it either.” She looked across the dividing console, met Haral’s gold-eyed hani stare. Different than Jik’s. Uncomplex in honor and greatly complex in loyalties. “Stow it in my personal file, huh? You don’t need to be part of it.”

Haral’s ears went back. Offended. “Aye. If you want it that way.”

“I do. Who heard?”

“Me.”

“Huh.” Pyanfar looked to the controls and brought her board up. A seat hissed under weight. She half-turned and saw Tully settle in next to Chur. “Tully r”

“Captain?” Tully turned his head, not using com and the translator.

“You crew, huh?”

“I-“ Tully misunderstood the question and fished up a small syringe from the chairside pocket. “I sleep at jump, wake at Kefk. I work.”

It sounded chancy. Gods made humans and stsho that way, that jump made them crazy. So they ran ships in and out of jump unconscious. Lunatics. “No fear, huh?”

A primate grin, quickly compressed to a hani smile. “I scared.”

“Huh. Us too.”

“Hurry it up!” Haral said over shipwide com. The voice echoed through the bridge and corridors. “Tirun, move it.”

“Vigilance lodge a protest?” Pyanfar asked, swinging round.

“Aye,” Haral said, and wrinkled her nose and laid her ears back. “I’d give this voyage’s profits to’ve been in range of one of that pair in that lock.”

“Huh.” Profits. She laughed. But humor died. “It was a stupid thing. Stupid, that’s what it was. Like a gods-rotted-“

Khym was on the bridge and Pyanfar swallowed that ancient comparison down too. Called up the outbound schedule,  “Log that Ehrran business. Right down to the exit from the lock.”

A hesitation. A key pushed. “I already had it separated.”

“I’ll lay it out for the rest of us-Put Geran wise to it, huh?”

(Gods, Khym back there, coming and going in all this business between her and Haral, between mahendo’sat in the lower corridor, and not a question out of him, not a What’s going on? or a Why? The world was out of shape. But she and Khym had both said a lot of things in the dark. Last watch.)

She glanced aside. Khym settled into observer one, between Hilfy’s as yet vacant post and Geran’s seat, flicking switches. He brought com live there, backup now to Hilfy. Geran would sit Chur’s post at scan one; Tully observer two; Chur moved to second scan; and Tirun, with below-decks cargo ops and second-bridge shut down, was left observer three, when she got to it, as auxiliary switcher, comp operator, engineer, and if things went amiss, backup at armaments. When she got to it.

Pyanfar punched in lowerdeck monitoring. “Tirun. You all right down there?”

“I’m coming,” said a breathless, moving source. The sound of running feet in main corridor below. Pyanfar broke the contact. Hilfy took her post. Pyanfar caught the reflection in the monitor, against the light from Khym’s boards.

Back in place. Home again. A ready light came on her board from Hilfy.

A mahen voice sputtered in her ear: “Clear when ready. You got clear, Pride of Chanur.”

Hilfy acknowledged the station communication Khym had brought through, taking over. “Thank you, Mkks.” Routine and cool. Thank you, Mkks. Pyanfar’s blood went cold.

Aft, the lift worked. That would be Tirun.

“Geran,” Haral said, “put Vigilance on the guard-it list right along with the kif.”

A moment’s silence. “You serious, huh?”

“Real serious. Jik says.”

“Uhhhhn.” No further comment. That got done. Their scan operators were onto it.

“Aja Jin to Pride, you got number one depart, go, go.”

Running footsteps in the topside corridor behind. “Gods rot,”  Haral said into the mike,   “sister,  we’re going, move, move, move!”

Footsteps reached the bridge, a body dropped into a chair and Haral hit the ungrapple program.

Clank-bang. They were under power then, a little queasiness as The Pride came off station and gave herself that little bit of thrust that got her outbound.

Nothing showy. The Pride could move. It was not a fact they cared to advertise to the kif or to any other watchers at Mkks. Haral brought The Pride about at leisure and took her time. They might have been hauling eggshells.

“We got an update on the entry projections,” Pyanfar said. “Jik’s got a-“

Then: “Priority,” said Hilfy, that dreadful word from a post with bad news. . ‘

It got switched. “-same advise you,” from Mkks Central’s ice-clear voice, “we got tc’a go outbound. Navigation caution.”

“Gods rot!” Pyanfar exclaimed.

“-Tell it power down and wait,” Hilfy was saying over com. “Mkks station,-“

Com transcripting was all over second monitor, kif protests, protests from Jik and Vigilance. . . .

“Got a blip,” said Geran. “Confirm something outbound from the methane-sector-“

“That’s a kif away,” Haral said, overriding. “Scan two. Comp, get that tc’a figured.”

“I’m on it,” Tirun said. “Stand by, Geran.” Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and snatched helm function to her board while Haral sorted priorities. Thank gods for full crew: com was babble from three prime sources and a dozen unauthorized outputs; Geran was on station scan output and Chur tried to sort out blips exploding off Mkks station about them like seeds from a pod.

Pyanfar kicked the rotation in, for The Pride’s internal G and rolled them up in a move that got to the pre-set course the hard way. Gods, they were on a hair-breadth schedule out to that jump-point, they had everything calculated down to the instant for that tandem jump, and the situation behind them looked like feathers in a windstorm.

“Schedule’s blown to a mahen hell,” Haral said. “Gods blast that split-brained fool! We got a lunatic mess back there!”

“Hilfy-“ From Khym, urgently.

“Priority,” Hilfy said. “Station transmission, general to all ships.”

Image turned up on second monitor. Violet light: a writhing serpent-shape, gold-mottled, that dipped and wove before the lens.

Methane-sector was talking to them: methane traffic control on visual output. The yellow, sticklike form of a chi raced up and down the tc’a’s uplifted back, darted about its head in frenetic attentions to its- whatever a tc’a was to a chi: master; comrade; friend or pet. The tc’a wailed, the multipart harmonics of its segmented brain and speech apparatus, multiple minds, multiple viewpoints in matrix translated at the bottom of the screen.

Tc’a      tc’a       hani       hani       mahe     kif         kif

Mkks     Kefk      Kefk      Kefk      Kefk      Kefk      Kefk give       go     go          go          go          go          go  tell        chi         go         go         go         go          go  chi         tc’a        go         go         go         go          go  knnn      knnn     knnn      knnn      knnn      knnn      knnn

A cold wind went up Pyanfar’s back. “Hilfy: get comp on that. Tirun, go to com one.”

“Aye,” Hilfy said.

Not a word of criticism. No outcry from the crew. The tc’a ship was out ahead of them, likely to foul their schedule; a tc’a official onstation was talking about knnn, and no one sane wanted them involved. No one could talk to knnn but tc’a; and tc’a talked like that, in matrices that had to be read in all directions at once. It spoke of two tc’a presences, one at Mkks, going, perhaps-(give a chi?)-to tc’a at Kefk; while knnn were involved all across everyone’s motivations, and of two kinds of kif (Kefk-bound?) and two kinds of hani (gods, did it pick that schism up?) only one lot of kif was going to fight?

“... abort this lunacy!” a hani voice said, Rhif Ehrran from Vigilance, fairly yelling over com. “Aja Jin, pull us back!”

“You want what,” Jik’s answer came back. “Give time Kefk know we come? Sure thing they blow us to hell, Vigilance. You stay on course, stay on course, you hear?”

“Khoihktkt mane kefkefkti-“-from the kif: The mahe’s agreeing with us.

“Aunt, comp’s got nothing better. The tc’a’s talking about notifying knnn and says that tc’a’s going with us to Kefk. Comp’s not sure about the rest, but it’s got a conjecture-“

“Vigilance is on,” Geran said, “wanting the captain direct.”

“Refuse,” said Haral.

“Call on three,” Khym said. “It’s Harukk. Their com wants the captain.”

“Refuse: get Jik.”

“Belay that,” Pyanfar said, biting her mustaches and reading comp’s conjectures on the tc’a, not far off her own. “Jik’II talk when he can. Give me output. Compose a message to the tc’a and tell it we go and it waits.”

“Aye.” From Hilfy, tautly. No ship talked to methane-breathers without filling out abundant official queries afterward. There were reasons. Like methane-breather logic, which could take something fatally amiss. They were different. Very. And went berserk very easily. Tc’a were the peaceful lot.

Knnn-were something else.

“Aunt-here’s the set-up; approve it before it goes.” hani       hani       mahe     kif         kit         tc’a        t’ca  ship       ship       ship       ship       ship       Mkks     ship  go         go         go         go         go         Mkks     wait  danger   danger   danger   danger   danger   danger   danger

“Makes sense to me,” Pyanfar muttered as it came up on the screen. “Log and send it. Send to Aja Jin: quote: We’re on schedule and proceeding. We’ve advised the tc’a of navigation hazard.”

“Jik’s on already,” Geran said. “He’s saying go with it. Still go.”

“Fine.” It was not the answer she had rather have had, but it was the one she expected. Go with it. Go ahead. Take the chance.

Jump with a tc’a in their midst. Tc’a navigated like snakes. They were snakes. Come in at Kefk blind with a tc’a liable to pop out of hyperspace any gods-rotten-where off-mark and the faster hunter-ships plotting to overjump them in hyper-space. ... It was asking for disaster. Collision.

“We’ll shine bright enough for Anuurn to see, if we kink this one,” Pyanfar said. “Someone want to calculate the size of the fireball?”

“Gods-rotted bright one,” Haral said.

“Vigilance advises us,” said Khym, “she’s filing a-“

Hysterical laughter broke out in sneezes, short and wild. They were hair-triggered. Hani. Hell-bent on course for kifish zones.

“What’s that Ehrran think she is?” Hilfy cried over it all, as if there had never been kif, never been those awful days. Hilfy: youth and outrage. “What’s been going on?”

“Welcome back, kid,” Haral said dryly, never turning around. “You want a list?”

“Chanur’s got trouble,” Geran said, from Hilfy’s right. “Ehrran’s the name of it. She’s after our hide. Any way she can get it. We don’t cross her bows. That’s the word on it. We take this jump, we thank the gods this time we’re coming in a little slower than that ship of Ehrran’s. She’ll be in front of us at Kefk. Don’t want her on our tail, no thanks.”

“Prefer the kif instead, huh?”

A small shiver in the air.

“Gods-rotted safer,” Tirun said. “Temporarily.”

Silence then.

“Niece,” said Pyanfar. “We don’t forget either.”

Silence still.

“What after Kefk?” Hilfy asked then, finally, in a normal voice. “Where do we go? You got an idea-captain?” Respectfully. “Have I been left out of briefings?”

Pyanfar flexed her fingers on controls, worked her elbow in the stress-brace. Drew a whole breath. “Some. You want it in a capsule? That engine-pack back there, this fancy new rig-nothing’s free, is it? We’re in hock, Hilfy Chanur. Nothing money pays for. And that Ehrran business-“

Lines trued up. They were on, headed for their mark. The tc’a was out in front of them now, having gotten up to its speed: no more turns now, even for it. Nothing but a knnn played games with physics.

“Gods-rotted tc’a’s going to be in front all the way,” Pyanfar said. “Gods only know where it’ll be after jump. I can tell you this. Jik’s got an idea he’s going to fake an ID signal at Kefk-break through there a shade ahead of the rest and get that scan for us before it shuts down.”

“Gods,” Tirun said. “How much ahead?”

“He didn’t say. No schema. Nothing. I tell you this, if he doesn’t make it, we got trouble. Real trouble. We got a nest of kif for one thing. We got some other things too. What are we getting on com? We got some quiet out there?”

“Nothing worth listening to,” Haral said. “Lot of kif stuff.”

“Vigilance has stopped transmitting,” Geran said.

“So’s Aja Jin,” Hilfy said.

“All right. Geran, I want you com backup right now; take number one scan after jump.”

“Got it.”

“Hilfy.”

“Aunt?”

“You asked about Ehrran. I’ll tell you what I’ve guessed so far in this business. Our troubles aren’t just bad luck. They’ve been coordinated.”

“Ehrran?”

“Oh, higher than that, imp. We settled that dustup at Gaohn, we busted our hani enemies out of Kohan’s way, drove Tahar clan into near collapse,-pushed Moon Rising into exile-We brought mahendo’sat to the homeworld, we brought humans and we brought knnn, which sets off the isolationists back home right proper, doesn’t it? Naur. Her bunch. Llun clan got chewed up helping us at Gaohn; so’d others of our friends. Tahar, enemy that they were-we broke them and broke their power over their allies; and that left vacuum, and that let some other clans move up in the han.”

“Naur and Jimun and Schunan,” Haral muttered. “Ehrran’s precious patrons.”

“That’s precisely the shape of it. We were better off with Tahar for enemies. They were bastards, but they were spacing bastards. What we got left is the worldbound old eggsuckers like Naur; and those fat old women’d just as soon see us all back in kilts and sofhyn.”

“It’s me,” Khym said. “

Swallow it, Khym.”

“Look, if I’d stayed downworld-“ 

“If not that, some other thing. We brought outworlders into Anuurn system-“

“-and got a male offworld.”

“So we got every bigot in the han stirred up. The spacing clans got chewed up bad at Gaohn; among the Immunes, our Llun friends lost too gods-rotted many good women; and Ehrran’s been itching after a piece of their rumps for years. Sure, Ehrran’ll kiss-foot for the Naur; they got themselves that shiny ship, got themselves big ears and notebooks, and the stsho-those fluttering bastards have got their fingers in the stew. The mahendo’sat leaned on the stsho to get our papers reinstated because Goldtooth suddenly wanted our help-wanted spacing hani on his side. So the stsho bent, they always will-but straightway they ran and got Ehrran’s ear and sucked that fool right in. Ehrran was out at Meetpoint hunting down Tahar and doing any other bit of business the han wanted with the stsho-like secret negotiations, maybe, for a whole lot of things-and then the stsho up and offered them our hides for a bonus.” “Stle stles stlen,” said Hilfy.

“Stsho got humanity coming in at their backs. They waffled on Goldtooth at Meetpoint. Gods know what they spilled to Ehrran; and I think if Stle stles stlen were less corrupt and less scared of Goldtooth the old bastard would have sold Tully to the kif right off. But we were there, and Ehrran didn’t bribe them, iron-spined fool that she is. Rotted stsho xenophobes are climbing all over each other, thinking about humans coming in at their backs and straight up against stsho territory. But Ehrran played politics and got outbid-I’m guessing. Stle sties stlen lost his nerve about doublecrossing Goldtooth when we turned up with a virtual blank check and high-level mahen authorizations. But I wouldn’t be surprised if old Stle stles stlen worries a lot nowadays about the mahen guards at his door at night. And I’ve got to tell you something else. Something you’d better hear. Haral-you got that tape from down in the corridor?”

“Aye.”

“Run it. That and the one with Sikkukkut.—We’ve been getting a lot of offers, cousins. On all sides.”

It was a long, long silence on the bridge, except for that thread of sound. Operations interrupted it. Pyanfar listened with one ear and winced now and again, kept The Pride running, tried not to think what Hilfy was going to say. Or what the translator was doing with it in Tully’s ear.

Tc’a. Tc’a. Methane-breathers were upset, Jik had said.

Jik had been out in the station at large. In secret. Conniving with gods knew what agencies; and tc’a were high on the list of possibilities.

Right along with Sikkukkut.

The tape finished. There was silence after, too.

“I’ve got us into a mess,” Pyanfar said. “One gods-be mess. I thought you’d like to know just what kind.”

“Sounds like-“ Tirun said, “sounds like Jik’s right. We were born involved. Being Chanur. When we get home-I’m betting we won’t find the han what we left.”

“I’m betting we won’t,” Pyanfar said. “But what is, nowadays?”

Another long silence.

“Well, I’m with you,” Tirun said.

“Same,” Chur said; and: “Same,” her sister said.

“Aunt, I-“

“Maybe you want to think about it, niece.”

The beep and tick of instruments went on. Tc’a matrix came up as comp sorted it, but it was all the same.

“Tully,” Pyanfar said, “you understand even half of it?”

“I hear some.”

Pyanfar could not see his face, saw only a shadowy reflection in a monitor, one un-hani silhouette.

“I hani,” he said. “I hani.”

She blinked, thinking that through. But it made a warm spot all the same. “Khym,” she said.

“My opinion?” he said. A great sigh gusted into com, a low rumbling. “Pity Ehrran’s Immune.”

“But they are,” Hilfy said. “They’ll go at father. They’ll go for him at home. We may not have Chanur any more.”

“I figure,” said Pyanfar, “I figure Kohan Chanur’s still no easy mark, niece. My brother and your father’s no fool. Neither’s any of our sisters, to let the bastards maneuver them out of the house. They’ll be holding on. Long as we’re in space, long as there’s Chanur ships loose to worry about- Naur and her pets’ll use some caution about dirty tricks. Kohan can still take anything that I know about, if the fight’s fair.”

And she thought of Khym when she said it, and felt an old pang of guilt: If I’d been home when Kara challenged him, if I’d been there to prevent hangers-on from interfering-

Khym might still be lord in Mahn if she had been home-if she had come blasting in for him the way Chanur clan had rallied for Kohan Chanur against her son Kara Mahn. Khym might not be in exile now if she had been there-even alone. Even when the rest of his wives and sisters and daughters deserted him. She might have stood by him against their son and their blackguard daughter. Chanur might then have had its best ally intact, in Khym lord Mahn. And the likes of Ehrran would not have risen and the world would not have changed.

“Nav fix positive,” said Haral.

“Wonder if that tc’a up there understands the flight plan,” Tirun said.

“We’ll find out, I guess,” said Geran. “Want to lay bets against, na Khym?”

“She’s cheating again,” Tirun said. “She always collects.”

“We got formation behind us,” Haral said. “The kif are making mark. Looks like we’re really going.”

“Looks like,” Pyanfar said. Her nerves tingled. Her forearm shed fur on the panel-edge. Sheer terror. Doubtless the rest of them were flutter-nerved as well.

“I’m with you,” Hilfy said hoarsely.

“Thanks, niece.-Stand by, everybody. We’re coming up on jump. Tully. You better use the drugs. Help him, Chur. Make sure he’s out.”

“Aye,” Chur said.

She punched in all-ship. “Kif-Skkukuk. Get ready: we’re going for jump.”

“I offer you your enemies.

“Fine, that’s real fine, kif.” She broke the contact quickly. A vague guilt still gnawed at her. For a kif.

As well talk to the walls. It talked good hani; they talked good hani back to it; and nothing intelligible got said to either mind.

/ offer you your enemies.

There was stress in its voice. Maybe it was scared, alone on a hani ship. Maybe it was trying to bargain.

Maybe it would starve, helpless and unattended in that washroom. Or break its bones in maneuver.

It was, gods knew, as trapped in its fortunes as they were-their good luck talisman; or their personal jinx.

“Jump plus ninety,” Haral said. “Fixed on Kefk.”

“Get it in your heads,” Pyanfar said, because the other side of jump, things fuzzed and habits took over. “Jik might not make it. If he doesn’t, we’ve got to move fast: get position first. Locate Harukk next. Remember that, hear? We’re going in with G. We’ll make it that easy on ourselves. If it goes real sour we’ve got a few options. The second we come out, we lock reference on Tt’a’va’o; we run for Meetpoint if we have to. That’s not Jik’s plan; it’s mine. We’ve got those three guardstations to keep track of at Kefk. We’ve got heavy debris in that system, it’s a close binary stirring that stuff up, and kif made our map. Even if Jik gets us one. Remember that. Remember it, all the time.”

“We got those numbers,” Tirun said, “I got ‘em up. Gods send Jik’s anywhere along his entry line and we’ll track him.”

“Nasty place,” Chur said. “Real nasty.”

“Set systems,” Haral said in calm, cold tones, and switch-flicking went on apace, systems-check, line-up. Pyanfar coordinated with her, shed the anxieties and called up the computer prompt program, comparing plan against tc’a-problems and Jik’s intentions. Shifted a priority in the prompts. Re-ran it. Fed it in with the press of a key. Other stations were doing similar things. Haral was running master-check, making sure all jobs were sequenced.

There was most need of locating themselves on the passive-scan; getting absolute position to start with.

Then find Jik, find Harukk and Vigilance and ride down their trail to Kefk’s heart.

“Sure one lunatic way to run a starsystem,” Tirun said.

“We can try telling them that.”

The numbers ticked away.

“There goes the tc’a,” Geran said.

“Gods help us,” Haral said.

“Tully?” Pyanfar asked.

“He’s under,” Chur said.

“Minus five,” Haral said.

Gods, a tc’a loose in their pattern.

And Jik had been out of pocket before undock. Talking about methane-breathers and visiting spies-

Could Jik bribe a tc’a? Was that what he had been up to, in his furtive sortie onto Mkks station docks just before they left?

Navigation help? Precision?

Was that what Jik had been after-a way to cut it fine enough to keep Harukk on his tail-using tc’a computers and tc’a charts to get one critical spacetime calculation- on a kifish system?-against Harukk’s wishes and beyond what Harukk wanted to provide them? My gods- “Minus one.” They were gone. there again. -falling- material and solid. Lights were blinking, the dopplered instruments gathering input and reading it-

“Kefk,” Haral said. “Spectrum-match.”

“Mark, where’s our mark?”

“Searching,” Geran said. “It’s-gods rot-That’s-in tolerance.”

“Unnnh.” The mind wanted to wander off at tangents and seek its former nowhere. The lights danced, hypnotic, led the eye in patterns: there was the sunlight on the hills- home.

“Aunt Pyanfar,” the little girl cried, running breakneck down the hill, ears laid back and small limbs pumping with all their might, “aunt Pyanfar! you’re home!”

Wide eyes and all ears, was Hilfy Chanur, her father’s darling daughter, her aunt’s surrogate for her own faithless Tahy-

Chanur’s yard at night: “Aunt Pyanfar, name me that star-“

“-That’s Kjohi; it’s a white, much, much too far and too hot anyway. We don’t go there.-See that little one below? That’s a yellow. That’s Tt’a’va’o.”

“Have you been there?”

“No hani has, yet. That’s a tc’a star. Tc’a have a whole hand of brains; they sing when they talk; they have seven voices all at once. I knew one once. Its name was So’o’ai’-na’a’o.”

Hilfy laughed. “Say that again-“

“Where’s that gods-be tc’a? Geran! Chur! where’s our own schema, we got any position on anybody?”

“Negative, negative, I got the other map integrated almost- got it, got it, got it-It’s coming through. ...”

The image turned up on Pyanfar’s board. Kefk-system schematic, adjusted to their entry-point. Sikkukkut’s best current map-at least of things like major rocks that could be long-term mapped and tracked in their chaotic orbits through Kefk system.

A huge starstation-gods, she knew it must be big. The kif’s only legitimate outlet to Compact trade, after all. Fifty ships in port and miner-craft scattered like red stars among the yellow ones of asteroids; and no one of those ships where a ship was indicated. It was only a for-instance of a map. Beware, hani: ships might exist. And they do.

It showed kif and tc’a and chi in port. Likely. Again a for-instance. Gods knew what else.

“Stand by dump. Haral, double-check me.”

“Aye.”

Use the wits, remember, wake up. Aja Jin out front by now-gods, where? Harukk and half the kif and Vigilance, with more kif due in at any instant.

Down again.

“Aunt Pyanfar-teach me the stars-“

Her own daughter, Tahy Mahn: “You’re never here. You always come back too late. It’s all over now. Kara’s gone. / sent him to Hermitage-“ Son and daughter gone. Each in different ways-

“So. I’ve got things to do, Tahy. I’m sorry.”

“You’ll always have them. You don’t live in this world. It’s that ship! It’s that ship! I don’t know you, I never will-“

And up.

Back to realspace. Pyanfar’s eyes rolled and centered on the lights, her fingers scantly aware of the controls; her elbow ached.

“Third dump. Come on, line us up, look alive back there-“

“Got it-we got Jik, he’s out there!”

“Pyanfar,” Kohan said, his broad face, his golden eyes gone all gentle, unlike the scowl he wore for show. “Sister- for the gods’ own sake-be careful this time.”

She was selfish. He was not. He omitted to mention the real reason for his worry. Khym. Her private madness. His own public embarrassment. They had talked about it once.

“They’ll go for you,” Kohan said. “All our enemies. They’ll be trying.”

“Law out there’s different, brother of mine. Safer. Folk accept what’s strange.”

“I hope so,” Kohan said. “I do hope so.”

And he walked away.

“We’re on, we’re all right. Got signal, got signal-He’s got us a beacon-image, he got it!”

“Star-fix, get that star-fix, Haral.”

“Affirmative. Tt’a’va’o. We’ve acquired.”

“Uhhhnnn.” She felt the drain of strength, the wobble in her hand. They were inertial. G pushed her decidedly down, not back. The arm ached in the brace. She freed it and pulled loose one of the concentrate packets from its clip, bit a hole in it and drank. The stuff hit bottom in her stomach and lay there like lead.

Gods, gods-Figures ripped past like lunacy. And coincided.

“We’re on,” Haral said. “By the gods, we did it twice, and blind; and Jik and all of ‘em-“

“I’ll believe it when we find that tc’a,” Geran said. “Where is that lunatic? GOOD GODS!”

Scan broke up. Lights went red. The siren howled. “Haaaa!” from Khym; and for a moment there was a nausea like dumpdown; but not-

“ V check,” Pyanfar yelled into the mike. “Gods blast-“ dump, this time, with a sluggish awful nausea.

The tc’a had come in close. Ripped past and dumped speed with two rapid flares of its field. And it was there, a large lump on scan matched with them in V.

“We just found the tc’a,” Tirun said.

“Gods and thunders,” said Pyanfar. Her blood ran hot and cold, her joints went weak; the concentrate fought to come up again. Someone was throwing up. On scan there were sane blips again, but one was far too close.

Human babble. Tully had come to.

“V plus point zero eight,” Haral said. “That bastard gave us V!”

“Let it ride; we burn it off later.” Pyanfar swallowed hard and blinked her eyes and tried not to listen to the retching off over at com. “We got-while yet before Jik’s AOS on Kefk-gods-rotted tc’a: it saying anything?”

Someone over at com managed to get transmission to her screen. tc’a        chi         hani       kif         kif         kif         kif

Mkks     Mkks     Mkks     Mkks     Mkks     Mkks     Kefk

Kefk      Kefk      Kefk      Kefk      Kefk      Kefk      Kefk

“It’s saying, I think-“ Hilfy said hoarsely, “it’s come from Mkks to Kefk with a hani and lots of kif. Hello.”

“They won’t shoot,” Pyanfar said, as the thought got through. Jik. That earless bastard, Jik’s called in another debt and snagged us a tc’a. It knows our flight plan. It must. “Gods, that son’s riding us close out there-they won’t shoot. Kif wouldn’t dare.” She leaned back, turned her head. “Chur. You all right?”

“Fine.” The voice sounded weak. “I’m on-duty.”

“Khym?”

He was the sick one. She had thought so. No answer but a moan.

“We’re nominal on equipment,” Tirun said.

“We still got the kif back there,” Geran said. “Got another ship just blipped in behind us. Ikkiktk ... I think . . . right on mark, five minutes Light.”

Everywhere about them the tick and blip of instruments went on, The Pride’s ordinary functions, unflappable mechanical processes.

“Tully?” Chur said. “Tully, you all right?”

“What that?” A slurred, faint voice on com. “What?”

“Tc’a got friendly. Gods-rotted closest we ever came to collision. Closest I ever want to hear about.” “That’s blip two: second kif in.”

“We just got a message from the lead kif back there,” Hilfy said. “It’s confirming it’s behind us, that’s all.”

“Acknowledge,” Pyanfar said. Their realscan showed their own little packet of space; their passive-signal pickup, half a roundtrip quicker than bounce-signal scan, showed them the stars and the things that reflected light, and the lead ships’ recent emission-trails. A lot of them.

“We’ve got time-calc on that image,” Tirun said. “Jik’s doing fine. Jik, Ehrran, Sikkukkut and a flock of the hakkikt’s best. Haaa-we got Harukk scan now-Clear, clear, clear!”

“Good luck to ‘em,” Haral muttered. “Even the gods-be kif.”

“Hope those earless bastards at Kefk haven’t moved any rocks,” Geran said.

“We’re running into old chatter,” Hilfy said. “Kefk isn’t aware yet of anything, on this timeline. Geran, I’m going to feed you sequencing on this stuff. See if you can do a locator on it, get an update on these positions.”

“Lot of scatter,” Geran said. “Chur, take scan one.” Down the time line again, racing their own incoming wave-front to Kefk station. Waiting for the message to come back. But this time they had shed a lot of speed. Kif talked behind them and in another time-reference, station-kif talked, and that clicking chatter occupied com. More kif dropped in behind them. And the tc’a glided along beside.

“We’re getting reaction now,” Hilfy said. “That’s a guard-station talking, I think. They’re challenging. That’s minus twelve Light.”

Two guardstations, one at Kefk I nadir, to stop escapees; one at Kefk  zenith, not so far away. The third off in Kefk 2’s ecliptic. And Kefk station itself was armed, by Sikkukkut’s admission, which violated more Compact laws.

“Harukk just answered,”  Hilfy said.   “Harukk ordered Kefk system to surrender. Challenge goes on. ... I can’t make out if they’ve launched anything. Translator, Khym; help; gods-be-“  

“Is that it?”

“-Back it up. Geran.”

“Sorry,” Khym said. “I’m sorry-“

“I got it,” Geran said.  “That’s affirmative on launch. Two interceptors away from Kefk  on Jik’s contact-moment.”

“Intercept vector for Jik,” Hilfy said. “Kif behind us report-“ Khym said, “they just heard that defense-engage.”

Pyanfar bit her mustaches, watched the steady rotation of images Haral shunted past her screens. “Unchanged,” Hilfy said.

“Tc’a’s unchanged,” Chur said. “Still by us.”

“Let’s hope it stays put,” Haral said.

“Unchanged,” Hilfy droned on. Then: “Wait, we’re beginning to get some comment out of station now. They’re real disturbed and they’re speaking pidgin as well as main-kifish. We won’t get the guardstation transmission to station or to Jik’s bunch at their angle.”

“What’s it doing?” Khym’s first out-of-line question, in a careful, quiet voice. “What the godssakes is it up to?”

“Easy.” Haral’s voice. “We’re not skinned yet.”

“Kif,” Tully said sharply.

“Tully’s right,” Chur said from scan. “Another one of our party just came in.”

“Huh,” Geran said, “By the gods all and sundry, we may just make it.”

“That’s a hakkikt, five kif hunter ships, Aja Jin and a han deputy telling them there’s a tc’a inbound at their tail,” Tirun muttered. “And they don’t know what more or how many. You think that won’t shake them up? If I was kif with my nose to station or a desk-sitter in central I’d be real upset just now. They’ll fold. Sikkukkut’s not half crazy.”

“Huh,” Pyanfar muttered. Crew talked themselves to confidence. Her stomach fought her again and she fought it back. Comp asked a question, offered choices. She kept her eyes focussed, read comp’s suggestion, scanned two other monitors and punched confirm.

Another desperate swallow. Her hand shook, terror catching up to her in a chill when the moment was long past. The tc’a could have hit them. Gods. How much closer? How much closer before they got pulled apart? Or before they made one ball of fire, hani, tc’a and kif together?

“They friend?” Tully asked and no one had time.

“Tc’a insystem are upset,” Hilfy said. “We’re starting to get chatter out of our own tc’a. It identifies itself and us. They’re sixteen minutes down the timeline.”

Camera image came up on the screens: Haral had gotten them image ... at this range, a bright orange sun washing out the stars. There was a red dwarf companion, Kefk 2, invisible or inconspicuous. Everything else was still too far. Heavy debris orbited Kefk, by Sikkukkut’s outdated charts.

And four stations all told, with a lot of disturbed kif.

“Transmission,” Hilfy said. “It’s them!”-forgetting protocols. “It’s Jik!”

“-Hold course,” the message reached Pyanfar via Haral’s switching. “You hold course. We go ahead in. Got no trouble yet-“

“They know the guard ships are on their track?” Khym wondered.

“Can’t tell,” Haral said. “They ought to. That’s-ten minutes Light. We’re still getting output . . . just chatter. Jik’s bunch isn’t upset, and they’re further into the timeline than we are.”

“Looking good,” Geran said.

Pyanfar let out a breath. A chill went up her back. To cut it that fine, to do it, by the gods, to come in blind like that and pick up signal on the mark, with all the kif behind them.

Navigation like that was a hunter-ship trick. Not for honest merchant-folk. But they did it.

They had done it.

They were alive so far.

“Haral,” Hilfy exclaimed, “we just got beacon!”

Image flashed up on monitor. Full current system composite: it showed Sikkukkut’s cluster of ships inbound for the main station; showed a skein of ships inbound where they themselves ought to be ... the kif, the tc’a, The Pride. And , the interceptors.

Three guardstations; a belt full of miners; an outbound ship; a schema of the main station that show forty-six ships in dock, origin indeterminate. Same as Jik’s initial snatch of image before beacon shut down.

Give or take their own presence. And the interceptors.

“We believe that thing?” Tirun asked.

“Kefk’s talking,” Hilfy said. “It’s a guardstation, I think. It’s-welcoming us in.”

“Gods,” Haral said. “Now it’s really working I don’t like it.”

Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches. “I don’t either. Message. Relay Jik what it sent and put our wrap around it.”

“Aye.”

“Kif are talking,” Khym said. Haral switched it. “Behind us.”

“-kkthos fikkthi kthtokkuri ktokkt Harukkur shokkuin.”

“They’re querying Harukk,” Pyanfar translated. “Sounds like they’re confused as we are.”

“That’s good news,” Haral muttered.

“Our tc’a’s transmitting too,” said Hilfy. “Same stuff as before. ‘I’m coming in with hani and kif.’ “

“That’s the reason for our welcome,” Geran said. “That lunatic tc’a. They can’t shoot.”

“Yet,” said Pyanfar, and chewed her mustache-ends. She reached for another packet and drank it in one forced series of gulps. Put her head back and contemplated the situation while The Pride hurtled at C-residual V toward a kifish stronghold that wanted to let them in. Past a doubtless armed guard-station.

Get them onto the docks, she could imagine the counsels in that chunk of fragile metal up ahead. We outnumber them. Lure them out of their ships if possible. Send poison through their ventilation tubes if not. Let the tc’a dock peacefully in the methane-sector and then destroy the intruders on the oxy side.

“We brought our own private kif along, didn’t we?” Pyanfar said: “Tirun. Khym. We’ve got a little time inertial. I want you two to go down, get some flex, and bring our guest in the washroom up here. His name’s Skkukuk. Be polite. Tell him I sent for him.”

“Aye,” Tirun said.

A moment later. “Aye,” said Khym.

Kif on The Pride’s bridge. The other side of Mkks, she would have sooner died