IV

She sat and listened a time in her cabin, finally contacted Geran belowdecks and turned over the monitoring to her. “Faha,” was Geran’s only comment.

“Hilfy knows,” Pyanfar said.

“So,” Geran murmured. And then: “I’m on. I’ve got it.”  

Pyanfar signed off and sighed heavily, sitting on the edge of her bed, arms on her knees-finally took a mild sedative and undressed and curled up in the bowlshaped bed for a precious while of oblivion, trying not to think of emergencies and contingencies and the horde of kif prowling about the system.

That did not work, but the sedative did. She went under like a stone into a pond and came out again startled by the alarm- but it was only the timer going off, and she lay in the bedclothes with her heart slowly stepping back down to normal.

“Any developments?” she asked lowerdeck op by com from her bedside, not even having crawled from beneath the sheets, but thrusting an arm out to push the bottom on the console. “Anything happened while I was off?”

“No, captain.” Haral’s voice answered her. A shift change had occurred in her off time. “The situation seems to be temporary stalemate. Station is broadcasting only operational chatter now. We aren’t getting much from the kif. Nothing alarming. We’d have waked you if there was news.”

So their orders ran. Interpretations of emergency varied; but Haral was the wisest head in the crew, the canniest. Pyanfar lay there staring at the ceiling a moment and finally decided she might take her time. There was nowhere to rush. The rib muscles she had strained in g force had stiffened. “What about systems check? Has anyone had time to get to that?”

“We’re still running the board, captain, but it looks good all the way. The blowout was absolutely clean and the recalibration was right almost to the hair.”

“Better luck than we deserve. What’s the Outsider up to?”

“Back at work at the keyboard. Chur and Geran are off now, and Tirun’s on, but I didn’t feel, by your leave, captain, that Tirun belonged in there with him in her condition, and I’ve had all I can do with visual checks on the separation readouts-again by your leave.”

“You were right.”

“He’s slept a bit. He hasn’t made any trouble . . . gods, he worked till he nearly dropped over, Chur said; and he’s back at it again this shift, shaky as he is. We fed him right away when he woke up, and he ate it all and went back to his drills, polite as you please. I’ve got his roomcom and his comp monitored from the op station, so we’ve at least got an ear toward him.”

“Huh.” Pyanfar ran a hand through her mane and scowled up at the brightening room light. The alarm had started the day cycle in the room. “Let the Outsider work; if it falls over, then let it rest. How’s Tirun making it?”

“Limping, sore, and working with the leg propped up. She’s still white around the nose.”

“I’m all right,” Tirun’s voice cut in, usurping the same mike.

“You go off,” Pyanfar said, “anytime you feel you ought to. We’re dead drifting, and someone else can take up the slack if those first checks are run. You see to it, Haral. Anything else I should know?”

“That’s the sum of it,” Haral said. “We’re all right so far.”

“Huh,” she said again, got out of the spring-held sheets and cut the com off, pulled on her black trousers and put on her belt, her bracelet, and her several earrings-shook the ear to settle them and gave her mane and beard a quick comb into order. Vanity be hanged. She left the cabin and paid a short visit to the galley, ate a solitary breakfast, feeling somewhat better. She turned the pager to the monitor channel in the meanwhile, listened to the chatter which was reaching them and found it much what Haral had said, a lull in events which in itself contained worrisome possibilities. By now the kif had surely figured out what had happened, and by now they would be hunting in stealth-hence the quiet. The Pride had undergone a great deal of lateral drift from their entry point, but if she were that kif captain, trying to reckon the arrival point of a cargoless fugitive on a jump almost too much for the ship . . . she would calculate a fringe area jump on a straight string from

Meetpoint’s mass to that of Urtur. And that would fine the hunting zone down considerably, from the vast tracts of Urtur’s lenslike system-to a specific zone on the fringe, and the direction of systemic drift, and certain places where a ship seeking cover might move. Time was the other factor; time defined the segment of space in which they might logically be drifting, two points-within-which, which then might be fined down tighter and tighter.

Time, time, and time.

They were running out of it.

She shut off the pager, went back to her cabin, spread out the charts of the last effort and picked up a comp link of her own, started as precise calculations as she could make on the options they had left.

From the hani ship-she interrupted herself to query Haral and Tirun on the point-there had been nothing during the past watch. No transmission at all. Starchaser would be feverishly busy at her own business, stripping down, not provoking anything at this juncture.

Waiting. All incoming transmission indicated that ships of all kinds were moving toward Urtur Station with all possible haste, a journey of days for some ships, and of weeks for others of the insystem operators . . . but even the gesture spoke to the kif, that the mahe would defend Urtur Station itself, abandoning other points to whatever the kif wished to do. The incoming jumpships had long since made it in, snugged close: armed ships, those . . . but one at least was stsho, and its arms were minor and its will to fight was virtually nonexistent.

Again, she reckoned, if she were that kif in command, those insystem ships would not go in unchallenged. For all those incoming from the suspect vector where a hani ship lay hidden, there would be closer scrutiny-to make sure a clever hani did not drift in disguised with the rest of the inbound traffic. ID transmission would be checked, identifications run through comp; ships might be boarded ... all manner of unpleasantness. Most of them would pass visual inspection: there was precious little resemblance between a gut-blown jump freighter with its huge vanes, and a lumpy miner-processor whose propulsion was all insystem and hardly enough to move it along with its tow full.

Only the miners who might have had the bad luck to come in from the farthest edge of The Pride’s possible location . . . they might be stopped, have their records scanned, their comp stripped-their persons subjected to gross discomforts until they would volunteer information, if the kif were true to nature.

“Someone’s jumped, captain.”

Tirun’s voice, out of the com unit. Pyanfar dumped a complex calculation from her mind and reached for the reply bar, twisting in her chair. “Who? Where?”

“Just got the characteristic ghost, that’s all. I don’t know. It was farside of system and long ago. No further data; but it fits within our timeline. That close.”

“Give me the image.”

Tirun passed it onto the screen. Nadir range and badly muddled pickup: there was too much debris in the way.

“Right,” she said to Tirun. “No knowing.”

“Out?” Tirun asked.

“Out,” Pyanfar confirmed her, and keyed out the image as well, stared morosely at the charts and the figures which, no matter how twisted, kept coming up the same: that there was no way to singlejump beyond Urtur, however reduced in mass they were now.

That jump-ghost which had just arrived might have been someone successfully running for it. More ships than that one might have jumped from here, lost in the gas and debris of Urtur’s environs.

But quite, quite likely that ship was kif, a surplus ship moving on to arrange ambush at the most logical jump point that they might use.

Rot Akukkakk. She recalled the flat black eyes, red-rimmed, the long gray face, the voice very different from the whining tone of lesser kif. A bitter taste came into her mouth.

How many of them? she wondered, and pulled the scattered charts toward her on the desk and again thought like a kif, wondering just where he might station his ships remaining at Urtur, having figured now, as he must have figured, what they were up to.

That inward flight which was making the station safer-was also giving this Akukkakk a free field in which to operate. There were a finite number of opacities in the quadrant where the sweep of debris might be concealing The Pride. A diminishing number of other fugitives to confuse him . . . just them and him, finally, along with whatever other kif ships he had called in.

Four kif ships had been at Meetpoint. Some or all might have come with him. There might have been as many more at Urtur when Hinukku came in. Eight ships, say. Not beyond possibility.

She made her calculations again, flexed an ache from her shoulders, and pushed back from the desk, combed her beard with her fingers and flicked her ears for the soothing sound of the rings.

Huh. So. She at least knew their options-or the lack of them. It was a thoroughly bad game to have gotten into. She levered her aching body out of the chair it had occupied too many hours, stretched again, calculating that they must be about due for Chur and Geran to come on again. And Hilfy: there had not been a word out of her. Possibly the imp had been late getting to sleep after the news which had broken in on her rest. If she had been sleeping, so much the better.

Pyanfar walked out into the corridor and down it, into the dim zone of the bridge, beyond the archway, where most of the lights were out and the dead screens made areas dark which should have been busy with lights. There was one unexpected bright spot, a counter alight in that ell nook of the bridge around the main comp bank. Someone had come back and left it on, she thought, walking up on it to turn it out; and came on Hilfy there, seated with her attention fixed on the translator, left hand propping her forehead and her right hand poised over the translator keyboard. The screen in front of her was alive with mahendo’sat symbols. Audio brought in a pathetic Outsider-voiced attempt at speech. Pyanfar frowned, walked closer, and Hilfy saw the movement and half turned, turned back in haste to close off the audio from the bridge. Pyanfar leaned on the back of her chair to observe the strings of symbols on the screen, and Hilfy got up in haste.

Go, the Outsider was trying to say. That was the symbol on the screen at the moment. / go.

“I thought you were supposed to be resting,” Pyanfar said.

“I got tired of resting.”

Pyanfar nodded toward the screen, where the Figure Walking was displayed. “How’s it doing?”

“He.”

“It, he, how’s it doing?”

“Not so good on pronunciation.”

“You’ve been cutting in on his lessons? Talking to him?”

“He doesn’t know me from the machine.” Hilfy had her hands locked behind her, ears flat, wary of reprimands. “You can’t work the second manual without help: it’s sentences. He has to have prompts. I’ve got more vocabulary filled in with him. We’re well into abstracts and I’ve been able to figure something about the way his own sentences are built from what he keeps doing wrong with ours.”

“Huh. And have you perchance gotten a name out of him amid these mistakes? His species? An indication what he comes from? A location?”

“No.”

“Well. I didn’t expect. But well done, all the same. I’ll check it out.”

“Seven hundred fifty-three words. He ran the whole first manual. Chur demonstrated changing the keyboard and the cassette and he ran it all, just like that; and got into the second book, trying to do sentences. But he can’t pronounce, aunt; it just comes out like that.”

“Mouth shape is different. Can’t say we can ever do much with his language either; like trying to talk to the tc’a or the knnn . . . maybe even a different hearing range, certainly not the same equipment to speak with-gods, no guaranteeing the same logic, but the latter I think we may have. Some things he does make half sense.” She lowered herself into the vacated chair, reached and livened a second screen. “Go talk Tirun out of her work down in op, imp; she’s been on duty and she shouldn’t be. I’m going to try to run a translator tape on your seven hundred fifty-three words.”

“I did that.”

“Oh, did you?”

“While I was sitting here.” Hilfy untucked her hands from behind her and hastily reached for the counter, indicated the cassette in the slot of the translator input. “I pulled the basic pattern and sorted the words in. Sentence logic too. It’s finished.”

“Does it work?”

“I don’t know, aunt. He hasn’t given me a sentence in his own language. Just words. There’s no one for him to talk his own to.”

“Ah, well, so.” Pyanfar was impressed. She ran some of the audio of the tape past, cut it, looked up at Hilfy, who looked uncommonly proud of herself. “You’re sure of the tape.”

“The master program seemed clear. I-learned the translator principles pretty thoroughly; father didn’t connect that so much with spacing. I got to start that study from the first; but / knew what I wanted it for. Like comp. I’m good at that.”

“Huh.-Why don’t we try it, then?”

Hilfy nodded, more and more self-pleased. Pyanfar rose and searched through the com board cabinets, pulled out the box of sanitary wrapped audio plugs and dropped a handful of those into Hilfy’s palm, then located a spare pager from the same source. She sat down at main com and ran the double channels of the translator through bands two and three of the pagers. She took her own plug and inserted it in her ear, tested it out linked to the Outsider’s room com for a moment, and got nothing back but bursts of white sound, which were mangled hani words that part of the schizoid translator mind refused to recognize as words. “We’re two, he’s three,” she said to Hilfy, shutting the audio down for the moment. “Bring him up here.”

“Here, aunt?”

“You and Haral. This Outsider who tries to impress us with his seven hundred fifty-three words ... we find out once for all how his public manners are. Take no chances, imp. If the translator fails, don’t; if he doesn’t act stable, don’t. Go.”

“Yes, aunt.” Hilfy stuffed the audio units and the other pager into her pockets, hastened out the archway in a paroxysm of importance.

“Huh,” Pyanfar said after her, stood staring in that direction. Her ears flicked nervously, a jangling of rings. The Outsider might do anything. It had chosen their ship to invade, out of a number of more convenient choices. It. He. Hilfy and the crew seemed unshakeably convinced of the he, on analogy to hani structure; but that was still no guarantee. There were, after all, the stsho. Possibly it made the creature more tragic in their eyes.

Gods. Naked-hided, blunt-toothed and blunt-fingered. ... It had had little chance in hand-to-hand argument with a clutch of kif. It should be grateful for its present situation.

No, she concluded. It should not. Everyone who got hands on it would have plans for this creature, of one kind and another, and perhaps it sensed that: hence its perpetually sullen and doleful look. She had her own plans, to be sure.

He, Hilfy insisted at every opportunity. Her first voyage, a tragic (and safely unavailable) alien prince. Adolescence. Gods.

From the main section of the com board, outside transmission buzzed, whined, lapsed into a long convolute series of wails and spine-ruffling pipings. She jumped in spite of herself, sat down, keyed in the translator on com. Knnn, the screen informed her, which she already knew. Song. No recognizable identity. No numerical content. Range: insufficient input.

That kind frequented Urtur too, miners who worked without lifesupport in the methane hell of the moon Uroji and found it home. Odd folk in all senses, many-legged nests of hair, black and hating the light. They came to a station to dump ores and oddments, and to snatch furtively at whatever trade was in reach before scuttling back into the darknesses of their ships. Tc’a might understand them . . . and the chi, who were less rational ... but no one had ever gotten a clear enough translation out of a tc’a to determine whether the tc’a in turn made any sense of the knnn. The knnn sang, irrationally, pleased with themselves; or lovelorn; or speaking a language. No one knew (but possibly the tc’a, and the tc’a never discussed any topic without wending off into a thousand other tangents before answering the central questions, proceeding in their thoughts as snake-fashioned as they did in their physical movements). No one had gotten the knnn to observe proper navigation: everyone else dodged them, having no other alternative. Generally they did give off numerical messages, which the mechanical translators had the capability to handle-but they were a code for specific situations . . . trade, or coming in, a blink code. There was nothing unusual in knnn presence here, a creature straying where it would, oblivious to oxygen-breather quarrels. There still came the occasional ping or clang of dust and rock against The Pride’s hull, the constant rumbling of the rotational core, the whisper of air in the ducts. The deadness of the instruments depressed her spirits. Screens stared back in the shadow of the bridge like so many blinded eyes.

And they were out here drifting with kif and rocks and a knnn who had no idea of the matters at issue. “Captain,” Tirun’s voice broke in. “Hearing you.” “Got a knnn out there.”

“Hearing that too. What are Hilfy and Haral doing about the Outsider?”

“They’ve gone after him; I’m picking that up. He’s not making any trouble.”

“Understood. They’re on their way up here. Keep your ear to the outside comflow; going to be busy up here.”

“Yes, captain.”

The link broke off. Pyanfar dialed the pager to pick up the translator channel, received the white-sound of hani words. Everything seemed quiet. Eventually she heard the lift in operation, and heard steps in the corridor leading to the bridge.

He came like an apparition against the brighter corridor light beyond, tall and angular, with two hani shapes close behind him. He walked hesitantly into the dimness of the bridge itself, clear now to the eyes . . . startlingly pale mane and beard, pale skin mottled with bruises and the raking streaks of his wound, sealed with gel but angry red. Someone’s blue work breeches, drawstring waisted and loose-kneed, accommodated his tall stature. He walked with his head a little bowed, under the bridge’s lower overhead-not that he had to, but that the overhead might feel a little lower than he was accustomed to-he stopped, with Hilfy and Haral behind him on either side.

“Come ahead,” Pyanfar urged him farther, and rose from her place to sit braced against the comp console, arms folded. The Outsider still had a sickly look, wobbly on his feet, but she reached back to key the lock on comp, which could only be coded free again, then looked back again at the Outsider . . . who was looking not at her, but about him at the bridge with an expression of longing, of-what feeling someone might have who had lately lost the freedom of such places.

He came from a ship, then, she thought. He must have.

Hilfy stood behind him. Haral moved to the other aisle, blocking retreat in that direction should he conceive some sudden impulse. They had him that way in a protective triangle, her, Hilfy, Haral; but he leaned unsteadily against the number-two cushion which was nearest him and showed no disposition to bolt. He wore the pager at his waist, had gotten the audio plug into his ear, however uncomfortable it might be for him. Pyanfar reached up and tightened her own, dialed the pager to receive, looked back at him from her perch against the counter. “All right?” she asked him, and his face turned toward her.

“You do understand,” she said. “That translator works both ways. You worked very hard on it. You knew well enough what you were doing, I’ll reckon. So you’ve got what you worked to have. You understand us. You can speak and make us understand you. Do you want to sit down? Please do.”

He felt after the bend of the cushion and sank down on the arm of it.

“Better,” Pyanfar said. “What’s your name, Outsider?”

Lips tautened. No answer.

“Listen to me,” Pyanfar said evenly. “Since you came onto my ship, I’ve lost my cargo and hani have died-killed by the kif. Does that come through to you? I want to know who you are, where you came from, and why you ran to my ship when you could have gone to any other ship on the dock. So you tell me. Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you have to do with the kif and why my ship, Outsider?”

“You’re not friends to the kif.”

Loud and clear. Pyanfar drew in a breath, thrust her hands into her waistband before her and regarded the Outsider with a pursed-lip smile. “So. Well. No, we’ve said so; I’m not working for the kif and I’m no friend of theirs. Negative. Does the word stowaway come through? Illegal passenger? People who go on ships and don’t pay?”

He thought that over, as much of it as did come through, but he had no answer for it. He breathed in deep breaths as if he were tired . . . jumped as a burst of knnn transmission came through the open com. He looked anxiously toward that bank, hands clenched on the cushion back.

“Just one of the neighbors,” Pyanfar said. “I want an answer, Outsider. Why did you come to us and not to another ship?”

She had gotten his attention back. He looked at her with a thoughtful gnawing of a lip, a movement finally which might be a shrug. “You sit far from the kif ship. And you laugh.”

“Laugh?”

He made a vague gesture back toward Hilfy and Haral. “Your crew work outside the ship, they laugh. They tell me no, go ####no weapons toward me. ### I come back ###.”

“Into the rampway, you mean.” Pyanfar frowned. “So. What did you plan to do in my ship? To steal? To take weapons? Is that what you wanted?”

“##### no ####”

“Slower. Speak slower for the translator. What did you want on the ship?”

He drew a deep breath, shut his eyes briefly as if trying to collect words or thoughts. Opened them again. “I don’t ask weapons. I see the rampway . . . here with hani, small afraid.”

“Less afraid of us, were you?” She was hardly flattered. “What’s your name? Name, Outsider.”

“Tully,” he said. She heard it, like the occasional com sputter, from the other ear ... a name like the natural flow of his language, which was purrs and moans combined with stranger sounds.

“Tully,” she repeated back; he nodded, evidently recognizing the effort. She touched her own chest. Pyanfar Chanur is my name. The translator can’t do names for you. Py-an-far. Cha-nur.”

He tried. Pyanfar was recognizable ... at least that he purred the rhythm into his own tongue. “Good enough,” she said. She sat more loosely, linked her hands in her lap. “Civilized. Civilized beings should deal with names. Tully.-Are you from a ship, Tully, or did the kif take you off some world?”

He thought about that. “Ship,” he admitted finally.

“Did you shoot at them first? Did you shoot at the kif first, Tully?”

“No. No weapons. My ship have no weapons.”

“Gods, that’s no way to travel. What should I do with you? Take you back to what world, Tully?”

His hands tightened on the back of the cushion. He stared at her bleakly past it. “You want same they want. I don’t say.”

“You come onto my ship and you won’t tell me. Hani are dead because of you, and you won’t tell me.”

“Dead.”

“Kif hit a hani ship. They wanted you, Tully. They wanted you. Don’t you think I should ask questions? This is my ship. You came to it. Don’t you think you owe me some answers?”

He said nothing. Meant to say nothing, that was clear. His lips were clamped. Sweat had broken out on his face, glistening in the dim light.

“Gods rot this translator,” Pyanfar said after a moment. “All right, so somebody treated you badly too. Is it better on this ship? Do we give you the right food? Have you enough clothes?”

He brushed at the trousers. Nodded unenthusiastically.

“You don’t have to agree. Is there anything you want?”

“Want my door #.”

“What, open?”

“Open.”

“Huh.”

His shoulders sagged. He had not expected agreement on that, it was evident. He made a vague motion of his hand about their surroundings. “Where are we? The sound. . . .”

The dust brushing past the hull. It had been background noise, a maddening whisper they lived with. Down in lower-deck, he would have heard a lot of it. “We’re drifting,” she said. “Rocks and dust out there.”

“We sit at a jump point?”

“Star system.” She reached and cut on the telescope in the observation bubble, bringing the image onto the main screen. The scope tracked to Urtur itself, the inferno of energy in the center of the dusty lens-shaped system, a ringed star which flung out tendrils the movement of which took centuries, ropy filaments dark against the blaze of the center. The image cast light on the Outsider’s face, a moment of wonder: Urtur deserved that. She saw his face and rose to her feet, moved to the side of this shaggy-maned Outsider-a calculated move, because it was her art, to trade, to know the moment when a guard was down. “I tell you,” she said, catching him by the arm-and he shivered, but he made no protest at being drawn to his feet. He towered above her as she pointed to the center of the image. “Telescope image, you see. A big system, a horde of planets and moons-The dark rings there, that’s where the planets sweep the dust and rocks clear. There’s a station in that widest band, orbiting a gas giant. The system is uninhabited except for mahendo’sat miners and a few knnn and tc’a who think the place is pleasant. Methane breathers. But a lot of miners, a lot of people of all kinds are in danger right now, in there, in that center. Urtur is the name of the star. And the kif are in there somewhere. They followed us when we jumped to this place, and now a lot of people are in danger because of you. Kif are there, you understand?”

“Authority.” His skin was cold under her fingerpads, his muscles hard and shivering, whether from the relative coolness of the bridge’s open spaces or from some other cause. “Authority of this system. Hani?”

“Mahendo’sat station. They don’t like the kif much either. No one does, but it’s not possible to get rid of them. Mahendo’sat, kif, hani, tc’a, stsho, knnn, chi . . . all trade here. We don’t all like each other, but we keep our business to ourselves.”

He listened, silent, for whatever he could understand of what she said. Com sputtered again, the whistles and wailing of the knnn.

“Some of them,” Pyanfar said, “are stranger than you. But you don’t know the names, do you? This whole region of space is strange to you.”

“Far from my world,” he said.

“Is it?”

That got a misgiving look from him. He pulled away from her hand, looked at her and at the others.

“Wherever it is,” Pyanfar said in nonchalance. She looked back at Haral and Hilfy. “I think that’s about enough. Our passenger’s tired. He can go back to his quarters.”

“I want talk you,” Tully said. He took hold of the cushion nearest, resisting any attempt to move him. “I want talk.”

“Do you?” Pyanfar asked. He reached toward her. She stood still with difficulty-but he did not touch. He drew the hand back. “What is it you want to talk about?”

He leaned, standing, against the cushion with both hands. His pale eyes were intent and wild, and whatever the precise emotion his face registered, it was distraught. “You #### me. Work, understand. I stay this ship and I work same crew. All you want. Where you go. # give me ####.”

“Ah,” she said. “You’re offering to work for your passage.”

“Work on this ship, yes.”

“Huh.” She thrust her hands within her waistband and would have looked down her nose at him, but it was a matter of looking up. “You make a deal, do you? You work for me, Outsider? You do what I say? All right. You rest now. You go back to your cabin and you learn your words and you think how to tell me what the kif want with you-because the kif still want this ship, you understand. They want you, and they’ll come after this ship.”

He thought about that a moment. Almost he looked as if he might speak. His lips shaped a word and took it back again, and clamped shut. And something sealed in behind his eyes when he did that, a bleakness worse than had ever been there.

It sent a prickle down her spine. This creature is thinking of dying, she thought. It was the look from against the wall, from the corner in the washroom, but colder still. “Hai,” she said, in her best dockside manner, and set her hand on his bowed shoulder, roughly but careful with the claws. Shook at him. “Tully. You aren’t strong enough yet to work. Enough that you rest. You’re safe. You understand me? Hani don’t trade with kif.”

There was a glimmering then, a sudden break in that seal. He reached out quite unexpectedly and seized her other hand, his blunt fingers both holding and exploring it, the furred web he lacked, the pads of the tips. Pressure hit the center of her hand and the claws came out, only slightly: she was careful, though her ears flattened in warning. To her further distress he set his other hand on her shoulder, then let go both holds and looked about at Haral and Hilfy, then back at her again. Crazy, she judged him; and then she thought about kif, and reckoned that he had license for a little strangeness. “I’ll tell you something,” she said, “for free. Kif followed you across the Meetpoint dock to my ship; they followed my ship here to Urtur, and right now we’re sitting here, just trying to be quiet so the kif don’t find us. Trying to decide how best to get out of here. There’s one kif in particular, in command of a ship named Hinukka. Akukkakk. ...”

“Akukkakk,” he echoed, suddenly rigid. The sound came as names must, from the other ear, his own voice. His eyes were dilated.

“Ah. You do know.”

“He want take me his ship. Big one. Authority.” “Very big. They have a word for his kind, do you know it? Hakkikt. That means he hunts and others pick up the scraps he leaves. I lost something at Meetpoint: a hani ship and my cargo. So did this great hakkikt, this great, this powerful kif. You escaped him. You ran from him. So it’s more than profit that he wants out of this. He wants you, Tully, to settle accounts. It’s his pride at stake, his reputation. For a kif, that’s life itself. He’s not going to give up. Do you know, he I tried to buy you from me. He offered me gold, a lot of gold. He might even have kept the deal straight and not delayed for piracy afterward. He’s that desperate.” Tully’s eyes drifted from her to the others and back again. You deal with him?”

“No. I want something for dead hani and lost cargo. I want this great hakkikt. You hear me, Tully?”

“Yes,” Tully said suddenly, “/want same.”

“Aunt,” Hilfy protested in a faint voice.

“You want to work,” Pyanfar said, ignoring her niece’s disquiet. “There’ll be the chance for that. But you wait, Tully. You rest. At shift change, I’ll call you again. You come eat with us. Meal, understand? But you get some rest first, hear? You work on my ship, you take orders first. Follow instructions. Right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Go, then. Haral and Hilfy will take you back down. Go.”

He nodded, delivered himself over to Haral and Hilfy together: not a backward look from either of them as they took him out. Or from him. She watched them go, found herself rubbing the hand that he had touched.

The knnn song wailed out again. Neighbors to the kif, the knnn. That bore remembering. That one was uncommonly talkative. No one was ever sure what knnn senses were, or what motivated their migrations from star to star.

She turned to the com bank, pushed Record, and sent the song again to the translator. It gave her no more information than the last time. The song ceased, and there remained only the whisper of the dust. Urtur system everywhere had grown very still.

The translator still carried white sound, Haral’s voice or Hilfy’s. The Outsider was saying nothing in being taken back to his quarters. She was marginally uneasy about having him out of sight. Perhaps he was mad after all. Perhaps he would suicide and leave them with nothing to show for the encounter but a feud with the kif. Up to a point she could not prevent him killing himself, except by taking measures which would not encourage his good will.

But revenge was something of purpose, something to make life worthwhile. She had offered him that.

She thought of his face close at hand, lively, crazed eyes, a hand as cold as something an hour dead-a creature, she reminded herself, who had been fighting alone an enemy which would have turned a stsho to jelly.

She grinned somewhat, a drawing back of the lips and wrinkling of the nose, and stared thoughtfully toward the telescope image.

No disengagement possible. Not with this kif prince, this hakkikt Akukkakk, whose personal survival rode on this Outsider business. His own sycophants would turn on him if he lost face in this matter. He had lost this Outsider personally . . . likely by some small carelessness, the old kif game of tormenting victims with promises and threats and shreddings of the will. An old game . . . one which hani understood; irresistible to a kif who thrived on fear in his victims.

Akukkakk had to make up that embarrassment at Meet-point. He would have been obliged to revenge if it were so much as a bauble stolen from him at dockside. But this Outsider Tully was far more than that. A communicative, spacefaring species, hitherto unknown, in a position to have come into kif hands without passing through more civilized regions. The kif had new neighbors.

Possible danger to them.

Possible expansion of kif hunting grounds ... in directions which had nothing to do with hani and mahendo’sat. Those were high stakes, impossibly high stakes to be riding on one poor fugitive.

Urtur would swarm with kif, before all was said and done.

She delved into the com storage and started hunting components for a transmitter of some power, roused out Chur and sent her hunting through the darker areas of The Pride’s circumference for other supplies.

V

It was a monster, like Tully, this thing that they constructed in the spotlit, chill bowels of The Pride’s far rim. It had started out hani-shaped, a patched and hazardous EVA-pod which they had stripped for parts and never succeeded in foisting off on another hani ship. Its limbs had just grown longer, sectioned off and spliced with tubing, and it was rigged with a wheezing lifesupport system.

“Get Tully,” Pyanfar said applying herself to the last of the welding which should get the system in order. “Rouse him out.” And Chur went, bedraggled as herself with the dust and the grime of The Pride’s salvage storage.

Pyanfar worked, spliced and cursed when the system blew in another frustrating curl of smoke, unhitched that component and rummaged for a new one, sealed that in and congratulated herself when it worked, a vibration and a flicker of green lights on the belt and inside the helmet. She grinned, wiped her hands on the blue work breeches she had put on for this grimy task ... a long time since she had practiced such things, a long time since she had worn blue roughspun and gotten blisters on her hands. In her youth, under another of The Pride’s captains, she had done such things, but only Haral and Tirun could recall those days. She licked a burn on her finger and squatted on the deck, content with the operation of the unit. Let it run a while, she decided: see if it would go on working. The suit stared back, stiff and gangling on its huge feet, reflecting her in distant miniature off its curved faceplate. It stood like some mahendo’sat demon, two limbs shy of that description, but ghastly enough in its exposed hoses and its malproportioned height, against the dark of the surrounding machine-shop. A reek of blood mingled with the singed smell of the welding. A bucket on the deck caught the occasional drip from the skinned carcass which hung beyond it under the light.

It was a little more than hani-sized, chained up to the hoist-track above, long-faced head adroop on a longish neck, to thaw and drain. It had begun to reek under the lights. The long limbs were coming untucked, and the belly gaped. Uruus. Sweet meat and a fat one: the best steaks had already headed galleyward, in this raid on their private larder. It had wounds this carcass, but that only lengthened the limbs, letting the haunches drop.

The door unsealed and sealed in the dark distance; steps whispered along the metal flooring. Pyanfar adjusted her translator and got nothing, but she could see the lights go on in the far dark expanse, illusionlike and high because of the upward curve of the deck in the vast storage chamber, picking out two figures, one gangling tall and pale. She sat and waited as the lights turned themselves on and off in sequence along the walkway, bringing the two nearer and nearer where she sat.

Tully and Chur, of course. The Outsider came willingly enough, but he stopped dead when he came close, and the light went out on him, leaving him and Chur in the dark outside the area where Pyanfar sat. She stood up, making him out clearly enough in the shadow. “Tully, it’s safe. Come on. it’s all right, Tully.”

He did come, slowly, alien shadow in the rest of the strangeness, and Chur had hold of his arm in case. He looked at the vacant suit, and at the hanging carcass, and kept staring at it.

“Animal,” Pyanfar said. “Tully. I want you to see what we’re doing. I want you to understand. Hear?”

He turned toward her, eyes deep in their shadowed sockets, the angled light glancing off a pale mane and planes of feature decidedly un-hani. “You put me in this?”

“Put that in the suit,” Pyanfar said cheerfully. “Transmitter sending signal hard as it can. We tell the kif that we’re throwing you out and we give them that, you understand, Outsider. Make them chase that. And we run.”

It began to get through to him. His eyes flickered over the business again, the vacant suit, the frozen carcass “Their instruments see in it,” he said.

“Their instruments will scan it, yes; and that’s what they’ll get.”

He gestured toward the carcass. “This? This?” “Food,” she said. “Not a person, Tully. Animal. Food.”

Of a sudden his face took on an alarming grin. His body heaved with a choking sound she realized finally for laughter. He clapped Chur on the shoulder, turned that convulsed face toward her with moisture streaming from his eyes and still with that mahendo’sat grin. “You # the kif.”

“Put that inside,” she told him, motioning toward the carcass. “Bring it. You help, Tully.”

He did, with Chur, his rangy body straining against the half-frozen weight, an occasional grimace of what might be disgust at the look or the feel of it. Pyanfar shut down the pod’s lifesupport, opened up their work of art, and wrinkled her nose as the Outsider and Chur brought the reeking carcass over. There was trim work to do. She abandoned fastidiousness and did it herself, having some notion how it might fit. The head could be gotten into the helmet, a bit of the neck to stuff the vacant body cavity of the carcass, and a little scoring and breaking of the rib cage, a sectioning and straightening of stiff limbs.

“Going to smell good if that drifts a while with the heater on,” Chur observed. Tully laughed his own choking laugh and wiped his face, smearing his mustache with the muck which coated his arms to the elbow. Pyanfar grinned, suddenly struck with the incongruity of things, squatting here in the dark with a crazed alien and a suit full of uruus carcass, the three of them in insane conspiracy. “Hold it,” she ordered Chur, trying to get the belly seam fastened. Chur held the sides together at the bottom and Tully helped at the top, and there it was, sealed and Tully-shaped.

“Come,” Pyanfar said, taking the feet, and Tully and Chur energetically got purchase on its shoulders, lumbering along with it as the lights recognized their presence and began to go on and off as they traveled.

“Cargo dump?” Chur asked.

“Airlock,” Pyanfar said. “Should passengers leave a ship by any other route?”

It was no light weight. They staggered along the walk with the body of the pod dragging at this and that point, got it onto a cargo carrier at the next section and breathed sighs of relief as it lay corpsewise on the carrier, mirrored faceplate staring up at the overhead. Tully was white and trembling from the exertion: sweat stood on his skin and he held onto the carrier’s endrail, panting, but bright eyed.

“You’re Pyanfar, right?” he asked between breaths. “Pyanfar?”

“Yes,” she owned, wiped an itch on her nose with a dirty hand, reckoning she could get no dirtier, nodded at Chur and gave him Chur’s name again.

“I #,” he said, nodding affirmative. He pushed enthusiastically when they pushed, and they got the thing moving easily down the aisle through interior storage, past the hulking shadows of the tanks and the circulating machinery, out again into the normal lighted sections of belowdecks, under a lower ceiling, and through ordinary corridors to the lock.

“# he go #?” Tully asked, staggered as he helped them offload the pod, looked anxiously leftward as the lock’s inner hatch opened. “Go quick out?”

“Ah, no,” Pyanfar said. She carried the feet through and braced them as Chur and Tully got the upper body through and upright. “There, against the outer hatch. We blow that, and he’ll go right nicely.” She set the feet down and added her weight as they heaved and braced it, stood back and surveyed her handiwork with a grin and a thought of the kif. She powered up the lifesupport with a touch of the buttons on the belt, and it stood a little stiffer, on minimum maintenance. She shut it down again, not to waste a good cylinder.

And for the moment Tully stood staring at it too, panting and sweating, arms at his sides and a haggard look suddenly in place of the laughter, an expression which held something of a shudder, as if after all he had begun to think about that thing and his situation, and to reckon questions he had not asked.

“Out,” Pyanfar said, motioning Chur from the lock, including Tully with that sweep of her arm. He hesitated. She moved to take his arm in his seeming daze, and he suddenly hung his hand on her shoulder, one and then the other, and bowed his head against her cheek, brief gesture, quickly dropped, hands withdrawn as swiftly as her ears flattened. She caught herself short of a hiss, deliberately patted his hairless shoulder and brought him on through the lock into the corridor.

Thank you, that act seemed to signify. So. It had subtler understandings, this Tully. She flicked her ears, a look which got a quickly turned shoulder from Chur, and shoved the Outsider leftward in Chur’s direction. “Go clean up,” she said. “Get showered, hear? Wash.”

Chur took him, indicated to him that he should help her with the carrier, and they went trundling it past and down the corridor to put that back where it belonged. Pyanfar blew a short breath and closed the interior lock, then headed for the common washroom where she had left her better clothes-did a small shudder of the skin where the Outsider’s hand had rested on her shoulder.

But it had understood what they were doing, very well understood what they were up to with the decoy, and that in fact it was not all a matter of humor.

Gods rot the kif.

And then she thought of the uruus’ solemn long face, so benignly stupid, and of the deadly pride of the great hakkikt of the kif, and her nose wrinkled in laughter which had nothing to do with humor.

Supper was on, a delicious aroma from the galley topside, Hilfy and Geran having stirred about for some time in that quarter and in the larger facilities below. It was a real meal this time, one of the delightsome concoctions Geran was skilled at, the penultimate contribution of the uruus to their comfort, prepared with all the care they lavished on food on more ordinary voyages, when food was an obsession, a precious variance in routine, an art they practiced to delight their occasional passengers and to amaze themselves.

Now dinner came with as great a welcome, aromatic courage wafting the airflow from that corridor, and Pyanfar set her com links to the bridge and did what wanted doing there to secure the place, at the last with her hands all but trembling from hunger, and with an aching great hollow in the middle of her. There had been nothing dire so far, only nuisance coming over com, no indication of trouble more than they already had; and the suited uruus waited in the lock, melting and still. . . she checked the airlock vid ... on its somewhat altered feet against the outer hatch. She cut that image and checked the galley/commonroom link again, picked up Hilfy’s voice and shunted the flow the other way, vowed a great curse on any kif who might interrupt such an hour as they had earned. But the link was there if needed and the unit in the commonroom would carry any business it had to. She got the word from Geran and passed it over allship, finally left the bridge and walked on round to dinner, clean again and full of anticipation.

She grinned inside and out at the sight, the table lengthened so that it hardly gave them room to edge around it, the center spread with fantastical culinary artistry, platters of meat, by the gods, no stale freeze-dried chips and jerky and suchlike; gravies and sauces in which tidbits floated, garnished with herbs and crackling bits of fat. The sterile white commonroom was transformed, and Hilfy and Geran hastened about to lay cushions with bright patterns, Chanur heraldry, red and gold and blue.

“Wondrous,” Pyanfar pronounced it, inhaling. Places for seven. She heard the lift and looked toward the corridor. In short order came Haral and Chur with Tully in tow, and Tirun limped along behind them, using her pipe-cane. “Sit, sit,” Pyanfar bade them and Tully, and they sorted themselves and edged along as they had to in the narrow confines, took then-places shoulder to shoulder. Pyanfar held the endmost seat bridgeward, Haral the endmost galleyward, and Tirun and Chur sandwiched Tully between them, while Hilfy and Geran took the other side. It presented a bizarre sight, this whitegold mane between two ruddy gold ones, hairless shoulders next to redbrown coated ones, and Tully hunching slightly to try to keep his gangling limbs out of his seatmates’ way . . . Pyanfar chuckled in good humor and made the health wish, which got the response of the others and startled Tully by its loudness. Then she poured gfi from her own flask by her cup; the whole company reached for theirs and did the same, Tully imitating them belatedly, and for a moment there was nothing but the clatter of knives and cups and plates as Geran’s and Hilfy’s monuments underwent swift demolition. Tully took snatches of this and that as the dishes rotated past him on the table’s rotating center, small helpings at first, as if he were not sure what he had a right to, and larger ones as he darted furtive glances at what others took, and ladled on sauces and laid by small puddles of this and that in the evident case it might not come round a second time. No questions from him.

“Uruus,” Chur said wickedly, crooking a claw onto his arm to catch his attention, gestured at the steaks. “Same thing, this, the animal we give the kif.”

Tully looked momentarily uncertain, poked at the steak with his knife and looked up again at Chur’s grin. “Same, this?”

“Same,” Chur confirmed. Tully took on an odd look, then started eating, laughed to himself after a moment in a crazed fashion, shoulders bowed and attention turned wholly to the food, darting only occasional glances to their hands, trying to handle the utensils hani-style.

“Good?” Pyanfar broke the general silence. Tully looked up at once, darted looks at them in general, helpless to know who had spoken. The translator speaking into his ear had no personality.

“I, Pyanfar. All right, Tully? This food’s all right for you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m hungry.” Hungry, the translator said into her ear, dispassionately; but the look on his face for a moment put a great deal more into it. The bruises showed starkly clear in the commonroom’s white light; the angularity of bones reached the surface on his shoulders and about his ribs.

“Says he’s cold most of the time,” Chur said. “He doesn’t have our natural covering, after all. I tried a jacket on him, but he’s too big. He still wants it, asks to cut it. Maybe better to start with something of Haral’s in the first place.”

“Still too small for those arms,” Haral judged. “But I’ll see what I can find.”

“Cold,” Tully said, in his limited understanding of the discussion.

“We’re trying, Tully,” Chur said. “I ask Haral, understand. Maybe find you something.”

Tully nodded. “#” he said forlornly, and then with a bright expression and a gesture at the meal: “Good. Good.”

“Not complaining, are you?” Pyanfar commented. “Don’t- Gods.”

The com broke in, a knnn-song, and Tully jumped. Everyone looked up reflexively toward the speaker, and Pyanfar drew a deep breath when knnn was all it turned out to be. Tully alone kept staring that way.

“That’s nothing,” Pyanfar said. “Knnn again. It’ll shut up in a moment.” She looked soberly at the others, now that business was on her mind. “Got ourselves a course laid, in case. It’s in the comp when we need it. And we will. Got ourselves a decoy rigged too, Chur and Tully and I-a gift for the kif that’s going to cost them critical speed if they want to pick it up; got it fixed so it’ll look good to their sensors.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“All right to talk?” Hilfy asked.

Pyanfar nodded without comment.

“Where?” Hilfy asked. “If we’re running-where? Meet-point again?”

“No. I considered that, to be sure, throwing the kif off by that. But figuring it and refiguring-we came close enough not making it when we came in with all Urtur’s mass to fix on; and there’s not a prayer of doing it in reverse with only Meetpoint’s little mass to bring us up. I’ve worked possible courses over and over again, and there’s nothing for it-twojump, to Kirdu. It’s a big station; and there’s help possible there.”

“The kif,” said Geran, “will have it figured too. They’ll intercept us at Kita.”

“So we string the jumps,” Pyanfar said, taking a sip of gfi. “No other way, Geran, absolutely no other.”

“Gods,” Chur muttered undiplomatically. Hilfy’s expression was troubled, quick darts of the eyes toward the others, who were more experienced. Tully had stopped eating again and looked up too, catching something of the conversation.

“Consecutive jump,” Pyanfar said to Hilfy. “No delay for recovery time, no velocity dump in the interval and gods know, a hazard where we’re going: we’re bound to boost some of this debris through with us. But the risk is still better than sitting here while the kif population increases. There’s one jump point we have to make: Kita. Past Kita Point, the kif have to take three guesses where we went-Kura, Kirdu, Maing Tol. They might guess right after all, but they still might disperse some ships to cover other possibilities.”

“We’re going home,” Hilfy surmised.

“Who said going home? We’re going to sort this out, that’s what. We’re going to shake a few of them. Get ourselves a place where we can find some allies. That’s what we’re doing.”

“Then the Faha-we could warn them.”

“What, spill where we’re bound? They’ll figure too ... the best hope’s Kirdu. They’ll likely go there.”

“We could warn them. Here. Give them a chance to get out.”

“They can take care of themselves.”

“After we brought the trouble here-“

“My decision,” Pyanfar said.

“I’m not saying that; I’m saying-“

“We can’t help them by springing in their direction. Or how do you plan to get word to them? We’ll make it worse for them, we can only make it worse. You hear me?”

“I hear.” The ears went back, pricked up with a little effort. There was a silence at table, except for the knnn, who wailed on alone, rapt in whatever impulse moved knnn to sing.

And stopped. “Gods,” Haral muttered irritably, shot a worried look the length of the table. Pyanfar returned it, past Hilfy, past the Outsider.

“Pyanfar.” Tully spoke, sat holding his cup as if he had forgotten it, something obviously welling up in him which wanted saying, with a look close to panic. “I talk?” he asked. And when Pyanfar nodded: “What move make this ship?”

“Going closer to home territory, to hani space. We’re going where kif won’t follow us so easily, and where there’s too much hani and mahendo’sat traffic to make it easy for them to move against us. Better place, you understand. Safer.”

He set down the cup, made a vague gesture of a flat nailed long-fingered hand. “Two jump.”

“Yes.”

“#. Need #, captain. #.”

He was sorely, urgently upset. Pyanfar drew in a breath, made a calming gesture. “Again, Tully. Say again. New way.”

“Sleep. Need sleep in jump.”

“Ah. Like the stsho. They have to, yes. I understand; you’ll have your drugs, then, make you sleep, never fear.”

He had started shaking. Of a sudden moisture broke from his eyes. He bowed his head and wiped at it, and was quiet for the moment. Everyone was, recognizing a profound distress. Perhaps he realized: he stirred in the silence and clumsily picked up his knife and jabbed at a bit of meat in his plate, carried it to his mouth and chewed, all without looking up.

“You need drugs to sleep,” Pyanfar said, “and the kif took you through jump without them. That’s what they did, was it?”

He looked up at her.

“Were you alone when you started, Tully? Were there others with you?”

“Dead,” he said around the mouthful, and swallowed it with difficulty. “Dead.”

“You know for sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Did you talk to the kif? Did you tell them what they asked you?”

A shake of his head.

“No?”

“No,” Tully said, looked down again and up under his pale brows. “We give wrong # to their translator.”

“What, the wrong words?”

He still had the knife in his hand. It stayed there with its next morsel, the food forgotten.

“He fouled their translator,” Tirun exclaimed in delight. “Gods!”

“And not ours?” Pyanfar observed.

Tully’s eyes sought toward her.

“I thought you ran that board too quickly,” Pyanfar said. “Clever Outsider. We, you said. Then there were more of you in the kif s hands at the start.”

“The kif take four of us. They take us through jump with no medicine, awake, you understand; they give us no good food, not much water, make us work this translator keyboard same you have. We know what they want from us. We make slow work, make we don’t understand the keyboard, don’t understand the symbols, work all slow. They stand small time. They hit us, bad, push us, bad-make us work this machine, make quick. We work this machine all wrong, make many wrong words, this word for that word, long, long tape-some right, most wrong. One day, two, three-all wrong.” His face contorted. “They work the tape and we make mistake more. They understand what we do, they take one of us, kill her. Hit us all, much. They give us again same work, make a tape they want. We make number two tape wrong, different mistake. The kif kill second one my friends. I-man name Dick James-we two on the ship come to station. They make us know this Akukkakk; he come aboard ship see us. He-“ Again a contortion of the face, a gesture. “He-take my friend arm, break it, break many time two arms, leg-I make fight him, do no good; he hit me-walk outside. And my friend-he ask-I kill him, you understand. I do it; I kill my friend, # kif no more hurt him.”

The silence about the table was mortal. Pyanfar cleared her throat. Others’ ears were back, eyes dilated.

“They come,” Tully went on quietly. “Find my friend dead. They # angry, hit me, bring me out toward this second ship. Outside. Docks. I run. Run-long time. I come to your ship.” He ducked his head, looked up again with a wan, mahendo’sat smile. “I make the keyboard right for you.”

“That kif wants killing,” Haral said.

“Tully,” Pyanfar said. “I understand why you’re careful about questions about where you come from. But I’ll lay odds your space is near the kif-you just listen to me. I think your ship got among kif, and now they know there’s a spacefaring species near their territories, either one they can take from-or one they’re desperately afraid is a danger to them. I don’t know which you are. But that’s what the kif wanted with you, I’m betting-to know more about you. And you know that. And you’re reluctant to talk to us either.”

Tully sat unmoving for a moment. “My species is human.” She caught the word from his own speech.

“Human.”

“Yes, they try ask me. I don’t say; make don’t understand.”

“Your ship-had no weapons. You don’t carry them?”

No answer,

“You didn’t know there was danger?”

“Don’t know this space, no. Jump long. Two jump. # we hear transmission.”

“Kif?”

He shook his head, his manner of no. “I hear-“ He pointed to the com, which remained silent. “That. Make that sound.”

“Knnn, for the gods’ sake.”

He touched his ear. “Say again. Don’t understand.”

“Knnn. A name. A species. Methane breather. You were in knnn territory. Worse and worse news, my friend. Knnn space is between stsho and kif.”

“Captain,” said Geran, “I’d lay bets with a chi the stsho had a finger in this too. Their station, after all ... where the kif felt free to move him about the dock in public ... I daresay the kif didn’t get any questions at all from the stsho.”

Pyanfar nodded thoughtfully, recalling the stsho official, the change in that office or that officer. A smiling welcome, impassive moonstone eyes and delicate lavender brows. A certain cold went up her back. “Stsho’d turn a blind eye to anything that looked like trouble, that’s sure-Imp,” she said, seeing Hilfy’s laidback ears and dilated eyes, “pay attention: this is the way of our friends and allies out here. Gods rot them.-Eat your dinner.”

Tully stirred his plate about, turned his attention back to that, and Pyanfar chewed another bite, thoughtful.

Knnn, kif, stsho . . . gods, the whole pot had been stirred when this Outsider, this human, dropped into the middle of it. An uncomfortable feeling persisted at the back of her neck, like a cold wind of belated reason. The whole dock at Meetpoint, zealously trying not to hear or see anything amiss, with a fugitive on the loose and the kif on the hunt. . . .

There was no particular evil in the stsho-except the desire to avoid trouble. That had always been the way of them. But they were different. No hani read past the patterns. No hani understood them. And, gods, if the knnn were stirred up- along with the kif. ...

She swallowed the dry mouthful and washed it down with a draught of gfi, poured herself another cupful. Tully ate with what looked like appetite. Food disappeared all round the table, and the plates rotated for second helpings.

“I’m going to put Tully on limited assignment,” she said. “He can’t read, sure enough. But some things he can do.” He had looked up. “Niece,” she said, “you’re no longer junior-most on The Pride, this run. Ought to make you happy.”

Hilfy’s brown study evaporated into disquiet. “He’s junior-most?”

“A willing worker,” Pyanfar said, with a wrinking of her nose. “Your responsibility in part, now.”

“Aunt, I-“

“I told you how it was, niece. Hear? You know what we’re dealing with, and what stakes are involved?”

“I hear,” Hilfy said in a faint voice. “No, I don’t know. But I’m figuring it out.”

“Kif,” Geran spat. “They’re different, when the odds go against them.”

“Once-“ Haral said, and winced. The knnn song was back again, shriller. “Rot that.”

“Close,” Pyanfar judged. It was exceedingly clear reception. She met Haral’s eyes facing her down the length of the table, more and more uneasy. The song continued for a moment, too loud to talk above it, then wailed away, gibbering to itself into lower tones.

“Too rotted close,” Haral said. “Captain-“

Pyanfar started to push herself back from table, surrendering to anxiety.

“Chanur Captain,” com said far more faintly, a clicking voice speaking the hani tongue. “Chanur Captain-don’t trouble to acknowledge. Only listen. ...”

Pyanfar stiffened, looked toward com with a bristling at her nape and a lowering of her ears. Everyone was frozen in place.

“The bargain you refused at Meetpoint . . . is no longer available. Now I offer other terms, equal to the situation. A new bargain. A safe departure from this system, for yourself and for the Faha ship now at dock. I guarantee things which properly interest you, in return for one which doesn’t. Jettison the remnant of your cargo, hani thief. You know our ways. If you do the wise thing, we will not pursue you further. You know that we are the rightful owners of that merchandise. You know that we know your name and the names of your allies. We remember wrongs against us. All kif. . . remember crimes committed against us. But purge your name, Pyanfar Chanur. More, save lives which were not originally involved in your act of piracy. Give us only our property, Pyanfar Chanur, and we will take no further action against the Faha and yourself. That is my best offer. And you know now by experience that I mahe no empty threat. Is this matter worth your sure destruction and that of the Faha? Or if you think to run away again, deserting your ally, will you hope to run forever? That will not improve your trade, or mahe you welcome at stations who will learn the hazard of your company. Give it up, thief. It’s small gain against your loss, this thing you’ve stolen.”

“Akukkakk,” Pyanfar said in a low voice when it had done. “So.”

“Aunt,” Hilfy said, carefully restrained. “They’re going to go after Starchaser. First.”

“Undoubtedly they are.” The message began to repeat. Pyanfar thrust herself to her feet. “Gods rot that thing. Down it.”

Chur was nearest. She sprang from her seat and turned down the volume of the wall unit. Others had started working themselves out of their places, Tully among them. Sweat had broken out on his skin, a fine, visible dew.

“Seal the galley,” Pyanfar said. “Secure for jump. We’re moving.”

Hilfy turned a last, pleading look on her. Pyanfar glowered back. And with Geran urging him to move on, Tully delayed, putting out a hand to touch Pyanfar’s shoulder. “Sleep,” Tully pleaded, reminding her, panic large in his eyes.

“For the gods’ sake put him out,” Pyanfar snarled, turned and thrust her own plate and some of the nearer dishes into the disposal, shoved others into the hands of Haral and Tirun and Chur, who were throwing things in as fast as they could snatch them. Hilfy started to help. “Out,” Pyanfar said to Chur.

“That business in the airlock . . . get its lifesupport going. Move it!”

Chur scrambled over the top of the table and ran for the doorway in a scrabbling of claws. Pyanfar turned with fine economy and stalked out in her wake, toward controls. Tirun limped after her, but Pyanfar had no disposition to wait. Anxiety prickled up and down her gut, disturbing the meal she had just eaten, sudden distrust of all the choices she had made up till now, including the one that had a slightly crazed Outsider loose on the ship in a crisis; and knnn near them; and their eyes blinded and their ears deaf to the outside. . . .

She walked into the darkened bridge, slid into the well worn cushion which knew her body’s dimensions, settled in and belted in, heard the stir of others about her, Tirun, Hilfy, Haral. The kif voice continued over com. Elsewhere she heard Tully pleading with Geran over something, trying to get something through the translator which he could only half say. She started running perfunctory clear checks, all internal, threw a look toward her companions. Haral and Tirun were settled and running personal checks on their posts, rough and solid and intent on business. Hilfy had her ears back, her hands visibly shaking in getting her boards ready. So. It was one thing, to ride through kif fire at Meetpoint . . . quite another to face it after thinking about it.

“Please,” a mahendo’sat voice came through, relayed suddenly from Hilfy’s board to hers. “Stand off from station. We appeal to all sides for calm. We suggest arbitration. ...”

They had thrown that out on longrange, plea to all the system, to all their unruly guests, this station full of innocents, where all who could in the system had taken refuge.

And among them, Starchaser.

“That had to antedate the other message,” Pyanfar said morosely. “It’s all old history at station.” That for Hilfy, to get her mind straight. Tully was still talking: she took the translator plug from her ear, shutting down all communication from that quarter, trusting Geran’s not inconsiderable right arm if all else failed.

“Captain.” That was Chur on allship. “ Lifesupport’s on and the lock’s sealed again.”

“Understood, Chur,” she muttered, plying the keyboard and calling up her course plottings. “Take station in lower-deck op.” She would rather Chur on the bridge; but there was Tully loose; there was a kif loose, and time running on them-it was getting late to risk someone moving about in the corridors. She spun half about, indecisive. Hilfy, the weak link, sat at com, scan backup. “What’s the kif doing? Any pickup?”

“Negative,” Hilfy said calmly enough. “Repeat of message. I’m getting a garble out of ships insystem, no sign yet of any disruption. The knnn. ...”

That sound moaned through main com again, a transmission increasingly clear and distinct. Closer to them in this maelstrom of dust and debris. Pyanfar sucked in a breath. “Stand by to transmit, full sensors, all systems; I want a look out there, cousins.” She started throwing switches. The Pride’s nervous system came alive again in flares of color and light, busy ripplings across the boards as systems recalibrated themselves. She hit propulsion and reoriented, reached for the main comp.

“Gods,” Tirun muttered, throwing to her number-one screen the scan image which was coming in, a dusty soup pocked with rocks. “Ship,” Haral said suddenly, number-one scan, and overrode with that sectorized image. Panic hit Pyanfar’s gut. That was close to them, and moving.

“Resolution,” she demanded. The Pride was accelerating, without her shields as yet. The whisper of dust over the hull became a shriek, a scream: they hit a rock and it shrilled along the hull; hit another and a screen erupted with static. “Gods, this muck!”

“Shields,” Haral said.

“Not yet.”

“No resolution,” Tirun said. “Too much debris out there. We’re still blind.”

“ “Gods rot it.” She hit the airlock control, blew it. “We lost something,” Tirun said; “Beeper output,” Hilfy said at once. “Loud and clear. Aunt, is that our decoy?”

Pyanfar ignored the questions, harried. “Longrange com to my board. Now.”

It came through unquestioned, a light on her panel. She put the mike in. “This is Pyanfar Chanur, Hinukku. We’ve just put a pod out the lock. Call it enough, hakkikt. Leave off.”

And breaking that contact, to Hilfy: “Get that on repeat, imp, twice over; and then cut all signal output and ID transmission and output the signal on translator channel five.”

Half a second of paralysis: Hilfy reached for the board, froze and then punched something else over, static-ridden snarl, a hani voice. “Chanur! Go! We’re moving!” It repeated, a rising shriek of urgency like that of the debris against the hull.

“It’s not our timeline,” Pyanfar snapped at Hilfy, but Hilfy was already moving again, outputting one transmission, then clearing, reaching with ears back and a panicked look after what recording she had been ordered, however insane.

“Prime course laid,” Haral pronounced imperturbably. “Referent bracketed.”

“Stand by.” Their acceleration continued: the dust screamed over the hull. Another screen broke up and recovered.

“Aunt,” Hilfy exclaimed, “we’re outputting knnn signal.”

“Right we are,” Pyanfar said through her teeth. She angled The Pride for system zenith, where no outgoing ship belonged. A prickle of sweat chilled her nose, sickly cold, and the wail over the hull continued. “Readout behind us,” Geran said, “confirmed knnn, that ship back there.” Gods rot it, nothing was ever easy. Differential com was suddenly getting another signal in the sputter of dust. “Chanur! Go. ...”

And a kif voice: “Regrettable decision, Faha Captain.”

Pyanfar spat and gulped air against the drag of g, vision tunneled with the stress and with anger. Hour old signal, that from the Faha; at least an hour old, maybe more than that.

“Second ship,” Tirun said. “3/4 by 32 our referent.”

“Get me Starchaser’s course,” Pyanfar said.

“Been trying,” Haral said. “Bearing NSR station, best guess uncertain.” Figures leaped to the number two screen, a schematic covering a quarter of Urtur’s dust-barriered system, below them, system referent.

“Knnn ship,” Hilfy said, “moving on the beeper.-Aunt, they’re going to intercept it.”

Pyanfar hesitated half a beat in turning, a glance at scan which flashed intercept probable on that ship trailing them. Knnn, by the gods, knnn were moving on the decoy, and they were not known for rescues. Something clenched on her heart, instinctive loathing, and in the next beat she flung her attention back toward the system schematic.

No way to help the Faha. None. Starchaser was on her own. Knnn had the decoy; kif were not going to like that. If there ever had been knnn. More than The Pride could play that dangerous game. The scream on the hull rose in pitch-

“Screens,” she snapped at Haral. She reached for drive control, uncapped switches. “Stand by. Going to throw our navigation all to blazes; I’ll keep Alijuun off our nose when we cycle back.” She pulsed the jump drive, once, twice, three times, microsecond darings of the vanes. Her stomach lurched, pulse quickened until the blood congested in her nose and behind her eyes, narrowing vision to a hazed pinpoint. They were blind a third time, instruments robbed of regained referents, velocity boosted in major increments. Dead, if Haral failed them now. But they were old hands at Urtur, knew the system, had a sense where they were even blinded, from a known start.

Down the throat of the kif s search pattern, from zenith ... she pulsed the vanes again, another increment, swallowed hard against the dinner which was trying to come up again. Differential com got them a kif howl, and a mahendo’sat yammering distress.

That, for whatever they had done against Starchaser, skin their backsides for them, a streaking search for a target.

“Ai!” Haral yelped, and instruments flared, near collision. “Chanur!” she heard: the name would be infamy here as at Meetpoint. There were surges and flares all over the board. She pulsed out and in again and the instruments went manic. “Gods,” Haral moaned, “I almost had it.”

“Now, Haral! for the gods’ sake find it!”

Instruments flickered and screens static-mad sorted themselves, manifoldly offended. An alien scream erupted from their own com. Tully, Pyanfar reckoned suddenly: his drugs were not quick enough. They had betrayed him like the kif.

Image appeared on her number one screen: Alijuun. The star was sighted and bracketed and the ID was positive.

“Hail” she yelled, purest relief, and hit the jump pulse for the long one. Her voice wound in and out in a dozen colors, coiled and recoiled through the lattices which opened for them, and the stomach-wrenching sensation of jump swallowed them down. ...

VI

. . . and spat them up again, a dizzying percept of elsewhere. A shimmer before her eyes, that was the screen, and the automated instruments were searching. Keep conscious, don’t go out, not now, keep the hand on controls. . . . “Working,” Haral’s low voice drifted to her out of infinity. “O gods.” That was someone else. Hilfy? A star came into brackets on the screen and wobbled out again. “Check referent,” Pyanfar said. Her blurring eyes sought instruments. A red light was on. “Got a problem,” Haral said, sending cold chills along her back. “No positive ID on referent.”

“Brace.” She started aborting the proposed second jump, dumping speed sufficient for the scanning sensors to make their fix. There was a moan near her when the shift slammed in. Her hand shook like palsy over the controls, hovering over the button. “Gods, we’ve missed,” Haral moaned; and then Tirun: “Abort! we’re vectored massward!”

Dark mass was ahead of them, the mass which had pulled them in from jump, coming up in their faces. Sensors realized it: alarms went off, dinning through the ship. Pyanfar dumped again, hard, flinched as screens went static and one went dead. Something had given way.

“Turning,” she warned the crew. The Pride veered in her next skip, and blood started in Pyanfar’s nose, internal organs and joints and flesh hauled in independent motion. She spat and struggled with the muscles of her eyes to keep focused, fought a strained muscle to keep her hand at the controls. Scan showed hairbreadth miss now and she trimmed ship and let it ride, hurtling for a virtual skim of the obstacle.

A kif voice came in over com. “Identify: urgent.” Someone was waiting in this place, stationed to guard, another of Akukkakk’s long arms.

“Aunt,” Hilfy’s voice came weakly, bubbling liquid. “Kif. . .”

“Got it.” Pyanfar sniffed blood or sweat, licked salt from her mouth, staring at the screens which showed the dark mass hoving up at them . . . tight skim, incredibly tight. Their own output was still knnn-song, wailing up and down the scale, tickings and whines . . . that had to put the kif off. Haral and Tirun talked frantically to each other, searching with the sensors for their way out.

“Got it!” Haral exclaimed suddenly; a star showed up in the bracket.

“Can’t do it,” Pyanfar said: the mass was too close. They had no choice now but to skim past and hope.

“Identify,” the kif voice insisted.

Instruments flared of a sudden, screens going static. “That was fire,” Pyanfar said to Hilfy, “onto our former vector, thank the gods.”

A second flaring: The Pride had returned a shot, automatic response. Of a sudden the alarms went again, crescendo of mechanical panic.

“Mass proximity,” Pyanfar said into allship, for those riding it out below. “We’re going to miss it.”

The solidity was there, a sudden jump in every mass/drive instrument on the bridge, lights flaring red, a static washout on the number four screen: Kita Point mass, a chunk of rock, a cinder radiating only the dimmest warmth into the dark, light-less, lonely, and far, far too big for The Pride to drag with her into jump. . . .

Vid picked up flares of light, massive spots like the glow of a sun in that dark, illumining the surface of Kita mass. Rock boosted in their field out of Urtur had not changed vector. It hit the dark mass at near c, pyrotechnics which flowered the dark.

They passed in that flare of impact, slingshotted with a wrench which brought a new flood of blood to Pyanfar’s throat . . . grayout . . .

. . . back again. “Haral!”

A frantic moment. “There!” Then- referent was back in bracket. A kif voice clicked and chattered out of phase with what they should be getting: that was then a second ship, lying off Kita zenith.

Fire hit them.

Pyanfar slammed the drive back in, with the howl of the kif in her ears, the static spit of instruments trained on the chaos in their wake. She tried with all her wits to keep oriented, a .slow reach of a sore arm while matter came undone about them, while they were naked to the between and time played games with the senses. No way that the kif could have followed. They had run the gauntlet. They were through the worst. After Kita it was one of three destinations and after the next, one of two more; and the choices multiplied, and the kif had harder and harder shift to bring numbers to bear against them. . . .

“We’re fading,” Haral said, words which stretched through infinity, emotion-dulled, nowhere: this was the way it went when ships lost themselves, when they jumped and failed to come out again . . . perhaps some mathematical limbo ... or straight into mahendo’sat hell, where four-armed demons invented horrors . . . Pyanfar dragged her wits together, watched for another such wobble. Damage they had taken under fire could have done something to the vanes, robbed them of capacity, might lose them permanently. . . .

. . . second arrival, a blurring downdrop of the senses into here and when again. Pyanfar reached for the panel and ordered scan search. Differential com was already getting signal: it was the marker of Kirdu System, wondrous, beautiful mahendo’sat voice, the buoy of the jump range.

“We’re in!” Hilfy cried. “We’re in.”

“Clear and in the range,” Pyanfar said, smug. She hit the jump pulse to throw off velocity and the smugness evaporated somewhat: the pulse was queasy, less powerful than it ought to be.

“Captain?” Haral’s voice.

“I feel it.”

“Maintain knnn output?” Hilfy asked.

“Yes.” Pyanfar kept her eyes on the readout, hit the pulse again. “Plot entry vector,” she ordered Tirun. “We might have trailed some debris with us.”

“Reckon we dumped most of the rocks on Kita,” Tirun muttered. She started sending the schematic over, fired off a comp-signal warning for what good it would do a slow ship in the path of their debris-attended entry. The dump went on, sickly pulses which finally began to count.

“That’s better,” Pyanfar said, swallowing against the stress. “Hilfy, got a lag estimate?”

“Approximate,” Hilfy said in a thin voice. “Thirty-minute roundtrip to station, estimate.”

Close, by the gods, too close. Pyanfar kept the dump pulses going at the closest possible intervals, kept her eyes nowhere but the center screen now, the relayed scan from the station buoy which plotted the location of ships and planets and large objects in the system. Automation had added in the warning The Pride had sent out, a hazard zone in a cone headed transzenith of system.

“Getting refinement on course,” Haral said as a schematic came up on number two screen. It took only a little bending: check velocity, the warning kept flashing. Pyanfar coaxed another dump out of The Pride and made the slight correction, her senses swimming now with the prolonged strain of high-velocity reckonings, with stringing her mind along those distances and speeds which the ship’s own comp handled in special conflict-dumping mode.

“Down the slot!” Tirun cried as the lines matched.

They were dead on at last, free and safe and headed down the approach path station had preassigned the next incomer in that area of the range. Pyanfar afforded herself a lighter breath, still with her eyes fixed on the scan, trying to figure how much more they could dump and how fast. Let one miner be where he ought not to be, let one skimmer have gone off for some private reason without advising station in advance, some idiot crossing the entry lanes, some mad knnn or chi, with whom there was never any reasoning, navigation hazards wherever they operated. . . .

Sweat ran, or blood. She sniffed and wiped at her nose, eyes still fixed and hand on the button. They rode the odds; they came in like a shot, counting on statistics and blind luck and traffic being exactly where it ought: one could do that a few times in a lifetime and not run out of luck.

“Acquiring station signal,” Hilfy said. “That’s tc’a talking now, I think. It’s this knnn signal of ours. . . .”

“Cut the signal. Give station our proper ID. Relay pirate attack; damage and emergency, and probable accompanying debris.”

“Got it,” Hilfy said.

Pyanfar hit the dump again, forced them a little more toward a sane speed, and a board redlighted. She cycled in a backup.

Haral unbelted and leaned into the pit beside her console, frantic readjustments.

There might be kif in dock at Kirdu . . . gods, would be kif here, by all the odds, and just possibly one of them had come through from Urtur. But this was Kirdu: mahendo’sat here, in their own territory, had teeth, and took no arguments from visitors. They would demand explanations for such an entry. Gods grant whatever remaining debris they had boosted through with them from Urtur found no mahendo’sat targets, or there would be more than an explanation due.

“Something’s left station,” Tirun said. The image showed up on the number two screen. Ships were outbound, four of them, one after the other, moving on intercept, dopplering into their path. “Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, “signal general alert, all hani ships insystem.”

“Done,” Hilfy said, moving to do it. Haral slid back into place, set to work in haste at the comp. The number one screen started acquiring estimates, locational shifts on the oncomers and everything else in the system. That was station guard which had just put out, more than likely: The Pride had broken regulations from entry to this moment, heaps and piles of regulations. Some mangy mahe station official was likely elbow deep in the rule books this moment hunting penalties, Pyanfar’s nose wrinkled at the thought of the fines, the levies, the arguments.

“Getting signal on the ships outcoming,” Hilfy said. “They’re mahendo’sat, all right.”

“Huh.” Pyanfar blew a sigh of relief. Worse had been possible, worse indeed. “Geran,” she said over allship. “Chur. Are you getting this down there? We’re all right; station’s ending us an escort.”

“Coming in clear, captain.”

“Is everything secure down there? How’s Tully? Have you got a monitor on him?”

“He’s here in op with us,” Geran said. “Drugs are wearing off. He’s muzzy but following what’s going on.”

“No more risks, rot you; who cleared that?-Take scan on number four for approach; give us some relief up here; and get him secure.”

“I friend.” Tully’s voice came back to her, hani words. And others, his own tongue, a flood of words. “Shut him down,” Pyanfar hissed; and there was silence. “Working,” Chur’s voice reported, and Tirun paused in her frantic pace, dropped her head into hands and wiped them back over her mane. She took the chance for a drink, from a plastic bottle from under-counter, passed it to Hilfy and then to Tirun and then to Haral and Haral to Pyanfar. The remnant went down, a welcome cooling draught. Pyanfar took the chance to call up comp to locate the damage, gnawed her upper lip as the information came through incomplete. She looked right, at the others, at Hilfy, who was listening to something, with a bruised, exhausted look on her face. “Shunt that below when they get the Outsider settled,” Pyanfar said to her, and looked at Haral, who was still doing updates. “Damage indeterminate,” she said to Haral privately. “I don’t feel any lag in the insystem responses, at least. It should be a normal dock, but we’re going to have to get a hurryup on that repair and I don’t know how to the gods we’re going to finance the bribe.”

“Aunt,” Hilfy said, “station is on, wants to talk to you personally. I told them-“

“Captain.” Lowerdeck overrode, sent up an image on scan.

Ship in the jump range, incoming, on their tail.

“Gods,” Pyanfar hissed. “Gods rot all kif-Hilfy: ID, fast.”

Hilfy hesitated half a breath: Tirun was already overreaching a long arm onto her territory. Wailing came through, and Pyanfar grimaced at the high-pitched squeal.

“Knnn,” Tirun said. “Captain, it’s that rotted knnn.”

“We don’t know it’s that knnn,” Pyanfar spat back, snatching the mike-waved an angry gesture with it at Hilfy. “Station. Station, and get your wits working, niece.”

The ready light came on. “Go,” Hilfy said, distraught and J wild-eyed, and subdued the knnn pickup.

“This is Kirdu Station,” the machine-translated voice came through. “We mahe urgent severe protest this entry. Go slow, hani captain incoming.”

“This is The Pride of Chanur, Pyanfar Chanur speaking. We’re incoming with an unidentified on our tail and with damage, but we have maneuverability. The ship behind us may pose a threat to station; I suggest your escort direct its attention to what’s following us.”

Com stayed dead, longer than lagtime dictated.

“Escort is passing turnover point,” Geran’s quiet voice came from the other op center. “Captain, they’re going to pass us, going to go out and look that bastard over.”

Pyanfar looked, saw, returned her attention to comp, where new estimate was coming up on the position of the incoming ship. It was close, moving hard, no dump of speed.

“Got a hani contact,” said Hilfy. “Tahar.”

“Gods and thunders.” This was not a friendly house to Chanur. Pyanfar picked up the contact on her board. “Tahar ship, this is Pyanfar Chanur. Stand ready for trouble. Don’t be caught at dock.”

“Chanur, this is Dur Tahar. Is this your trouble?”

“It has no patent, Tahar, not so far. Stand out from station, I warn you. In case.”

“Chanur,” the translated voice of station broke in on them. “Tahar Captain. Against regulation, this. “Use station channel. And this station order stay. No moving out.”

“We’re coming in, station. We advise you ships are destroyed and lives lost. If that ship back there is knnn, well; but if it isn’t, Kirdu has trouble.”

Another voice, clicking and harsh. Kif.

“That’s from a docked ship,” Hilfy said quickly. “Got it on station directional.”

“Captain.” That from Tirun. “Incomer’s just begun dump; they’re checking speed.”

Pyanfar blinked, the suspicion of good news hitting dully on a dazed brain. She drew a whole breath. “Gods grant it is knnn,” she muttered. “Station, you should be getting that now: we’ll make a full explanation as soon as we get in and get our mechanical problems in order. We strongly urge you take full precautions and get a positive visual on that so-named knnn arrival. We have serious charges to lodge.”

Silence from station. They were not, most likely, overjoyed.

Pyanfar broke the contact. “Bastards.” She wiped her mouth, straightened her beard with her fingers. “Cowards.” The escort passed and headed out to the incoming ship behind them. She settled back in her cushion and listened to the reports.

“Aunt,” Hilfy said finally, “mahendo’sat report visual confirmation: it is a knnn ship.”

“Thank the gods,” Pyanfar muttered, and threw open the restraint on her cushion, leaned forward more comfortably. Station was coming up. A flurry of docking instructions was arriving on the number three screen.

Not kif behind them, only a vastly confused knnn. She gave a wry pursing of the mouth, imagining the chagrin of the odd creatures, who had arrived to far more commotion than knnn were wont to stir under any circumstances. Coincidence, perhaps; ships came and went from everywhere-gods, rare to have two ships come into a jump range that close, but not that rare. Kirdu had a great deal more traffic than that generated by The Pride. This was civilization, here at Kirdu, civilization, after all.

She drew a series of quieter breaths. Watched the schematic which showed them the way toward docking. Tired. Indeed she was tired. She ached in her bones. It took a moral effort to settle in for docking maneuvers, to do it by manual because she wanted the feel of it, not to be surprised by some further malfunction under automatic.

She was already mentally sorting through possible arguments with the Tahar, a loan, anything to get The Pride’s repairs made and paid, to get out of this place: they needed no more damages than they had, and most of all they did not need prolonged residence here.

If they were very, very fortunate, the kif were sorting matters out with a certain knnn who had picked up a bit of salvage at Urtur; and that knnn might not be amused by a hani joke. The great hakkikt Akukkakk would be even less amused . . . but he would have a hard time negotiating with the knnn for a look at its prize; and a harder time with his fellow kif .. indeed he would. She felt, in all, satisfied.

But a knnn had happened through jump with them; had happened to crowd them. Gods ... did they have apparatus which made tracking possible?

Its voice was back, distant and eerie, like that which she had duplicated at Urtur, to use a knnn voice as shield and disguise.

Gods knew what message they had been transmitting to knnn hearing: follow me? Help me? Something far less friendly?

Tc’a might know; but there was no querying that side of Kirdu Station.

They came up on dock, moving in next the Tahar ship: Kirdu wanted its hani problems collected, apparently, giving them berths next each other. In some part that was good, because it gave them private access to talk without witnesses; and in another part it was not, because it made them one single target.

“Where are the kif?” she asked station bluntly, stalling on the approach. “I’m not putting my nose into station until I know what berths they have.”

“Number twenty and twenty-one,” station informed her. “Mahe and stsho in the between numbers, no trouble, no trouble, hani captain. You make easy dock, please.”

She wrinkled her nose and committed them, not without contrary thoughts.

VII

The Pride’s nose went gently into dock, the grapples clanged to and accesses thumped open, and Pyanfar thrust back from the panel with a sudden watery feeling about the joints. Station chattered at them, requests for routine cooperations. “Shut down,” she said curtly, waved a weary signal at Haral and pushed the cushion round the slight bit it could go. “Hilfy: tell station offices. Tell them we’ve got some shakeup. I’ll talk with them when we get internal business settled.”

“Aye,” Hilfy murmured, and relayed the message, with much flicking of the ears in talking with the official and a final flattening of them. Pyanfar shortened her focus, on Tirun, who was running her last few checks. Her hands made small uncertain movements; her ears were drooping. “Tirun,” Pyanfar said, and Tirun’s face when she looked around showed the strain. “Out,” Pyanfar said. “Now.”

Tirun stared at her half a moment, and ordinarily Tirun would have mustered argument. She looked only numb, and pushed back from her place and tried, a faltering effort which got her to her feet, and a reach which got her to the next console. They all scrambled for her, but Hilfy was quickest, flung an arm about her. “She goes to quarters,” Pyanfar said. “Aye,” Haral said, and took charge from Hilfy, replacing Tirun’s support on that side.

Hilfy stood a moment. Pyanfar looked on her back, on the backs of Tirun and Haral as Tirun limped away trying not to limp; and Hilfy straightened her shoulders and looked back.

“I’ll stay on the com,” Hilfy offered.

“Leave it. Let station wonder. Clean up.”

Hilfy nodded stiffly, turned and walked out, quite, quite without swagger, with a hand to steady her against the curvature-feeling of the deck when they were docked. It occurred to Pyanfar then that Hilfy had not been sick, not this time. Pyanfar drew a deep breath, let it go, turned and leaned over the com. “Lowerdeck, who’s at station?”

“Geran,” the voice came back. “All stable below.”

“Clean up. Above all get Tully straightened up and presentable.”

“Understood.”

Pyanfar broke the connection. There was another call coming over com.

“Chanur, this is Tahar’s Moon Rising. Private conference.”

“Tahar, this is Pyanfar Chanur: we have a medical situation in progress. Stand by that conference.”

“Do you require assistance, Pride of Chanur?”

There was, infinitesimal in the tone,, satisfaction in that possibility. Pyanfar sweetened her voice with prodigious effort. “Hardly, Moon Rising. I’ll return the call at the earliest possible. Chanur’s respects, Tahar. Out.”

She broke off with abruptness, pushed back and strode off, without swagger in her stride either. All her joints seemed rearranged, her head sitting precariously throbbing on a body which complained of abuses. Her nape bristled, not at kif presence, but at an enemy who sat much closer to home.

Gods. Beg of the Tahar?

Of a house which had presented formidable threat to Chanur during Kohan’s holding? The satisfaction in the Tahar whelp’s voice hardly surprised her. It was a spectacle, The Pride with her gut missing and her tail singed. There would be hissing laughter in Tahar, the vid image carried home for the edification of Kahi Tahar and his mates and daughters.

And from Tahar it would go out over Anuurn, so that it would be sure to come to Kohan. There would be challenges over this, beyond doubt there would be challenges. Some Tahar whelp would get his neck broken before the dust settled, indeed he would: young males were always optimists, always ready to set off at the smell of advantage, the least edge it might afford them.

They would try. So. They had done that before.

That was what Dur Tahar had wind of.

“She’s well enough,” Haral reported at the door of the crew’s quarters on the lower deck. Pyanfar looked beyond and saw Tirun snugged down in bed and oblivious to it all. “Leg swelled a bit under the stress, but no worry.”

Pyanfar frowned. “Good medical facilities here onstation. But it might be we’d have to pull out abruptly; I don’t want to risk leaving any of us behind for a layover, not... under the circumstances.”

“No,” Haral agreed. “No need for that. But we’re wearing thin, captain.”

“I know,” she said.

“You too, begging your leave.”

“Huh.” She laid her hand on Haral’s shoulders. Walked away to the lift, paused there and listened in the direction of Chur and Geran’s post. She walked back that way and leaned in at the door of op, where Geran sat watch, washed and in clean blue trousers, but looking on the world with the dull look someone ought to have who had gone from one on-shift to the next without sleep. “Right,” Pyanfar said simply, recalling that she had given them orders they were following, and leaned an arm against the doorframe. “Tully made it all right down here, did he?”

“No trouble from him.”

“I’m going to have to take him up on that work offer. You and Chur trade off with him, one on and one off. Tirun’s ailing.”

“Bad?”

“G stress didn’t favor that leg. We’ll rest here as much as we can. I’m going to see what charity I can get out of Tahar. Need to find out what damage we’ve got, first off.”

“Got a remote on it,” Geran said, turned about and called it up on the nearest screen. Pyanfar came into the room, looked at the exterior camera image, which was from the observation blister, and suffered a physical pang at the sight. Number one vane had a mooring line snaking loose, drifting about under station’s rotation, and there were panels missing, dark spots on the long silver bar. “That was our fade,” Pyanfar said with a belated chill. “Gods. Could have lost it all coming in with that loose. Going to take a skimmer crew to get that linked back up, no way the six of us can do it.”

“Money,” Geran said dismally. “Might have to sell one of us to the kif after all.”

“Bad joke,” Pyanfar said, and walked out.

Tully, she had thought, with an impulse of which she was heartily ashamed.

But she kept thinking of it, all the way up to her own quarters.

She stripped and showered, shed a mass of fur into the drain; dried and combed and arranged her mane and beard. It was the red silk breeches this time, the gold armlet, the pendant pearl. She surveyed herself with some satisfaction, a lift in her spirits. Appearances meant something, after all. The mahendo’sat were sensitive to the matter, quite as much as the stsho.

Offended prosperity, that was the tack to take with them. They knew The Pride. As long as it seemed that Chanur’s fortunes were intact and that Chanur was still a power to reckon with among hani, that long they might hold some hope of mahendo’sat eagerness to serve.

And there was, she reckoned, smiling coldly at the splendid hani captain in the mirror, there was deadly earnest in this haste.

There was Akukkakk.

Gods rot it all.

Possibly she had embarrassed him enough that his own would turn on him. That would take time to know. A long time out from homeport, keeping her ear alert for rumor.

Get rid of the Outsider Tully . . . would that the disentanglement were that easy.

She stared into her own eyes, ears flat, and meditated the villainy that any trader seeing the Outsider would think on naturally as breathing; and after a little thinking her lips pursed in a grimly smug smile.

So, so, so, Pyanfar Chanur. There was a way to settle more than one problem. Likely Tully would not like it, but an Outsider who came begging passage could take what he could get, and it was not in her mind to beg from Tahar.

She checked com, found the expected clutter of messages waiting attention. “Nothing really urgent,” Geran said. “Station’s still upset, that’s the sum of them.”

“Chur’s got Tully, has she, cleaning him up?”

“A little problem there.”

“Don’t tell me problem. I’ve got problems. What problem?”

“He has his own ideas, our Tully does. He wants to be shaved.”

“Gods and thunders. Washroom?”

“Here, now.”

“I’m coming down there.”

She started for the door, went back and picked up the audio plug for the translator and headed down in haste. Shaved. Her ears flattened, pricked again in a forced reckoning that customs were customs.

But appearances, by the gods. . . .

She arrived in op in deliberate haste, found the trio there, Geran, Chur, Tully, all cleanly and haggard and drowning their miseries in a round of gfi. They looked up, Tully most anxious of all, still possessed, thank the gods, of all his mane and beard and decent-looking in a fresh pair of trousers.

“Pyanfar,” he said, rising.

“Captain,” she corrected him sternly. “You want what, Tully? What problem?”

“Wants the clippers,” Chur said. “I trimmed him up a bit.” She had. It was a good job. “He wants the beard off.”

“Huh. No, Tully. Wrong.”

Tully sank down again, the cup of gfi in his two hands, looked chagrined. “Wrong.”

Pyanfar heaved a sigh. “That’s reasonable. You do what I say, Tully. You have to look right for the mahendo’sat. You look good. Fine.”

“Same # hani.”

“Like hani, yes.”

“Mahendo’sat. Here.”

“You’re safe. It’s all right. Friendly folk.”

Tully’s mouth tightened thoughtfully. He nodded peaceably enough. Then he reached a hand behind his head and knotted the pale mane back in his fingers. “Right, that?”

“No,” Pyanfar said. The hand .dropped.

“I do all you say.”

Pyanfar flicked her ears, thrust her hands into her waistband. “Do all?” She felt pricklish in the area of her honor, and the Outsider’s pale eyes gazed up at her with disturbing confidence. “It might frighten you, what I want. I might ask too much.”

Some of that got through. The confidence visibly diminished.

“I make you afraid, Tully?” She gestured wide, toward the bow. “There’s a station out there, Kirdu Station. Mahendo’sat species is the authority in this place. There’s a hani ship docked next to us. Stsho species too, down the dock.”

“Kif?”

“Two kif ships, not the same ones. Not Akukkakk’s, not likely. Traders. They’re trouble if we linger here too long, but they won’t make any sudden move. I want you to go outside, Tully. I want you to come with me, out in the open, on station dock, and meet the mahendo’sat.”

He did understand. A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I’m crew of this ship,” he said. It seemed a question.

“Yes. I won’t leave you here. You stay with me.”

“I come,” he said.

That simply. She stared at him a moment, deliberately held out her hand toward the cup in his. He looked perplexed for a moment, then surrendered it to her. She drank, subduing a certain shudder, handed it back to him,

He drank as well, glanced at her, measuring her reaction by that look, finished the cup. No prejudices. No squeamishness about other species. She nodded approval.

“Go with you, captain,” Chur offered.

“Come on, then,” Pyanfar said. “Geran, you stay; can’t leave the ship with no one watching things, and the others are off. We’re going just to station offices and back, and it shouldn’t be trouble. I don’t expect it, at least.”

“Right,” Geran said, not without a worried look.

Pyanfar put a hand on Tully’s shoulder, realized the chill of his skin, the perpetually hunched posture when he was sitting. He stood up, shivered a bit. “Tully. The translator won’t work outside the ship, understand. Once out the rampway, we can’t understand each other. So I tell you here: you stay with me; you don’t leave me; you do all that I say.”

“Go to the offices.”

“Offices, right.” She laid one sharpclawed fingertip amid his chest. “I’ll try to get it through to you, my friend. If we go about with you aboard in secret, if we leave mahendo’sat territory with you and go on to Anuurn, to our own world- that could be trouble. Mahendo’sat might think we kept something they should have known about. So we make you public, let them all have a look at you, mahendo’sat, stsho, yes, even the kif. You wear clothes, you talk some hani words, you get yourself registered, proper papers, all the things a good civilized being needs to be a legal entity in the Compact. I’ll get it all arranged for you. There’s no way after you have those papers that anyone can claim you’re not a sapient. I’ll register you as part of my crew. I’ll give you a paper and where I tell you, you put your name on it. And you don’t give me any trouble. Does enough of that get through? It’s the last thing I can tell you.”

“Don’t understand all. You ask. I do it.”

She wrinkled her nose, threw an impatient wave of her hand at Chur. “Come on.”

Chur came. Tully did, blindly trusting, at which she scowled and walked along in front of them both to the lock, hands thrust into the back of her waistband, wondering whether station offices had detectors and whether they could get away with a concealed weapon, going where they were going. She decided against it, whatever the other risks.

A watcher stood by the rampway outside, a mahe dock-worker who scampered off quickly enough when they showed outside, and who probably made a call to his superiors . . . the mahendo’sat were discreetly perturbed, polite in their surveillance. But they were there. Pyanfar saw it, and Chur did; and Tully turned a frightened look toward the sudden movement. He talked at them, but the translator was helpless now, outside the range of the inship pickup, and Pyanfar laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder and kept him moving. “Just a precaution,” she said, a quiet tone, and looked beyond to the rampway access of Moon Rising, where a far more hazardous watcher stood, a hani crewwoman.

“Better take care of that business,” Pyanfar said to Chur, and diverted heir course diagonally among the canister-carriers toward Moon Rising.

Another hani showed up outside, on the run: second crewwoman, doubled reflection of the other, same wide stance and steady stare. At a certain distance Pyanfar stopped, and waited, and made a subtle sign to Chur, who strode forward to meet the others.

There was an exchange too quiet for her ears ... no friendliness in the postures, but no overt unpleasantness. Chur came back, not in haste, not delaying any either, ears flat.

“Their captain’s asleep,” Chur reported. “She proposes to come aboard The Pride when her nap’s done. Answer, captain?”

“Why should I? I wasn’t advised. But I may let her come. It suits me.” She turned without a glance at the others, put a hand on Tully’s hairless back and steered him away with them.

And if the Tahar captain was in fact sleeping, she would not be by the time those two rag-ears got back inside, to report the Chanur captain had a companion of unknown species, headed for station offices. The Tahar had gotten caught in their own arrogance, and Chanur failed to rise to the insult, simply walked off. Pyanfar threw a little swagger into the departure, for the Tahar and for the gaping mahe dockworkers, some of whom fled in haste to report to superiors or to gather comrades, a dark-furred and scantly clad crowd.

“They noticed,” Chur said.

“That they have.” Pyanfar locked her hands behind her and they strolled along in company, one tall hani captain in scarlet, one smallish hani crewwoman in roughspun(blue, and improbably between them, a towering wide-shouldered Outsider with naked skin and a beautiful golden mane, excruciatingly conspicuous. Pyanfar suffered an irrepressible rush of the blood, a tightening of the lips as a crowd began to gather, far more people than those who worked the docks. Mahendo’sat, dockers and merchanters and miners and gods knew what else; and a scatter of stsho, pale and pastel among the crowd, their whitish eyes round as moons, holding each others’ hands and chattering together in shock. Of the kif . . . no sign as yet, but the rumor would draw them, she was well sure of that, and wished in that regard that she had that gun she had thought of taking.

They, reached the lift, pushed the button, mahe giving way about them and crowding back again at every opportunity, a roar of crowd-noise about them. “Captain,” someone asked, one of the mahendo’sat. “What is this being?”

She turned about with a grin which lacked all patience, and mahendo’sat who knew hani backed up, but there was humor in it too, satisfaction at the turmoil. The lift arrived, and a half dozen startled mahe decided to vacate it, whether or not they had planned on getting out on this level. They edged out the door in haste and Pyanfar seized Tully by the arm and put him inside. Chur delayed while she stepped in, and came last, lacing the crowd. The door delayed, time enough for anyone else who thought they wanted to ride up with them, but no one entered. The door closed, and the lift shot upward. Pyanfar let go of Tully’s arm and put her hand on his back, ready to indicate to him to move out. He was sweating despite the chill in the air.

On the other side of him Chur patted his arm. The lift stopped once. Those waiting decided against entering, eyes wide; and the lift went on up.

“Friend,” Tully said nervously, out of his scant hani repertoire.

“Mahendo’sat and stsho,” Pyanfar said. “Friend. Yes.”

The car stopped a second time, a quieter corridor in the office complex. Tully walked with them, out and down the hall, startling other mahe workers.

And stopped, abruptly. A kif came from the offices ahead, stopped and stared, anonymous in gray robes and doleful kifish face. Pyanfar seized Tully’s arm, pulled the claws in when he winced, but the sting got him moving. They passed the kif and the kif turned; Pyanfar did not react to it, but Chur, crew and unburdened with captaincy, faced about with ears flat and a snarl on her face. Likely the kif kept staring. Pyanfar whisked Tully through the welcome office doors ahead and only then turned to cast a look back; but the kif was on its way, robes aswirl in its haste, and Chur, ears still flat, joined them inside the registry office. Tully smelled of sweat. Veins stood out in his arms. Pyanfar patted his shoulder and looked round the gaudy colored room at a frozen officeful of mahendo’sat, most standing.

“I’m Pyanfar Chanur. You requested an interview.”

There was a general flutter, the foremost of the officials dithering about letting them through the general registry area to the more secluded complex behind the doors, with a dozen looks at Tully in the process.

“Come along,” Pyanfar urged him softly, keeping a hand on his elbow, and now she sweated, reckoning the shocks Tully had endured thus far, a kif in the hall, close spaces . . . one irrational moment and he could bolt; or strike at someone- “Friend,” she said, and he stayed by her.

The official let them through into a luxurious waiting area, thick carpet and pillowlike couches in bright colors, hastened about providing them refreshment as they settled on a facing group of couches. “Sit, sit,” Pyanfar said, providing Tully the example, legs tucked and ankles crossed, and Chur waited until Tully had settled nervously on the facing couch. Chur sank down in relief. The official set the welcoming tray on a portable table in their midst. His dark mahe eyes were alive with curiosity. “Beg understanding, hani captain . . . this is-passenger?”

“Crew,” Pyanfar said with a prim pursing of the lips. She accepted the glass the squatting mahe filled, two-handed mahe style in her holding of it; and saw to her satisfaction that the mahe had in fact provided three glasses. He filled the second and gave it to Chur, whose manners were impeccable, and with some diffidence, offered to Tully.

Tully took his after the same fashion, keen mimic. Pyanfar smiled to herself and smothered the smile in a sip of mahendo’sat liquor. The official pattered out with effusive and anxious bows, leaving them alone; and whatever Tully thought of the liquor he had the self-possession not to flinch from it.

“Friend,” Tully said again, looking worried. Chur, beside him, put a hand on his knee and he seemed to take reassurance from that. Panic, not quite, but his skin glistened with sweat, his muscles were taut. Steps sounded just outside the door at the side of the room and he would have looked around, but Chur patted his knee and he refrained.

The door opened. A handful of mahendo’sat, important with elaborate bright kilts and collars, came in on them, one of them attended by a small brown and white fluff which scurried about the floor at its feet and bristled at the scent of hani. It hissed and had to be scooped up in the official’s arms; and Pyanfar kept a wary eye on it all the same, rising in respect to the visitors. Chur and Tully followed her lead, and she bowed and suffered the mahendo’sat’s frankly appraising stare at Tully. They chattered among themselves, no little disturbed, and some of that she caught, exclamations of curiosity: the fluff growled, and its owner-an elderly mahe whose dark fur was graying and whose flat face had all the other attributes of age-looked toward her with a lowering of the ears.

“Chanur captain?”

“The same. Have I the honor to know you?”

“Ahe Stasteburana-to, I.”

The stationmaster in person. She made another bow, and the stationmaster did the same, keeping the equilibrium of the pampered creature in his arms, soothing its growls unsuccessfully as he straightened again. And with apparent distraction Stasteburana strolled off, while another of the company made a stiffer bow and launched into them. “You pay, Chanur captain, fines for reckless approach. Fines for bring debris boosted through, danger to all innocent. Fines for reckless haste near station. For bring hazardous situation.”

“I spit at your charges. I dumped the debris at Kita and warned you only in the remote chance there was still some with me, dumped it, I might add, and sustained damage protecting your worthless station from injury. As for fines, you’re brigands, bloodsuckers, to prey off a friendly ship with a long-standing account at this station, when for the preservation of our lives and the protection of the Compact we had to come in for shelter against piracy. A hani, a hani, mind, asks shelter, and when have we ever done such a thing? Are you blind and deaf as well as greedy?”

“We have outrage. We have knnn act crazy out there. We have report-“

The Personage Stasteburana held up his aged and manicured hand. His Voice silenced herself and broke off with a bow, while Stasteburana strolled back, stroking his ball of fluff, which had never ceased to growl. “You make large commotion, honorable Chanur, great hani captain, yes, we know you- long time absent; maybe trade our rival Ajir, but we know you. Good friend, we. Maybe make deal on fines. But serious matter. Where come from?”

“Meetpoint and Urtur via Kita, wise mahe.”

“With this?” An ears-flat look at Tully.

“An unfortunate. A being of great sensitivity, wise and gentle mahe. His ship was wrecked, his companions gone . . . he cast himself on my charity and proves of considerable value.”

“Value, hani, captain?”

“He needs papers, wise mahe, and my ship needs repairs.”

Again Stasteburana walked away, aloof from the Voice. “Your ship got no cargo,” the Voice spat. “You come empty hand, make big trouble here. You near ask credit, hani captain; what credit? We make you fines, you send Anuurn get cargo, maybe two, three hani ship pay off damages. You got us knnn. You got us kif. We know this. You go talk hani at next berth, ask she pay your fines.”

“Trivial. I have cargo, better than Moon Rising. I make you a deal, indeed I shall, in spite of your uncivilized behavior. I make a deal all mahendo’sat will want.”

The Voice looked at Tully, and the Personage turned about, moved in with a leisurely grace, handed the small noisy animal to the Voice, and frowned. Stasteburana made a further sign to his other three companions, and one of them called to someone in the hall.

It was not easy to make distinctions of mahendo’sat of the same age and sex and build; but about the large and relatively plain fellow who answered that summons . . . there was an instant and queasy familiarity-particularly when he flashed a broad gilt-edged smile. Pyanfar sucked in her breath and tucked her hands behind her, pulling the claws back in.

“Captain Ana Ismehanan-min of the freighter Mahijiru,” Stasteburana said softly. “Acquaintance to you, yes.”

“Indeed,” Pyanfar said, and bowed, which gesture Gold-tooth returned with a flourish. ‘

“This kif business,” said Stasteburana, folding his wrinkled hands at his middle. “Explain, hani Captain.”

“Who am I to know what a kif thinks? They let this unfortunate being slip their fingers and expected me to sell him back, plainly illegal. Then they attacked a hani ship which was

Completely ignorant of the matter. A Handur ship was completely destroyed unless the captain of Mahijiru has better news.”

“No good news,” Goldtooth agreed sadly. “All lost, hani captain. All. I get away quick, come here tell story my port.”

The Personage turned and tapped Goldtooth on the shoulder, spoke to him in one of those obscure mahen languages outside her reckoning. Goldtooth bowed profoundly and backed aside, and Pyanfar looked warily at the Personage. “You know,” she said, to recover the initiative, “what the kif wanted; and you know that there’s no chance of hiding such a prize, not here, not on Anuurn either. No good hiding it at all.”

“I make you-“ There was a beep from someone’s pager. A voice followed, and one of the attendants came forward in consternation, offered the instrument to the hand of the Personage Stasteburana. There was talk of knnn: that much past the local dialect; and the Personage’s dark eyes grew wider. “Where is it?” Pyanfar caught that much of the conversation, and saw distress among the others. “You come,” said Stasteburana himself, not using his Voice for instruction, and swept a gesture to the doorway from which the mahendo’sat had come into the room.

“Come,” Pyanfar echoed to Chur and Tully, and walked along amid the mahe, the attendants and the Voice and the captain of Mahijiru, all in the wake of the Personage, who was-hastening with some evident alarm.

The corridor debouched on an operations center. Technicians in the aisles melted aside for the Personage and his entourage. The Voice hissed orders, and the fluff hissed too, in general menace. On the air a tc’a spoke, a sound like static bursts and clicking.

“Screen,” Stasteburana ordered in his own tongue.

The main screen livened in front of them, meters wide and showing a dimly lit dockside. Blues and violets, a horrid light, like nightmare, and a scuttling shape like a snarl of hair possessed of an indefinite number of thin black legs. It darted this I way and that, dragging with it, clutched in jaws-appendages—under the hair?-something which glittered with metal and had the look of a long-limbed hani body.

With a sinking feeling Pyanfar recognized it. It was a good J bet that Chur and Tully did, who had conspired in its construction.

“That’s a knnn,” Pyanfar said to Tully. He said something I back, short and unhappy. On the screen the creature scurried I this way and that with its burden, eluding the attempts of writhing shapes in the shadows which tried to deal with it: those were tc’a. Something stiltlike joined the commotion, darted at the flitting knnn and tugged at the prize, skittered off again. CM, by the gods: those manic beggars; the limbs glowed phosphorescent yellow, left confusing trails on the screen in its haste.

Of a sudden a pair of tc’a writhed into the knnn’s way, physically dispossessed the knnn of its burden; and the knnn darted about the harder, wailing with rage or distress or simply trying to communicate. The scene was complete chaos; and suddenly more knnn poured in. The solitary chi fled, a blur of yellow-glowing sticks; and in the mahendo’sat control center, technicians who had been seated stood up to watch what had become riot. Hisses and clicks and wails came from the audio. The knnn began to give ground, a phalanx of hairy snarled masses.

Suddenly one darted forward, seized one of the leathery, serpent-shaped tc’a and dragged it off into their retreating line. There was a frantic hissing and clicking from the mass of tc’a; but apart from a milling about, a writhing and twining of dozens of serpentine bodies like so many fingers lacing and unlacing in distress . . . nothing Not the least attempt at counterattack or rescue. Pyanfar watched the kidnapping with her ears laid back.

So the knnn had traded, after its fashion, darted onto station and laid down its offered goods-made off with something it took for fair; and now another species had descended to trading in sapients.

“What is it?” a mahe asked distressedly, and fell silent. The main body of the tc’a managed to drag the knnn’s trade goods along, a grotesque flailing of suited arms and legs. A communication came through, and a technician approached the Personage Stasteburana. “Hani-make eva-pod,” that one said, and Stasteburana turned a disturbed glance on Pyanfar, who lifted her ears and assumed her most careless expression.

“I shouldn’t want to disturb you,” Pyanfar said. “All you’ll find in that suit, wise mahe, is a very spoiled lot of meat from our locker; I’d advise you take decontamination precautions before taking that pod helmet off.”

“What you do?” Stasteburana spoke in anger without his Voice, and waved his Voice off when she attempted to intervene. “What you do, Chanur captain?”

“The knnn seems to have intercepted a gift of mine meant for the kif. It’s confused, I’m sure. Probably it’ll return the tc’a.-It was, at the time, a matter of necessity, revered mahe.”

“Necessity!”

“Only spoiled food, I assure you. Nothing more.-We were on the point of discussing repairs to my ship . . . which are urgent. You’ll not want me sitting at your dock any longer than you have to. Ask the honest captain of Mahijiru.”

“Outrage!” the Voice proclaimed. “Extortion!”

“Shall we discuss the matter?”

The fluffball suffered another transfer, to the nearest of the dignitaries, and the Voice looked to be preparing for verbal combat; but the Personage lifted a placid and silencing hand, motioned the group back down the corridor, delaying to give an instruction regarding the tc’a. Then the Personage led the way back into the comfortable room down the corridor.

“Profit,” Pyanfar said quickly and soothingly when the elder mahe and his entourage turned to face her and hers.

“Trouble first with kif and now with knnn and with tc’a. Deceptions and hazards to this station.”

“A new species, revered mahe. That’s the prize that has the kif disturbed. They see the hope of profit the like of which they’ve not known before; and I have the sole surviving member of his company, a spacefaring people, communicative, civilized, wise mahe, and fit to tilt the balance of the Compact. This was the prize at Meetpoint. This was the reason of the loss of the Handur ship, and this was the part of my cargo I refused to jettison. Surely we agree, revered mahe, what the kif meant to do if they had gotten this information first. Shall I tell you more of my suspicions . . . that the stsho knew something about what was going on? That kif meant to annex a large portion of adjacent space . . . having intimidated the stsho? That having done so, they would then be in a position to expand their operations and rearrange the map of the Compact to suit themselves-an acquisition from which the other members of the Compact would be positionally excluded; only the stsho . . . who would lick the kif s feet. And what future for the Compact then? What of this Compact which holds all of our very profitable trade together? What of the balance of things? But I shall tell you what I have: a tape, a tape, my good, my great and farsighted mahe elder, for a symbol translator. ... a tape which the kif spent sapient lives to obtain and failed to get. We aren’t selfish; I make this tape available to mahendo’sat as freely as hani, in the interests of spreading this knowledge as far as possible among likeminded people. But I want my ship repaired, the fines forgotten, the assurance that Chanur will continue in the friendship of this great and powerful station.”

The Personage laid his ears back, his eyes dilated. He turned away, leaving his Voice to face the matter. “Where come this creature? How we know sapient? How we know friendly?”

“Tully,” Pyanfar said, and put a hand on his arm and drew him forward. “Tully, this is the Voice of the stationmaster . . friend, Tully.”

For a terrible moment that arm was tense, as if Tully might bolt. “Friend,” he said then obediently. The Voice frowned, peered this way and that at Tully’s face ... on a level with the mahe’s own. “Speak hani?” the Voice asked.

“I go on Pyanfar ship. Friend.”

Gods. A sentence. Pyanfar squeezed the arm and put him protectively behind her. The Voice frowned; and behind the Voice the Personage had turned back with interest. “You

bring this trouble to us,” Stasteburana said. “And knnn . . . why knnn?”

“A resident of Urtur. I claim no understanding of knnn. It’s become disturbed . . . but not of my doing, noble mahe. The safest thing for Kirdu Station in all events is to have me safely on my way . . . and to have that, I fear, there’s a matter of certain essential repairs-“

The elder flared his nostrils and puffed breaths back and forth. He consulted with his Voice, who spoke to him rapidly involving kif and knnn. The Personage turned back yet again. “This tape deal-“

“-key to another species, revered mahe. Mahendo’sat will have access to this development; meet ships of this kind-assured peaceful meeting, full communication. And mind, you deal with no stranger, no one who will cheat you and be gone. Chanur expects to be back at Kirdu in the future, expects- may I speak to you in confidence-to develop this new find.”

Stasteburana cast a nervous glance at Tully. “And what you find, a? Find trouble. Make trouble.”

“Are you willing to have the kif do the moving and the growing and the getting? They assuredly will, good mahe, if we don’t.”

The Personage made nervous moves of his hands, walked to the one of his companions who held the angry ball of fluff and took it back, stroking it and talking to it softly. He looked up. “Repairs begin,” Stasteburana said, and walked near Tully, who stood his ground despite the growling creature in the mahe’s arms. The growling grew louder. The mahe stood and stared a long moment, gave a visible twitch of the skin of his shoulders and lifted a hand from his pet to sign to his Voice. “Make papers this sapient being. Make repairs. All hani go. Go away.” He looked suddenly at Pyanfar. “But you give tape. We say nothing to kif.”

“Wise mahe,” Pyanfar said with all her grace, and bowed. The Personage waggled fingers and dismissed them in the company of the Voice, and the fluff growled at their backs.

So, Pyanfar thought, as they delayed at the desks outside, as nervous mahendo’sat officials went through the mechanics of identifications with Tully. So they had promises. She kept her ears up, her expression pleasant, and smiled with extraordinary goodwill at the deskdwellers. Chur kept her hand hovering near Tully’s arm, at his back, constantly reassuring him at this and that step, answering for him, keeping him calm when they wanted his picture, urging him to sign where appropriate. Pyanfar craned forward, got a glimpse of a signature of intricate regularity which could not be an illiterate’s mark in anyone’s eyes.

“Good,” she said, patted Tully on the shoulder as the document went back into the hands of mahendo’sat officials-looked about again, nose wrinkling to a scent of perfume, for two stsho had just come into the offices. They stood there with their jeweled pallor looking out of place in mahendo’sat massive architecture, the huge blocky desks and the garish colors. Moonstone eyes stared unabashedly at Tully and at them. Capacious stsho brains stored up a wealth of detail for gossip, which stsho traded like other commodities. Pyanfar bared her teeth at them and they wisely came no closer.

The papers came back, plasticized and permanent, with Tully’s face staring back from them, species handwritten, classification general spacer semiskilled, sex male, and most of the other circles unfilled. The official gave the folder to Pyanfar. She gave it to Tully, clapped him on the shoulder, faced him about and headed him for the door, past the gawking stsho.

Elsewhere, she trusted, orders were being passed which would get a repair skimmer prioritied for The Pride. The mahendo’sat’s prime concern had become getting rid of them at utmost speed: she did not doubt it.

There would be a mahe official demanding that tape before all was done: that was beyond doubt too. There would be some little quibble which came first, repairs or tape; repairs, she was determined. The mahe had little choice.

They walked the corridor to the right from the office doorway, toward the lift, the three of them, past occasional mahendo’sat office workers and business folk who either found reason to duck back into their doorways or anxiously tried to ignore them.

But the three who waited before them at the lift. . . Pyanfar stopped half a step, made it a wider one. “You,” she said, striding forward, and the foremost mahe stood out from his two companions, gilt teeth hidden in a black scowl.

“Bring trouble, you,” said the captain of Mahijiru.

“How you live, mahe? A? Sell information every port you touch?”

“My port, Kirdu. You make trouble.”

“Huh. Trouble found me. Got crew shot getting you your rotted welders to keep our deal. Do I say anything about pearls you owe me? No. I give you a gift, brave mahe. I ask no return.”

Goldtooth frowned the more, looked at Chur and walked closer to Tully, tilted his round chin and looked Tully up and down, but kept his hands off him. Then he threw a glance at Pyanfar. “This you pick up on the dock.”

“You ask questions for the Personage? Same you gather information at Meetpoint?”

For the first time the mahe flashed that sharpedged gold grin. “You clever, hani captain.”

“You know this Akukkakk.”

The grin died, leaving deadly seriousness. “Maybe.”

“You really merchant, mahe captain?”

“Long time, honest hani. Mahijiru longtime merchant ship, me, my crew, longtime merchanter, sons and daughters mer-chanters. But we know this Hinukku, yes. Longtime bad trouble.”

Pyanfar looked into that broad dark face and wrinkled her nose. “Swear to you, mahe captain-I didn’t think to bring trouble down on you. I give you the trade goods, make no claim for return. You saved our hides, put us onto that kif bastard. Owe you plenty for that.”

The mahe frowned. “Deal, hani. They make you repair, you get quick leave . . . danger. Tell you that free.”

“Mahijiru took no damage getting out of Meetpoint?”

“Small damage. You take advice, hani.”

“I take it.” She pressed the lift button, took a second look, to remember the face of this mahe beyond doubt. “Come,” she said as the lift arrived empty. She shepherded Chur and Tully through the door and turned once inside. Goldtooth/ Ismehanan and his companions showed no inclination to go with them. The door closed between and the lift started down. She looked back, at Tully and at Chur, and gathered Tully by the elbow as the car, unstopped this time by other passengers, made the whole trip down and let them out on the docks.

The crowd had dispersed somewhat, thank the gods; but not enough. It gathered quickly enough as they crossed the dock, and Pyanfar watched on all sides, flicking quick glances this way and that, reckoning that by now, trouble had time to have organized itself.

And it was there. Kif-by the gantries, watching. That presence did not at all surprise her. Tully failed to spot them, seeming dazed in the swirl of bodies, none of which pressed too closely on them, but stayed about them.

The rampway access gaped ahead. A group of mahendo’sat law enforcement stood there, sticks in hand, and the crowd went no farther. Pyanfar thrust her companions through that line, with her own legs trembling under her-want of sleep, gods, want of rest. Chur was in the same condition, surely, and Tully was hardly steady on his feet, unfit mentally and physically for this kind of turmoil. She sighted on the rampway and went, hard-breathing.

But among the gantries beside them . . . hani shadows. Moon Rising’s folk, none of her own, had spilled over from the next berth, behind the security line. “Come on,” she said to Chur and Tully. “Ignore them.”

She headed into the rampway’s ribbed and lighted gullet, had led the two of them up the curving course almost to the security of their own airlock when she heard someone coming behind. “In,” she said to her companions, and turned to bar the intruder who appeared around the curve. Her ears were flat; she reached instinctively for the weapon she had left behind-but the figure was hani, silk-breeched and jeweled, striding boldly right up the rampway.

“Tahar,” she spat, waved a dismissing hand. “Gods, do we need complications?”

“I’ve done napping.” The Tahar captain stopped just short of her, took her stance, hands at her waist, a large figure, with a torn left ear beringed with prosperity. Broadfaced ... a black scar crossed her mustache, making it scant on the left side, and giving Dur Tahar no pleasant expression. Her beard was crisply rippled and so was her mane, characteristic of the southerners, dark bronze. Two of her crew showed up behind her, like a set of clones.

“We’ve managed,” Pyanfar said, “without troubling your rest.”

Dur Tahar ignored her, looked beyond her shoulder-at what sight, Pyanfar had no trouble guessing. “What’s that thing, Chanur? What creature is that?”

“That’s a problem we’ve got settled, thank you.”

“By the gods, settled! We’ve just been ordered off the station, and it’s all over the dock about this passenger of yours. About hani involved with the kif. About a deal you’ve made-by the gods, I’ll reckon you’ve settled things.-What are you, trading in live bodies now? You’ve found yourself something special, haven’t you? That fracas that sent you kiting in here with your tail singed-involved with that?”

“That’s enough.” Her claws came out. She was tired, gods, shaking on her feet, and she stared at Dur Tahar with a dark tunnel closing about her vision. “If you want to talk about this, you ask me by com. Not now.”

“Ah. You don’t need our help. Are you planning to stay here in dock with your tail hanging... or did you and the mahendo’sat come up with a deal? What kind of game are you proposing, Chanur?”

“I’ll make it clear enough. Later. Get clear of my airlock.”

“What species is it? Where from? The rumor flying the docks says kif space. Or knnn. Says there’s a knnn ship here that dropped a hani body.”

“I’ll tell it to you once, Tahar: we got this item at Meetpoint and the kif took out Handur’s Voyager for spite, no survivors. Caught them sitting at dock, and they and we hadn’t even been in communication. We dumped cargo and ran for Urtur, and the kif who followed us struck at Faha’s Starchaser with no better reason. Whether Starchaser got away or not I don’t know, but they At least had a run at it. The kif want this fellow badly. And it’s gotten beyond simple profit and loss with them. There’s a hakkikt involved, and there’s no stopping this thing till we’ve got him. Maybe we did, at Urtur. He looked bad, and that may settle it. But if you want to make yourself useful, you’re welcome to run our course.”

“Suppose you make yourself generous. Give this thing into my hands. I’ll see it gets safe to Anuurn.”

“No, thanks.”

“I’ll bet not. You can deal with the mahendo’sat, after all, but not with a rival. Well, Chanur’s not going to sit on this one, I’ll promise you that, Pyanfar Chanur. And if this turns out to be the fiasco it promises to be, I’ll be on your heels. That brother of yours is getting soft. Back home, they know it. This should do it, shouldn’t it?”

“Out!”

“Give me the information you traded the mahendo’sat. And we may view things in a better light.”

“If you were mahe I’d trust you more. Look him over, Dur Tahar. But anything else you want to know . . . I’ll decide on when I’ve got this straightened out. Never fear; you’ll get the same data I gave the mahendo’sat. But if you leave this in our laps, then by the gods, we’ll settle it our way without your help.”

Dur Tahar laid her ears back and started to go, lingered for one poisonous look beyond, toward the airlock, and a focus snapped back on center. “I’ll ask you at Anuurn, then. And you’ll have answers, gods rot you. You’ll come up with them.”

“Nothing personal, Tahar. You always did lack vision.”

“When you beg my help-I might give it.”

“Out.”

Dur Tahar had made her offer. Perhaps she expected a different answer. She flinched, managed a lazy indifference, smoothed her rippled beard, turned and looked back toward the airlock a last time, slowly, before she stalked out, gathering her two crewwomen as she went.

“Gods,” Pyanfar muttered through her teeth, put a hand wearily to the rampway wall and turned about to the airlock, feeling suddenly older. That was muffed. She should have been quicker on her mental feet, slower of temper. The Tahar might have been talked into it. Maybe wanted to be talked into it. If a Tahar could be trusted at their backs. She hated the whole of it, mahe, Tahar, Outsider, all of it-winced under Chur’s stare. Not a word from Chur the whole way back, regarding the business she had conducted, this tape-selling, trust-selling.

And Tully’s face ... of a sudden he jerked away from Chur’s grip and went into the airlock, Chur hastening to stop him. Pyanfar broke into a run into the hatchway, but Chur had got him. Tully had stopped against the inside wall, his back against it, his eyes full of anger.

“Captain,” Chur said, “the translator was working.”

Pyanfar reached into her pocket and thrust her audio plug into her ear, faced Tully, who looked steadily toward her. “Tully. That was not a friend. What did you hear? What?”

“You’re same like kif. Want the same maybe. What deal with the mahendo’sat?”

“I saved your miserable hide. What do you think? That you can travel through Compact territory without everyone who sees you having the same thoughts? You didn’t want to deal with the kif-good sense; but by the gods, you haven’t got a choice but us or the kif, my friend Tully. All right. I traded them the tape you made-but not that I couldn’t have gotten the ship repair without that: they’re anxious to get rid of us; they’d have come round tape or no tape, you can bet they would. But now everyone’s going to know about your kind; gods, let the mahendo’sat make copies of it; let them sell it in the standard kit. It’s the best deal you can get. I’m not selling you, you rag-eared bastard; can I make you understand that? And maybe if your ships meet our ships . . . there’ll be a tape in the translators that may keep us from shooting at each other. We meet and trade. Understand? Better deal than the kif give you.”

A tremor passed over his face, expressions she could not read. The eyes spilled water, and he made a move of his arm, jerked at Chur’s grip on it and Chur cautiously let him go.

“You understand me?” Pyanfar asked. “Do I make myself understood?”

No response. 

“You’re free,” Pyanfar said. “Those papers let you go anywhere. You want to walk out the rampway, onto the dock? You want to go back to station offices and stay with the mahe?”

He shook his head.

“That’s no.”

“No. Pyanfar. I #.”

“Say again.”

He reached to his waist and drew out the papers, offered them to her.

“Your papers,” Pyanfar said. “All in order. Go anywhere you like.”

He might have understood. He pointed toward the door. “This hani-want me go with him.”

“Her. Dur Tahar. No friend of mine. Or to this ship. Nothing that concerns you.”

He stood a moment, seeming to think it over. Finally he pointed back toward the inner hatch. “I go sit down,” he said, shoulders slumping. “I go sit. Right?”

“Go,” she said. “It’s all right, Tully. You’re all right.”

“Friend,” he said, and touched her arm in leaving, walked out with his head down and exhaustion in his posture. “Follow him?” Chur asked.

“Not conspicuously. Docking’s got his quarters out of commission. Get a proper cot for the washroom.”

“We could take him into crew quarters.”

“No. I don’t want that. There’s nothing wrong with the washroom, for the gods’ sake. Just get him a sedative. I think he’s had enough.”

“He’s scared, captain. I don’t much blame him.”

“He’s got sense. Go. Tell Geran if she doesn’t hear something about that repair crew within half an hour, come get me.”

“Aye,” Chur murmured, and hastened off in Tully’s wake.

So. Done, for good or ill. Pyanfar leaned against the wall, aching in all her bones, her vision fuzzing. After a moment she walked out, down the vacant corridor toward the lifts, hoping to all the gods Geran could find no incident to put between her and bed.

No one stopped her. She rode the lift up, walked a sleep-drunken course down the central corridor to her own door.

“Aunt,” Hilfy’s voice pursued her. She stopped with her hand against the lockplate and looked about with a sour and forbidding stare.

“Repair crew’s on its way,” Hilfy said ever so quietly. “I thought you’d want to know. Message just came.”

“You’ve been sitting watch topside?”

“Got a little rest. I thought-“

“If Geran’s on, it’s waste to duplicate effort. Get yourself back to quarters and stay there. Sleep, gods rot you; am I supposed to coddle you later? Take something if you can’t. Don’t come complaining to me later.”

“Captain,” Hilfy murmured, ears back, and bowed.

Pyanfar hit the bar and opened the door, walked in and punched it closed before the automatic could function. Belatedly the look on Hilfy’s face occurred to her; and the long duty Hilfy had spent at com through transit, and that she had intended to say something approving of that, and had not.

Gods rot it. She sat down on the side of the bed and dropped her head into her hands. Gods, that she had staggered through the requisite interview with the mahendo’sat, bargained with them, offended the Tahar-and Tully ... she had traded off what three of his shipmates had died to keep to themselves.

In such a condition she gambled, with Chanur and Tully’s whole species on the board.

She dropped her hands between her knees, finally reached for the bedside drawer where she kept a boxful of pills. She shook one into her hand and put it into her mouth-spat it out in sudden revulsion and flung the open boxful across the cabin. Pills rattled and circled and lay still. She lay down on the bed as she was, drew the coverlet over herself, tucked her ;arms about her head and shut her eyes, flinging herself into an extended calculation about their routing out of here and refusing to let her mind off that technical problem. She built the numbers in front of her eyes and fended off the recollection of Tully’s face or Hilfy’s, or the scuttling figure of the knnn with its prize, or the kif which skulked and whispered together out on the docks.