Chanur's Homecoming

Chapter Nine

. . . .emergency. . . . . . . .emergency. ...

. . . .Siren shrieking, auto-alarm from scan. . . .

Pyanfar reached, rolled her head to get view of the chrono and blinked to clear her eyes on the display. It was not at fault. They were on mark. On schedule. Urtur arrival.

. . . "Message," Hilfy mumbled, "message . . .kifish. . . ."

It came blasting out over the com, general. "Proceed!" came a kifish voice from Pyanfar's own back, their interpreter, live and with them. "Our escort ships are laying down a pattern of fire, they are proceeding on!''

"We stay on auto!" Pyanfar yelled at Haral. "We got ships at our tail-" Lest old habit take over.

Slow down and they had ships racing up their backside. They kept on, hurtling into Urtur system with all its debris of dust. . . .

... a star more like a black-stained, broken egg, sullen yellow at system heart, all bound up in a black, flat mist of dust and rock through which a couple of distant gas giants and a host of moonlets plowed rings. It was a scientific wonder. ...

... a hellhole for inbound ships, where dust and rock could break down a starship's defensive bubble and strip away its V. Hit the thick of it at their present velocity and they would make a UV glow, particles accelerated by the contact with virtual particles they brought with them, exotics shooting off in ricochet fashion and creating an accelerated maelstrom of reactions that would bleed away their energy. Ships had to dump when they reached a gravity well; but a cloud like Urtur's had ways of doing it for a ship. . . .

. . . getting through the V shield, chewing away bit by bit in pyrotechnic decay, until it got to vulnerable realspace metal and quasimetals, and got the vital vane-surfaces, and gnawed away at the hull till it began to glow. . . .

Not yet for The Pride. Instruments jumped and flared as dust and larger debris met the bowshock of particles they carried with them and flared and came apart to join the stream and fly off in discharges at collision with still other particles. They were a cometary fluorescence, if any living eye could track them, if any ship moving at that V dared be close to any other ship doing the same or had the time to look to anything but their own survival.

The trailing ships would be popping into system and running into their backturned message and the kif's as Hilfy relayed it on: We're here, so are the kif, keep going, stay on auto. And wide of their entry point, three kif launched precautionary fire before enemies could get organized, plowing through the medium as an irregular flutter of telemetry out of the maelstrom they were meeting, creating more hard radiation trails with the passage of their fire.

Their escort was not going to stop. It had to blow a hole for them through anything that might be in the way and keep going, they had agreed that much. But the kif had their own idea what precaution meant.

It was not saying that a contrary-coursed enemy could not come flaring bow-on toward them, to unintended collision.

Or that there might not be one of Urtur's rocks out there too big for their shields.

"We're not getting buoy telemetry," Haral murmured; and Pyanfar swallowed hard against the upwelling of nausea in her throat and fought the blurring of her eyes. Her hands were numb. It was the brace that held her right hand near controls; she shoved with a heave of her shoulder and swung it woodenly over, pushing Confirm to comp's automatic warning that they were blind.

"Bad habit hereabouts," she said between her teeth. And tried to remember what to do next, which was to read the advisements comp was programmed to hand her, data and detail matches to check against the autos.

Enemies might peg them by sheerest luck. A rock was more likely to do it for them. Sikkukkut's earliest ships had come through here and gods knew what had become of them, whether they still existed, whether they had not gone on to a kifish rendezvous at Kita or Kshshti.

-a knnn had grazed past them, otherside.

-hallucination?

Gods, no, it was real, it had been real-attack pouring into Meetpoint off several vectors, including Urtur . . . Sikkukkut's enemies had come out of Urtur and Tt’a’va’o and Hoas and V'n'n'u vectors-or space corresponding to those points-

Realtime months ago.

Your doing, Jik? Your gods-be contacts with the tc'a? Gods, gods, have you ever told the truth in your life? What have you done?

Had it been Goldtooth coming in at Meetpoint? Could he marshal methane-breathers to his aid-along with humans?

Could anyone guarantee the methane-folk?

Whatever had begun to happen at Meetpoint had played itself out already, while they existed only as a probability in the gods' intentions, an arc in hyperspace, a bubble with a slender stem to Somewhere shooting along in Nowhere Reasonable on the whim of V and vector and the dimples stars made with their mass-while they did that, ships had battered away at each other, and ships which might have been at Urtur might well have leapt out again days ago, with the kind of hyperspace arc hunter-ships could cut-sleek, power-wasting hunter-ships who could cut days off a freighter's time-

-but not The Pride's, except they were encumbered with a handful of freighters who had to make it through to give them a chance at all where they were going.

-Moon Rising, o gods, where?

System buoy gave them nothing. Industry existed back there in that timelag; and Starwind and Hope; and Lightweaver to bring up the rear, unless Moon Rising made it on some miracle-

There was a sick feeling at her gut that had nothing to do with the after-jump queasiness. The numbers ticked away; warnings flashed all over the board, approaching mark, have to make it on schedule or lose it all-

"Coming up on dump," she said. And let the autos take them, as instruments blipped and flashed hazard warning.

-Easy then to drift away, give it up, quit trying after the figures that glowed ghostly green just beyond her reach, just out of focus. Survival was in those numbers. It was just inconveniently far, everyone so godsforsaken tired and home so far and so fraught with disasters-

Wake up, Pyanfar Chanur, focus, make the fingers feel, the hand move, the mind work-

-long way home. Someone else's job. She was already there, the pale golden dust, the deeper gold of grainfields and the fleet herds that raced and bounded and soared for the sheer exuberance of running, sharp hooves and sharper horns-

Blood and hani hide. No uruus was calved that could get a horn into Kohan Chanur, except for young Hilfy's mistake, wide-eyed youngster caught right in the path of one that should have gone the other way.

"It's all right," Kohan said. And sat down, plump, right where he stood, with his hand pressed to his ribs and his nose gone pale. "It's quite all right."

While Hilfy stood there in horror, only then catching up to what had happened, when all the rest of them had reached their peak of panic when na Kohan had, and moved; but Kohan was nearer, saw young Hilfy's danger, and hit the uruus like a projectile. It lay dead, its quickness and its beauty all still in the dust; he sat there with blood leaking through his fingers and a sick look on his face that was none of it for himself, only for what could have happened. And the rest of them, chagrined and self-disgusted that he had had to do what he had done, a skilled hunter caught like that, and none of them in position to help when a young girl's mistake near killed herself and her lord. Hilfy stood there thinking, they knew later, that she had killed him, killed her father, her lord she should have died for, the dearest thing in all her protected young life. She had never taken a scar. Never did.

Till a dockside brawl on Meetpoint; till the kif laid hands on her; till she was their prisoner for much too long-

Kohan would not know his daughter.

She's grown up, brother. She's not a girl anymore. Not anything you can understand anymore, your pretty Hilfy; you, tied to the world; her, a spacer, with a spacer's ways, like Haral, like Tirun, like me.

I don't want your world.

I've ruined her for it, taken her out of it, changed her in ways I wouldn't have chosen, brother; but I couldn't keep her prisoner myself; couldn't hold her, wouldn't try.

I hate it. I've always hated it. Not the fields, not the feel of the. sun. It's the confinement. One world. One place. A horizon too small.

Minds too small to understand me.

I'd rather go anywhere than home. Rather die for anything than fat old women and empty-headed men who love their walls and their wealth and their privilege and never know what's out there-

Khym knows. Maybe you almost do. But I'm coming back for them. Hilfy and I. So gods-be many have bled for you. Or frozen cold in space. Or gone to particles, not even enough to find. You don't know the ways you can die out here.

I don't want to get there. Don't want to see the look on your face.

Rut by the gods I won't leave you to Ehrran and the scavengers.

-Aren't we coming out of it? Has something malfunctioned? Are there red lights? Gods, do you ever stop thinking when you lose it and the ship doesn't come down again, do you just go on-

-out again, and back to realspace, with V lower and the telemetry flicking past numbers in mechanical agony, red lights flaring-

"I got it, I got it," she mumbled to save Haral the effort. Not malfunction lights: it was gas out there, thick enough to flow and flare off their shields. The shield-depletion curve was rising, fluctuating as they swept up gas and hit a bare spot, where the shield recovered a little strength. The kifish escort was far away now. On auto, relying on numbers alone and not even in direct control, they achieved a kind of tranquility. Warning lights flickered, reminding them of laws and lanes they overrode. Haral swore and disabled them for the duration of Urtur passage, to be rid of the beep.

She fumbled after the nutrients packet, bit a hole in it and drank it down-and Tully, Tully was alone belowdecks, his poor teeth always had trouble with the packets and there was no one to help him, alone because the gods-be Tauran were too squeamish-

-behind her Skkukuk would be seeing to his own meal. Her stomach heaved at the thought. But his kifish voice came through now and again, delivering some information to Hilfy and Fiar at com, translating off those kifish ships up front.

Kifish transmissions everywhere; and Chakkuf and Nekekkt and Sukk were doing their job, the point of a spear that had to drive straight into Urtur before it stopped, re-vectored, and ran up the V sufficient for a jump out of this hell. That was the worst of it, that dead-relative-stop they had to do to line up that next jump, or slew through hyperspace askew from their target and depending on the next star to pull them in, loss of realspace-time, loss of everything if they miscalculated. . . .

Those hunter-ships were aware of their schedule, were able to make up that time and distance on sheer power, and rendezvous again, elsewhere. They claimed. It was their idea. A merchant pilot would have laughed, disbelieved it: and suffered a chill up the back at the thought of ships that could do that, knnn-like, as far off their capacity as they were off that of an insystemer.

She had no doubts. Clearly the kif would not have shown them everything they had.

And, gods, she would have given anything to find that fire answered, Akkhtimakt in Urtur system, resisting. He was not. That meant he was elsewhere. The terror reasserted itself, habitual and consuming.

"Chur," she heard Hilfy say. "Time you woke up. Chur-"

Persistently. She cut in on that channel herself. "Chur, gods rot it, answer, we're coming up on braking."

No answer.

"Geran," Pyanfar snapped. "You got backup, we're stable; get back there."

There was a snap from a released restraint. She did not look around to see. Did not try to talk to Khym, had no doubts of his safety, or Tully's. They were no different from oilier crew, probably had reported in to com monitoring, as the Tauran would report, from crew quarters, going through frantic prep for shift change while they had this small inertial stretch for the generation systems to recharge. The machine was keeping Chur quiet. That was what it was. It was supposed to. That was all it was.

"No gods-be hope of Akkhtimakt being here," she muttered to Haral.

"We ever expect it? Hope to all the gods those first ships of Sikkukkut's cut 'em good. We got station output, no buoy, no ship-com. No tc'a, f'godssakes, tc'a miners don't notice kit' stuff. They're not talking either. Something big's been through here like thunder. Something that bothered them."

"And a knnn comes in at Meetpoint. I want out of here. I want out of here real bad." Pyanfar took another swallow at the bag, another listen at com off Chur's cabin. There was the sound of the door opening. Geran's voice desperately calling Chur's name. She swept an eye over scan. All the ships behind them had dumped down. "We're all on. How're you doing, Haral?"

"I'm holding up." The voice was hoarse as her own.

Then: "Chur's coming out of it," Geran said over com. ''Tell the captain."

"I got that," Pyanfar said, punching in. "How is she?"

''Weak,'' the answer came back, which was not the answer she had wanted, not with what they had coming.

If Geran admitted that much, it was bad back there.

Pyanfar took another drink, emptied the noxious liquid into her mouth and swallowed hard. She threw com wide to all-ship. "We're stable. We're doing all right, high over the soup. If the two kif have jumped past us back to Sikkukkut, he's welcome to 'em. . . ." She cut it off. "Gods," she said to Haral. "Gods, I hope. What in a mahen hell's keeping our backup crew? Query 'em." The weakness came and went in waves. Her muscles had no strength left. They had awhile yet to run before they reached their turn point. The Pride would query for a Confirm; but if it got no Abort it would make that final dump on its own, reorient, find its own reference star and head out to Kura, would do it if they were all dead or incapacitated, taking its log records and everything it had into hani space, to brake at Anuurn and wait to be boarded ... by hani, pray the gods. The chance that the automatics could do all that flawlessly was about fifty-fifty; but it was their third-backup, failsafe to feeble living muscle and overtired brains. Haral had run all that calc, even had it plugged into one contingency courseplot for Kshshti to Maing Tol; and one for Tt'a'va'o as well, all while she had been tied up with the kif. Brain-bending, meticulous checks, run fast and by the gods accurately. And Haral like the rest of the crew, like Geran back there trying to keep her sister alive, had far overrun her physical limits.

"Tully's on his way up," Hilfy said. Internal-com was not her proper assignment; but it was a fair bet Sifeny had not understood him. 'Na Khym's up and headed out upper sec. Tauran crew is on its way."

"Thank gods," Pyanfar murmured. Things started to sort out. She could just about hold on that long. "Skkukuk."

"Hakt'."

"You're offduty." No, gods, no, can't send him down the lift with Tauran crew coming up, they might shoot him. "Soon's Tauran crew hits the bridge, you can go to quarters. See you at Kura."

"Kkkkt. Yes, hakt." Exhausted as the rest of them. "Hakt', there is not adequate resistance here. Chakkuf has advised subordinates of this. Akkhtimakt has gone elsewhere. The two advance ships will have gone on. I queried regarding those courses. Our escort does not know."

"Thanks," she said. Calmly. There was no course but what they were following. It was academic information. That was all.

While all the agreements that held the Compact together had been shattered.

"On the other hand there a possibility both may have turned and gone for Kita," said Skkukuk. "Akkhtimakt, defilement on his name, might circle back to Akkht. If he had Akkht he would be formidable again. Homeworld could not stand against him if it were not aware that he is severely challenged."

"And not to Kura? Leave Akkhtimakt free to go to Kura?"

"We are that contingency, mekt-hakt. Certainly the hakkikt has sent a message to Akkht. But that we are not aware of the course of these ships indicates that they are not part of our business."

"Or, of course, that our escort has separate orders."

"Assuredly. Should I have mentioned that? The mekt-hakt' is no fool."

She tasted bile. Her heart labored and skipped like something moribund, on its last strength. The lift-door light reflected in the monitor at her right hand. A group of figures exited, shadows in a dimly-reflected corridor. Tauran, thank the gods. And where in a mahen hell's Tully? She was not mentally fit for problems. She knew that. For godssakes get up here, Tauran, I can't handle anything, I'm not sure I can walk across the floor. Her chest was hurting again, a persistent pain. She violated her own rule, powering her chair about on a working station. But Tauran was there, Sirany and all the rest of her crew, and-dull shock-Tully was with them, Tully had ridden the lift up with strangers and gotten out unscathed, points to that crew's nerves and decency.

She unbuckled her restraints and groped after the chair arm. She was in that kind of condition. She heaved herself to her feet as Tully went off the back way to the galley, on duty; and Sirany Tauran and her crew headed for their change-off. "We got it easy," Pyanfar said, though ops-com had been open for monitor the while. "Escort's been laying down fire ahead of us, we got no sound out of Urtur station, we got no sound out of kif insystem. We got an hour to run before we hit our last dump and turn. We're still missing Tahar and Vrossaru. They didn't make the jump."

"Understood," Sirany said. "I've been on your com feed since before we dropped. Knnn. Knnn, for godssakes."

"Knnn and trouble of some kind back there at Meetpoint. Whether that's good news or bad for Tahar or for the kif I don't know. I hope to all the gods it's Goldtooth's bunch, but they weren't running IDs." She passed a glance aside as Skkukuk unbuckled. "Kkkt," Skkukuk murmured, and got up to his full, if unsteady, height. "Hakt." That was only one captain he saluted; he bowed and turned and walked off the bridge, bound below, while Tauran crew took the briefings, the critical situations, from Chanur crew on the last of their strength.

Pyanfar straightened her shoulders and looked at Sirany. "You got a real good crew," she said of Sif and Fiar.

"Yeah," Sirany said, but the flick of the ears said immensely pleased. And said something else she could not read. "We got it, go."

Time then to step out of her way and let another captain to The Pride's, boards, the codes stripped to master-unlock, even the log and their private files. Fire-codes, data-codes, the whole ship. "All open," she said to Sirany, and turned and collected Haral, who left the boards like she was leaving a lover, with a second and a third look. She put a hand on Haral's shoulder and shoved her galleyward, paused to shepherd Hilfy through, and Fiar too, offshift with Chanur crew; but Sif Tauran went to hang over the back of Sirany's seat at the main boards and deliver a quiet report.

My compatriot. My maybe-enemies and allies of necessity. My crew of men and aliens and reluctant, ambiguous hani. Clans were more absolute in the old days; the hani tongue had nothing native to express halfway loyalties. A hani had to come to the deep wide black to find it. Among kif and mahendo'sat. And humans. "Tirun," she said out loud, and gave an irritated jerk of the chin at Tirun, who delayed with her opposite number, on her feet and physically clinging to the seat. "Come on, gods rot it, cousin, time's running."

Tirun came. Geran arrived from down the corridor, blear-eyed and staggering. "We're relieved," Pyanfar said. "Come on. How's Chur?"

"Alive," Geran said, and her mouth went hard shut, as if that was the only word that was going to get out. But: "Going to get something down her," Geran muttered in passing. "Going to sleep there this trip."

"Huh," Pyanfar said, venturing no more than that. The two of them crowded into the same bed, that was what Geran meant: there was nowhere else in that lifesupport-crowded cabin. She said nothing about it, tried not to think of anything at all, but the bridge and the galley corridor went strange in her sight, all near and far at once.

Dark and stars and the monstrous shape of a knnn ship bearing down on them as if they were a minnow in the deep.

Kif ships putting down a steady barrage of fire into nothing at all, because there might be something out there. (But there might equally be helpless bystanders. Mahendo'sat. Hani. Tc'a.)

Strangers with their hands on The Pride's controls, delving Into Chanur records-

Kefk docks, all lit in fire-

Three hundred thousand stsho dying in sudden vacuum, delicate, gossamer-robed bodies frozen and drifting, with horror on their faces.

Human shapes, tall and mahen-like, pouring by the thousands into a hallway, Tully times infinity, armed and hostile-

"Captain-" Tirun had her arm. Held onto her, as the hall went dark in her sight and the wall suddenly ended up in the way of her shoulder.

"I'm all right," she snarled, and shoved the hand off.

"Aye," Tirun said, in the tone it deserved.

She made it as far as the galley, dropped into a seat as her sight went dark again. Someone shoved a cup of gfi into her hands and her vision cleared on it; she got it to her mouth and forced a nauseating swallow down. Grimaced then and nearly heaved. A sandwich arrived in front of her, in a hairless human hand, Tully and Khym in better shape than any of them who had been on duty since Kefk. But the mingled stink of them all was enough to turn a kif s stomach. It was more than enough for a hani's, and mixed with the godsawful smell of gfi and food and the ammonia-stink that had somehow gotten onto all of them. She had always run a clean ship, an immaculate ship. Now this.

While the Compact was trying to come undone, and, gods-

"I'm worried about the kif that went out of here," she said. "Sikkukkut's. Not just Akkhtimakt's lot. The pair of Sikkukkut's that went out on this heading before he came into station-" Remember. Remember it. Mind did strange things when jump shook it and set it down again. There had been such kif. She and Skkukuk had discussed it. There had been methane-breathers. There had been Jik, on their bridge, spilling an incredible sequence of evidence into their computer. She forced a mouthful down. "I got to tell you, ker Fiar, and you can tell your cousins, we got a Situation aboard: we can't always say what we'd like to say. Skkukuk's real stable, but we don't tell him we're not the hakkikt's loyal friends. Wouldn't bother him in some ways. But he'd think we were crazy. Kif thinks you're crazy, he won't do what you say. So we just don't fill him in on everything. You got to understand him-"

"Aye," Fiar murmured in a guarded tone, because, perhaps, it seemed incumbent on her to say something to that insanity, surrounded as she was by Chanur and Chanur's odd crew. Khym attracted as much of her attention as Tully did, little nervous moves of her ears, following sounds. They came desperately forward. "You think one of those lead ships went on to Anuurn, captain?"

"Could have," she said, and Haral:

"Our escort's in a way to cover anything they choose to cover. Emissions all over the godsforsaken system. No telling what's here. But they know what they found before they churned it all up. That's for sure, whatever they've cut out of what they send us."

"You're not working for them."

"Gods, no," Pyanfar said. Maybe Tauran clan had believed her assurances from the start but Fiar wanted to be reassured in words she could hear. "Skkukuk was a present. One I didn't choose. But I get the feeling his alternative was worse. Kif serve the ship they're on and he's on this one. Fight for us like a maniac, he would. And has."

"He any trouble?"

From a young and worried hani who was about to bed down and sleep on lowerdecks, with a kif down the corridor. Humans, Fiar seemed more able to take in stride. Even one handling the food she ate. But her shoulders were bristled.

"He gives you any, tell him I'll skin him. With a kif that's literal." Gods, when had she gotten so callous? Another gulp of sandwich, on a stomach that was taking it better. Little talk. Little problems. What about the kif, captain, he going to go crazy and cut our throats? What about the human, captain?

What kind of thing is it, your husband and this alien rubbing shoulders and making nothing of it, and this human handling the food we got to eat? "We're going home, Fiar Aurhen. Home and gods know what else waiting for us. Got no passengers here."

"I heard-" Fiar said, and whatever she had heard waited when Sif Tauran showed up late and edged her way past Khym in the little galley. Not without a look.

"Heard what?" Pyanfar asked.

Fiar swallowed a choking bite. Her ears went back, her eyes blinked, watered, and fixed on hers dead-on and wide. "Word is-what happened at Meetpoint last year, how you came in there and took it apart when they got-particular. Captain. How you set to with the Immune. How you had a run-in with the kif and that mahen hunter. Whole Compact has the rumor the humans are coming in and you're involved in it." Her voice went hardly audible. "To get trade, maybe. Maybe something else."

"Who said?"

"I don't know who said. It's all over. And the treaty and the han- What're we going to do when we get to Anuurn, ker Pyanfar?''

An edge of panic there. Of outright fright.

/ don't blame you, kid. Not at all.

"Mahendo'sat are moving to cut this off," Pyanfar muttered. "We got the plot on it. This is one godsforsaken mess. But we got that hope. Fact is the kif that moved on Meetpoint is about as worried as we are-that's what we were working on. That's all that got us out of that port."

"Does our captain know this?" Fiar asked.

"About the mahendo'sat? Dunno."

"No," Haral said. "I briefed ker Sirany on ops and course and the fact we and the kif aren't cozy. Mahen business I didn't say."

That was right. It had been in the report. Otherside of jump. She was losing things. She stuffed more sandwich in her mouth. Waved a hand at Haral, who took that signal and started spilling what else she knew; Tauran ears sagged, flagged, flattened. And:

"You talk to your captain," Pyanfar said, to Fiar, to Sif Tauran, "before you head below. Tell you another thing. You're on my crew shift. Tully here's crew. Shares quarters on this shift. My orders."

"Work," Tully objected. "I wake, work."

"Shut up. You're on my shift and you stay that way. Give me trouble I'll bed you with Skkukuk." She swallowed another mouthful of gfi and shuddered. ''I got no time, we got no time." While Geran staggered off with a pair of cups Khym had given her, for herself and Chur. "We got to get there, is what. Our guns may be all Anuurn's got, you hear me?"

Tauran ears pricked and half-flattened again in dismay. And maybe, maybe an increasing bit of belief.

One of their number was lost already. Moon Rising arriving late or in any condition was a sight she would give a great deal to see. And there was less and less hope of it.

She shoved herself away from the table, shoved sandwich wrapper and empty cup into the disposal. She was working on autopilot, same as The Pride. Programmed stuff. Lower brain functions.

In the same way she turned and wandered through the bridge, where foreign crew sat working, as strange to see there as if they were mahen. Or human. Sirany Tauran acknowledged her presence, and Pyanfar flicked her ears back and nodded in return, before she wandered out and down the corridor.

Nothing else was wrong. If it were, Sirany would have said. Tauran crew was going to do something about intership communications, try to relay a coded do-watch on mahen ships. Or whatever they might manage to get across of their situation. While Aja Jin rode beside them.

She paused at Chur's open door. Geran was there, at the bedside. " 'Lo," she said, and was not sure if Chur responded; her eyes were blurring out on her. "Hey, we about got the hard part, cousin, just hang on, huh? We're all right. We'll make it."

She got into her own room, made one trip to the head, fell face-down into bed and coordinated herself enough to jab the bedside console and power the safety rig over, never forget that, gods, never forget, an old spacer never lost that reflex,

move down the corridors right smart, stay out of open areas,

get to safe small places in case the ship had to move. Broken bones and smashed skulls else. Spacers died of bad luck like that, a ship moving to save its steel hide and some poor bastard of a spacer smashed to pulp down a corridor become a three-story drop-epitaph on many an acquaintance: the luck ran out. On a ten-ring spacer it could happen-

Luck out on Tahar and Vrossaru. Gods help 'em.

After a dark space the restraint hummed, a large and warm weight settled onto the same mattress and a warmth settled about her. "We're about to brake," Khym said; and woke her up just enough to feel a drunken panic.

"Restraint," she said. "I've got it," he said, and she opened her eyes blearily on dim light and the arch of the safety web going over them, on a familiar face, a large arm going over her like the arch of the safety, a huge body shaping itself to hers, awful and stinking as they both were, straight out of jump and headed in again without respite. She hugged him back, hard.

The vanes cycled again, blowing velocity in a dizzying pulse of neither here nor there, right down to the lowest energy they could reasonably achieve. It was a hunter-ship maneuver. Honest freighter never had the reason to do a thing like that.

Urtur dust screamed over the hull, shields downed during the low-V of their turn and reacquisition, dust abrading the vanes. The whole ship wailed and keened in sound that hurt the ears.

Gods let Tahar make it after all, gods save the rest of us, where's the kif?

"Unnnh." Khym clenched his fist in her mane. "Claws, Py, gods-"

Realspace acceleration started up, the unsettling G-shift of rollover.

"We're going," she said, "we're going all right." Which might or might not be true. There might be enemies after all. Or a big rock the shields would fail on. It was all Tauran's problem now. Not hers. Not hers.

The dust wailed away, changing pitch.

"Py-"

He burrowed in closer, arm stretched above her. "I'm holding on," he said; and did: his weight kept her steady and comfortable, so that her groping reach after the handgrip became too much effort. He stayed like that forever, in a position that could not be comfortable for him. She tried again to move and get a foot braced against the safety-rim. "I've got it," he said again, "it's all right, Py."

"Sprain your gods-be shoulder," she muttered.

He breathed into her ear and tongued the inside of it, like in the dark of off-watch, like the two of them twenty and brand new again. "Good gods." She caught her breath and lost it again. "Not now, Khym."

"Think of a better time?"

He couldn't, under the strain they were under. But he amused himself. While they hurtled on toward oblivion and it was clear he was in pain.

"Gods be fool man," she said. "Love you like my sister." It sounded stupid. It was the only way she knew to say it to him, in hani, so he would know what she meant. "Always have."

"Man's got no brother," he said. He was breathing hard. Strain was in his voice, while the scream of the ship went on and he kept up his lackadaisical attentions. "Man's alone. Man never even knows what I've got exists at all. Not alone anymore. Never alone anymore. You were right. You were always right."

"Gods, I wish I were." / wish I was right about what I'm doing, what I've done. We're going to jump and they haven't got that gods-be com on, they cut the gods-be com, we don't know when-

She hazed out. She came to and realized G-stress had shifted and Khym had come down on her limp as a dead man, breathing hard. That was no matter. He was warm, and without him she would shiver; she felt it.

"Mark," a sudden voice came over com, not Haral's, stranger-voice. "We're outbound."

-into jump. -falling.

''Hello,'' said the young man, sitting on the rock, beneath blue sky, above a golden valley; and she took him for a Wanderer, up to no good on Chanur land. She set her jaw and drew a deep breath and made herself as tall as she could: No nonsense, man, take a look at the spacer rings and figure you're not dealing with any young fool; I'll shred your ears for you.

"Hello," she said, on her way up from Chanur lands, on the. road. She had chosen to walk, when she might have made a landing here, created a little stir, coming in like that. But she was romantical in her youth.

What it got her was a young bandit, that was what. Real trouble, if he was also crazy. And worse trouble if he carried e knife. Some did.

"You're on Chanur land," she said. "Wise if you'd move along."

"You're Pyanfar," he said. And, gods, he was beautiful, his eyes large and gold-amber, his mane thick and wide. He stepped off his rock and landed on his feet in her path. ''Are you?"

"Last I checked. Who in a mahen hell are you?"

"Khym Mahn," he said. "Your husband."

-down. -alive. By the gods alive.

-and where? Gods, where? Kura. Kura. Got to get up, get to the bridge- No. First dump. Got-remember interval. "We all right?" Khym murmured. His weight hurt her, hurt her all the way to her bones. She was smothering. "We at Kura?"

"Move," she said, gasped. Gasped again when he tried, and fought and moaned her way to the edge of the bed, reaching for the console, involved in the edge of the safety net. "This is Pyanfar. We all right? Where's that gods-be com? Give us com, hear?"

There was delay. "Aye, captain," a strange voice said. And waited, by the gods waited during some on-bridge clearance, while a rag-eared bastard of a Tauran com officer asked her captain for clearance to report, that was what was going on. "Gods-be-"

Khym moaned in that way he had when he was about to be sick. And rolled over to the other side of the bed.

Com came through, a busy crackle of voices.

Khym was not sick. But she did not bother him either. She lay there listening to the data-chatter and the heavy machine-sounds of the ship.

"We're not getting buoy-output, from Kura," someone said. And sent ice water flowing through her gut.

Someone swore over com.

"Standby number two dump," a voice said then.

And the ship cycled down again, a lurch half into hyper-space-

-no buoy at Kura. -in hani space.

"I came here to wait,'' Khym said, on that path, beside the way she would have had to take. Perhaps someone had just phoned. He was perhaps another romantical fool, having come this long trek to sit alone and wait on a prospective wife. His face had a kind of wistful vulnerability: she had not known it then, but when she remembered that look afterward, she knew what it was, of experience. It was hope. It was Khym's gentle and earnest self, open to everything, entranced with her.

And he had escaped his sisters and his wives and gotten away alone. Or they did not care for him the way they ought: that had been her first thought when she believed he was who he claimed to be:

"You alone?" Anything might have happened to him. Some bandit might have attacked him. Some Chanur hunter might have taken him for a bandit and asked questions later. Or he might have fallen in with a group of Chanur herders who might have taken a fancy to him, and precious much they would have believed his claims to be their neighbor. A lord never got out in public. Except at challenge. And Chanur and Mahn, old allies, would never challenge each other. In those days.

Gods, she had thought atop it all, I'm betrothed to a fool in a house of rump-sitting fools who can't keep track of their own lord.

"It isn't far," he said, pointing back toward Mahn land.

Gods if I don't keep you better, she had thought; and then knew she could indeed do no better. Home was not a place she stayed. She had to trust the other wives and his sisters and his female cousins, who clearly could not handle him.

I'll have to knock heads in this house. Do I really want to get into this? If I weren't a fool I'd go home right now and leave him out here.

Gods, he's good-looking, isn't he?

But so're a dozen more I could find in the bushes.

"I don't do this all the time," he said earnestly. "I told them-" A gesture back toward the heart of Mahn land. "-1 was going to the garden. I guess no one's looked. I wanted to see you-"

He knew he was in the wrong. He knew he had made a bad impression. He knew he had even made a dangerous mistake, if she had a notion to take offense and go back to her clan, figuring a fool of a man was an easy mark for her lord; then he might die a young fool, and Mahn was in danger, if she were either unscrupulous or truly outraged. He knew this and he worried, now, when it was too late. Break her neck, he might, if he could get his hands on her. But it was not likely that he could. She was fast, in those days, and looked it; and might have a knife or even a gun (she had); and had the advantage of her clan, who could kill him under any circumstances for being where he was, but under felony charges, could dispossess his sisters and his kin and send them out homeless. He knew all of this. ("I thought you would go back,'' he had said to her in after years. ''I thought if you did I would have to challenge. And you would hate me. And so I couldn't do that either. I'd spend all my life trying to get you back.")

She set hands on hips and looked him up and down. Here in this isolated place where only they knew what might happen. And flattened her ears at him and slowly pricked them up again when his drooped. "Huh," she said. "Well, you got your border wrong." Even a man would know where that was. The flick of his ears showed he had indeed known. And deliberately trespassed, by the difference of two hills. The one in Chanur land just happened to have better vantage. And she came up close to him and up next to him and laid hands on him, which only his wives and his sisters could do without offense.

They were husband and wife before she walked him home. Out there on the border of Chanur land, as if she were some landless scoundrel and he some equally landless lad with hopes. She knew what she had married before she got there. A romantic, who, gods help her, asked her ten thousand questions, what was it like in space, where did she go, how long was she staying, would she come to see him every time she came back to the world?

He was ingenuous and reckless and a veritable encyclopedia of trivialities and natural science. He loved poking about under logs and into ponds, as devoted to hunting out curiosities as he ever was in hunting the game in which Mahn hills were rich; he could study a flower for whole minutes. Or the color of her eyes. She was not sure she liked being studied, there under Anuurn summer skies. She had come up to Mahn after a husband for politics, for finance, because they had dealt with him indirectly and believed his sister, that he was a decent domestic administrator and a man with some legal sense and no disposition to quarrel with Chanur; a fast few days in Mahn, a satisfaction of certain urges that were about to come on her, and which were misery on shipboard-and she ended up with a shy-smiling young man who did a fool thing like trespass and let himself be led off into the bushes and who spent whole minutes telling her how unusual her eyes were and (being Khym) what the statistical frequency of gold-and-bronze was with her ancestry.

She had known then she had gotten herself an odd one.

-aren't we coming out?

-Gods and mahen devils, what are they doing up there? Is that the drop?

It was. The Pride came down with a vengeance; Khym moaned; and she did; and heard the curses over com about the inlaid program in Nav, about the fools who had laid it in and the condition of Tauran stomachs.

Got to get up there. Second dump, I got to.

They had laid in food stores in the room, pinned to the console. She groped after them, packets the same as they used on the bridge. Dared not retract the net. Not till she got an all-clear.

Then over com: "Gods fry it to a mahen hell! What is that thing?"

She jabbed the com button, fighting with the net. "What is it? What's going on up there? This is Pyanfar Chanur, gods rot it, what's going on?"

Delay.

"Gods blast you, don't you give me authorizations on my own ship! Give me Sirany! What in a mahen hell's going on up there?"

"Chanur. We're stable. Proceed with crew change."

"Gods be." She retracted the safety restraint, rolled over and got her stiffened legs off the edge and hauled her sore torso upright. "Oh, gods." Never, never make love in jump, oh my ribs, my back, o gods. She got herself upright, swallowed down a rush of nausea and reeled and staggered, limping, toward the door.

A black streak shot down the hall, about ankle-high, squealing as it went.

''Gods and thunders!''

The Dinner was loose again.

She came reeling and limping her way onto the bridge with the crew-call sounding out over the general address, and grabbed the back of observer-two seat to steady herself while she got a look at the monitors, at scan, at a situation that looked tranquil enough, except for the kif running silently ahead of them. No firing here. No output from station either.

They were in hani space, and Kura, the second-largest station in that space, was dead silent at least as far as buoy output went.

"Kif’ve tripped a warning," she surmised suddenly, and staggered her way toward Sirany Tauran, grabbing the back of her seat to hold herself steady. "That's where buoy went. Shut itself up the moment it got kifish ID. Which kifish ID it got and how long ago, that worries me. Has our escort made it in? Did they overjump us?"

"Neat and sweet, they did, about two hours' worth. Got plenty of power on those ships, and their emissions trail's strong and clear. Covering up everything."

"Have we got a message going out? I auto'ed a message for Kura."

"Aye, captain," the com officer said. "We're three minutes out of response time."

"It tells Kura what we can. Advising any ships here to get home. Fast."

"Same I sent," Sirany said. "Same all the others been sending, their own ships' wrap on it. The mahe's been transmitting coded stuff, long burst just before we left Urtur.''

"Huh." More than huh. But not with Sirany. Worry broke out all over again. Jik's still with us. Still on our side. She scanned the monitors and saw the positioning of ships, the still-broken pattern, the hole where Tahar ought to be and was not. "No sign of Tahar."

"No sign."

She gnawed her mustaches and waited, eye on the chrono. "We get any response?"

"Negative."

"We got some godsrotted vermin run through here," Sirany said.

"I know it. We cleaned it out once. Skkukuk's gods-cursed food supply. Something's got loose again."

"F'godssakes. What are the things eating?"

"The ventilation filters."

"Lifesupport?"

"We got an electrical screen on the main systems from last time. We got it covered. Don't worry about it. The problem's in our watch. Just a stray, more'n likely. We'll get it."

"You thought of sabotage? That gods-be kif-"

"Is crew."

"Not in my watch, captain. That door of his is locked from the boards."

Question my judgment! On my bridge, in my chair, rot your hide! It was also a sane and reasonable suspicion. She restrained herself and got her voice quiet. "That kif," she said, "is our translator. Protocol officer and a gods-be decent one. Crew." It half-choked her. Get your backside out of my chair, Tauran. "He takes orders. Takes 'em fine. He's had a lot of chances to kill one or the other of us. Saved my hide back at Kefk." And I don't let him loose either, but he's not risking his neck in those corridors hunting vermin. "Shift. I'll spell you, work with yours and spell 'em off as mine come in. You did a marvel, Tauran, got us here through that soup, real fine job and strange boards-" Compliment the graynosed bastard. Keep us friendly. It was a good job. We're alive. We still got all our ships behind us, Jik and Harun and the rest, and all three kif out to front, and she's trying real hard to be polite, isn't she, Pyanfar Chanur? More suspicious than young Fiar. Wiser and harder and she has to be. She's got to push me a little. Got to keep her eyes clear and play the hardnose and try to get at truth, that's what she's after. She didn't fail us. Hasn't failed us.

"Fancy stuff," Sirany said, still sitting., "Mahen-make. Real fancy. That comp's a wonder."

What'd you pay for it, Chanur? What buys equipment like this, state of the art, class one stuff, when Chanur's broke and bankrupt and all space knows it?

What's this we hear about you and mahendo'sat and the Meetpoint stsho?

Before we go to sleep again-what kind of ship are we on?

"We got our tail shot up. Emergency patch at Kshshti. The mahendo'sat wanted us out of there real bad. It's this passenger of ours."

"The kif or the human or the mahendo'sat?"

Pushing hard now. Her pulse hammered and her ears flattened as Sirany turned in her seat to look up at her.

Out in the dark places too long, maybe, Chanur?

"I'll argue that in the han,'' Pyanfar said. "But our records are unlocked. Had a look, have you?"

"I've been busy," Sirany said. "Real busy." Her ears were flat. "Interesting stuff. But the important thing's still to get home, isn't it? We do it your way. Your rules. You want that kif in on com, that's fine. We got two more jumps to go. You want us to bed down with the gods-be kif, if you want to vouch for his manners, I'll take your word on it."

"Listen. I mean this. Don't expect him to be hani. He'll take your hand off if he thinks you're pushing me. Tully's quieter, but he's scared of you and he's got troubles youdon't know about; let him be. And my husband-let me tell you, ker Sirany, since you've said not a word on it, let me tell you: my husband's steady as anybody at the boards, and gods help him, you won't shock him, not after this trip, he knows what ship life is; he knows how to take orders, and you don't have to worry about him. Or Tully. They work together in galley. No problem with tempers. They like each other."

Sirany's ears went down and struggled bravely erect. "I saw the ring."

"Didn't win it in a fight. Won it sitting the boards doing his job while Haral Araun had her finger on a destruct button. And he'll take your orders, or mine, or any senior's. That's how it is. I want your help, ker Sirany. It's good we've got someone aboard who doubts us. And every word in that log is true. You understand me?"

Sirany's ears went half-flat. White showed at the corners of her eyes and her jaw was hard. Then the ears came up. "We'll worry about that when we're through this alive."

"I'm fighting for the han. They'll call me a traitor. They'll put that on my tomb if I get one. You understand me yet? It's one thing to be a gods-be hero. If we get through this alive, I want someone, I want one hani else to know this crew's not what they'll say we are."

Fear showed in Sirany's face. Undisguised. "What do you want, company?"

"I want your influence. We got two fights. One's in space. The other's with that fool Ehrran and all her ilk. The han tucks its collective head down and the kif have got the axe hanging over it. You hear me, Tauran? I'll do whatever I have to. If you see what I see, you'll be with me. Whatever else you think about me."

"You're a lunatic!"

"I'm doing something. What in a mahen hell has the han done right lately? What has anybody done about it?" A claw popped through the seat-leather as her hand clenched tighter. A second. "Tauran, how long do you think we can sit still while the Compact's blown to a mahen hell? Humanity's coming in on us. Mahendo'sat've done something stupid, they've done something that's touched off humans and got something started that they don't understand and I'm not sure the humans do: Tully's witness to that, and he warned us. Jik's tried to do something to save us all, and it's cost him. He at least knows his people've been fools. Like the stsho. Like hani. And the kif. And maybe the tc'a, gods save us. And even the humans may know by now. Most of 'em are fools by doing something. Ehrran just got us a brand-new treaty with the stsho, did you know that? And look where they are. Look what we're into. The kif just took 'em. We got kif backing into hani space. We got Kura not answering here. We got Akkhtimakt in such a mess that hani space is the only thing left he can get to, because ^Sikkukkut’s sent out ships to every jump-point in reach and blocked his other routes. Meanwhile there's a major mahendo'sat push coming down out of Kshshti, which if Akkhtimakt's spies are worth anything, he knows and Sikkukkut doesn't-he's been at Kita and up by Kshshti. That bastard's going to let Sikkukkut take the hit from the mahendo'sat while he pulls off into hani space and conies up again at the mahen underbelly, straight up at Iji. You know the mahendo'sat, you know they'll fragment if the Personage goes out. They won't have a defense. And humanity's going to be right in the middle of mahen territory with a whole lot of ships, ships that can jump short, just like our friends the mahendo'sat and just like the kif, ships that can shorten the time between strikes like nothing we want to imagine. But we won't worry about it. We'll be lucky to have a world left. And we'll belong to whoever wins. With nothing to say about it. If we survive at nil. We got one of our men in space. One, and you know how safe this ship is, with half the kif in the universe hunting us and the other half about to. The whole rest of our species is on Anuurn. And it takes one big rock, Sirany Tauran, one C-charged rock, and we're all widows and brotherless. Forever. You hear me? You know what I'm saying?"

Tauran said nothing. The ship hurtled on, crossing planetary diameters in every few heartbeats. In silence, all about them, inside the ship, inside the space between them.

"Tauran."

"I hear you. This is all crazy."

"Tauran's a spacing clan. Three generations. You know what I'm talking about. That mess you got into at Meetpoint. Could you even explain to those old old women in the han why you couldn't take out running? What chances you had getting up to V or what those distances are like? How many of 'em understand a stsho?"

"Who understands a stsho?"

"How do they formulate policy with them, make a treaty with them, tell us who live out here that we're supposed to stand off the kif, do I guess-that they expect us to dispose of the kifish problem, because it's going to take them ten, twenty years to change their concept of the way kif behave, or what the mahendo'sat are likely to do, and gods save us when they start dealing with the humans and their three governments, all fighting each other? What in a mahen hell are they going to do right now when Akkhtimakt comes into system? Order the Llun to bar them from station? Put hegemony sanctions on them? Study the problem?"

"It's too much-"

"I'm asking another clan to damn itself. With me. I'm asking all the rest of you. I'm asking those who know what I'm talking about to do something about it. We're not dealing with scattered pirates anymore. Hani out here'll do the right thing. I'm betting all we've got on that. Traders'll have stripped down, some go home, some scatter like seeds on a high wind. Everywhere. They're warned. But it won't save us from a rock. It won't protect us if some kif decides to take our species out. I can't get to the han to tell them what I'm telling you. I can't explain what happened at Meetpoint- gods know what's happened at Meetpoint. Or what's going to follow us. Or when. If Sikkukkut sent a ship out we don't know about, and some bastard's tailing us, they might pick up our directional transmissions. We can't do anything but what we've done."

"I read your running orders. I got your message from Sif. And I'm not a fool."

"I never took you for one. I got that impression early on. And I've got to go on walking the track I've been walking. Inside. Same as Jik's done. Till we've got Akkhtimakt stopped. There aren't enough hani ships in all space to do what we have to do, against hunter-ships and gods know what. We need the kif s firepower, even at the risk we're running. That's the game I'm playing, Tauran, and you know what I'll hear from the han if I can even get to 'em. Illegal contacts. Violation of treaties. Illegal personnel for the eternal gods' sake, on my ship. If somehow we live through this and the han's still operating, they'll probably hit us both with a charge of registry violations. That's how much they understand. You know who we're dealing with. Those old women are up with every twitch and power shift in the insystem markets, they know who's leaning where in the vote, they know every move and current in Anuurn affairs, and every dustup in history between the River Hegemony and the Amphictiony of Pesh and every other gods-be particle of past history that isn't going to matter a whole lot, Tauran, if one incoming rock kills every living thing on the planet back to the bugs and the worms, is it? A whole lot of expertise that's by the gods useless in the only question that matters, which is what are we going to by the gods do, Tauran, with what we know and where we are, and what we got behind us and ahead of us that we know about and they don't?"

"I'm hearing you," Sirany said. There had been a quiet stir about. Chanur crew was up. Tauran crew was still in place. But it was very quiet now. "I'm hearing you. I'm agreeing with you. But I've still got to think about this, Chanur."

"Think all the way to Kura Point. I'm going to send you Sifeny and Fiar back to your shift; let you all work it out. Take my own back to the boards. Human and my husband and the kif and all. With my thanks, her Sirany. They're good. I don't like to mess with teams that work. Yours or mine. And we need some crew rested full. For contingencies."

"You got it." Sirany released restraints and climbed out of the chair. "Get you a sandwich back here," she said then, and gathered up her crew, galleyward bound. Pyanfar stared at her retreating back, still hanging onto the seat. In case. The way any spacer held onto things in a moving ship. She looked at her own crew, at sober faces of Chanur who had arrived around her.

Ears lifted. "Good," Haral said.

"I hope," she said, and slid a glance Geran's way, at a face that showed trouble. "How is she?"

Geran shrugged. The woman had gone so gaunt herself that her ribs showed. Her worry was tautly held, made a darker spot above her nose, an indentation in her brow that had gotten to be part of her expression.

"You're a mess yourself. We need you. Get in there with Sirany's crew, get some food down you; Tully'll run some back to Chur. Don't argue with me, gods rot it, I'll have your ears. Chur'll have mine if I get her there without you. Hilfy, get the rest of us up here." The assigned crew was all there, all settling in as Hilfy's voice began calling Tully and Khym and Skkukuk on the general speakers.

"Mess," Pyanfar said, and flung herself into her chair. Haral was beside her, already in control of things. "No sign of Moon Rising."

There had been a chance. There was less and less. It was four months back at Meetpoint, as hyperlight ran down the starlanes, but not by the way they traveled; whatever had happened there was four, five months old and about to get older.

"Long time back," she said, while the data flowed past her.

"Kura's alive," Haral said. "Just not talking. Kif scared them plenty. They shut down everything. They got no ships here or they're all lying silent."

They had been a long time away from home. And far from the han. "Gods know what the stsho taught us, huh?"

Years the way homework! saw it. That was the way of spacers. To stay young while the worlds aged, and groundlings connived and contrived their little worldly plots and made their gains in the intervals when spacers were strung out between the stars, lost in dreams.

"Kif's not having any trouble out there. Real fine piece of navigation, that."

"We got troubles, Skkukuk's gods-be dinner's loose again. Got careless with his door open."

"Or we missed a couple of 'em."

"What's it eating, that's what Sirany wanted to know. That's what / want to know."

"Maybe it's gotten acclimated to electric shock," Hilfy said, breaking in on station-to-station. "Adaptive, Skkukuk said they were. Akkhtish life."

She looked straight across at Haral with a sinking feeling about her stomach.

"Lifesupport," Haral said.

"Check it. Those godsforsaken things eat plastics."

"We'll get it." Haral was out of her seat and headed. "Hilfy, get the menfolk on it. Get Skkukuk!"

"We can't leave our gods-be schedule. Can't. We got no way to recalc this thing and get word to all the ships back there fast enough. Gods rot it-" They were off auto-pilot see-and-evade while crew was coming up. It put the ship at some risk of damage. Not doing it was worse in terms of fragile flesh and bone. They had lives at stake back there. She punched a button to usurp com. "Ker Sirany, we're slaying stable a good half hour. I'm taking your advice on the vermin. We're trying to track them down."

"Understood," Sirany's voice came back, clear above the quiet of other voices in the galley. And, politic, not one other word.

Second jab of keys tied into com. "Skkukuk, this is the captain speaking, you hear me, son? Your gods-be dinner's loose again, I want 'em counted, I want to know where it is, I want it out of our way, or I'll have your hide for a wall-hanging, you hear me?"

"Kkkkt," the answer came back, dopplered from pickup to pickup. "Hakt', I let nothing escape, this is not my doing, not my doing, mekt-hakt'-/ am on my way, at once, at once-Fools, fools, hold the lift!''

He doubtless believed it about the wallhanging. She ducked her head between her hands and raked her claws through her mane. Tell the Tauran they were sane and this cut loose. It was ludicrous. It was deadly serious. No telling what systems the things could take out. The whole ship was infested. She had lost her reputation already. She stank, the whole ship stank, was acrawl with kifish vermin and gods knew what else, the whole clean, well-ordered universe was turned inside out and the vermin were the last, grotesque insult. The gods' own dark humor, that was what it was; just a final, ugly joke on the species. Take out the ship that might save them, with a mucked-up lifesupport, filters ruined, gods knew where they could get in and short something out with their wickedly sharp little teeth.

How many of them?

Breeding during jump? Something that lived so gods-be fast it just went on living and breeding even in hyperspace, generations upon nasty, squealing little generations?

Nothing could do that. Most animals did well to breed at all on shipboard, with all the noise and the clatter and clank that kept them upset; nothing could shift its metabolism like that and live real time in hyperspace.

Even kif couldn't.

Could they?

She stared at the situation on the screens in front of her, she kept the ship on course while one crew had its necessary meal in the galley; and Geran came back to tell her she had just reassigned Khym and Tully from galley to the hunt and she was, by the captain's leave, taking a cup of soup to her sister, by the captain's leave. Please. In spite of her specific

orders.

"Gods. Yes." Pyanfar took another desperate swipe at her disordered mane and part of it came out on her claws, the way a body always shed during jump, but no one on ship had had a bath in over four realspace months and six or so subjective days. "How is she?"

"Just real still. Says-says there's a trouble at home. Says there's kif going there. Says Moon Rising's behind us. Akkhtimakt’s ten days up on us. She says."

A chill went up Pyanfar's spine, and right down again to the gut. "She could be right." For a moment she had a conviction Chur could well be right: crack scan tech and sometime navigator, Chur knew how much time determined hunter ships could gain on a band of freighters. Then she saw it the way Geran had to see it. Chur was a practical woman. And she was babbling prophecies across lightyears. Jump could do that to a mind. There were casualties who never came in out of the dark. She had seen them, sitting in the sun at hospital, with Anuurn's blue sky above them forever and not a realization in the world where they were.

They were everywhere, that was their delusion. They would always be everywhere. If there was anything mystical about it, the thing that was themselves had just reached infinity and stayed there, like a machine with a broken cutoff switch.

"She wants to work," Geran said.

"Tell her-" Pyanfar drew a breath. "Can she?"

"No."

"Get her fed. We got an hour insystem here. I'm taking you offshift; you stay with her."

"No." Geran's ears went flat. "No, captain."

"You want one of the Tauran? Tully, f godssakes? You do it. We got Tirun to take scan. We can run .this one short or I can haul Sif back in. Stay there."

Geran's face went hard and desperate. Ears flicked and struggled up again. "Tully," she said. "I mean, he's not going to do anything, is he? Sleeps with us below. They're friends. Aren't they?"

"Yeah." Less said on that the better. "The good of the ship. Good of-a whole lot of people. Yes. I want you on the boards if you got your mind there."

"It'll be there," Geran said. "Do her good. She can't argue with Tully. I'll feel better about it." And she went, with a solid purpose in her stride.

Pyanfar settled into her place, listened to the chatter insystem, ran checks, took a cup of gfi when Fiar came bringing cups round. Charity. Out of their own galley.

The hunt went on, upper decks and lower. And the system they were running through stayed far quieter than it ought to be.

"They got the upperdecks filter changed out," Hilfy said. "Caught three of those things. Skkukuk swears they didn't slip from his collection. Old stuff, he says. They're coming from somewhere."

"Great. Wonderful." She clicked through changes on the comp. "That's fine news." Ought not to snap. Crew has enough on their minds. "Sorry."

"Aye, captain."

You've grown a lot, Hilfy Chanur. Can't tell you that. Crown woman never wants to hear that. Can't tell you anything anymore.

"First escort's jumped," Tirun said. "We're on-" The fifteen-minute warning sounded, a double pulse. "That's fifteen," Hilfy's voice rang out through the halls.

Pyanfar punched in on the same channel. "Leave it, whatever it is. Give us an easy trip, get yourselves to stations and quarters, wherever they are, forget the gods-be mess, I want you where you're going on the five. Tully, you go to Chur's room. Now."

"Got," that lone human voice came back. And other acknowledgments. Perhaps no one had broken it to Tully until now where he was spending the jump.

He would not object. He understood. Would do anything for Chur. Friend, he would say.

What Chur would say about Tully in her bed was another matter.

Annoy her. Make her mad. Get her mind back. That was what might work. Of a sudden she saw Geran's logic, clear and plain.

"He's what?" Chur murmured, and blinked at her sister, and at Tully standing all diffident at the foot of her bed.

"Taking care of you," Geran said. "Mind your manners. You take advantage of him the captain'll skin you. Hear?"

Chur blinked again, deciding finally that this was funny. The worried look on Tully's face was funny. There was a time she would have worried. Had been a time-yesterday, it seemed-when she had wanted no more of anything but hani. It was strange how all that had washed away, as if jump had left it behind, left her washed out, new, all things and everywhere. A god would feel this strange sensation, as if all space was her body and her brain, the stars so many particles. She might be a god. She laughed at them both, and flexed the fingers on the arm so long stiff it had gone beyond pain. Machinery ticked away. She had learned how to cheat it, how to keep her heart quiet and not trigger its anesthetizing flood through the tubes. She felt the pulse increase and settled it down again, deliberately.

"Brought me a handsome lover, have you? I must be better. C'mon, Tully. It's all right. They got one hand out of operation."

"I stay with," he said. Innocent of everything.

He stank. Everyone did. She did. There was no help for it, though Geran tried to keep her clean. That was all right too. Geran went off and left them together, Tully standing there lost-looking, and the com crackling with reports.

The reports confused her. They had hunted the black things out at- wherever they had been.

They were back again at Kura. Little slinking evils. A god might have worse things to deal with. They were only nuisance-nightmares.

"Go soon," Tully said, and sat on the edge of her bed. "I be with you." He patted her knee under the blankets. That hurt a little. All her joints ached. "You be fine, Chur."

It was nice to be told that by someone other than Geran, who was biased. She drew a larger breath.

"We go to Anuurn," he said, and held up two slender, agile fingers. "Two jump. We got-" Another rearrangement of the fingers. "Nine ship. Make safe."

"Against the kif?" For a moment space went inside and out. "No. Tell the captain-tell the captain- trouble. They'll be waiting off Tyar."

"Geran tell," Tully said. "She tell, all right?"

"Logic," Chur said, and waved the free hand, a loose, limp failure of a gesture. "Logic-position. The geometry of the thing-" She stared at him in despair. Geran had looked at her as if she were crazed. Tully simply blinked, beyond his vocabulary.

"Danger," she said. "Danger, gods rot it."

"Understand," he said. And looked at her with fear. With Geran's look.

Crew returned. Pyanfar ran the checks. They were still on the mark. They had no communication with the other ships excepting the necessary crosschecks of position and exchange of navigational data. It was not politic or wise, considering possibility of spies overhearing them, to do more than they had done. Their messages would be reported, as often as they were detected, and some they had sent were already pushing the limits of prudence.

Hakkikt, she would say, such arguments were necessary. They won us allies. Isn't that the point?

If she got the chance. .

The five-minute warning sounded. The ship started procedures. Data started coming up. Tauran crew and their mahen passengers reported themselves secure.

"Sukk just made jump," Geran said.

"Coming up on mark," Haral said.

They left behind a scrap of message, to persist after them. Danger to Anuurn. Assist.