The Kif Strike Back

I

The Pride came in, dropping suddenly into here and now; and Pyanfar Chanur reached for controls, half-dazed yet.

Where? she thought, with one wild panicked notion that the drive could have betrayed them and they might be nowhere at all. There were new routines to remember. There were new parameters, new systems—

No. Go on comp, fool, let the autos take her—

"Location," she said past jaws gone dry as dust.

"We're in the range," Tirun said.

The first dump came, phasing them into the interface and out again; and The Pride of Chanur hauled herself back to realspace with authority.

"We're alive," Khym said.

And that surprised them all.

"Chur?" Geran asked.

"Here," a voice said from in-ship com, faint and slurred. ''I'm here, all right. We made it, huh?"

Second dump: The Pride shed more of the speed the gravity drop had lent her. And kept going, while the red numbers reeled on the board, a passage-speed that flicked astronomical measures past like local trivialities.

"Just passed third mark," Haral said.

"Huh," said Pyanfar.

"Beacon alarm."

"No response." Pyanfar's eye was on the scan image Mkks' robot beacon sent them, positions of everything in Mkks system. Beacon protested their velocity. "Get me that line, gods rot it, can we do it?—where's that line? Wake up!"

The line flashed onto the monitor, red and dangerous, showing them a course that broke every navigation code in the Compact.

Alarms flashed: the siren howled. Pyanfar laid back her ears and reached frantically to controls as Haral synched moves with her to get the numbers ripped loose from scan-comp and embedded in nav. She keyed a confirmation, one press of a button. Alarms died, and The Pride kept going, hellbent on the line—

("We're on, we're on, we're on!" Tirun breathed—)

—sending a C-charged jumpship on a course straight to Mkks station, a maneuver two stars wide, betting everything they had that Mkks beacon would be accurate. They were racing the lightspeed wavefront of their own arrival, the message which that jumprange beacon back there sent to Mkks—chased that moment down the timeline as fast as any ship could dare, with enough energy bound up in their mass to make one great flare if anything Mkks beacon had not reported should turn up in their path—a nova in miniature, a briefly flaring sun.

Pyanfar let the controls go, flexed aching hands and reached in null G drift for the foil packet she had clamped to the chair arm. It escaped her claws and she snagged it back, bit a hole in it and drank the contents down in several convulsive gulps, shuddering at the taste and the impact on her stomach. It was necessary: the body shed hair, shed skin, depleted its minerals and moisture. Shortly blood sugar would surge and plummet, and she had to be past that point when The Pride's course reached critical again.

There was no hope now of steering. They were going too fast to skew off to any influence but the star's, and that pull was plotted into their course. She wiped her mane back and rubbed an itch on her nose that had been there since Kshshti.

"Mkks nine minutes Light," Haral said.

Nine minutes til Mkks station got the news of their arrival; mahendo'sat authority would take a few minutes more realizing they had not made that critical third velocity dump. In the meanwhile The Pride was shortening the nine minute reply interval. In much less than eighteen minutes, they would run into the outgoing communications wavefront of a frantic station.

That was time as starships saw it: but someone had to call the kif on com; someone had physically to push buttons and get to kif authority, while in each running stride of kifish feet down a corridor an inbound jumpship traveled a planetary diameter.

"Send," she said to Khym. "The Pride of Chanur inbound to Mkks: requesting shiplist and dock assignment. We want berths clear on either side of us. We have cargo hazard. Send."

That would confuse them: a ship behaving like vane malfunction and talking like cargo emergency. Eight point nine minutes to get that message to station. Fifteen point something by the time station could so much as reply if they were instantaneous. Someone had to turn a chair, ask a supervisor, report the message. She heard Khym send it out—gods, a male voice from a hani ship: that alone would confound station central. They would not have heard its like before—would be checking their doppler-receivers for potential malfunction, doubting the truth while it hurtled down on them, even techs accustomed to C- fractional thinking—

"Send again: Message to Harukk, Sikkukkut commanding. We have an appointment. We've come to keep it. We'll see you on the docks."

(Someone deciding to relay that to the kif; kifish feet racing to locate the commander: another moment to decide to undock or sit tight—An instant's consideration and a planetary diameter flicked by.)

Ten minutes to launch a ship like Harukk if they ripped her loose from dock without preamble: forty more to get her sufficient range from mass to pulse the fields up. Harukk had a star to fight for its velocity, and that star was helping them come in.

Another half minute down.

At this dizzying rate, inside this time-packet, there was a curious sense of slow-motion, of insulation from kif and threats.

And a sense of helplessness. There were things the kif could do. And there was time for those things—like pressing a trigger, or cutting a defenseless throat—

The dizziness hit; the concentrate had reached her bloodstream.

"You sick, Khym?"

"No." A small and strangled voice. It was not the first time.

"Chur?"

"Still with you, captain."

"Tirun: got a realtime check?"

"483 hours in transit, by the beacon."

"That's 20 minutes to final dump," Haral said.

On schedule, on mark. They had worked it all out at Kshshti, before they undertook this lunacy; worked it out the hard way, in the hours before undock, and in the long hard push that sent The Pride out to a jump by-the-gods deep in the gravity ,well and brought her in gods-rotted deep in this one, in a maneuver a hunter-crew would stick at and no merchanter ever ought to try.

They were hani, all: red-gold maned and bearded, red-gold hides. All of them but one had gold rings aplenty up the sweep of their tuft-tipped ears, gold that meant experience, voyages and ventures from home at Anuurn to Idunspol, Meetpoint, Maing Tol and Kura; Jininsai and Urtur; strange ports, foreign trade, dice-throws and wide bets. But no voyage like this one. Mkks was no hani port. Not a place where any honest freighter would care to go. And no honest merchanter had that outsized engine pack they carried; or that ratio of vane to mass.

Pyanfar said nothing. She uncapped the safety switch on what few armaments The Pride had, and broke another law.

"Eighteen to final dump," Haral said.

"Call coming—Tirun—Tirun—which one?" Khym's voice betrayed strain and panic, inexperienced as he was at that board. Disoriented as well as jump-sick, it was well possible. But the switch got made and the station's voice came through, dopplered out into sanity.

Mahen voice. "Confirm dump, confirm dump—"

"Repeat previous message. Tell them we want that shiplist. Fast."

There were codes they might have used to get cooperation from the mahendo'sat. There was no way to use them. The kif had ears too.

So they went at it the hard way, and Mkks station began to panic, dopplered message overlaying message, continuing a few seconds yet in the initial assumption: that they had a ship incoming dead at them in helpless malfunction.

By now their own message would be flashing to the kif, who would not be so naive.

The kif might—might—at this stage get a ship out to run; but she had not read Sikkukkut an'nikktukktin as that breed of kif.

Not with prisoners in his hands.

It was a hall somewhere within the upper reaches of the ship docked gods-knew where. Hilfy Chanur knew the ship-name now. It was Harukk.

And she knew the kif seated before her, among other kif. His name was Sikkukkut. He sat as a dark-robed lump on an insect-chair, among its black, bent legs. Sodium-glow relieved the murk close in, casting harsh shadow and orange-pink light. Incense curled from black globes set about the room and mingled with ammonia-stench. She could not so much as rub her offended nose. Her hands were linked with cords behind her back, Tully's likewise, for all the good that he could have done if his hands were free. Tully's face was pale, his golden mane and beard all tangled and sweat-matted, his fragile human skin claw-streaked and bleeding in the lurid glow. He had done his best. She had. Neither was good enough.

"Where did you hope to go?" Sikkukkut asked. "To do what?"

"I hoped," Hilfy Chanur said, because it never paid to back up with a kif, "to fracture a skull or two."

"No fracture," Sikkukkut said. "Concussed."—whether that this was a kif s humor or a kifish total lack of it. Harukk's captain unfolded himself from his insect-chair in a rustling of black robes. There was no color save the sodium-light, none, throughout all the ship. Objects, walls, clothes were all grays and blacks—They're color blind, Hilfy thought, really, totally blind to it. She thought of blue Anuurn skies and green fields and hani themselves a riot of golds and reds and every color they decked themselves in, and held that recollection like a talisman against the dark and the hellish glare.

Sikkukkut moved closer. There was a sound like the wind in old leaves as other kif moved beyond the lights and the curling wisps of smoke. She braced herself; but it was Tully the kif aimed at.

"This speaks hani," Sikkukkut said. "It tries to pretend not—''

Hilfy stepped into his path.

"And where our understanding fails," the kif said in flawless hani accents, "I know you have expertise with the human. We can secure that. Can't we?" He brushed past her and jerked Tully suddenly toward him by one arm and the other. The kif s claws made small indentations in his flesh and Tully stood there, face to face with those jaws a hand's breadth from his eyes. Hilfy could smell the sweat and fear.

"Soft," Sikkukkut said, tightening his grip. "Such fine, fine skin. That might have value on its own."

Closer still.

"Let him go!"

The dark snout wrinkled and the tip twitched. Kif sustenance was mostly fluid, so outsiders said: they were total carnivores, and disdained not at all to use those razored outer jaws. Two rows of teeth, two sets of jaws. One to bite and one fast-moving set far up inside that long snout to reduce the outer-jaw bites to paste and fluids the tiny throat could handle. The tongue darted in the v-form gap of the teeth. Tully jerked and winced in silence. The long face lifted, to use its eyes at level, its jaws—

"Stop it! Gods rot it—stop!"

"But it will have to stop struggling," Sikkukkut said, "I can't release my claws.—Tell him so. ..."

Hilfy took in her breath. But Tully had stopped resisting, slopped—all at once, betraying himself.

"Ah. It does understand."

"Let him go."

The kif sniffed, jerked Tully against his chest and flung him free all in two quick motions.

Tully stumbled back. Hilfy thrust her shoulder between him and Sikkukkut's step forward and stood her ground with her knees wobbling under her from stark fear. Her ears were back; her nose rumpled into a grin that was not at all the grin of Tully's helpless primate kind.

A dry sniffing. Kifish laughter. Sikkukkut gazed at her from within the hood, the dim light glinting off his eyes. 'Implicit in the hani tongue are concepts like friendship. Fondness. These are different than sfik. But equally useful. Particularly I do not discount them when you have such success talking to this creature. How have you bound him?"

"Try kind words."

"Do you think so? I have been kind. Perhaps then my accent confuses him. Tell him I want to know everything he knows, why he came, to whom he came, what he hopes to do-—Tell him this. Tell him that I am anxious and impatient and many other things."

She weighed it for what seemed forever. She wondered that the kif s patience could last so long.

It broke. The kif reached and she blocked that reach a second time with her shoulder. "—He's asking questions, Tully," she said all in one breath. "He wants to talk."

Tully said nothing.

"Guess he doesn't understand," she said. "He gets words muddled up—"

"I was skku to the hakkikt Akkukkak in his day." Sikkukkut's voice was soft, cultured; but in its softness she heard distinctly the clicks within the throat, the clashing of inner jaws as he lifted his chin. "We do know each other, he and I- We have met— before this. At Meetpoint. Does he remember?"

"—Friend of Akkukkak's," Hilfy said. Distract him; gods, distract him, get him off the hunt. "—If kif had friends."

"This human has sfik," Sikkukkut said, unmoving. "Akkukkak failed to know this. How could so soft a creature have so much sfik as this, to elude kif on Meetpoint docks? Had I been there, of course, he would have fared less well. And now I am here, and he is here, and I am asking him these things."

"—He's still asking questions," she said to Tully.

"I shall be asking them," Sikkukkut said. "I do ask them." The silence lingered. Light kifish fingers touched hershoulder, stroked the fur—

—withdrew. She sucked in a kif-tainted breath, trembling. Her ears were flat. She went deaf, near blind, hunter-vision narrowed to one long black tunnel focused on the kif. But Sikkukkut drew away. He settled down again onto his many-legged chair and tucked his legs up until he indeed resembled some ungainly insect.

Tully's shoulder touched hers and leaned there. She felt his weight, the chill of his flesh: gods, no, stay upright, don't give way, don't faint, they'II go for you—

The kif lifted his hands to the hood he wore and dropped it back to his hunched shoulders, the first sight she had ever had of any kif unhooded, and it was no pleasant thing, the long dark skull, the dull black wisp of mane that lay forward-grained along the centerline: he was virtually earless, stsho-like in that respect. She had seen models. Holos. None were this peculiarly graceful, ugly thing.

The eyes rested on her, apt for such a face, dark and glittering. "You will understand these things: this creature has more than sfik-value; it has sfik itself. Let me speak in hani terms: Akkukkak perished of embarrassment. Therefore I love this creature, because it has killed my superior and now I have no superior."

"Gibberish."

"I think it quite clear. It has value. If it yields me its value and tells me what I ask I shall be further grateful,"

"Sure."

"Perhaps I shall keep it in my affection and let it see the death of my friend Akkhtimakt. Perhaps I shall let it eat of my rivals."

It still spoke hani. The words meant other, kifish things. Her nape bristled. She wanted out, out of here.

"Translate this."

"—He's crazy as all kif."

The thin body shook and hissed atop its insect-perch. "Bigot. I shall make my own translations. Kkkt!"

"Fool!" mahen authority screamed into com; and other, less complimentary things.

"Stand by third dump," Pyanfar said.

"You fool, daughter ten thousand fools, what do? what do? You get report sent han this outrage; we report you endanger—''

The Pride dumped speed, a breakup of telemetry—

—phased in again, into a new flood of station chatter.

"Khym. List." Tirun's voice, prompting him in his muzziness. "Shift it. Move."

The incoming shiplist turned up on number two screen, Haral's transfer of data smooth and routine while station's voice suddenly grew quieter ...

"That's two minutes Light," Geran said. They were virtually realtime with Mkks station, moving at a crawl now, within the capacity of their realspace braking thrust.

Harukk, the shiplist said. There were other kifish names. A lot of them. A few mahendo'sat. A stsho. (A stsho, at Mkks!) Aflock of tc'a and chi in Mkks' small methane-sector.

"Thank the gods," Pyanfar muttered, and began to take he telemetry again, shifting her mind back to business. "Approach," she said; and when Geran delayed: "Course clearance, gods rot it, look to it!" She began The Pride's high-V braking roll. "Hang on. We're going with it. Now."

"What business?" Sikkukkut asked; and Hilfy pressed close to Tully's side, hearing the shifting of bodies about them beyond the smoke and the lights. "What did it arrange with the mahe? Kkkt. Ask it. Get an answer, young Chanur."

"—He's asking about deals," Hilfy said, and shifted again, for a kif moved up on that side of Tully. She looked at Sikkukkut. "He doesn't understand. He can't understand, gods rot it. He uses a translator on our ship. He can't speak, he can't shape our words even if he knew what I was saying to him."

Sikkukkut gathered up a silver cup from the table, a ball-like thing studded with thumbsized, flat-ended projections. He extended a dark tongue, dipped his snout into it and drank—gods knew what. He lifted his face. A thin tongue flicked about his muzzle. He still held the cup, his fingers caressing the flat-studded surface. "Choose better words: They will harm him, young Chanur, my skkukun; they will. Persuade him. Break this silence of his. If there are mechanical translators needed, we will supply them. Only make him speak."

"I'm trying." She shifted again, bringing herself between Tully and the circling kif. "Back off!—Tully, Tully, tell him something. Anything. I think you'd better."

—Lie, she wished him; play the game, I'll help you—She felt the chill of his body against her side. She tried to look up at him, but he looked only to the kif, perhaps without the wit left to lie at all.

"Perhaps," said Sikkukkut—A door opened, admitting sullen light: another kif came in, silhouette like all the rest.—"We should consider another private interview with him. Kkkk-t?"

The kif hastened past the others. Sikkukkut turned his head.

"Ksstit," it hissed. "Kkotkot ktun."

Message. Hilfy drew a breath and felt Tully shiver against her. The interloper bent its hooded head near its captain's and whispered shortly. Sikkukkut rested with his hands upon his knees. His shoulders moved with a long, long breath and his jaw lifted.

"Kkkt! Kktkhi ukkik skutti fikkti knkkuri. Ktikkikt!"

All about them the room rustled with kif. Take them from here. Hilfy knew that much kifish. But not the inflections. Not why, or what had happened, or what happened next.

Kif closed about them: Tully let out an unaccustomed sound as they tore him from her side.

"Claws in," she yelled at the kif, "you stupid clot!"—She raked a kifish shin with a bare-clawed foot. A returned blow jolted her teeth and claws bit into her shoulders. There was nothing, with her hands tied, that she could do. They were enough to carry her. They seized her about both knees and did that at the end, despite her twisting and turning.

"Bastard!" she yelled past kifish bodies. She saw Sikkukkut still sitting there like some graven image in the dark, flanked by other kif.

"They are here," Sikkukkut said.

The door came between and closed.

Mkks station was a wall in front of them as The Pride homed in: the berth Mkks had assigned her glowed with the comeaheads on the number two screen while the closing numbers ticked off.

—"Please you wait," mahen authority had protested via com during the last part of their approach, a much, much more conciliatory tone. "Got already advise Harukk, same want conference, repeat, want conference. Request reply^—"

And closer still, in their silence: "We make request you delay dock, Pride of Chanur, you got problem, please, we negotiate—"

Because there was no way a station like Mkks had to stop any ship from coming in. And worse, there were fifteen vulnerable kifish ships dead-vee at dock, attached to Mkks' very vulnerable side. Mkks would have sounded alarms by now and thrown the section-seals on its docks, fearing projectiles launched, fearing kif; and riot.

—"Please," the protest went on from Mkks authority: ''You stop this make negotiate the kif: We forbid you carry quarrel here."

But they had the berth they demanded, a clear spot with nothing directly next them on either side. There were kif at hand. Harukk was in the sixth berth down, within the section. Two mahen traders were docked far over on the other side of Mkks' torus. Kif ships lined the adjacent section's docks. There were more mahen ships beyond. The solitary stsho. And tc'a and chi on methane-side.

—"We meet you at dockside. We bring security. Make negotiate this matter. We appeal—"

Clank-thump. The grapples took, from their side and from station's; the hookup routines started. They had a docking crew waiting. And security. So Mkks Central said.

"They've stopped talking," Khym said anxiously, meaning he had done nothing to cut them off by accident, in his inexperience. "They just went quiet."

But half a heartbeat later, another call came through.

"This is kif port authority," said a clicking voice." You are clear. Welcome to Mkks, Pride of Chanur. You may even bring your arms. The hakkikt extends safeconduct. You will have guides. Welcome, again, to Mkks."

"Gods rot those bastards!" Geran cried.

"They've got their own personnel inside Central for sure," Tirun said. "That was a valid code."

"Move. We've got no choice." Pyanfar powered her chair about and hurled herself out of it, slapped the back of Haral's seat. "Get that linkup made."

"Rifles or APs?" Tirun was already on her feet; Haral's sister, tall, full-maned and bearded, with gold rings winking from her ear. There was Geran, slight and fairer: slight indeed against the size of Khym nef Mahn who climbed out of his seat and towered there, wider and taller and dead grim.

"APs," Pyanfar said with a tautness about the mouth, a drawing-down of her mustaches. "But I'll take a rifle; want you with one, too. Might want a distance weapon on those docks—might-want a lot of distance, huh? And I don't think we have to worry about the law here."

There were quiet laughs, a soft explosion of ugly humor. Tirun opened the locker and passed out side-arms to her and Geran, mahen weapons that fired an explosive shell, not the motley patchup of pocket guns they had had back at Kshshti: APs with the necessary extra cartridge-case on the holster belt. And the two rifles, hers and Tirun's, longer-range and capable of a precise target, unlike the APs.

Pyanfar took the rifle and checked the safety and cycled the power-test while com crackled with further instructions. "We will meet you outside," the kifish voice said. Thumps and clanks went on, the securing of lines and hoses.

The kif intended ambush. They took that for granted. Ambush might come later, after they had gotten far from the ship, or it might be a kifish rush the moment the airlock opened, and gods help any mahen dock-worker caught between.

"They're moving the access link in." Haral spun her chair about. "We're in." She rose and belted on the AP Tirun handed her.

"One of us," a voice said from the door, "has got to stay here and hold the farm."

"Gods rot—" Pyanfar did not need to turn. She saw Chur clearly from where she stood. Geran's sister leaned in the doorway of the bridge, blue breeches drawstringed perilously low, beneath the bandages swathing her midsection. "Chur—"

"Doing fine, thanks." The tightness about Chur's nose and mouth denied it. "Na Khym's worth more outside, isn't he? And / can bust her loose from dock if need be." Chur limped across the bridge into her sister's reach and waved off Geran's help. She reached for her own accustomed seat at scan and leaned on the back of it, kept going as far as Haral's co-pilot's post and sat down. "You tell me when you want her opened, captain. I'll figure shut for myself. No mahe's getting in, huh? Gods rotted sure no kif either."

Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and threw one look at Geran, whose head lifted in terminal stubbornness. No reasoning with either sister. It ran in the blood. No reasoning with that sudden fire in Khym's eyes, when he saw a chance more to his liking than sitting guard up here. "Fine," she said. "Get Chur a rifle. In case. And get him one. Move Khym, you keep your wits about you out there. You don't breathe without my order. Hear? We've got one problem on those docks. One. Hear me?"

"Aye."

They were husband and wife at other times. Not here. Not out there. As males went, he was a rock of stability and self-control.

And Chur was right: he was helpless with the boards.

Clank-thump-clang. The access way was firm. They had connection to Mkks station.

Geran laid a rifle into Chur's grasp. Chur lifted it deliberately, though she had done well to lift a hand the other side of jump's time-stretch. Click-click. Safety off and on again. looked up, ears pricked, mouth pursed in a wry smile that showed hollowness below her cheekbones, substance waste in jumpspace healing. Her gold-red fur was lusterless and dulled. Light showed through her ear-edge where rings belonged. Chur had not dressed for amenities, not even important ones like that. "Get them out, huh?" Chur said, meaning Hilfy, meaning Tully, and gave a look at Geran before all of them. "Want you all back, too." she said.

"Come on," said Pyanfar. She turned on the pocket com she had hooked to her belt and gestured at the door. She wore no finery this trip, none of the bright color she favored, just blue spacer breeches, same as the rest, excepting Khym, who wore plain brown.

She headed out the door without a backward look, with Khym thumping along beside her and Haral and Tirun and. Geran at her back.

"Com's live," Chur's voice pursued them down the corridor toward the lift, all-ship address that echoed everywhere. Behind them the bridge door hissed shut, sealing Chur in.

"Hurry it." Pyanfar hit the lift button and held the door open, diving inside last as the door shut and the lift whisked downward with a G drop of its own. They were rank at close quarters, unwashed since jump. Wisps of shed fur clung to bodies and clothes; copper taste filled her mouth. None of the crew was better off, none of them fit for diplomacy dockside. The gun dragged at her hip. The heavy rifle in the crook of her arm offered no comfort at all. Gods, gods, kif outside; mahendo'sat— honest mahen station guards trying to prevent trouble and protect their own folk. The last thing any of them wanted was to shoot their way past allies who were duty-bound to stop them.

The lift braked and let them out again on lowerdecks. They sorted themselves out into an order of instinctive precedence as they headed down the hall: herself and Haral; Khym with partnerless Geran; Tirun at the rear, Haral's sister-shadow, a little lame in a long run, but veteran of too many ports to let anything reach their backs.

And Khym — calamity waiting a chance, she thought; lousy shot, male-like; male-like, a worry in a crisis; and twice as strong as any of them if it came to a set-to hand to hand.

"Got a call from a mahen officer named Jiniri," Chur's disembodied voice boomed out from com. '"We got ourselves some mahen station guards out there and a lot of citizens. I told them keep clear; they're not — not listening — "

"You all right up there?"

"Fine, captain." The voice was hoarse and thin. "Fine." Stronger that time. "Watch yourselves, huh?"

They reached the bend toward the airlock. "We're there," Pyanfar said to the pickups in the corridor. "Where's the kif? See any?"

"Can't tell for sure. Haven't heard a sound in the access and I've got the gain up full. The com — they say they're out there. Mahe — mahendo'sat — out there — Me, I'd just as soon they were."

"Gods-rotted trouble. Tell them get out of it. Fast."

"Won't listen — They invoke the Compact. Say — say — Gods rot. you can guess."

Pyanfar snicked the safety off her rifle; there were two echoes and a couple of different sounds as Haral and Geran took the APs from their clip-holsters, took the safeties off and sent cartridges to the chambers. "We're set. Open us up.''

The hatch hissed open. They herded in and stopped, facing the outer door. "Seal us out and let's go," Pyanfar said.

The way behind them closed; the facing hatch shot open on an empty accessway, a yellow-lighted passage, icy cold.

Pyanfar dashed to the last point of cover where the accessway bent; Tirun took the other side with her rifle and the two of them came round the bend together, with three more guns aimed past their backs.

No kif. Empty passage. Pyanfar jogged soft-footed as far as the debouchment, where the yellow access tube gave over to descending rampway, a slope of interlocked gratings leading down to the pressure gates, and down again, a long exposed walk to the dock. People down there. Crowd-noise. A knot of about forty civilian mahendo'sat waited at the bottom of that long ramp, with a handful of mahen guards, dark, tall, primate: black-furred and one conspicuous tasunno, brown. And, gods, an anomaly in the midst of the crowd, a white-skinned stsho in drifting rainbow gossamer. The crowd surged forward with a gibbering outcry at the sight of them.

"Smell it?" Haral muttered, at her side.

Ammonia: kif scent. The dilapidated dockside was in twirl light, and a hundred doorways showed on the anti-dockward side, any one of which might hold a sniper; if the wind had! not been up her back before, that smell would have sent it.

She headed down in haste, a quick thunder of steps on the; old-fashioned steel rampway, Haral at her side. The mahendo'sat below shouted and pushed and shoved among themselves, attempting the ramp while the guards struggled to-hold the line.

One passed, came striding forward right onto the foot of the ramp as they came down to it. "You crazy, crazy!" The official-looking mahe waved her hands as they came face to face; her howl rose louder than the rest, even the stsho's agitated warble. "You go back 'board, we negotiate this trouble, not bring guns this dock! You keep back our line, let our guard do, hani captain! Hear? Go back you ship! We arrange talk; come, go between talk, you, kif hakkikt! No go down, hear! We got accommodations—we fix—"

They had it down smooth, she and Haral: she could deal with the mahe knowing her second in command was watching the crowd; and Geran and Tirun would be watching left and right, with the known space of the ramp at their backs. God knew where Khym's attention was. She ignored the waving hands, the attempt to catch her arm, and brushed the officer aside. "Come on," she said to her crew, and left the ramp, parallel to the line of guards who had their hands full with agitated dignitaries.

"You no go!" the mahe cried, trying to get in front of her again. The black face contorted in anguish. "No go!"

Pyanfar shoved with the rifle, sideways-held, which drew a collective gasp from the crowd. "Private business," she said. "Get your people out of the way, I'm telling you—Go! Get! Get cover!"

"Not bring guns! Go, go you ship, not do, not do!"

And from the stsho, who eluded the guards to rush, up and wave white arms in her face: "You break Compact law. Complaint, we make complaint this barbarous behavior—We witness—"

"Move it!"

A second shove. The stsho recoiled in a wild motion of gtst spindly limbs, retreating in a flood of gtst gossamer robes and a warble of stsho language, headed full-tilt away from the scene. "Ni shoss, ni shoss, knthi mnosith hos!—"

"Maheinsi tosha nai mas!" the mahe cried; and mahendo'sat guards turned from crowd-control to facing hani rifles with their riot-sticks, as the mob discovered they were not at all interested in getting closer. There was a low sound of dismay und the docks grew astoundingly quiet.

"Move them," Pyanfar said, gesturing with rifle barrel still averted from the mahen official. "Hasano-ma. Authorization from your Personage. Hear?"

The mahe had drawn back to range herself with her guard. She stood with diminutive ears laid back. But they came up at Personage. Fear grew starker on her face.

"You've got your tail in a vise, Voice. I advise you, go back to Central and stay there. Fast."

"Captain!" Haral hissed. "Your left."

A shadow advanced at her flank, from the obscurity of gantries and machinery—kif, in numbers. The mahen Voice heeled about and held up her hand in the face of the advance. "You stop! Stop! You break law!"—as the crowd shrieked and scuttled from between, and kept going, all but the Voice and her handful of nervous guards.

The kif drifted to a stop like a shadow-flow. One kept walking ahead, a black-robed figure. The rest stayed still, rifles in their hands. The whole dock seemed hushed, but for the distant whir of fans and clank of pumps and the fading sounds of fleeing civilians.

Law. The Voice's protest echoed faint and powerless. Mkks was in this moment very, very far from mahen law. And the mahendo'sat who claimed this disputed star station depended on pretences that had teeth only when mahen hunter-ships were in port.

Not in this hour, that was sure.

Pyanfar's ears flattened. She let them stay that way. "Well?" she said to the hooded kif who had stopped a little distances! removed, rifle crosswise in its hands. "We were invited here. Name of one Sikkukkut. You represent him?"

The kif walked closer. Guns leveled: Khym's; hers. Haral's and Geran's were trained on the main mass of kif; and Tirun—Tirun, rear-guard, was not in her view; but she was back there and alert, that was sure.

The kif regarded them with dark, red-rimmed eyes. Its gray wrinkled skin acquired further wrinkles up and down the snout and lost them. "I have message, hani."

It held out a thin hand. It held a small gold ring between its thumb and retractable fore-claw.

Tully's. Pyanfar held out her hand and the kif dropped the ring into her open palm, no more willing than she to be touched.

"Is the human alive?"

"At present."

Hilfy too? Pyanfar ached to ask and knew better than to give a kif a hint where the soft spots were. She kept disdain in the set of her mouth. "Tell Sikkukkut I'll talk about it."

There was a long pause. The kif gave no ground. "You come to trade. The hakkikt will see you. We choose a neutral, ground. Bring your weapons. We have ours."

It was better than might have been. It was far too good an offer and she distrusted it. "We can deal here," she said. "Now."

"This wants time discussing. You ask condition. Alive, but uncomfortable. How long a delay do you wish?"

She slung the rifle marginally upward, out of direct line, and wrinkled up her nose. "All right," she said, ever so quietly, as if no hani had ever broken a kif's neck or no blood ever been shed at Gaohn. "All right. We'll add it up later, kif."

It flourished a wide black sleeve: follow. It headed for its own ranks.

Pyanfar started walking and heard a soft-footed whisper of pads on decking behind her as her crew followed, with the rattle of gunstrap rings.

"Captain." A patter of non-retracting claws. The Voice caught her arm again. "No go—"

"Keep the kif away from my ship. You want this station in one piece?''

The Voice fell behind. "You crazy," the outcry pursued her, echoing off the dockside walls, the gray emptiness. "You crazy go that place!"