Chanur's Homecoming

Chapter Ten

. . . Down. . . .

. . . one more time. ... . . . "Kura Point, Pyanfar."

She was young. Back in Urarun's day. Green kid on her first trip back home again. Looking forward to Anuurn and swaggering about the estate.

See me. Ring and all. Got this scratch dockside at Meetpoint, I did.

Difference of opinion, me and a Jesur crewwoman.

Gods bless. What were we fighting about?

No matter. We healed fast in those days.

"Meet you at the door, Hal." With a slow and heavy-lidded look, while a gray nosed spacer (that was the name: Pura Jesur) Pura Jesur thought she could push a couple of Chanur kids and have a bit of fun. Herself and Haral, insubordinate and full of young arrogance toward a rival ship's crew. And drunk. That too.

Gods save us.

Urarun Chanur being the captain on the old Golden Sun. She retired as captain two voyages after. Chanur clan took the ship out of service, sold it finally to Thusar, where it ran under the name of Thusar's Merit, a little ship. A lot of ship, for a little clan like Thusar, new to spacefaring. Chanur retired the shipname. Transferred the crew eventually, as many together as they could, to the newbuilt Pride. Urarun Chanur died in her sleep one night planetside.

. . . "Captain."

"I got it, we're on, aren't we?"

"We're running smooth."

How's Chur? Calm down, she won't answer yet. Can't answer. Gods-be drugs. No. Tully's with her. "Tully. Report. How is Chur?"

A long pause. Muzzy human. Tully was always hard to rouse after jump.

"Tully? How's Chur, Tully?" Is she alive, Tully? F'gods-sakes, answer back there. "She sleep."

"Are you sure? Is she all right?" With Geran listening. But it was what Geran had to know.

"She sleep," Tully's voice came back again. "We've got acquisition on our escort," Geran said, dead calm, onto business. "We're still doing fine, captain."

/ have no nerves, captain. The job gets done. For the ship and all of us.

"No buoy here, either," Haral muttered. "No sign of anything." She drank down the concentrates. Her hand shook. She wadded up the foil packet and thrust it into the bin after, and wiped her face. An appalling lot of hair came away. Teeth were sore, when she pushed them with her tongue. One felt loose. That more than any wound she had ever suffered made her afraid; not of dying. Of time. Of the inevitable wall that said this far for a body and no further, courage and wit and skill notwithstanding. Where are we? Is what I remember true? Gods, how did I get here? Get this old?

Kif. Kif out in front of us. It's all true. No hallucination. Gods, if it were a hallucination, if I was back there with Urarun all this time, if I never knew these things, if these friends, this ship, this terrible mess-were all illusion-

Earflick. A weighty number of rings chimed and rang against each other.

Old graynose. Yourself, Pyanfar. Here. In this gods-be mess. Wake up. Come back. You're fuzzed and drifting. . . . . . . when did I get old?

Haral beside her. A flash and flicker of monitors at her board. Scan information vanished for a checklist, one critical moment. Reappeared again. Haral had missed a switch and changed all the priorities in a rippling flicker of screens. Haral had missed. That never happened. "You on?"

"I got it, cap'n. Sorry. That's confirm on Aja Jin. They're in on schedule." Vermin. Little vermin. drop again. ... . . . reform. ". . . got us stable."

"Hilfy. Relay that. Tell our relief we're looking for 'em up here fast as they can do it. Skkukuk, you're discharged. Get some rest."

"Hakt', I should check the filter traps."

"Do it fast, then. Go to it."

"Yes, hakt'." Long hour til jump-out.

And still days down. She did not want to know how many. The figures were lost in her jump-mazed brain.

Akkhtimakt's ships were indisputably in front of them, already gone, in transit toward Anuurn. Of the two missing probes, nothing. Their own escort was there, that was all.

She forced another nutrients-packet down. Swallowed and listened to an eerily deserted nowhere, the dark mass of Kura Point, its little beacon extinguished. Not a place hani had ever found it economical to put a station, it was just an astronomical oddity, Kura Point Mass, a lump of rock that just incidentally made hani an independent species-making a route to Meetpoint and other species through hani space only, and not through mahen Ajir, to the sure annoyance of the mahendo'sat.

An accident of nature that had cut four months off the Anuurn-Kura run and saved the whole hani species from becoming a dependency of the mahendo'sat.

It just sat there radiating away, dead and quiet. A chancy, spooky place where hani met and hailed each other, glad of another voice in the tomblike silences. Have a breakdown here and a ship just sat and waited for rescue. Which might bankrupt a running ship. Weeks waiting on help and months getting a repair crew out from Anuurn or Kura star.

She made the count on those coming in behind them. "Send," she said to Hilfy. "The Pride of Chanur to all ships. Status check."

Because the silence oppressed her, because of a sudden, this last, this perilous last jump, she wanted a voice or two out of the dark. She wanted Jik's most of all, wanted it to come across the way she was used to hearing it, deep and humorous and reservedly friendly.

Crazy. Crazy impulse. Why him? Ought to want his ears, I should, I ought.

Lying bastard that he is. He's not suffering on that ship of his. Got enough crew to rotate shifts with no pain at all.

They're built for this kind of run. A ship like Lightweaver, or Starwind, back there, they're going to be feeling it near as bad as we are, gods help 'em.

Kifish advisements came in, cold and exact. No pain there either. We are running well, one sent. Glory to the hakkikt.

Hani ships: "We're hanging on." -Harun's Industry.

"We got one system on backup." -Pauran's Lightweaver.

"We counting? We got four." That was Shaurnurn's Hope, a youngish voice. "We're patching, this lay-through."

"We're doing all right. We've got a few red-light conditions. We're seeing to them." Munur Faha, on Starwind.

And last of all: ''We all time good condition, friend. I be here, no worry. What you 'spect, a?"

Hilfy made acknowledgments, passed advisements, in a wan, tired voice.

And from Geran, quietly, speaking to someone: "How is she?"

"Geran. You want to get back there? That's an order, cousin."

"Aye."

No argument this time. Tirun signaled she was covering that station. A belt clicked, and Pyanfar gnawed her mustaches and fought the hypnosis of the blinking lights, the wash of green on the board- Going to lose her, was the thought that wanted through, and she would not let it.

Bone and muscle. Vital organs. Nutrients. Steel and plastics could last the trip. Living bodies needed time to rebuild, and there was no recovery in their schedule.

Do kif suffer this?

Image of a black bundle of rags, Skkukuk collapsing in her arms, virtually moribund in the first jump they had made.

Image of black, ravenous lengths of fur and muscle and sharp little teeth gnawing away at The Pride's vitals, fatal, voracious stupidity destroying the vessel which kept them from the cold of space.

Like the han and the stsho.

We learned the lesson: the kif must have learned it. The law of controlled predation: neither predator nor prey can survive alone. Intelligent predators manage their resources.

Do you recall that lesson, Sikkukkut?

Burn the land? Lay waste whole ecosystems?

Suicide, na kif. Kill the stsho and you will die. Take out hani and mahendo'sat and the economy the stsho live on collapses, same result.

A predator needs his rivals as much as he needs his prey. Ecosystems interlock. One predator, one prey, can never sustain itself.

Her eyes hazed out. She knew the signs. Forced herself back again, arched her shoulders. Withdrew her arm from the brace and hissed at the pain.

"You all right?" Haral asked.

"Gods," she said, short of breath from the hurt. Old age, cousin. It's old age for sure. You and me. It's not fair this should happen to us. We were immortal. Weren't we? "We got one more jump to make. One more." That reassurance was for herself. Not that much more to go, Pyanfar, not that far. Done it time after time, haven't you, lived days while Anuurn lives a month. Two months out and back.

But the gods of the Wide Dark gave time with one hand and took it with the other. Wore a spacer out from the inside, strained the heart, took the steadiness from the hands. Kohan was graying, last she saw him. Graying in earnest. But he sat on his cushions in the stability his wives provided him in Chanur's lands, and hunted his preserves and had the best of care. He never knew hunger, only a lunch delayed in the field, his wives and daughters and nieces and cousins and juvenile sons all slogging along with the makings of a small feast. Rough living, the groundlings thought. A hunt burned off the fat and quickened the blood and a little hunger put an edge on a body.

O gods, Kohan. Late lunch. A tragedy. Never been jump-stretched, never had your fur falling out so thick it left a shimmer of bare skin beneath it, never had your backside hurt because the bones hit the seat, never wake up from jump and find the bones and tendons all prominent, your hand like a stranger's at the end of your arm, your teeth sore and your joints aching like the stab of a knife between the bones.

Another food packet. Something on the stomach. "What in a mahen hell's keeping Tauran?"

"They're in the lift," Hilfy said. About the time the lift door opened, bright and spreading reflection in the right-hand monitor, and dark figures came down the hall, resolving themselves into hani silhouettes and hani presence.

She turned the chair around and saw Sirany Tauran, saw her face change and her ears flatten in dismay at what she saw. Like looking in a mirror. Am I that bad? She reckoned that she was.

"We're stable, everything clear," she said to Sirany. And levered herself up from the chair, caught herself on the arm and on Sirany's suddenly offered hand. She had a close view of Sirany's face then, wide, shocked eyes. She shoved herself upright and tried to find equilibrium. "Ker Pyanfar-"

"Want to rest," she said.

"Go to it," Sirany said. "We'll bring you something. You, your whole crew. Get to bed." Pity, Tauran?

She resented that. Resented it with an irrational touchiness and knew that it was irrational. It was concern the Tauran offered her. Was belief in them. Was what she had been trying to rouse in Tauran in this long alternate life-death they were locked in.

How long? Months on months now. How long have the kif had to do harm at Anuurn? Gods, were they gone from Urtur long before us? Was the

force at Meetpoint only a part of what they have? Were they already weeks ahead of us?

Are we running into a trap meant for Sikkukkut?

Chur seeing visions.

Black vermin in the ducts.

"Pyanfar-"

A hard grip settled onto her right shoulder. Claws bit. She stared into lambent, hani eyes. "I let Jik go," she mumbled, knowing she was rambling, but suddenly it seemed to matter, it seemed something that Tauran had to know, part of the puzzle, the jagged pieces that resulted when someone dropped the universe and it shattered, scattered, made new patterns that a ship had to navigate. "It's important." But that was not enough to say. "The mahendo'sat are the key. Neither predator nor prey. They're important. Always prying into things. Like Tully. The humans are like them. Both predator and prey. Be careful. The mahendo'sat didn't know that. Humans are trouble. They'll confound us like the mahendo'sat. Like the methane-breathers. The kif know that. Even the han had instinct on their side in that one. We were right."

"Captain," Haral said. Haral's face this time, displacing the other. "Captain, here's here. Watch the time, cap'n."

She blinked. Jolted back to physical motion again instead of all-movement, particle-dance and star motions. Blinked again. "Yeah," she said. Blinked a third time and things hurt again. Her legs felt unsteady. "I'm going."

("Is she all right?" someone asked, not a Chanur voice. Young voice. Fiar.)

Pyanfar turned around, flattened her ears, fixed the young tech with a stare. "She's fine, youngster." She drew a larger breath, continued the sweep of her eyes on back to Sirany. "I've preset us to drop close in. May have been a mistake. We do the best we can."

Doubt. Plain and clear on Sirany's face. This is what we've got to rely on, is it? Woman's been through too much. Too long, too far. We're bound to sit duty on this leg and we have to hand off the ship at Anuurn to a lunatic. With all that may be at stake.

"Sirany, if you think I'm not tracking right, you're mistaken."

"Didn't say that." Not a bristle at the familiarity of first names. Not a twitch of irritation. It was pity. The ship crossed planetary diameters at a breath or two, and a fool wanted long arguments on the bridge, distracting the crew from their business.

"Get to work," Pyanfar said. "Eyes on those boards!" Ordering the wrong crew. "Somebody get their eyes on those boards. I don't care which." So much for inattention, Sirany Tauran. Which of us is wit-wandering? "I'm telling you," she said, trying to dredge gnosis up from the free-association where it was wandering. Dark territory. Nowhere. Numbers and lines spread wide through the Compact. "Jik is the best we've got. Rely on him and his First. And I want com through to allship this time. The kif too. We can't afford to come out the other side wondering where we are."

No, Pyanfar Chanur, we certainly can't afford that. Still the doubt. Below the surface now, like a fish gone into deep waters. Surface smooth, a relief to have the proprieties back again. But the doubt was still cruising along down there, all sleek and dark and quiet.

To flare up at the wrong moment, and turn and bite you, yes, Pyanfar Chanur.

"We're still on auto?" Sirany asked. "Still?"

"Good computer," Pyanfar said. "Good crew. I told you those nav figures are right. I'm not a liar, ker Sirany."

"No," Sirany said, quiet against her heat, "I really don't think you are."

"What I was talking about. Think on it, you said. Think on it." See, I remember. Do you, Tauran? Your mind that clear? Or do you still think I'm crazy? "I'm asking again. Here and now. Before we get make drop at Anuurn."

"Join you?"

"That's what I'm asking. You're supposed to give the rest of the captains out there some kind of report before then, aren't you? Sure you are. But you haven't, yet. Jik would have reported it to us. Unless you coded it real clever." She leaned hard on the chair back, eased the weight on her legs. "What are you going to tell them?"

Long hesitation. "That you're no pirate. That we're convinced of that."

She stood there a moment. Blinked, trying to run it through .her brain. "But not that we're right."

Sirany's ears went down. Not anger. Profound distress. "I'm still figuring that out for myself."

"How long are you going to think about it, huh?" Her pulse thumped in her ears. The bridge fuzzed in one longusmear of lights both white and green. "We got no gods-be time left when we come out. You understand that?"

"You've set the comp that way. I know."

Black closed in. Cleared again. "I set it," she said carefully, "to get us in there as close in the well as we could get. We got one lousy lot of Akkhtimakt's kif in our way. We're not going to have time to sit and talk about it. We don't have the guns to hammer our way clear across system from far out. We aren't fit for a long fight. This ship has seen fighting like that before, at Gaohn, captain, and I don't want to do it again. Odds get up to you, fast."

A hand descended on her shoulder, ever so gently. "Cap'n. Time."

"I'm onto it, Haral, I'm gods-be onto it." She drew herself up on a deep breath. "We're one ship down, we're up to our noses in kif, and I am not, by the gods greater and lesser, ker Sirany Tauran, a raving lunatic." A second breath, speech clear and spaced this time. No shouting, no hysteria. "I am giving you my sane assessment of the situation: we're aiming one set of kif at the other set and hoping to the gods we have enough left to push them outsystem. If we don't, we are going to die there, collectively and gods hope, without seeing what else will happen. And I am not having my plans tampered with and my communications setup interfered with and myself and my crew deprived of necessary information or of control of this ship at the last moment do we understand each other, ker Sirany? I'm going to take controls at Anuurn. My shift. That's the way I set it up, that's the way it's going to be, don't play hero with me. You want to fight, you'll get your share. Not on the drop!"

Sirany's ears were down. Not anger. That fright-doubt expression again. They lifted and twitched and flattened and lifted again. And what will you do about it, you and your crew, none of you fit to stand?

Someone moved. More than one someone out of a chair.

Khym's gusting breath. Khym looming like a shadow over in the peripheries of her vision.

Male and crazy. It was in the sudden nervous flick of Sirany's eyes.

"He's on our side," Pyanfar said hoarsely. She was disarmed by that threatening move of his. There was nothing left to say, Sirany doubted her husband's sanity if not her own and they had just lost all hope of reason. Clock was running. The ship was headed for jump and they had crew to take care of. She made a despairing wave of her hand, not sure she could find equilibrium if she let go of the chair. Everything swam in a blur. "See you otherside, ker Sirany. Gods hope." She let go, resisted the urge to grab Khym's arm, managed to keep the deck stable and the exit steady in her vision.

"Pyanfar." Sirany's voice, name unadorned.

She managed to turn around. Steadied herself, Khym's shadow to her left, Hilfy and Tirun over there somewhere. Haral still beyond.

"It's concern, understand," Sirany said. "It's not-doubt, ker Pyanfar."

"I'm going to fall on my face," she said calmly, rationally. And stared as much at the level line of the control boards beyond Sirany's back, to keep something level in her vision. The bridge was trying to tilt. "Send us something to eat for godssakes and let us go, ker Sirany."

She managed to turn, still keeping the counters level in her sight, walked out without the use of her internal equilibrium. One foot in front of the other. Khym was behind her. Others were. Chur's door was shut as she passed it. Where Geran was-she could not remember, whether Geran had gone to the galley, whether she had heard her pass that corridor.

She reached the door of her own quarters. Fumbled after the lock and got it, and staggered in and fell into bed.

"I'm going after food," Khym said in a voice hoarse and deep.

"They'll do it."

"Me," he said. "I make sure it gets done. We're time-critical."

And came back out of a confusing darkness and shook at her till she sat up and wrapped her hands around the cup he gave her. Whole jug of the stuff with him. Awful. Full of sickly spices. Tofi. "Gods, you got to put that stuff in?"

"Way I cook. Shut up and drink it. It's got calories."

She drank it, drank another cup because he insisted. Ate the dried stuff. Her hands just fell away limp and dropped the packets. He fell in beside her. Out of some terrible reverberating tunnel the intercom was ringing with strange hani voices: ''Rig for jump." Operations noises. Strange crew. The words echoed and twisted in and out of her brain, losing focus. She felt after the security of the restraint webbing, found it, and all the while the room kept coming and going.

Khym had remembered the safeties. Half conscious as he was, he had remembered that.

"They're all right," some real voice said from the doorway, "Excuse me, captain."

It confused her to a mahen hell. The door shut. Tauran security check. They had had a door open.

Black things. Might feed on a body while it was helpless. Kifish life, active in jump, when they lay inert and unable to move, to feel pain. Might wake up with fingers gone. Bleed to death. Gnawed to a rack of bones, aswarm with slinking vermin. A siren went.

"We're going," Khym mumbled against her shoulder. She grabbed him and held tight. Trust their lives to Tauran. And her programming and the Nav-comp, and the lock on that door.

"Last jump," Hilfy murmured, in her bunk beside Haral's and Tirun’s and Geran's, down in crew quarters. Two beds were empty. Chur's and Tully's. She clenched her claws into the mattress, counting breaths. Tully had stayed topside with Chur. She had been shocked when Geran showed up to join them. But: "I got to work otherside," Geran had said. As if she had turned all emotion off. Their lives and more than their lives rode on Geran, otherside. That was true. And Geran came down to rest with them, face cold and set, leaving her sister to Tully's care a second time. "He's good with her," Geran had said. "She wanted him."

And sent you away? Perhaps Chur had done that. Gods knew what Chur's condition was. Geran kept her mouth shut.

"How is she?" Haral had the nerve to ask. The same question. Forever the same question, as if it was going to have some better answer.

"Holding," Geran said. "Holding." No optimism. Geran had stayed up there a long time and come down at the last moment of stability, with the alarms ringing.

"She able to eat?" Tirun was merciless. Trod right in where even Haral did not dare.

Long silence out of Geran. Then: "Yeah. Did pretty well." In a flat and hopeless voice.

Last jump.

"I programmed that son to take us right in close to Anuurn," Haral said between her teeth. "Forty-five and eight by six. Lay you odds we get it inside point five."

"We'll string it a bit," Tirun said, all matter-of-fact calculating the drag and push of entering and already-arrived ships on the gravity slope. Deformation calc. Keeping the mind busy.

It was Geran and Chur who always laid the bets. Even that was offkey. Geran refused to take the bait. She remained in dire silence. It was not money Tirun and Haral were betting. It was drinks in the nearest bar.

Hilfy stared at the overhead. Terrified.

We're not going to make it, we're not going to make it, we're too few and the kif too many, we can't push them. Sikkukkut's ships are a throwaway-we're all throwaways.

What's a kif care, how many ships he loses?

Cheap annoyance to his enemies.

And we were pushing him too hard.

"Otherside," Pyanfar murmured, "we got to move. We'll run stable right after the first cycle-down. You got to count. First pulse, then get up and go even if we got an alarm going. I don't know if Tauran's going to call us. I don't trust that."

"First pulse," Khym said against her ear, all indistinct. "Right. Got it."

"Got to-"

-down.

-the wide dark again.

She struggled to remember her own name. It was important to recall. She lay with an alien snuggled tight against her, his strange smooth hand holding hers ever so loosely. He had drugged himself before this, and lay helpless, as his kind had to be, in order to face the deep.

Chur, the name was. She stayed, tied by that loose grip on her essence. She could not have left him alone.

Left my son. Lost him. Never find him again, never know.

Not leave my friend out here helpless. No.

She was aware. It was not normal to be this hyper-stretched. She knew this. She had time, in this long waking of subjective days, to sort through things, not in the waking dream of time-stretch, the dim haze with which minds got through the deep, slower than bodies, but wide-awake in the twisting dark. She stretched out like the ship, and ran calculations in her head with one part of her brain, and kept the tether of that strange, fine-boned hand.

Not leave him. She thought of Tully and remembered why they were here, remembered aliens, and the ship, and the Situation, Situation, the captain would call it. She forgot about time with Geran, Geran being forever, like the stars and the movement of the worlds. But Tully came from elsewhere; was more lost than she was. Tully had period and limit. There was a time when she had not known him. There was never a time but this that she had lain so close to him. She tried to tell Geran this, explaining why she wanted Tully to stay. "Get out," it came out of her mouth. Not the way she had meant it, but speaking with her mind that full was a surreal experience. Calculations. Numbers. One could spill out too much. "Gods rot it, get. Go. I don't want you here. Him. He's enough. You got work, Gery. Get to it. You want to kill us at those boards?"

I'm sorry.

She wiped that scene. Built another. She sat in bed, propped with pillows.

"We got troubles," she said, which was what she had meant to say. "Gery, I want my place back."

"You'll get it," Geran said, gently (she knew Geran would say exactly that thing, knew the precise cant of the ears, the pained look, the soft, quiet tone). "Come on now. We got relief aboard. Tauran. I told you that. You want to go to the galley, have a sit? Something to drink?''

"All right," she said; and let herself be led there, slowly. Seated, in familiar surroundings. Tully was there. He came and laid his hand on her arm.

'' You scare me,'' he said.

"I'm sorry," she said. (Back in bed a moment. Tully lying there asleep, drugged senseless. Pretty mane he had. Prettiest thing about him. The gods could have fur like that, all sunlight. She scared him sometimes. But he snugged down against her: maybe she kept him warm. Friend, he had said just as he was going out. A little pat of his hand on her shoulder, a smoothing of her fur. Friend.)

They were all there, all the crew, at the galley table, which made no sense with things as they were, at risk. Only the captain was missing. And the kif. Someone put a cup in her hands. Geran shaped her hands around it and nudged them, helped her carry it to her mouth. It was hard to get back again. Hard. She was aware of heat in the liquid. It tasted of nothing at all. It was hard to focus small enough, to adjust her ears to hear the noise of their speech, to concentrate her mind to sort this kind of detail and not raw calculations of the sort she had been running.

She blinked at movement, at the captain's voice. Pyanfar had shown up, sitting between Haral and Tirun. Khym was meddling about in the cabinets, on galley duty again.

". . . I'm not easy about this," Pyanfar said. "Some reason, I'm just not real easy about this next jump. We're going into it close to Anuurn as we can. I don't know what we're into. But it's been too quiet, all along the way. Kura had no time to get us a message. I wish we'd come closer to the station."

Chur blinked. Blinked and found Jik there, when she had remembered only dimly why he was there at all. Their little galley table held more places than usual. Space folded itself. A lot of things fit.

"Push them out of the system," Chur said then. "That's what we have to do. Cut them to ribbons on first encounter. The han knows they're coming. The mahendo'sat have told them. Haven't you, Jik?"

"A," the mahendo'sat said, and shrugged.

"There was Banny Ayhar. Ayhar went on to Maing Tol. You gave them a message, Jik, when they shot me at Kshshti. I've figured their course home. That's where they'd have gone. Nothing would stop them. Not with what they knew. Not with what you gave them to carry. Isn't that so, Jik?"

"Good guess," Jik said, in better hani than he usually spoke. He leaned his elbows on the table. "Bad luck at Kshshti dock. How you know 'bout Maing Tol?"

''I told her,'' Geran said. ' 'Told her the message was all right. Gods, she got a hole in her gut defending it, you think I wouldn't tell her that? It was important, after all."

"Better be. I got a hole in my gut to prove it. You think I'm going to lose track of something like that? Banny Ayhar went on to Maing Tol and I know she went with something of yours. I know what I'd have done in Banny Ayhar's place. I'd have gotten out of there fast. I'd have run for home the safest, shortest way. And the Personage at Maing Tol would have a thing to say to the han about then, wouldn't he, knowing he had to arrest that whole crew or let them go. Let them go with a message. Let them go with a whole mahen company to see them home."

"I'm not at controls," Pyanfar said. "I've been thinking about something like that. I've hoped it was so. But this isn't my shift. Not my watch."

"I told you that," Geran said.

"Hey, you think I don't keep track of things? I'm better than that. I know where I am. I've known all this time. You think it's easy running calc in your head? I know where every ship could be. And how long. I know their mass and their cap. I know what their drop time is. I got gray hairs in this game. I know our competition, don't I? Not competition this time. Our help. All the help we got. Trust me, captain. I got it figured for you."

''Not my watch,'' Pyanfar said again.

And left the table. Was gone.

So did others. "I'm sorry," Jik said. "I'm not here."

Then she was alone with the crew again. Khym left. Then she did.

There was deathly quiet. Tully was anchor, in a long dark sea.

She reached out and carefully, in motion that took the better part of a day, perhaps, in timestretch, disconnected herself.

. . . down again. . . . gravity slope.

It was hard to move at all. But Chur did that, levered herself to the side of the bed and remembered-she could have forgotten nothing-to put the safety back. For Tully's sake.

Longer still down the corridor, which reeled and snaked and kept going into the lighted bridge. Perhaps it took a day to walk it. Dark things skittered and moved, ran like black, rapid serpents in the corridors.

New logical track: moving and breeding. Feeding where they could. Insulation. Plastics. Ignoring barriers.

Akkht-bred. Like the kif.

Alert within jump.

. . . down and still falling. . . .

She made it as far as the captain's place. And leaned there. "Captain," she said, perhaps another day in the saying of it: "The mahendo'sat. A message has gone to them. A message can have reached from Maing Tol to Iji. Ayhar of Prosperity will have come home. From Kirdu to Kita is one jump. A ship can have gone to Iji from there. From Kirdu to Ajir, one; from there to Anuurn. Our ships will have heard. They'll come home, captain. As we are, coming home at the earliest possible. The mahendo'sat will not have resisted this move. The quarry goes to the small valley, but hunters cross the hill. That is only reasonable." Words slurred. She watched the slow twitch of a listening ear. Not her captain, but this stranger. Tauran. She knew that too.

"Believe us," she said to that captain. "Believe what we've told you."

Other calculations. The solar system danced in her memory, swung through two years of positional changes. Lanes threaded like moving spirals of color through this maze of rock, converging on Anuurn.

Cover a ship with mass and emissions-noise, a gravity well it could stay in, concealed in dancing fragments, in the thunderous emissions of a gas giant. Akkhtimakt knew there would be attack coming in at him. He had had time to plan and research the moves he hoped to make, and attack could not possibly take him by utter surprise.

She crossed to the com board, reached the slack hand of a Tauran crewwoman, punched in a channel. "Kif. Do you hear me?"

"Kkkt," the voice came back, slow and slurred. "Who calls? Who is this?"

She reached-it was terrible effort-to the board. Sat down in a vacant chair. Tully's. Between two Tauran crewwomen. She freed up armaments from that master board and set her hand on that control, preprogramming fire on the Tyar vector from their entry point.

Black things ran and squealed. There were red lights on boards, systems failures. She went to the main board and carefully switched to backups, system after system, where automation had failed.

. . . down again. She staggered, held to the board, blinked with the jolting here of the bridge about her, where she spent her life. The crewwoman beside her was turning her head in confusion, the whole of the bridge was real for the moment before it began to darken.

"My gods," someone said. As The Pride fired on its own.

The dark folded round again, but it was only a dimming of the light; and there was pain, the bite of the strap against her sagging body. She pushed herself upright again. She reached for the com-switch again, threw it on wide. "Captain. This is Chur. Get up here. Emergency, emergency."

"How in a mahen hell'd she do it?" a young voice cried; and another: "Captain!"

As space sorted itself into sanity, as alarms wailed, advising of systems gone backup; as they ran into a wavefront of information that said ANUURN, ANUURN, ANUURN-

"My gods!" someone yelled, seeing something.

And their own ship answered, automatic: The Pride of Chanur.

They were well into system. Close to the star. To the sun that had warmed their backs as children and beaconed them home trip after trip.

Anuurn buoy was out. No help for that. "Watch out for Tyar," she said to the scan operator by her, tried to say. As The Pride's weapons fired again.

Pyanfar ran. She had never moved so hard, straight out of jump. She hit the door with her whole body, triggered the lock and staggered into the hall and ran it with the thud and thump of Khym running behind her. A blurred figure came out of Chur's room and collided with her, embraced her, stink of human, half-naked and all but falling. "Chur-" Tully said, but she sorted out from him, already on her way, and left him to obstruct Khym's path.

Bridge loomed, lit and swimming in and out of focus. She grabbed the doorframe, safetywise hand-over-handed toward the nearest console and lurched for the next, heading for the captain's seat, grabbed the back of it and hung there. "I'm here," she gasped, and Sirany twisted in the seat and began to get out of it. "Get to observer one. Too far to go below."

"We're still firing," a youngish voice said. "Do I stop?"

"Priority, we got no buoy here."

"What are we firing at?" Sirany snapped. "Gods and thunders, what are we doing? My gods, we're high-V-those guns-"

"Not sure," that one said; and: "She's fainted-" Another voice. As Pyanfar grabbed Sirany's seatback. "Out!" she yelled at the Tauran; and Sirany cleared it as she threw herself into it, a collision of bodies. "Tyar vector," someone said; and: "Stay your posts," Pyanfar snapped, blinking at a blur of lights, and felt blind after the general hail: "Chanur, get your backsides up here! Run for it! Tauran, cancel fire, cancel."

''My door, my door! Fools!''

"Unlock the kif," she said to the Tauran copilot/switcher. Confusion behind as Tully and Khym tried to ascertain Chur's state. "Khym! Get her to the galley, emergency secure. Getcliquid down her if you can." They had run that drill, galley-secure, smallest fore-aft space next the bridge. Close the corridor-access and hit the padded benches, collapse the table to use for auxiliary brace, and belt in and tie down. In the tail of her vision they took Chur out that way. Sirany moved and came on over intercom from the seat Chur had left. "I'll aux switch, Chanur."

"You got it," she said, ripped a nutrients packet loose and downed it, her eye to the chrono and the red numbers flashing on the screen. "Gods - " Into the general com: "Make that lift, gods rot you, run, we got thirty seconds to dump, run, run, run! Ride it out in the lift!"

"We'll make it!" Haral's voice. Dopplered and moving, from the com. "Let it go!"

Images got to her screen. She jammed a com plug into her right ear and listened with one ear to that flow, kifish jabber.

Fifteen seconds. Noise from the intercom, wide open from both ends. Shouts and curses at a recalcitrant door. "Open the gods-be lift!' '

Then: "We're in. Different speaker. Tirun this time. And: "Wait, wait, wait! Kkkkt-kkt-kt! Wait!"

''Hurry!' '

"Kkkkkkkkkkkkkk-"

Dump. - down. Velocity drop.

- red lights. Breaking out like plague.

O my gods, don't let us lose it here.

Not now. Not now.

Normal space. Anuurn and kif. She swallowed down sickness and flicked switches while the Tauran switcher next to her fed her images.

"Position, position, where in a mahen hell are we?" Not Haral beside her. Fire was going on out there, their kifish escort hammering away at something forty five degrees off and low. Haze blossomed on the scan as it cleared. They had no clear way to know what the kif were firing on. "Com, gods rot it, where 's ID on those ships?"

"No ID," the young voice answered. "I'm not getting ID."

Captain, we got hits out there, Tyar vector!' '

"Targeting."

"We don't know who we're shooting at," Sirany objected.

"Targeting, gods rot it, did I say fire? Get us a gods-be lock on it!''

"Gods rot yourself, did I say I wasn't?"

Not a crew up here. A collection. Left and right hand tangling. In the monitor a light-reflection showed, widened. Lift door opening. She looked at the time and saw fifty seconds to next dump. "Fifty to dump, clear those seats, number two, three, five, seven-Chanur crew's in upper main, we got a fast shift, bail out and go, move it!"

"Get!" Sirany yelled at her own crew. "You heard her. Galley!"

Every regulation in the book was fractured. Crew bailed out and fled in mid-ops, a scramble for the galley corridor. Running footsteps hit the bridge deck and seats sighed and hummed and belts clicked, new crew in. New voices reported over com.

"Your sister's all right," Pyanfar said.

As the chrono ticked over and they went down again-

-programmed dump. More red. Red, red, red. O gods, not the main boards- Lifesupport out. Gods fry those slinking things!

Over to backup on three more systems. Final backup on another.

Out again, with telemetry coming in, Chanur voices delivering information.

"Affirmative: Akkhtimakt. Tyar vector, breaking for nadir."

"Fire."

As another disruption streaked past them, disrupting scan. "That was Jik!" Geran said.

"Go for 'em!" Tirun cried, and: "Kkkt! Sgot sotikkut pukkukt'!" from Skkukuk.

More disruptions. A welter of high-V projectiles, passing by them.

They added their own, lower-V, and a burst of beamfire from their small bow projector. Hydraulics whined and thumped, reloading the chambers on the launcher, tracking.

The source of the fire was off-gods, in the ecliptic. A chill went up her back. Chur and premonitions. The first fire they had thrown out was the most damaging kind, high-velocity, aimed blind.

Someone had keyed the guns.

Whump and groan. Another missile round off. More loading.

"Stand by braking." Gods hope the systems hold. As she threw them into rollover, the guns still tracking and firing under auto.

She threw the mains in. Her hand was shaking on the board, even with her arm thrust through the stress brace. Her vision fuzzed under the strain, and something small and black flew past her head and hit the forward bulkhead beyond her panel, squealing and yelping. Three story drop, where it had come from. "Gods!" she yelled in revulsion: it ran right back over the boards and chittered and squealed as it went, tiny claws scrabbling as it climbed against the G-force and ran right over the counter along the bulkhead, the course of least resistance.

Then colors blossomed all across the scan. . "We got company!" Geran yelled, and pounded the board. "Gods, o gods, they're ours, hani IDs-hani ships lying off-system ecliptic, they're coming in!"