Explorer

Support in the ranks was wavering. It was evident on the other faces.

Even Becker looked less certain. “We’ve got only your word for what’s going on.”

“You’ve got proof in front of you, you damned fool!” That from Polano, with Kaplan, out in the corridor, an outright explosion of anger. “I’ve got two cousins on that station, who may be alive, and I don’t want to leave them here, mister! Use good sense!”

“Mr. Polano,” Bren introduced the complainant. “Who has a point. What’s so difficult about dealing outside our species? We do it daily. We may be able to get you all out of this. But we need straight answers.”

“Listen to Mr. Cameron,” Kaplan said, and Polano and the crew behind him added their own voices.

“Straight answers,” Becker said, and looked at his mates, and looked at him, and looked at Polano and back. And at Ilisidi and Cajeiri, with a far greater doubt. “That’s a kid?”

“Aged seven,” Bren said.

“ Seven. ”

“They’re tall,” Bren said dryly. “That’s exactly the point, isn’t it! They’re not us. But you’re still welcome aboard. You and your kids. Your wives. Your grandmothers. We can get you out of here and go where your kids have a future. You’ve got to have somebody you care about.”

He was making headway with the others. Becker, however, scowled. “The Guild’s not going to approve anybody leaving.”

“Because they’ve got such thorough control of the aliens out there? I don’t think so.”

Clearly Becker had thought he had an answer to that point, and now that it was on the edge of his tongue, it didn’t taste right.

“Get us two things,” Bren said. “Fuel and the reason that alien ship’s out there. The truth about what happened six years ago. The remains and belongings of whoever tried to come aboard and negotiate with your Guild.”

“Negotiate, hell!”

“That’s what your Guild told you? Truthfulness with us hasn’t been outstanding.”

“Look,” Becker said. “Look. Give me contact with my office. I’ll call and tell them everything you’re saying.”

“And what you report won’t change their basic opinions in the least, will it? What matters most here, Mr. Becker? Braddock’s good opinion? Or people’s lives?”

“We’re not the sort to make decisions like this!” Becker retorted. “We’re not qualified to make decisions!”

“You’re not stupid, either. You’ve been waiting for this ship. It’s here. And now you think your Guild wants something else. What could it possibly want? Control of this ship? Your Guild’s sat here for most of ten years with a hole in the station and now they need to run things? No. Not a chance.”

Becker bit his lip. “Not mine to say.”

“If your families don’t get aboard, if nobody on this station gets aboard, do you want that on your conscience? Because, being on this ship with us, you will survive, gentlemen. You may be the only ones from the station that do survive, because without refueling here we can’t possibly rescue your relatives. But survive you will, and you can remember that you had a chance. You can think about that fact, you can regret that fact for the rest of your lives, in safety, back where we come from.”

“They’ve got a hostage.” The fourth man, who never had spoken, blurted that out. The other three looked appalled, but that one, white-faced, kept going. “That’s why the aliens haven’t come back. We’ve got one of them. That ship out there, it’s not shooting because we’ve got one of them alive on the station.”

For two heartbeats Bren stood as still as the rest; then, having stored up his wealth of information, he finally remembered to translate. “Aiji-ma, this last man appears to have suffered a crisis of man’chi, and to save his relatives from calamity, he claims the station holds a foreign prisoner… a circumstance he believes alone has protected them from a second attack.”

A very slight shifting of stance among listening atevi. This was information.

“Interesting,” Ilisidi said, leaning on her cane.

“You think you’ve got a hostage,” Bren said to Becker. “And this hostage is still alive?”

“Supposed to be,” Becker muttered. Then the inevitable, “That’s all we know.”

“Mr. Becker, we’ve got a problem.” The pieces of information began to add up, logical enough only to the otherwise hopeless, and weren’t at all comforting to a man who had to make peace with the pattern they made. “So our arrival disturbed the situation you thought you had, and now that the currents are moving, you don’t know what else to do. But my people have spent the last several centuries figuring out how to talk outside our own species. Rumor says the aliens won’t attack you while you’ve got this prisoner. I’d say that’s an increasingly thin bet, and the more we dither about it, the thinner it gets. Who is this person, where is this person, and has anyone successfully talked with him?”

That last was his greatest hope, that someone had broken the language barrier, that someone knew how to communicate with this species.

The listeners in the corridor waited. Ilisidi waited, hand firmly on Cajeiri’s shoulder.

“We don’t know anything,” Becker said, Becker’s answer to everything, and that provoked an outcry of absolute frustration from the human listeners. “Listen to Cameron!” somebody yelled, out in the corridor. “Idiots! You don’t mess with aliens!”

Becker was nettled. “We don’t know anything, dammit!”

“He’s supposed to be alive,” Coroia said. “But nobody knows. We guess he is, if that ship out there is staying where it is, or maybe they just don’t know.”

“There’s supposed to be alien armament,” the fourth man said. “They’re supposed to be copying it.”

“That’s a crock,” Coroia said. “If they’re copying anything, Baumann, is some popgun somebody hand-carried aboard the station going to stand off a whole ship ?”

That insightful question brought its own small silence.

“You don’t know even that much is the truth,” Bren said. “That is the point, isn’t it? You don’t really know why you’ve been safe for the last half dozen years. The reason you’re alive just hasn’t made sense, and now that ship sitting out there, with us having stirred the pot, is liable to do nobody-knows-what. Can you tell us where this prisoner is, and can you tell us how to get to him?”

“Get families safe aboard,” Coroia said. “Get the kids all aboard.”

“That’s mass,” Bren said. “Is there fuel to move this ship anywhere if we do board the station population?”

Fearful silence. Then: “The miners went out,” Becker said. “Mining went on, six, seven years ago. There’s supposed to be fuel.”

“And mining hasn’t been going on since that ship showed. You were waiting for us with a sign on the fuel tank saying, This will explode. How did you plan to get out of the mess you’re in without us?”

“We don’t set policy.” Becker winced as even his own comrades exclaimed in outrage, and he gave a nervous glance to the patiently waiting atevi present.

“After Phoenix left—” Esan had abandoned his braced, surly stance and stuck his hands in his hip pockets. “We mined. They came and poked their noses into our corridors. We caught this bastard. And since then they haven’t tried again. That’s as much as everybody knows.”

“This second attack,” Bren said. But suddenly he was aware of the onlookers parting.

Jase had shown up.

“I’ve been on this,” Jase said under his breath, Jase, who hadn’t gotten any sleep, “from my office. What’s this prisoner goings-on, gentlemen?”

“ They say an alien prisoner exists on the station,” Bren said, dropping into Ragi, as if he were talking to the atevi present, but it was just as much Jase he intended. “They say they mined fuel. They maintain this prisoner, with whom the station does not communicate, is the reason the foreigners have not attacked a third time. Supposedly the station captured some sort of armament. But what potency it has against that ship sitting out there is questionable.”

“Possession of this prisoner,” Ilisidi said, with a thump of her cane against the floor. “This prisoner, and the fuel for the ship. We have disturbed this pond. Ripples are still moving. Shall we sit idle?”

“No, nandi,” Jase said on a breath, in Ragi, in full witness of the detainees. “We do not.” And in ship-speak: “All right. Where is this prisoner, and what does he breathe?”

Good question, that. Very good question. The planet-born didn’t routinely think about the air itself.

“They wore suits when they came in,” Becker said. “Shadowy. Big. Straight from hell.”

Big certainly answered to the silhouettes they’d exchanged with the alien ship.

“You personally saw them?” Jase asked.

“On vid.”

Anything could be faked, Bren remembered. Anything could be made up. If it weren’t for the missing station section and that ship out there, Becker’s shadowy aliens could be an old movie segment from the Archive, and those in charge had shown a previous disposition to make up vid displays.

“Spill,” Jase said. “Spill. Now. Location of this prisoner. Location of Guild offices. Everything you know.”

Becker didn’t answer at once. “Guild wing is D Section,” Coroia said in a low voice, in that silence, “and if you give me a handheld and a pen, captain, I’ll show you.”

“The hell,” Becker said.

“Beck, I’m buying it. We haven’t got another way to defend this station.”

“Back off,” Becker said to the mutiny in his ranks. “Shut up.” Then, to Jase: “I’ll show you, myself. But I want my people out of this cage and I want our families boarded, fast as we can get them here.”

“In secrecy?” Jase asked. “You want to call your next-ofs and tell them start packing, and this isn’t going to trigger questions?”

Guild might eat and breathe secrecy, Bren thought, but he didn’t bet on family connections keeping a secret, not in a station where everybody was related. If Becker called his wife, would he fail to call his mother? And if the mother called Becker’s sister, where did it stop?

Becker surely saw the disaster looming. He didn’t entirely leap at the chance.

“We’ve got to tell the people,” Coroia said desperately.

“And start a panic,” Becker said. “There’s got to be orders. Central’s got to give orders, Manny.”

“They have to,” Jase said, “but they’re not doing that. We’ve warned them. But our senior captain’s disappeared on station. You had orders to come in here and scope us for whatever you could find. For what , gentlemen?”

“For irregularities,” Becker said.

“For a head count. For a check on who’s in command.”

“Yes, sir,” Becker said.

“So you’ve got that information, plain and clear. And then what was Guild going to do?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” Jase thumbed four or five buttons on his handheld. “And we’re not going to try to maintain this station up with an alien ship breathing down our necks. You wonder what that ship’s sitting out there for? It’s sitting out there because you’ve got one of its people and it claims this space, if you want my interpretation. It claims this solar system, it’s sitting there, probably taking notes on what comes and goes here, possibly communicating with others, and we’re not disposed to argue with its sense of possession. We’re getting the lot of you out of here, we’re establishing defenses back at Alpha, and we’re drawing the line there. This station is written off, to be vacated, best gesture we can make to calm this situation down. If we can get fueled and negotiate our way past that alien craft, we’re getting you, your families, and Chairman Braddock out of here.” He showed Becker and crew the handheld. “This is your own station schematic, gentlemen, straight out of Archive. With the damage marked. Right now, give me specifics, where this prisoner is, where the primary citizen residence areas are, where Guild command is, and where our senior captain’s likely to be, if she’s been arrested. If you want your kids safe—give us facts.”

Curious sight—Jase’s machine, Becker and the detainees vying to figure out the diagram through the thick plastic grid, nudging one another for a better view, and to point out this and that feature, suddenly a case of Guild loyalty be damned. Atevi observers were curious, too, more about the human doings than about the image—not least, Ilisidi, Bren was well sure, who kept her great-grandson protectively by her side as her security kept hands very near weapons, all of them sensing what they would call the shifting of man’chiin. Atevi would understand all the impulses to betrayal, all the emotional upheaval Becker and his men might suffer… and would not understand what pushed matters over the edge.

“Becker-nadi has seen the threat to his household, aiji-ma,” Bren said quietly. “He and his associates conclude their Guild has failed them and failed to deal honestly with them.”

The dreadful cane thumped down. “Observe, great-grandson. Mercy encourages a shift in man’chiin. Does it not? If it also encourages fools to think us weak, then we do not lose the advantage of surprise.”

“Yes, mani-ma. Shall we now attack the station?”

A thwack of Ilisidi’s finger against a boyish skull. “Learn! These are humans. These are your allies. Observe what they do. One may assume either reasons or actions will be different.”

Jase’s attention was momentarily for the schematic Becker had in hand, the things Becker was saying… the paidhiin both knew, however, the urges percolating through atevi blood and bone, potent as a force of nature: the aishi-prejid , the essential strength of civilized association, had to be upheld, had to be supported by all participants, and would survive, while the opposition’s command structure was tottering, its supporters seeking shelter. Translation: a weakness had to be invaded and fixed quickly, for the common good, even across battlelines. Among atevi, the web of association, once fractured, was impractically hard to repair.

War? That word only vaguely translated out of Ragi, and at certain times, not accurately at all; but as applied to the fragile systems of a space station utterly dependent on its technicians, the atevi view might be the more applicable.

“If we move,” Bren added in the lowest of tones, only for keen atevi hearing, “one fears atevi intervention will rouse fear and resentment among local humans. They will see you as dangerous invaders. If we are to go in to use force, it may be best humans do it.”

“Kaplan-nadi and his team are insufficient,” Banichi mut tered under his breath. “How can they improve on Sabin-aiji’s fate?”

That was the truth: if Kaplan and crew could get directly to the ordinary workers, they would have the advantage of persuasion—but getting to the common folk wasn’t at all likely. Sabin had tried walking aboard into Guild hands, and that hadn’t gone well at all. Ship-folk had no skill at infiltration.

Becker and crew, evidently the best the station had, hadn’t moved with great subtlety. The very concept of subtle force seemed, in this human population, lost in the Archive—along with the notion of how to deal with outsiders.

But to risk Banichi and Jago… even if fifth-deck atevi were the ship’s remaining skilled operators…

“ We can move very quietly,” Jago said. “We can find this asset.”

“If you go aboard, nadiin-ji,” Bren muttered back, “you can’t go without a translator.”

“We know certain words,” Jago objected in a low voice.

“You know certain words, but not enough,” Bren said. “If you go, I shall go, nadiin. Add my numbers with yours. I can reassure those we meet. I can meet certain ones without provoking alarm and devastation, which cannot serve us in securing a peaceful evacuation.”

Banichi listened, then moved closer to Cenedi, and there was a sudden, steady undertone of Ragi debate under the human negotiations.

“Nadi,” Bren said to Jago, who had stayed close by him. “Are we prepared for this move?”

“Always,” Jago said.

Oh, there was a plan. He’d personally authorized them to form a plan, but he had a slithering suspicion that, in another sense, plans had existed, involving the same station diagrams, from the first moment the aiji-dowager had arrived in the mix.

And meanwhile they had a handful of Guild operatives now crowding one another at the grid to point out the architecture of their own offices, pointing and arguing about the location of a prisoner none of them claimed to have seen—while crew who’d become spectators took mental notes for gossip on two-and three-deck. Openness? An open door for the crew? Jase certainly came through on that notion, and crew listened, wide-eyed, occasionally offering advice.

Jase had to be hearing everything, two-sided jumble, atevi and human. His skin had a decided pallor, exhaustion, if not the situation itself.

He listened.

And took his handheld and pocketed it. “Mr. Kaplan. Mr. Polano.”

“Sir,” came from both.

“Reasonable comforts for these men. Unauthorized personnel, clear the area. Nand’ dowager.” A little bow to Ilisidi, who, with Cajeiri, had been listening to Banichi and Cenedi with considerable interest. “Mr. Cameron. Same request. I’ll see you in my office, Mr. Cameron, if you will.”

Jase looked white as the proverbial sheet. Crew didn’t argue any point of it. Bren translated the request: “One believes the ship-aiji has reached a point of extreme fatigue, nandi, and wishes to withdraw.”

“With great appreciation for the dowager’s intervention,” Jase said with a little bow. Weary as he was, court etiquette came back to him. But he retained the awareness simply to walk away, not ceding priority to Ilisidi, a ruler in his own domain.

“Go,” Ilisidi said to Bren, with a little motion of her fingers.

While several Guild officers, having vied with one another in spilling what might be their station’s inner secrets, hung at the gridwork watching Jase’s departure. With alien presence and crew resentment both in their vicinity, their stares and their thoughts, too, following the ship’s captain who went away in possession of all they’d said.

They looked worried. And that lent the most credibility to the information they’d given.

Chapter 14

My picture’s missing,” Jase said indignantly, when Bren walked into his upstairs office. “Of all damned things for them to take.”

“Galley,” Bren said. And dropped into a chair. “I nabbed it.”

Jase gave a shaky sigh. “I’ll want it back.”

“You’re done in, Jase. Get some rest. Turn things over at least for two hours, while we analyze what we’ve got.”

“I can’t let the dowager take independent action.”

“ You’ve dissuaded her. Ship-aiji, she says. She accepts that notion. But in the way of things, if you have atevi allies, they’re going to act where it seems logical. We have to face the possibility we won’t get Sabin back. We might even have a worse scenario, that Sabin completely levels with the Guild and sells us out. The dowager wanted to know whether you can lead. I think she’s satisfied.”

Fatigue showed in the tremor of Jase’s fingers as they ran over the desk surface. “I wish I was.”

“Get some rest, Jase, dammit. Take a pill, if that’s what it takes. I wouldn’t like to predict our situation without a strong hand at the helm—so to speak, Jase. I truly wouldn’t. And you’re it.”

“We know there’s one alien ship out in the dark,” Jase said. “For all we know—there could be another. Or three or four. We know what we see. In my mind—and I don’t wholly trust my mind at the moment—agreement with them isn’t inconsequential here. Whether or not Sabin doublecrosses us, she doesn’t need to tell the station what the aliens out there want—not if they’ve been holding a hostage. The hostage becomes a bargaining piece, right along with the fuel. And Banichi’s talking about getting to him. Is that the deal?”

“About that, about the fuel.”

“Our technicians aren’t sure about that lock. They’re studying the problem.”

“So what are our options?”

Jase rocked back in his chair, thinking, it was clear. His eyes were red. His voice had gotten a ragged edge. “Our options are to sit here not fueling, not taking on passengers, and hoping the station’s hostage keeps the situation stable, or to give the situation a shove.”

“In what way?”

“Make life harder for the Guild. Put pressure on them to fuel this ship. Becker says the population’s about seventeen thousand—more than we thought. I hope he’s telling the truth. It’ll be tight, but we can handle that number.”

“Three things lend the Guild hope of holding out. Their control of the fuel. Us. And their hostage.”

“Four things. Their absolute control of what the station population knows. If they didn’t have the hostage, they’d have to fear the aliens. If they had to fear the aliens, they’d still have the fuel, and they’d have us—assuming we’d fight to protect them. They’re sure of that. But if they lose their lock on information—that’s serious. If they lose that, they lose the people.”

“And the station goes catastrophic in a matter of hours. With the fuel.”

“And the machinery to deliver it. If they lose control—things become a lot more dangerous. Everything becomes a lot more dangerous.” A tremor of fatigue came into Jase’s voice. “If we try to come in on station communications to tell the truth, their technicians can stop us cold. Anybody aboard who actually got the information, they’d tag before he spread it far.” A little rock backward in the chair. “They’ve got tech on their side, in that regard. But I’ve been thinking. There’s high tech, and there’s low tech. And your on-board supplies include paper.”

True. The ship didn’t regularly use that precious downworld item. Reunion wouldn’t. Atevi society, however—proper atevi society—ran on it. Paper. Wax. Seals, ribbons, everything proper as proper could be.

“Handbills,” Bren said, catching the glimmer of Jase’s idea.

“Handbills,” Jase said.

“If we do that—they’ll mob the accesses. And we can’t tell honest stationers from Guild enforcers.”

“They can’t mob us. We’re not hard-docked. Boarders will have to come up the tube, with all that means.”

“No gravity and no heat. If we don’t open fast, they’ll die.”

“They also can’t come at us in huge numbers. They have to board by lift-loads, and go where our lift system delivers them: the tether-tube is linked to the number one airlock. Ten at a time’s its limit, and we can override the internal lift buttons.”

“So you’re planning to do it.”

“I’m considering it as an option. I’ll write the handbills. I know the culture. I take it Banichi has an idea of his own.”

“Somewhat down your path. Getting our hands on this hostage. Knocking one pillar out from under their fantasy of safety. Safeguarding this individual before something happens to him.”

Jase nodded slowly.

“How we’re to do this,” Bren said, “I don’t know.”

“I’ll hear it when you do.”

“Meanwhile—get some sleep. Hear me?”

“In your grand plan to get hands on the hostage,” Jase said in a thread of a voice, “I take it you plan for atevi to execute this operation. And what happens when they’re spotted? This station is armed and wired for alien intrusion. Your people will be in danger from the stationers. And you’ll scare hell out of the people we want to talk into boarding the ship.”

“Both are problems. Maybe your handbills ought to just tell the truth. How’s that for a concept?”

“God. Truth. Where is truth in this mess? I’m not even sure I’m doing the right thing.”

“Get some sleep. Get some sleep , Jase.”

“The captain’s missing. Banichi wants to take the station. How in God’s name do I sleep?”

“Get a pill and lie flat. Do it, Jase, dammit! Let your staff rest. Trust your crew. Trust us, that we’re not going to pull something outrageous without consulting. We’re going to win this thing.”

Jase looked at him. “Tell me how we convince near twenty thousand scared people to trust us when they come face to face with the atevi Assassins’ Guild.”

“You’re on the ocean. Your boat goes down. You see a floating piece of wood. You swim for it. If your worst enemy spots it, too, you’ll share that bit of wood. Instinct. Far as we are from the earth of humans, we’ll do it. Atevi do it. It’s one of those little items we have in common.”

“You suppose those aliens out there have the same instinct?”

“May well. When the water rises and the world goes under, not just anybody, anything else alive becomes your ally.”

“I’m not sure I trust your planet-born notions.”

“Get some sleep,” Bren said, and got up to leave.

“I want my picture back,” Jase said.

“Cook has it. I’ll get it myself.”

“I’ll send down for it,” Jase said. “Get. Go. Do anything you can.”

He left. Left a man who, on the whole, had rather be fishing, and wanted nothing more than that for himself for the rest of his life.

But fate, and Ramirez, and Tabini-aiji, had had other designs.

He walked the corridor behind the bridge, talking to his pocket comm, giving particular instructions, already making particular requests.

“Rani-ji, I shall need the paper stores. Jase will have a text for us to print, at least five hundred copies.” He recalled, curiously, that five-deck had the only hard-print facility on the ship. Jase had known how to write longhand when he dropped onto the world, but nine-tenths of literate ship’s crew had had to learn how to write coherent words on a tablet when they first saw pen and paper. Read, no problem: dictate well-constructed memos, yes. But they couldn’t write; had never seen paper or written the alphabet by hand. Alpha and the crew had existed across that broad a gulf of experience—there was no shorthand explanation for the differences between Mospheirans and ship’s crew.

And twenty-odd of the atevi Assassins’ Guild were going to scare common sense out of the populace unless there was some immediate, visible reassurance to station that they were on the side of the angels. This was an orbiting nation that couldn’t fly; that universally read and couldn’t write; that knew gravity, but not a sunrise. That panicked at the flash of light and dark in the leaves of trees. Certain subtexts were unpredictibly lost when fear took over.

Someone had to make clear that atevi presence was there to help them. Someone had to demonstrate human cooperation with atevi. Seeing, in a very real sense, was believing.

And he had a clammy-cold notion where the paidhi’s job had to lie in this one.

Chapter 15

Jase, one hoped, was finally asleep, as Bren sat with his own bodyguard, his own staff, in the dining room, with his computer, with a pot of tea and a plate of wafers, and a number of pieces of printout littering the broad dining table.

“One has exhausted talk, nadiin-ji, where this Braddock-aiji is concerned. And that we have lost touch with Sabin seems no accident. Her departure left the ship with no skilled operatives, few that know anything of self-defense, this being a closely related clan, unused to internal threat. So Jase has no choice but appeal to five-deck.”

“Does he then conclude,” Banichi asked, “that Sabin-aiji is lost?”

“He is by no means sure.” Bren had his own doubts of that situation, and accurate translation to an atevi hearer was by no means easy. Aijiin had no man’chi. It all flowed upward. And that a leader could desert her own followers was a very strange notion. “She may have acted on her own, against the Guild. Certainly she was aware that she was taking most of our protection with her—except atevi. And she took our one known traitor—if traitor he was, to her. Neither Jase nor I know whether she meant to protect Jase from Jenrette, or Jenrette from Jase.”

“Perhaps,” Jago ventured, “she may not have rushed blindly into whatever trap they may have laid for her. She never seemed a fool. Perhaps she thought she took enough force to seize control of the station center; but why, then, take Jenrette?”

“That answer must be lost in the minds of ship-folk, nadiin-ji. A Mospheiran human utterly fails to understand it.”

“Perhaps she did confide in Jase,” Banichi suggested darkly.

“Even so, even with his strongest promise to keep such a secret—I can hardly believe he would keep it from me. And she would have known that, too.” He thought on the matter of Sabin’s intentions twice and three times and came to the same conclusion. “Either she betrayed us outright, in which case I would expect her to contact us, or she took Jenrette because she wanted his help, or his information. I think she may have intended some covert action of her own, yet to develop—perhaps something so simple as spreading information among the general populace; but more likely attempting to infiltrate critical systems.”

“The fuel port,” Banichi said, “and communications.”

“Both likely.”

“Asking no help from us,” Jago said. “This seems likely, in Sabin-aiji.”

“Risking failure,” Banichi said. “We should take this station, Bren-ji. We need not run it, only evacuate it.”

Bren’s heart beat faster. And he couldn’t say no to the outrageous notion.

“If we open our doors,” Jago said, “we can evacuate it. But we lose our ability to maneuver this ship.”

“Even so,” Bren said. “And there remains the Archive, that we came here to remove.”

“We can reach the command center through the accesses,” Banichi said, “and take that during the general confusion. We may find Sabin-aiji, if she should be inclined to be found. The ship, so I hear, can manage the fueling with its own personnel. Gin-aiji can pursue that. Take the command center, free this hostage this Guild retains, and pay our due to the foreign ship, all in one. The staff has every confidence the paidhi-aiji can negotiate, at that point, with all parties.”

Dizzying prospect. On one level it was what he wanted to hear. He wanted to believe it was reasonable, and possible; and he hadn’t prompted it. He had no doubt at all that Banichi had a clear vision how this could work, and how they could move quickly enough to assure they could refuel before a cascade of systems failures took the station down in an evacuation—if they were fast, if they supported key systems, Banichi clearly thought they could do it. And if they got to the command center and took Braddock, they could take everything at once.

Banichi could be right, and he knew he himself was notoriously wrong when it came to inserting his own plans in Banichi’s area of expertise—but—

But—he had his doubts. Sane doubts. Doubts that had to be laid out.

“Yet, Banichi-ji,” he said, “one fears taking on too much. If we should proceed too quickly, if we should fail to manage Central, being as few as we are—if this ship and its pilots should come under orders of this Braddock-aiji, or if the station should fall to that foreign ship—any of these events would lead to terrible outcomes: hostile action against that ship out there, wider provocations that might involve the world we came to protect.” Damn, Banichi was always right. He had a most terrible foreboding about arguing with Banichi’s advice, and more than anything, feared he erred by timidity. “If, on the other hand, nadiin-ji, we take this prisoner into our hands, before they realize that we can penetrate the station, then we take away their source of confidence that they can hold that foreign ship from attacking.”

Banichi and Jago considered a breath or two. “Will this not unite them in resistence?” Jago asked.

“It will increase doubt toward Braddock.” It was all soft-tissue estimation, the paidhi’s word about human behavior, versus what atevi might do under similar circumstances; and it gave him no confidence at all that he could make no firm predictions. “I think it likely, at least.”

“Will they not hold the fuel,” Banichi said, “to counter our leaving with the hostage?”

“We can leave with the hostage, Banichi-ji. We can reach that ship in a small craft, if we have no other choice. And we can make it clear to the station population that we are here to take them to safety. We have not yet offered them boarding—not that we can rely on them having heard from Braddock.”

“Shall we then tell them?” Jago asked.

“Jase has such a plan. Pamphlets.”

“We pass out brochures?” Banichi asked, incredulous. “Like a holiday?”

Simply put, it sounded chancy. “Jase believes he can compose a compelling message.”

Banichi leaned back from the table, simply contemplating the matter. Then: “So we take this prisoner. And distribute brochures. And perhaps we shall find Sabin-aiji and find out her intentions. There are very many pieces to this plan.”

“And I shall go with you.”

“No, Bren-ji.”

“Absolutely necessary. I can walk up to humans and wish them good day. You are far more conspicuous, nadiin-ji.”

“He has a point,” Jago said. “If these humans threaten us, we might hesitate to shoot them; but if Bren-ji is with us, we shall have no hesitation.”

He had lived long enough among atevi that he had no difficulty following Jago’s reasoning. There was a basic logic in it, instinctive protection of their household, with which he found no inclination to argue.

“So we shall have these brochures,” Banichi said, “which we shall print, which will bring humans rushing to our doors. But will the Guild administration then arrive at our doors begging admittance, Bren-ji?”

“They will not. One believes they will hold out to the very last. Then we may need your plan to take Central, nadiin-ji.”

“We should call Gin-aiji,” Banichi said. Gin was their ultimate authority on systems.

“We shall need to inform Jase,” Bren said.

“And Cenedi,” Jago said.

So they sent the requisite messages, and informed Cenedi, who informed the dowager.

Whose reaction was far more moderate than one expected. “Shall we have television of it?” Cajeiri was reported to have asked.

In fact, there would be television, if they could manage it, but not for Cajeiri’s delight.

Gin arrived, herself having caught a little precious sleep. The table was already paved with their own version of station plans and schematics, but Gin brought a schematic she and her engineers had marked up.

“There are access ports from the outside,” Bren asked her. “Just as at Alpha.”

“Damned inconvenient for repair crews if there weren’t,”, Gin said, and called up specifics of the area Becker and party had named to Jase.

The diagrams looked as innocuous and common as any other area of the station, which looked like Alpha: Bren knew, having translated a stultifying quantity of the technical manuals and the building plans.

“They may have modified this entire area for greater security,” Banichi observed, pointing to a section door. “Here would be a likely control point, a minimum of fuss.”

“Remembering, nadi,” Bren said, “that they have had six years to fear that that ship might send a force in to rescue this person. Station may have laid traps.”

“Not, however,” Jago said, “greatly clever ones—if one may judge by Becker. But we should seek a means to distract attention.”

Comforting thought.

“A good use for roboti ,” Banichi said.

“To draw fire with my robots?” Gin cried, when that found full translation.

“A small one,” Banichi said. “A minor one. We can surely spare one to good use.”

Gin considered, and a grim light was in her eye. “One,” she said, holding up a finger like a merchant in a market. “One.”

It ran like that. Gin laid her plans and went off to estimate how they could best annoy station security. Banichi and Jago and Cenedi went to estimate what items might be both portable and useful.

Therein the paidhi had no usefulness at all, having only the most rudimentary notion how to get into an electronic lock or how to defeat security closure on a section door… the paidhi only hoped to lie down in his own quarters, draw a few slow breaths, and perhaps to catch one of those hours of sleep he’d lost.

Prospect of a rash intrusion onto station and the presence of station agents aboard, however inclined to change their views—that didn’t make for restful thoughts. Banichi could sleep anywhere, on cue. He didn’t have that skill.

And what if he dropped a stitch, and they ran into a trap?

What if they were killed attempting this, and the ship had to do without him, and explain matters to that alien craft—explain they’d tried, and explain to an angry and mistrustful set of strangers enough plausible excuses to gain the ship’s release?

Sleep evaporated. He got up, found paper and pen in his desk, and began sketching, in their dot-pattern code, an explanation of their mission. Of—grim thought—mission failure. Of request for a meeting with ship’s personnel. Jase would have to manage it, if it came to that, but Jase, of all others, understood. Gin halfway did. She would help. The dowager would help. It wasn’t as if he was leaving Jase without resources.

More dot-patterns: the ship taking on passengers. The ship mining the area for fuel. The ship leaving the system. The ship conducting talks with the alien craft. The ship engaging in trade—a closeness they never sought, but might have to have.

Trying to imagine all the contingencies Jase might have to deal with, trying to reach across space and time to gather every stray possibility, was a curious enterprise. He tried to think of things. He tried to create a basic vocabulary of interactions: communicating the difference between coming and going to a foreigner who shared one’s planet was hard enough. Communicating that useful distinction to a species that might only have a single word for movement or that might have a dozen more specific words—or, God help them, communicate in something other than nouns and verbs—was no walk on the beach. Go and come, give and get, infelicitous pairs of concepts that had distressed atevi at first glance, for no reason at all to human senses, and disturbing all sense of balance in atevi nerves. Fingernails on a blackboard, continual and unintended in all early efforts.

But civilized entities—if one had a right to expect any behavior out of a species that had gotten off its own planet—ought to have some concept that the universe was wide, that differences were likely, and that shooting as a first response would ultimately lead one to ruin.

Human and atevi together, he said in his dots. Human and atevi making agreements, taking this voyage, rescuing people from station. Human and atevi together meeting alien species in peace.

He tried.

He wrote a note to Tabini: Aiji-ma, I am undertaking a mission aboard the station which involves risk, but which I have persuaded my bodyguard is necessary. Should this account cease, I have misjudged my abilities and apologize .

To his brother: Toby, the station has an alien prisoner we’ve got to pry out of there, and since the captain took all the security with her, atevi security is going to have to do this job, and they can’t do it without someone to translate instructions. I’m the one that can do that. Jase would probably volunteer, but he’s got to get this ship home, so there we are. If this letter ends here, it didn’t work as well as I hoped. Love you, brother .

To his staff, a paper note: Thank you for the comfort you have provided. Should this mission fail, take all my effects to Jase, and then pursue your own man’chi .

To Jase. Who would know where to bestow various letters, Give the dowager a copy of everything, and a translation where appropriate. If you get this, my last idea was a bad one. What more can I say? You’re my other brother. I’d say something to embarrass us both, but I’m hoping like everything I get to erase this bit .

He sent the dot-code up to Kaplan, by Jeladi and one of Gin’s engineers, with instructions not to wake Jase, if Jase had gotten to sleep.

Then he undressed to sleep, that most elusive of chances, feeling the sheets against his skin, watching through slit eyes the living green curtain of Sandra Johnson’s plants—it always amazed him, how the plants grew during their transits, as if they were mad to live, mad to survive. Or took some benefit from what reduced the wits of mobile creatures. He watched the air from the duct stir the streamers and the leaves, artificial wind in a steel world. Fluid moved in their veins and simple light and nutrients let their cells divide. A wondrous invention of planets.

So were they.

So was that other packet of life that met out here, this far from other living cells. And they wanted to shoot one another? Unacceptable. Entirely unacceptable. The lord of the heavens refused to take that answer.

In that light, the whole universe seemed surreal, beyond easy belief, relative to those gently moving fronds. One reality wasn’t the other, and one found it distractingly easy to slip into that green world. Here, a stubborn set of human beings, and maybe some alien hard-heads as well, had made a botch of what should have been a simple situation—oh, hello. Anyone home?

Your estate? Do excuse me. I didn’t realize I’d crossed your boundary. And: Are you a neighbor or a traveler? Do step in for tea.

Well, the dowager had done that, and half-killed him. But he never believed that was an accident, and the dowager knew, and he knew, and on that basis they got along in ways that astonished the dowager’s enemies, and his. God, he loved her.

Life itself. Dared one think that in this void where life was rare, life was bond enough, that a couple of reasonable entities might say they’d had their encounter, they both understood the limits, and could get along?

He actually slept. He realized that when he waked and felt Jago stir—he’d never felt her arrival. He’d slept so hard that getting his wits about him again required a few breaths, then a search for bits and pieces of the plan they’d made and what he had to do.

He had to call up and find out Jase’s situation, and whether Jase approved. That was at the head of the list. But he hesitated to move, knowing he’d wake Jago at his stealthy best. So he lay there and rehearsed plans until she stirred.

“Good morning,” he said—no endearments to confuse the issue. Jago would only brush them off with: We have business, Bren-ji.

So they did. And a light was blinking on the message center. He dragged his dressing-robe about him and punched the button for a recorded message.

“ Bren .” Jase’s voice. “ I understand your reasoning. All of you — if you need anything — ask. I’ve sent down the text for the fliers. I’ve sent down a key. My key. Note — I’ve searched the premises and can’t turn up Sabin’s or Ramirez’s, and I did it with my key. So either I don’t know where to look or Ramirez’s key is with Sabin or with Ogun. I’m approving Gin’s move and yours, and moving our own personnel into position for the duration. We’re ready. Baji-naji, Bren-ji .”

So it was. Fortune and chance. The wiggle-room in a rigid universe. And possession of the key to the ship, the station, anything humans out here would value. “Baji-naji,” he muttered to himself, and took a quick shower, Jago having already departed, bent on what she would call business at hand.

And with staff’s help, it was back into the blue sweater and plain trousers and jacket, hair in a plain, tight pigtail under the collar.

“Nandi.” Bindanda quietly slipped Bren a simple card. “From Jase-aiji, which he avows is very important.”

“It is, Danda-ji.”

“And this, nandi,” Narani said, offering his pistol, which he took, no question in this, intending no hesitation to use it. He tucked that into his right jacket pocket.

Then Jeladi gave him a cloth-wrapped bundle which proved to be quite heavy, and a glance proved the contents— brochures , Banichi had translated it, and brochures there were: illustrated brochures, beautifully printed, a sunset by the sea, the north shore of Mospheira—Mt. Adams and a ski resort, with Jase’s—one assumed—description: Safe Haven, and text below, which gave details of their mission and instructions for boarding, with a photo of a representative cabin—Gin’s, as happened. Below that, it said: Comfort and Safety. Captions, actually appropriate to the pictures, and Gin’s hand somewhere in the mix.

“Three hundred more we have sent to the ship-aiji, nandi. One hopes they suffice.”

“Very fine, very fine, nadi-ji.” He found a place inside his jacket for a dozen brochures, and gave a little bow to the non-combatants of his staff. “Extraordinary accomplishment, nadiin-ji.”

“Fortunately posed, one humbly hopes, nandi. One hopes the illustrations convey only desirable elements.”

“Rani-ji, indeed, and my compliments.”

He tucked the packet under his arm, bowed, and went out into the corridor, where Jago and Banichi were in the last stages of preparation, black leather and non-reflective black plastics, and no few pieces of armament, besides breathing-masks and a black bag of gear.

“Gin-nandi is ready with her mission,” Banichi reported. “Shall we carry the packet, nandi?”

He yielded it, and Jago put the brochures into the bag, while he patted his pocket to be absolutely sure of Jase’s precious key.

“Cenedi,” Banichi said, “will run the security station for the duration, paidhi-ji.” Rare. They couldn’t ask for better than that. “Jase-aiji has lent his key?”

“I have it.”

“He has also lent a pilot. And Gin-aiji promises assistance. We shall go down to the life pods, Bren-ji, and cross to number 80 access, which is next to the section Becker-nadi indicated.”

“Excellent.” He hadn’t tracked such operational details: he trusted Banichi for those, and any help they could get came welcome, in his opinion. They were trusting the word of a traitor; and if Banichi had been arranging pilots and plans, Jase had been the only translator awake—which said how much sleep Jase had gotten, and how much Banichi himself had gotten. The air felt colder and colder, a chill coming on, bringing him almost to the point of shivers, but Jago had zipped up the bag and slung it to her shoulder, and they were off down the corridor at what atevi called a brisk pace, and what humans called a hurry.

Going down to the pods. A pilot, not the starship sort, but qualified to run station-tenders and such. And Gin had to have one of her robots in action, or another pod. Details floated around him in a null-g soup of items and lists turned into substance full of surprises, details unreal to him. Their operations up to this point had been shaping pieces of a plan, a list of things that had to be cleared out of the way, not an inclusive list, but his staff had gathered up things he had had no skill to put together, and gotten Jase and Gin involved. Now they headed down the corridor with a bag of guns and brochures and cutting tools.

No begging off at this point. No changing directions. Haste was written all over the operation—haste, on little rest and less sleep, and people of unknown number and disposition on the station, and entities of uncertain patience expecting performance on promises. He recalled a dusty brown hillside near Malguri, smoke and, overhead, the pulse of an open-cockpit plane dropping bottle-bombs.

From there, to this, light-speed; and maybe things no more subtle than the bottle-bombs. Guns. Explosives. God, he hoped that key worked as advertised.

And minimal communications. Television, which would have delighted Cajeiri, was not possible. Transmissions of any kind became a liability, to be rationed out, used in case they had to report disaster and alert Cenedi to a cascading problem.

Three of the dowager’s young men met them at the section end and simply fell in with them, young men carrying small bundles, equipped with guns and knives and spare ammunition in appalling quantity. Three of them and three of the dowager’s, auspicious numbers; but they were now six, his nerves informed him— six , counting himself. Infelicitous six hit the pit of his stomach as they reached the end of the corridor. Six was an impossible number for the mission. It wasn’t the end of the plan, he was instantly convinced of it; and as they passed the section door, out to the small area, indeed, one of Gin’s staff met them—Barnhart, it was, with a packet under his arm and a com unit tacked to his jacket.

Fortunate seven, now: Gin’s promised assistance took the form of one of her engineers in the party, to read the charts, if nothing else, to solve technical glitches having to do with human logic and human traps.

“Mr. Cameron.” Barnhart gave a little bow at the lift, Mospheiran and having no trouble falling in with atevi habits. “Honored to be here.”

“Mr. Barnhart. Welcome in.”

They were a comforting number as they bundled themselves inside the lift—down, was the direction this time, relative down from the ship’s metal heart, down where gravity grew uncertain and then left them prey to inertia of the car itself. Bren clutched the safety bar, running a last-minute check in his own mind all the things he’d had to do, the notes he’d had to leave—had he missed any? Late to be adding anything. But it distracted him from utter panic.

Down to cold, ungravitied places—cold stung the skin, cold so bitter it felt like heat as the lift let them out facing a blank wall and a sign. Emergency Evac 12 , it said, and Lifepod , with overlapping yellow arrows. Other signs saying pressure hazard and volatiles present .

They’d had their drills. He knew he was to follow the internal corridors to Lifepod 2, which this wasn’t. This was somewhere down on the ship’s cargo-carrying belly, where five-deck didn’t go, in drills. And this pod might not have opened in the last three hundred years, since Taylor’s age—it bore the patina of mechanical age, the cold surface other gloved fingers had recently touched, and left marks in the frost their breath recoated.

Now the pod hatch opened and he went through that portal, with five atevi and a Mospheiran engineer, into a dim, cold interior where atevi had to duck their heads. Metal walls seemed to drink in light and not give it up. Drifting plastic webs—he belatedly realized these were the evacuation pod’s safety restraints for far more persons than their number. The hatch shut, and two ship’s crewmen, shadowy and underlit in LEDs, moved beyond the webbing. Nine for the transit, he said to himself. Nine, fortunate as seven, thrice three. Jase’s men. Jase’s invisible, numbers-reckoning hand on this mission that they’d laid out: Jase wouldn’t let atevi go out with eight.

Across a dark leap, not on the mast, but on the station cylinder itself, on the edge of the damaged section, was service port 80, a number one hoped to attribute to station administration and not to their effort.

Gin thought they could do it because, she said, there weren’t many defenses on the inside of the station’s curve and from that angle; and because, second point, lifepods had automated firesafe signals that were supposed to protect them from station trim jets and other hull-vicinity hazards—Gin swore that signal would protect them from anything more lethal the station defenses emitted on automated targeting. A lifepod was, in ship’s and station’s systems, always sacrosanct.

“Will they not think of this?” Jago had asked during their planning session with Gin. Depend on it, atevi security, if they were in charge of the station, would have had a list of security permissions and they would have consulted it and reviewed such weaknesses when their opposition changed from alien to virtually internal, moreover, likely armed with a builder’s key… would station not have thought? Would they not have done something to counter?

They would do something sooner or later, which made the bearer of that key say, quietly, to his companions: “Nadiin-ji, Jase’s key is in my right pocket.” In case he were lying on the floor unconscious or worse.

“One hears, Bren-ji,” Jago said quietly.

Gin simultaneously would make a feint at the fuel port. And Jase’s security meant simultaneously, and for real, to secure the personnel tube associated with the tether. To maintain that post, they would have to maintain hard-suited personnel constantly on duty from now on through general boarding; but one hoped it wouldn’t be that long.

“We’re ready any time, sir,” the pilot said.

“They report themselves ready, nadiin,” he said. Null-g was uncharacteristically making him sick. Or it was raw fear unsettling his stomach.

“Go,” Banichi said in Mosphei’. Just that. Go. Banichi was de facto running this operation, which was the greatest comfort in the situation.

“Go,” Bren confirmed for the pilot. While Oh, my God , was the whiteout thought that streamed through his head as switches flipped, lights blinked and grapples thumped loose. He hated shooting. He hated being shot at ever so much worse.

Oh, my God . As he seized a grip on the webbing and the light inside the pod went inauspicious red.

They didn’t have a view, but they now had a definite floor—which, after a gentle shove and a deafening rumble like a train on a track, shifted again abruptly. A rail had indeed guided their release. Now they launched free, under full power.

He hadn’t taken firm enough hold. He fought to keep his handhold on the bar, felt his gloved fingers losing his grip; but a strong atevi arm encircled his waist and held him. The floor rotated, began to be back there , the aft bulkhead, such as it was; but his guardian held him fast.

He wasn’t heroic. He was a maker of dictionaries. And he shivered in a cold far more than he’d bargained for. He daren’t muster coherent conversation during this transit in which, baji-naji, his bodyguard had to have other things than inane chatter on their minds—their objective, and getting inside. Getting to that point was all up to Jase’s two men, now, the skill to home this thing in on a moving station and the luck not to get them shot at or smash them to bits on some antenna or other ephemeral projection that might not be in the plans.

Gin swore there was a way in. Gin swore this pod could limpet itself to any kind of hatch and establish a secure seal—a seal which still had to be there when they got back from their mission with whatever prize they’d managed to lay hands on. The pod had to be there, or it was going to be embarrassing getting back to the ship—Excuse me, sir, can you point out a corridor which will lead us to the core? We seem to have lost our way…

“It’s working very well, Bren-ji,” Jago said: it was Jago holding him.

“One has every confidence.” His teeth chattered from the cold. They didn’t have suits. They couldn’t use their equipment from suits and suits, even on humans, would say to anyone they met, invader , which wouldn’t help at all. So they took their risk of vacuum, and glided in their pressurized bubble, weightless now, emitting only that pod signal, down into the heart of the damaged station’s ring, and across. It seemed to take forever.

“Barnhart-nadi,” Banichi said.

“Yes.” Passable Ragi, that yes .

“Bren-nandi, say to Barnhart that if we come under fire, he will keep always to your left.”

“Yes,” Bren said, and relayed that vitally important instruction, which effort temporarily kept his teeth from chattering. If Barnhart was to his left, he noted, that put him to Jago’s left—never on his security’s right hand. Not in this.

Not since a certain hillside in Malguri’s district, in the faraway east. Not since the day he’d learned what it was to get afoul of his own security. If he strayed out of order, his security would kill themselves trying to get to him. Their atevi instincts would send them toward him. All planning took that into account.

But the initial foray was his. All his.

The pod underwent an unplanned course correction, and his stomach tried to rise up his throat. Not auspicious, not auspicious, his brain insisted. He had to do better than this. He concentrated on that proposition, noting, by the glare of lights now green, that Barnhart was having no easier journey, while—God, did nothing bother atevi stomachs?

But whatever they had had to miss, they had missed. It was Jase’s crew flying this thing. And somewhere—somewhere behind them—above them, relative to station—Jase was not idle. Jase would be talking to Guild authorities, pretending to negotiate the release of Becker and his men, keeping Guild officials as busy as he could. Meanwhile Gin did something involving a far smaller miner craft—while ship’s crew attempted a simple descent to the mast, hard-suited and armed to the teeth in case station had thought it was going to take over that tube and control access to the ship.

It was more than guns that batch would have, however. It would be another batch of brochures, which were by now from Jase’s office to that team’s hands.

The brochures had said, among other things his eye had glossed past, in one desperate glance: Reunion Station is disbanded by order of Captains’ Council .

All station citizens, administrative elements, and crew: boarding is imminent for Alpha Colony, where we have a longstanding, peaceful arrangement with natives of that planet. Expect mutual protection in an atmosphere of cooperation and economic prosperity.

Atevi were in there, buried it in the fine print.

Baggage limit: 20 kilos per adult, 4 kilos per child, dimensions of standard duffle, exceptions granted for uncommon cause. Baggage must be yielded to security on arrival. Weapons must be declared and placed in ship’s armory…

It went on into more specifics for evacuation of medical facilities, for children and elderly, and the use of the safety cable in the tube.

It offered people from deep space and curved metal horizons a sunset on the beach and a ski resort, and one had to recall how Jase, first landing, had had trouble looking at a flat horizon, and nearly lost his supper in a fast-moving vehicle. Among other details, the Council of Captains was locally down to one captain, if Sabin didn’t turn up, and Alpha Colony hadn’t existed for centuries as Alpha Colony, but it was the sort of thing the Reunioners would expect to hear.

The pod underwent more readjustments, then a sudden shove from the engines that taxed even Jago’s strength to hold him. Bren clenched his teeth, trying not to think anything was wrong, trying to think of the brochure, not the arm cutting off his wind.

It went on, and on. What are they doing up front ? he wanted to ask, if he had any air. Are we in trouble ? But he’d long since learned not to chatter at people doing what they had to do, especially if it was going wrong. He clenched his teeth, breathed shallowly, and tried to keep his wits about him.

If somehow some armament didn’t like the firesafe signal the pod emitted, and wanted to blow them to little agitated atoms…

Toby , he’d write, if he had the chance, you won’t believe where I’m going. You won’t believe what we’re doing. What we’re hoping to do. We’re absolutely crazy. There might have been a better plan than this …

Big bump. Jago nearly lost him from her grip.

Clang. Bang. Bump-scrape-clang. He gritted his teeth while the pod skidded over some surface it should be able to grab. God, they’d missed their grapple.

Thump-clang.

Jolt.

Whine.

“We’re at the port,” the pilot reported breathlessly.

Thank God, thank God, thank God.

The whining kept up. And kept up. The whole pod seemed queasy in its attachment—but attached. Something had gone wrong, he was sure the pilots had improvised—but they had weight . His feet were on the floor again, which meant they’d reached a cylinder surface, and Jago let him go. She made a rapid check of her gear, as Banichi and Cenedi’s men did, as Barnhart checked his pockets and his coat, and he took the cue himself: he had the gun still in his right pocket, despite the jolt, that, and the pocket com in his left. Brochures securely inside his coat.

The whining stopped. The pilot and co-pilot crawled out of their seats and began working at the forward port, pulled it back, and, dyed with blinking green light, showed them a metal wall, flame-blackened, a lot the worse for wear.

In the middle of that wall, a round port with a blinking green light in the middle of it, under lettering that said EPORT 81.

They’d missed number 80. They were at another access. How did that number match their numbers? Bren asked himself: was it up or down on the cylinder, and where were they?

The pilot and co-pilot opened the control cover, going for switches. There was a red handle. The co-pilot pulled it, and the whole surface of the door recessed rapidly.

White light came on, blinding, flooding their little pod.

Banichi and Jago went through, and Bren went, the rest of the mission behind them, through the open port, into a white-lit airlock.

“Good luck,” the pilot wished the lot of them, and the door shut between. Banichi pushed a button and opened the door into Guild territory—a dimly lit engineering corridor that very happily had heat and light and air that didn’t hurt. One could be ever so grateful for those basics. Bren personally was.

“This way,” Barnhart said, and pointed with a gloved hand. They walked a considerable distance down that corridor, and the air by now didn’t feel so warm.

But they reached a shut section door marked 80, which was where they were supposed to be, and an unfortified approach—far more luck than their skidding entry had forecast.

Bold as brass, Barnhart strolled in that direction, and Bren took a deep breath and got into the fore of the expedition as well, as far as a cross-corridor which was, to their vast relief, vacant. The pilot had stayed behind, keeping systems hot and waiting for them, but the co-pilot had tagged along with them. For a brief while they were to be infelicitous eight—disastrous eight, double infelicitous four. Only acquiring the prisoner could change those numbers to three of threes, the adventurously felicitous nine—God! The mind zigged and zagged in terror through superstition and operations—even his atevi bodyguard would call it nonsense, while their nerves twitched to it. At this point of the operation, felicitous numbers rested in accomplishing their mission. Jase’s orders. Jase’s sensitivity to atevi nerves. And now atevi lagged back and a handful of reasonable-looking humans, give or take the cold-area coats and gloves, had only to walk, calmly down the corridor, calmly, up to an ordinary lift, in the right section, the section they were supposed to be in.

Bren turned, gave a little nod and waited for atevi to join them and take up positions on either side of the door.

Then he stripped off the gloves, pocketed them, punched in a call—no need for the key—and waited for the lift.

The door opened. Empty. Not unexpectedly so. The lift system cycled people to sensible destinations, not detouring them through cold, dimly lit maintenance levels. People in cold, inconvenient spots had to wait while the lift system emptied a car.

“Nadiin,” Bren said, first in, holding the door open, and Banichi, Jago, and the rest boarded and occupied the sides, atevi back against the walls, out of sight, humans to the center.

Barnhart input their destination. The lift rose. And rose. And rose.

And stopped.

The door opened. A single security officer faced them, not even yet expecting trouble as he walked in.

Bren grabbed his jacket and yanked him in. There was a yelp, the start of an outcry.

That stopped, if the struggle didn’t. The car started up again.

They reached level four. And stopped. The door didn’t open. The lift panel flashed a request for security clearance.

“Key,” Barnhart said, and Bren put the keycard in.

The door opened tamely and without alarm. And while his key was in, Bren put the car into a maintenance hold, door open.

“Very poor,” Jago said softly, “very poor provision.” As they exited the lift.

They had one prisoner in the lift car, a slightly conscious and bruised prisoner. One of Cenedi’s men remained with him. The rest of them moved out at a sedate pace, and without a word Bren took the lead, in a brightly lit, warm corridor, Barnhart beside him, the co-pilot close by. They were to make as soft an entry as they could into what their prisoners back on the ship told them was a detention area, creating as little fuss as possible.

Max security, Becker and his men had called it. Max security, as station understood the term. Jago thought it wouldn’t be much. God, he hoped not.

Blind turn. And if they were getting close to occupied areas, it was the paidhi’s turn to see, solo, what was down that hall. He gave a little tug at his slightly rumpled work jacket as he faced the corner. “Hang back,” he said to Barnhart and the copilot, got a worried look back.

“Use great caution,” Jago wished him, a whisper at his shoulder, “Bren-ji.”

“One will do one’s utmost, Jago-ji,” he said. He pulled the com from his pocket, did a fast check of his shortrange communications, nothing so extensive as to reach the ship, and the answering flash said he had contact with his bodyguards.

He walked out, facing a sealed door, no guards in sight. Just very blank corridor on either hand, no designation on the door.

He used his key, locked the door open by means that gave as few signals to the system as possible, and walked ahead into an equally blank corridor, no doors, nothing but a left turn toward what his recollection of the diagrams said should be a main transverse corridor. He whistled tonelessly as he walked, not wishing to startle anyone around the next corner, and on inspiration, took one of the brochures from his jacket pocket—not that paper wouldn’t be a phenomenon, but it posed its own puzzle to the eye, and distracted attention from the cut of his coat.

He walked around the bend, and saw a man at a desk, the image of men at desks in front of sealed doors everywhere in human civilization.

He walked up, whistling, preoccupied with his brochure.

“What’s that?” the man at the desk asked him. And a second, closer look: “What department are you?”

“Technical.” That explained almost anything, in Bren’s experience. “You seen this thing?” Bren laid the brochure on his desk.

“Where did you get this?”

“Admin.” That also answered everything.

The man handled the brochure cautiously, saw the pictures of beach and mountain. Opened it, gave it a scant glance, while Bren meditated simply hitting him on the head, but he was curious.

The man read, looked up, alarmed. “They’re serious?”

“Very serious.” He played it by ear. “Look, I’m supposed to estimate the prisoner’s needs in this transfer.”

“You have to talk to Madison. He’s in charge. B corridor.”

A name was helpful. But he couldn’t leave this man unaccounted for. And he didn’t know what to do with him. “Look,” he said, improvising. “I’ve got to have a list.”

“What list?”

“List, man. There’s always a list, isn’t there? Life requirements. That sort of thing. You’re supposed to have one drawn up for me.”

“I’m not supposed to have anything. That’ll be Madison, that’s what. I can call him.”

Last thing he wanted. “Look, Madison’s not in my instructions. You were supposed to have the list.”

“I just sit at this door, man. I don’t have any damned list?”

“Look, they swore up and down you were going to have it.” He switched sides on the desk, drawing the man’s eyes toward him, away from the corner where his staff waited. He put on a hangdog face. “Man, you’re putting me in a hard place. Shigai said move on it.”

There. Shigai wasn’t a name. It was Ragi. And Banichi, and Jago arrived around the corner.

“Migod,” Bren said, looking up.

The man turned his head. Fast. Bren pulled his own gun, as the man swung to look around—and made a dive for his intercom.

Bren grabbed his arm short of that button and held his gun right at eye level.

“No,” Bren said. “Don’t touch that button. I really wouldn’t touch any button. They won’t hurt you. I might.”

Banichi and Jago arrived on the other side of the desk, and the man looked left and right, sweating.

“They’re not from the same planet as the prisoner,” Bren said. “They’re from Alpha, matter of fact, same as I am. Same as he is.” This, for Barnhart, who had stayed close to Banichi, along with the co-pilot. “And the brochure, let me tell you, is the truth. This station is being evacuated by order of the Captains’ Council, and you’ve got a limited time to do it. Upper administration is being recalcitrant, not to the good of ordinary station folk. So we’re seeing to the evacuation ourselves, trying to get all you good people onto the ship and lifted safely out of here before the attack comes.”

“Attack.”

“This station isn’t going to exist in a few days. We’re here to take you back to Alpha Colony, where it’s safe, where there’s an abundant, peaceful planet, and where you don’t have an alien ship ready to come in here to get back this prisoner you claim to have. If we can we have a little cooperation, here, I’ll let you go. Then you and your family can go pack your belongings, advise your neighbors, and get yourselves off this station alive. That is, supposing we can get our ship fueled in time to get away from here. Which Mr. Braddock for some reason doesn’t want us to do without following his regulations. Mr. Braddock has annoyed the aliens, lied to our senior captain, and otherwise made himself generally objectionable to us. Given the situation, and an irritated alien presence out there, we aren’t in a patient mood. So decide what you’re going to do.”

It was not a pleasant sight, a truly scared man. But not a stupid man. He didn’t move. He looked from him to Barnhart and the co-pilot, twice, and once, fearfully, at Banichi and company.

“Get up from the desk,” Bren said. “You’re quite safe. I’ll send you where you’ll be safe for the duration. I take it you have family who want to see you again. Just get up quietly. One of my associates will see you to safety.”

“One of them ? Who are they ? What do they want?”

“The legitimate inhabitants at Alpha. As for what they want—after several hundred years of careful negotiation, they’re our hosts, our allies, and on our side. Nadi-ji, escort this good gentleman to the lift car.”

One of Cenedi’s men, behind Banichi and Jago, took that request. “Kindly comply,” that one said in Mosphei’, certainly a surprise coming from the dowager’s staff, and a greater surprise to their detainee, who had broken into a sweat.

“And where is this prisoner?” Bren asked.

The man looked at him as if he had the only life preserver.

“You’re safe with him. Worry about me , and be very accurate. Where is the prisoner?”

“B,” the man said. “B17.” And helpfully pointed the direction B was supposed to be. “There’s a restricted section. Three guards.”

The Guild didn’t seem to command the highest loyalty among the populace.

“And who is this Madison?”

“In charge of the prisoner. In charge of the section.”

“This person says the prisoner resides in B17, and we may expect three more guards there.” Bren gave a dismissive wave of his hand, quite calmly so—the dowager’s gesture, he was disturbed to realize—but the mind was busy.

Cenedi’s man took their anxious detainee back down the corridor toward the lift, there to join the unfortunate from the lower deck… a collection that might grow further, Bren thought desperately, and none of them the ones they wanted, while they were keeping a lift car out of the system longer and longer, which might soon raise questions from maintenance.

He gave a cursory glance to the man’s abandoned console, read the story implicit in key wear, and looked down the corridor, reading signs like scuff on the floor tiles and the invisible signs of human handedness that confirmed to him that, yes, traffic did go through here, and key wear could almost tell him which keys the man used when people had valid authorizations.

No labels here. That ship-habit the station definitely had. But security was all soft.

He walked further, toward the door in question, and exchanged his gun for his keycard, trusting it more than the console. He was about to open it when he became aware of his bodyguard still in view, close to him.

“We may take the lead from here, nadi-ji,” Banichi said.

“Not without casualties, nadi-ji. I insist. Stay back. Let me attempt this.”

His security was not happy to wait. They had other armament ready. They were far enough in, and prepared to finesse it, as Banichi would say, from here on. But Banichi motioned his contingent back against the wall, into what concealment the section door frame offered, while he keyed the door open and locked it into position.

He and Barnhart and the co-pilot walked into a corridor that could be any stretch of small offices, no windows, nothing to indicate who was where, or that this was a high-security area. He counted doors. Ten.

First intersection of corridors. The habitual scuff marks in the corridor took a turn. Bren pulled a brochure out, sole precaution. And around that corner they faced a uniformed guard.

“Banichi,” Bren said under his breath, to his electronics, “one armed man at a desk and a shut door.” He kept walking, himself and Barnhart and the co-pilot, as if the guard himself, not the closed double door beyond, was their objective.

“Who are you ?” the guard asked.

“Looking for Madison,” Bren said, and laid the brochure on the desk. “Have you seen these things?”

The man took a split second to read the title and look at the pictures. And looked up into a gun-muzzle—a weapon in the hands of a very scared paidhi-aiji who really, truly hoped his security would hurry so he and his two non-combatant allies wouldn’t have to defend themselves. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t make a move.”

The man considered carefully what to do with his hands. He was indeed wearing a gun.

“Read the paper,” Barnhart suggested. “It explains what’s important.”

The guard looked down, opened it as if it had been a bomb. And looked up, alarmed at what he read—twice alarmed, as Banichi and Jago turned up silently.

The guard looked from Bren to them and very carefully didn’t move a muscle.

“We’re from Alpha,” Bren said calmly, “and these are our neighbors, no relation to the people who blew a hole in your station. This station is in imminent danger, we’re here to get the prisoner and evacuate the station as quickly and quietly as we can. Stay very still. We’re going to remove the gun. You don’t want to use it, anyway.”

“Damn you!”

“Mind your tone. They don’t speak much of our language. Be polite and smile at them.”

“The hell?” The man moved to prevent Jago lifting the gun from his holster. Mistake. Jago took the arm instead, yanked him up straight out of his chair, and Banichi took the gun in a wink.

“Be still, sir,” Banichi said in Mosphei’, and the guard said not another word.

Bren moved on and inserted the keycard at the next door: the door, the hallway in the other direction showing an office-like door at the end.

The door didn’t open. The builder’s code didn’t work. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Code’s not working,” he said. “It must be a jury rig. Not on the system.”

“Finesse will not suffice here,” Banichi said in Ragi, and took a fistful of the guard’s jacket. “Open the door.”

The guard commendably refused.

Just as someone, an administrative sort, opened a side office door and blithely walked out into the situation.

Blinked, open-mouthed.

And ducked back. Other doors stayed shut. Jago walked down the short corridor, dragging the unhappy clerk with her, shoving small clear wedges into the small gap between door and mounting—assuring someone from the outside was going to have to release the occupant; but the alarm by now would go to Central.

“Gas,” Banichi said, gun in hand, and Bren tugged the mask out from under his collar as the others did the same.

Banichi ripped the panel off the double door, clipped a line and attached a small switch, which quietly opened the door on a wide open area that suddenly, in Bren’s recollection, matched their charts—he was thinking that and thinking he had better get himself to the fore, when Banichi tossed a grenade that went rolling down the hall.

A guard ran to grab it, and it blew out a cloud of gas and went on spewing, while the guard, a shadow among other shadows in the gas, doubled over. Jago and Banichi charged in. Bren ran. Man’chi, whatever impelled a sane human—he went in, gun in hand, desperate—skidded to a stop as Jago pitched another grenade, this one percussive, with a great deal of smoke, a shock that deafened human ears. Two human senses were impaired.

Sirens started. Red lights dyed the gas. They’d gone in as civilized individuals. They’d become invading, masked monsters. Guards, whose defenses hadn’t included gas masks, were down and choking in front of a clear-walled enclosure that itself was filling with gas, and the yellow-clad figure caught inside that cube of slowly obscuring air, white-lit in the general haze of red, could have been a very stout, brownish-gray human in a baggy yellow coverall.

The occupant of that glass cage applied stocky dark-gray palms to the glass wall, pressed close, trying to discern the nature of the invaders. It had a broad, large-eyed face, heavy-jowled, heavy-browed. All of that, Bren saw at first blink, before Jago blew the clear plastic door in, and the yellow-clad alien turned away to face intrusion.

Then the alien turned full circle, as if seeking some other route of escape—or expecting to die by the hands of some oddly composed lynch mob.

Banichi invaded the cell, seized the alien’s massive arms and hauled the alien toward the shattered wall. Banichi had brought a spare mask. He whipped it out of his jacket and pressed it over the alien’s mouth, and at that point the alien stopped fighting, held the mask in place with his own hands and, perhaps conceiving of safety, cooperated in the rescue, accompanying Banichi, trying to keep up with a wider stride.

Jago stood with rifle ready to provide covering fire, and as they brought the alien past, Jago folded their expedition inward and began a fast retreat. Bren tried to observe that plan, grabbed Barnhart by the arm as they reached their rear guard, accounting for the co-pilot: he meant to get to the fore again, but Jago took the lead and Banichi dragged the rescuee along with them.

Cenedi’s man stayed rear guard. Bren didn’t look back, except to be sure that all their company was retreating with them, a rush back toward clear air, back past rows of—thank God—closed office doors, where people were likely phoning for help, but nothing but another builder’s key could close a door a builder’s key had locked, so Gin swore, and so far things were working.

Someone, maybe the guard, rushed at them at the corner: mistake. Jago flattened the man with an elbow and light-footed it ahead, pausing for corners and doorways. They reached clear air at the corner by the desk, and pulled the masks down in favor of unobstructed breathing and vision. The prisoner, seeing others give up the breathing masks, removed his own—then looked wildly about at a thunderous rush behind them.

Men came running behind them; and all of a sudden Jago heaved another grenade down the corridor, and running attackers skidded to a stop and tried to get back.

It blew in a cloud of gas. And Cenedi’s man blasted the overhead light panels, a neat, one-after-the-other chain that darkened the corridor and drove their pursuers in retreat.

They ran, then, Banichi dragging the stocky alien, as fast as he could; and Bren had his gun in hand, keeping an eye to pursuit behind them, not wanting to shoot any hapless guard. The doors had stayed open, and he found the presence of mind to shut one and lock it with his key.

Then he ran to catch up, almost hindmost, around the last turn. He passed Barnhart, passed Banichi, caught up with Jago just as she reached the lift.

Cenedi’s men had trussed their terrified detainees and kept them flat on the floor, and now they all jammed themselves into the lift, straddling their detainees, dragging along a frightened, sweating alien who smelled like overheated pavement and bulked like a small truck. Bren shoved his key in the slot and Barnhart punched in their destination before he extracted the key and pocketed it.

“We’ll let you go at the bottom,” Bren said then to the two white-faced, absolutely terrified humans crouched at their feet. He reached down and assisted up the man he’d dealt with. “Come to the ship when you’re ready. The paper isn’t a lie. Believe it!” He remembered the rest of the fliers, took the sheaf of them from inside his jacket and shoved them inside the man’s jacket. “Here, have some brochures.”

“Yes, sir,” the man muttered. The other, still on the floor, seemed beyond speech, as Jago extracted the whole packet of brochures from their kit and set them in his lap.

“Safe,” she said to him, encouragingly.

“My bodyguard says this is your ticket aboard,” Bren said shamelessly. “Pass them out. Brochures get first boarding. The access is open now. We have a handful of days to get everyone aboard.”

Down and down the levels, all the way to the bowels of the station’s maintenance, down to the service-port and the dim, cold depths. Banichi was on the comm the moment the doors opened, and they freed their two Reunioners, then shoved their rescuee out into this place that, whatever thoughts might be going through the alien’s mind, certainly wasn’t the prosperous end of the station.

They ran, then, dragging the alien with them. Cold hit like a wall, burned the lungs as they tried to make time, down dim corridors, into section 81.

There escape in fact loomed in front of them: the co-pilot had opened the emergency hatch from his side, the only way it would open, and with a broad inclusive wave, beckoned them in.

Safe, now. Two frightened humans trying to raise an alarm upstairs might only tell where they had been, in a very few moments, but if they were the least bit worried, Bren thought, those two might keep quiet, believing those brochures were a precious thing, to be passed out quickly among reliable friends.

Meanwhile their assorted party crammed themselves inside the airlock, within the webbing. The alien looked about him, large, dark eyes glittering in the dim light, a liquid glance passing jerkily over strange sights and strange faces—thinking of escape or murder, more than likely, but if they knew one thing about this person by now, they knew this was by no means a fool. Cooperation remained the moment-to-moment rule, compliance as the pilot and co-pilot got the pod door shut—no fuss, no argument. They were leaving the place that had held him and that suited the alien fine.

Haste and distance was their collective intention: haste in reaching the cover of the ship itself was all they could do to protect themselves from the station. And if the pod had been close quarters going out, now, with the door shut, they jammed themselves up closer and tighter, human, atevi, and shivering, strange-smelling unidentified.

Thump! Clang! They were free, rotating alarmingly at first. Then a steady hard push of propulsion cut in, compressing the whole untidy mass of them toward the aft bulkhead, a painful tangle of muscular flesh punctuated with other people’s knees and elbows.

“We did it,” Barnhart panted at Bren’s ear, breathless and astonished, and Bren only thought, enduring a hard atevi elbow between his shoulder blades, and air too dry and thin for comfort, For God’s sake, man, don’t jinx us .

Then the alien they were transporting began struggling—huge arms, legs like tree trunks and a swing, if they hadn’t all been pressed together like a sandwich, that could have cracked skulls. Banichi grabbed one arm and pinned it. The alien’s eyes showed wild, broad nostrils flared and the mouth—omnivore, Bren decided, just like humans—opened in frantic gasps.

“Air pressure!” Bren shouted against the weight compressing his rib cage. “Take the air ship-normal! Fast!”

Fast still wasn’t an instantaneous process. They were in freefall and the pilots had their hands full, what with the possibility that the station might at any moment find something capable of taking a shot at them, either inside the ring or once they started up the mast toward the ship. Bren personally didn’t want to distract them—but they had an alien laboring for breath, close to passing out after his wild exertion: he must have stood it as long as he could, and gotten desperate.

“Short distance to our ship,” Bren yelled into the alien’s face. Touching him could be reassuring. It could equally well be deadly insult. He opted for hands-off. “We want to help you. Be still. All right?”

He didn’t know whether the alien heard or understood. Banichi’s grip held the alien fast against a new burst of resistance, and now one of Cenedi’s men began to wind self-adhesive restraint about him, which didn’t calm the situation or likely help his breathing at all.

“Caution, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, struggling to hold the massive arms out of action, and if Banichi was having trouble keeping his grip on those arms, Bren found no chance. He wriggled to back up as far as he could, acceleration pressing them together. Then Jago added her efforts, inserting an arm and struggling past him to get the binding wrapped.

But it all became easier as the alien stopped fighting and let his head loll, close to passing out.

“Easy, easy, easy,” Bren said, and took a chance. “Oxygen. Can we get the emergency oxygen, Jago-ji?”

Jago reached a long arm to an emergency panel. In a moment more they had an oxygen mask roughly over the alien’s broad, flat face, and the last fighting eased as their passenger gasped for breath.

Not a crazy person. One trying to breathe.

Then acceleration stopped, all in one stomach-wrenching moment, and the axis spun over. They began, despite the testimony of senses, to slow down, trying not, Bren said to himself, to impact the ship and smear their little mission all over their ship’s travel-scarred hull.

Slowing down. Slowing down. The pilot and co-pilot were talking to someone with an incredible and reassuring calm.

Bren found himself breathing as if oxygen for all of them had grown far too short and he wished there were a mask for him.

But the pilots worked calmly just as if they were coming in at Alpha station, a precise set of communications and maneuvers.

Their alien’s eyes opened slightly. He was no longer fighting them. He might not know another word of who they were, but air was potent, the most basic requirement. They had satisfied that urgent need, and they had taken him out of that clear-walled cell, and they weren’t where he had spent the last six years—they had that to recommend them.

“We’re coming to our ship,” Bren said to their alien, in the hope that those years in human hands had taught him some few words. “My name is Bren. This is Banichi. We’re from the ship. We want to help you. Do you understand me at all?”

The alien gave no response, only a slow, blinking stare.

“We’re coming in,” the copilot said. “Brace, all.”

Thank God. In. Safe. They had the station’s precious hostage, and—now that the station knew they’d been robbed of that asset, now that the station had the ship’s offer of rescue coursing the halls and soon being gossiped in the restaurants—maybe the station would just give up quietly, turn Sabin loose, and let them have the fuel.

Maybe rainbows would shine in deep space.

But, he thought, up against this strange creature who smelled like pavement, they did have a major asset in their hands, they’d told the truth to a handful of people. And they hadn’t killed anyone during their mission.

Let the Guild recalculate its assets now.

Thump-clang. Rattle and stop. Blessed stop.

They were in. They were safe.

“Mr. Cameron,” the co-pilot said, “captain’s compliments, and will you get up to his office at the earliest after dock?”

Urgently, never mind they’d just worked a miracle and he had an alien he had to talk to—get upstairs.

Something wasn’t according to plan.

Chapter 16

Come up, Jase had said, and to the bridge Bren went immediately, gun in pocket, jacket torn and rumpled, sweat and the lingering stink of noxious chemicals about him. It made his eyes water. Narani would be scandalized, Bren thought, aware he was light-headed at the moment. He needed to be down below to supervise their alien guest.

But Jase needed him topside, fast.

The lift door let him out. He spared only a quick leftward glance to be sure Jase wasn’t on the bridge. Crew there was busier than it had been, which said something on its own.

And—God?—a blood trail snaked down the corridor from the lift, a set of dots leading down to the executive offices.

Jase’s was the second door. Where the dots entered. There was no bodyguard outside.

He buzzed it and opened the door almost in one motion, hand on the gun in his pocket.

Jase was at his desk.

Jenrette sat opposite, Jenrette, who’d gone aboard the station with Sabin. And Jenrette’s right arm was wrapped, sleeve and all, in bloody bandage.

Kaplan was there, too, Kaplan with blood all over his sleeve, likely Jenrette’s, and Polano stood in the other corner, neither looking happy.

“You got him,” Jase said. Meaning their alien, Bren judged. “He’s alive.”

“Yes. In good shape.” He was a little set aback, that Jase would talk other business in front of this man, but there was nothing he needed to conceal. “Can’t speak to his mood, but no physical damage. He cooperated, in fact.”

“Good.”

“Mr. Jenrette.” He gave a nod to the man leaking blood onto the chair arm and directed his primary question to Jase, all the same. “I take it there’s a problem in other areas.”

“One of the robots blown to hell,” Jase said, “Guild agents in the mast, but not in the tube at this moment: Hendrix and Pressman are holding that. In the confusion that broke out after the fuel port event, Mr. Jenrette got himself to the tube and reached our team inside, to give us Captain Sabin’s instruction—which was to be careful and don’t create a problem.”

Bren sat down. “Well, that came a little too late.”

“Notably,” Jase said. And hadn’t at any point spoken in Ragi. Or evidenced any distrust of Jenrette. Both circumstances told a tale, to a man who’d shared quarters with Jase in Shejidan. Jase, however, was cool and calm. “Explain, Mr. Jenrette. Our atevi allies need to know.”

“Hiding in the vicinity,” Jenrette said, clearly in pain, teeth chattering. “Freezing. They’ve set a guard down there, near the tube access. Or they had one. But when the robot blew at the fuel port, I suppose, or when your team moved in, the guard moved away. Alarms were going. They went to the lift, maybe to get secure-line communications, and I made a break for it. They spotted me and started shooting. Our force started firing back and I got inside.”

Gin’s mission had upended the figurative teakettle. So it seemed.

“Mr. Jenrette says he doesn’t know what’s happened to the captain, except she didn’t like the way things were going. She sent Mr. Jenrette back to report to us and the Guild took exception to him leaving. Whether she’s been arrested or whether she’s trying to reason with them, we have no idea. Meanwhile, by Mr. Jenrette’s evidence, they were shooting at her bodyguard.”

Jenrette was the last member of her bodyguard Sabin would send on a mission to report to Jase—no. Jase didn’t believe it either.

“I got to the mast. I hoped I could get past the guard and get to the tube. I didn’t know whether you could get anyone to cover me, sir, and I was afraid they’d tag me if I called. But it was getting to where I’d freeze to death if I didn’t. Then the alarm happened.”

“Sabin won’t be using ship-com, I take it,” Jase said, “for the same reason.”

“There’s a contact in the Security offices. Coursin is his name. Amin Coursin.” Jenrette moved his arm and winced. “Soon as I get this arm seen to, I’m to deliver what I’ve told you and get back to that meeting point. I’ll carry anything you want to tell her.”

“In Shejidan,” Jase said, “I learned one thing, Mr. Jenrette: if the person who told you to rendezvous is missing— don’t use their contacts. That wouldn’t be wise of you, to go there. And you are experienced security.”

“I’m experienced security, and with all respect, captain, I’m not under your command. I’m under hers. I’ve delivered my message, for what little good it does now, and, again with all due respect, sir, I’m going back to her command, with or without medical treatment.”

“Settle in. You’re not going anywhere.”

“I beg to differ, sir.”

“I said settle down. Your fight is over, Mr. Jenrette. You may be Guild—”

“No, sir!”

“Aren’t you? For that matter, isn’t the senior captain, herself? Damned brave of you—taking a hit for verisimilitude. But while we’re not trusting suspect contacts, Mr. Jenrette, you have to be at the top of that list.”

“Sir?” Jenrette started out of his chair.

Polano moved. So did Bren. And, on his feet, he held an atevi-made pistol aimed at Jenrette’s middle, where even a non-professional couldn’t miss. “Sit down.”

Jenrette subsided back into his chair and sat there like a statue. Bren kept standing, glad Polano was there and armed.

“So we’re at odds,” Jase said. “But I think we’ve been operating at cross-purposes, Mr. Jenrette. I have my own theory about what’s gone on to bring us to this situation. I think the Old Man was going back to take Alpha, at least that those were the orders the Guild gave him. So the Guild wasn’t totally surprised the ship was gone a while, was it? Our long absence only indicated to them that there’d had to be a change of administration at Alpha Station, possibly a messy change of administration.”

To take Alpha Station, their station, Bren thought, certainly hadn’t turned out to be a simple matter of sailing up and taking control. In the end, there’d been anything but Guild loyalty dominating the Captains’ Council.

And increasingly one suspected Ramirez had worked at counter-purposes with the Guild, start to finish, and hadn’t taken his orders from the Guild as any use to him.

“Was that what Tamun found out about, Mr. Jenrette?” Jase asked. “Guild orders?”

“Nonsense,” Jenrette said.

“Your old partners on Ramirez’s security team all died. Tamun shot them. People you’d shared duty with for twenty years. Does that mean anything to you? Not a shred of personal regret for your partners?”

“Tamun was a bastard,” Jenrette said, jaw clenched. “No regrets at all he’s dead. And he’s irrelevant to the case at hand.”

“Regrets for Ramirez?”

“Regrets for Ramirez,” Jenrette said somberly. “He was the Old Man.”

“But he wasn’t Guild, was he? He didn’t take the Guild’s orders. He didn’t take their orders when it came to poking about in other people’s solar systems. The Guild wanted resources. But he was constantly looking for an alternative, not so much for Reunion as for the Guild’s leadership. I rather think you went along with that for a number of years. But he was getting older and no stronger, and when the business blew up and Reunion got hit, then you were going to see to it he carried out Guild orders, if you had to shift the balance of power on the Council. You were going to stop him from his old-age ambition to settle this mess, because you thought he’d become a fool.”

“That’s not so.”

“You’d spied on him all his life. You’d told the Guild as much as kept the Guild happy. And when Ramirez began to look weak, you jumped over to the Guild’s side.”

“Ramirez was, longterm, looking for alternatives to the Guild,” Bren interjected. “Looking at every likely star in reach. And he finally found his answer at Alpha—a whole planetful of alternatives. And not all human. And that’s when he made a choice. And I think that’s when you did, Mr. Jenrette.”

“He was the Old Man,” Jenrette said. “I was with him.”

“And when he made an agreement with the atevi,” Jase said, “and kept it—did you try to save him from himself, too, Mr. Jenrette? When he was dying, were you the one who let the rumor out, about survivors at Reunion? You knew the truth. You’d known it from the time you went into Reunion.”

Hesitation. Hesitation, as if somewhere in the whole equation, there was still a fragment of real loyalty in the man, a desire to justify himself to himself.

“You double-crossed Ramirez when he was dying,” Jase said. “Damn you. And you double-crossed Sabin out there. You didn’t bring us her orders. You brought us theirs.”

“No.”

“The Guild’s orders, Mr. Jenrette. You’re working for the Guild, and you have been since your visit here. I’d like to have known what went on after the record ended. I’d like to know what they said, or did, to turn you so thoroughly to their side.”

“There never was a side,” Jenrette said. “I didn’t double-cross the Old Man, and I didn’t double-cross the Old Lady. I want her back safe. But safe isn’t going against the Guild, safe isn’t letting atevi run the ship or taking your orders from him , sir.”

Meaning the paidhi-aiji, quite clearly.

“A bloody great hole in the station is safe?” Jase retorted. “A mess with an alien ship out there is safe? You’d better stop and look around you, Mr. Jenrette. You want to say what you think? I’m a jumped-up theoretician? I’m too friendly with the atevi? I’m not really qualified and you’re going to save the ship by steering another batch of us into a Guild trap, when they set the captains against them, when they’ve kept their own population at risk instead of shipping the majority of them out of there? You have double-crossed Captain Sabin, Mr. Jenrette, in your mistaken conviction that a handful of deskbound fools have any clue how to assure human beings survive in this universe with our culture and our common sense. Rethink, mister. Rethink and tell me I don’t have the real picture. They’ve got a theory. We’ve been there and back again. We’ve dealt with aliens and we’re still human, last I looked in a mirror. Not human enough for you, maybe, but that’s the reality, and theirs dead-ends. It’s going to dead-end completely in not so very long, because we’re pulling the population out of here. So where have you ended up, Mr. Jenrette? Doing anything good? I don’t think so.”

Long silence. Jenrette shook. He outright trembled, in the shock of a real injury, but Bren didn’t find himself in the least sorry for the man who’d been a long-term traitor to three captains, his own comrades, and the ship’s whole crew.

“Well,” Jase said, “so what you wanted, Mr. Jenrette, isn’t happening. We’re undertaking the steps to let us board passengers. We’re shutting Reunion down. And if you want to find a way out of your situation, you’d better start trying. Mr. Cameron, do you have any questions for him?”

Bren had not the remotest idea what questions Jase wanted asked of the man, but Jase, sitting on his well-known temper, probably didn’t trust himself to find all the requisite threads at the moment. He didn’t have specifics, but he had keys, and if he could only open a door to information, he hoped Jase might find a wedge to keep it flowing.

“Mr. Jenrette,” Bren said quietly. “Mr. Jenrette, I’m relatively sure you’re quite adept at leaking information. Maybe you dropped just enough hints to provoke Tamun to turn on Ramirez; and Tamun killed your partners, which was why you swerved about and turned on Tamun. I’ve no doubt you were at Ramirez’s ear for years. I’m relatively sure if anything aboard this ship for the last twenty years has skewed off course, your fingers are somewhere in it. All these things I believe are the truth, but they’re all past. What is important is that we’re going to get the fuel we need, we’re going to get everyone off the station that we can persuade aboard, and then we’re going to have to blow up the station with everyone that’s left aboard—your Guild, foremost. Probably our senior captain and your latest colleagues in her bodyguard, but she knew the risk she ran, and I’m sure you did. After we blow it up, we’re going to take our alien guest over to his people, and take what agreement we can get and go back where we came from. That’s what we’re going to do, Mr. Jenrette. But you know what we came here to do. And I’m sure you’ve told the Guild. Why of all things did you think you could walk back in here and be believed, with me, and with Captain Graham? Or was that the job Guild leadership gave you? You’d lost your usefulness with Sabin: she was onto you. So they just made a last-ditch try and sent you here—because if you’ve hired a traitor, you don’t go on using him. You find someplace to send him where he’ll be taken care of. Unhappily, we’re the only other place there is. You’re supposed to do some sabotage. Use your skills on their side. Never mind what you contain. What you know. You’ll be a good follower, and die trying. Then Braddock won’t have to meet you again.”

Jenrette stared him, jaw set, full of anger, and said not a word.

“If you’d stuck with Sabin,” Bren said, “you’d have had her ear. But you’ve thrown away your influence. Sabin did have reservations, exactly as you do. The dowager respects the senior captain: atevi would have listened to her as a strong voice for her point of view. But you’ve silenced her. You’ve silenced all the voices of human dissent. Thanks to their own mismanagement, the Guild likely will fall; Ramirez is dead, and Sabin may not survive. Tamun, in his rebellion—he didn’t do what you wanted. He decided Ramirez was lying, when most of the lies were yours. Between you, you and Sabin and Tamun, I suspect you kept Ramirez from ever trusting us with the whole truth. How am I doing?”

“Go to hell.”

“Pretty well, I’ll imagine.”

“Listen to me,” Jenrette said. “Listen to me! All we have to do to get out of here is for him to answer Guild rules. Then we’re all away free, with no trouble.”

For Jase—to surrender Phoenix and come under Guild command.

“Meaning Sabin’s also refused the Guild’s orders,” Jase said. “Interesting.”

“It’s your choice.” Jenrette swung round toward Jase. “In a post you don’t remotely qualify for. You’re no captain of this ship. You have no right.”

Jase shook his head with amazing patience. “The stakes are too high, Mr. Jenrette. And trust me, your hand isn’t nearly high enough. Sabin tried to help you—maybe knowing all the while you’re a Guild agent. And look what she got for her trouble. It’s damned lonely being your friend, Mr. Jenrette.”

“Shut up.”

“You know, Braddock himself may have figured you’re always on your own agenda, and that’s not a wholly useful agent: Bren nailed that, didn’t he? You’re a total fool, but you always know better than your captains, than the Guildmaster, than everybody. Consequently you’re no use to anyone. So Braddock sent you here. Best use for you.”

“Taylor’s bastard,” Jenrette spat. “You don’t have the answers. You weren’t born with any answers. You aren’t God. Just existing doesn’t make you anybody , Graham. Not anybody!”

“Take your pick,” Jase said. “I’m sure, if your devotion to the Guild is that strong, Mr. Jenrette, we’ll let you go join Mr. Braddock. He may even remember your name, and he might even keep his promises to you—even if he hasn’t kept them with his own station population.”

“On the other hand,” Bren said, “if your convictions aren’t strong enough to die with the Guild—maybe you aren’t so convinced that’s the best course.”

Jenrette wouldn’t look at him. Not at either of them.

“Make your decision,” Jase said.

“What kind of deal?” Jenrette asked. Not, one noted: I see the light. I change my ways, but: What kind of deal? It was possibly a glimmer of truth.

“You want a pardon?” Jase said.

Jenrette looked at Jase—interested for about a quarter of a heartbeat; then very, very wary. That face he saw wasn’t genial Jase Graham, usually silent second to Sabin. It was Jase Graham who’d stood in the aiji’s court and held his own with the lords of the Association.

“I’m putting you outside,” Jase said quietly. “And there’s only one way you’ll get back aboard. And that’s if you bring the senior captain, alive and well, with every one of her escort.”

“I can’t do that,” Jenrette said.

“Because she’s dead?”

“No. I don’t think she’s dead. But look at this.” Jenrette demonstrated his wounded arm. “You’re sending me out there to get me killed.”

“Mr. Jenrette, I’m not sending a station shopkeeper to do this job. I’m sending a covert professional, who’s managed throughout his life to be secretive. You’ll find a chance to get to her. You’ll have a wider chance as the panic spreads and as the station loses its personnel—wider still, as Braddock’s trusted people get the notion their only hope is this ship. And let me make it very clear. I will let Mr. Braddock aboard. I will not let you aboard unless you satisfy my condition. If we don’t get Sabin, you’ll stay on this station. You’ll be on it, all alone, in the dark, when we blow the remnant of this station to cold space.” Jase had leaned on a chair back nearest Jenrette. Now he stood back. “Mr. Polano.”

“Sir.”

“Are your reinforcements outside?”

Polano cross-checked on his com-set. “Yes, sir, they are.”

“Then take him out of here. Get the arm treated. Then put him out into the mast where you found him.”

“Free, sir?”

“He doesn’t come back aboard unless he’s in Captain Sabin’s company.”

“Yes, sir,” Polano said with satisfaction. “Yes, sir .”

“Mr. Jenrette,” Jase said nicely, with a little wave of his hand. “Go with Mr. Polano and company. Goodbye and good luck.”

“Damn you,” Jenrette said, and got to his feet. And clearly thought about a move.

Polano showed him the door. And after a self-preserving second thought, Jenrette turned and walked to the door.

There were half a dozen men outside, ordinary crew, armed, and backing up Polano.

The door stayed open a second or two after Polano and Jenrette left, and shut.

“He may do one thing,” Bren said, “or the other. Fifty-fifty he reports to Braddock.”

“I put it sixty-forty against,” Jase said. “Jenrette’s not atevi. He’s a survivor. And I think he’s not found the chaos he hoped to find aboard. He doesn’t like what he’d have to tell Braddock. Eighty-twenty he’ll lie to Braddock. Question is, can he make Sabin believe him?”

“You’re lucky Sabin took him out of here. God knows what he’d have done.”

“I don’t think luck had anything to do with it. I think she knew what he was. I don’t think she knew how far he’d misinformed Tamun. But she didn’t trust me, with him aboard, to keep this ship out of Guild hands. I think she thought I’d let my guard down.”

“And if he comes back?”

“If he comes back with Sabin—he’ll have his chance to convince her he’s a hero.”

They were committed to the hilt.

And Bren shakily pocketed the gun.

“Our alien’s alive and well?” Jase re-asked him.

“In good condition. Tolerates our air, clearly hasn’t died of our food in six years—a lot of problems short-cut by those two items…”

“Shortcut by the plain fact the Old Man was poking around among planets with our life requirements,” Jase said. “So the Guild had an alien hostage. And they don’t, now. We do. We’ve got Jenrette. We’re short a robot, but the word is out. We’ve papered the mast with our fliers. They’ll have hell’s own time rounding those up.”

“We dispersed others on the far side of the station.”

“Any shooting?”

“We made a fair amount of racket—Jago tossed a few grenades, but nobody got killed, nobody hurt on our side. About the brochures—I confess I told certain people they were first-boarding tickets.”

Not much had struck Jase as funny in the last number of hours. The laugh was startled, quickly gone. “We urgently need to talk to this alien. Any possibility?”

“Six years in confinement… if he hasn’t learned at least yes, no , and go to hell I’ll be surprised.”

“But that’s not guaranteed by anything you’ve heard.”

“No. It’s not guaranteed. I’ve sent him to five-deck. Furniture that fits his size. Personnel with the physical strength to hold him. He’s large. He’s far too strong for human guards. He’s almost too strong for Banichi.”

“I trust you know what you’re doing.” Jase tapped a stylus on his desk. “We’ve made a fair stir here. Observers on that ship out there are going to start wondering. I don’t want to back this ship out and take them the hostage, for several reasons. I don’t want to panic the station. And I don’t want to get involved in negotiations with the aliens out there before we board our people. I want it a fait accompli. But if we take all that mass on, we’ve got to chase the fuel situation to a conclusion, next number one priority. We lost a robot. We did get some pictures. And we know where the guns are.”

Risky venture. But so was everything.

“If we could get a long-distance understanding with that ship out there,” Bren said, “if we knew we could gain time…”

“That would be very useful, if we knew that for certain,” Jase said. “I’d really like that—if you can figure how.”

“I’ll find a way,” he said to Jase. “I don’t know yet what our guest may know. Hold off on attempting the fuel for at least six hours. I’ll see if I can learn anything.”

“Six hours,” Jase said. “Six hours, if nothing else happens. Don’t bet too heavily it won’t. The stationers you met have seen atevi—not to mention Jenrette’s almost certainly told what he knows. So that secret’s out. Becker’s out and away, armed with more of your travel brochures. He and his men say they’re going to get their families and relatives packed and ready—or they could could to run straight to the Guild, if any one of them thinks what they’ve learned is that valuable to Braddock.”

“You can judge their intentions better than I can.”

“I don’t know,” Jase said. “Likely they themselves didn’t know what they were going to do when they left. In their line of work, they’re cautious. They don’t trust things. They’ll try to verify what’s been going on before they make any decision. And my bet is they’ll go immediately to their closest contacts. They’ll take a look at their wives and their kids. I think they’ll come back. The way I half way figure Jenrette is adding up the odds and thinking how to get Sabin back here in one piece.”

“One hopes so,” Bren murmured in Ragi, and reached in his pocket and handed Jase the builder’s key. “This was useful, nadi-ji.”

“So nothing’s changed.”

“One new door not on the system. That was all we found that failed to answer it.”

Jase pocketed the key himself. “Useful to know. I’ll advise Gin of that.”

“I’m going,” Bren said, switching languages without thinking. “I’ll call when I know something.”

Scary business. A change of clothing was in order, at very least, a change of clothing, a quick wash, a change of direction, a change of mind and mental state away from fight-flight and panic, and toward orderly problem-solving.

Among first things, the gun went back into storage. He was as glad to shed that as he had been to turn the key back to Jase’s keeping.

“One is grateful, Rani-ji. It was extremely useful.”

“Nandi.” Narani absorbed the compliment as graciously as Bindanda would accept praise for a fine dinner. The gun had not been fired—a condition that pleased them both.

“One wishes also,” Bren said, “Rani-ji, a change of clothing for our guest, somehow. One observes a very great girth.”

“One has already provided him an adequate bathrobe and estimated his measurements, nandi. One hopes this was proper.”

“Indeed. Thank you, Rani-ji. And food and drink?” Without knowing his preferences, one might think bland food close to its natural state might be a safe choice, but there were hazards in atevi cuisine, a fondness for alkaloids humans had found quite distressing. Even fruits were not without difficulties, for some individuals. “Bland fruit juice. Abi , I think, and cold water. Unleavened breads.”

“At once, nandi. We have only awaited your order.”

“Perhaps sweets as well.” Food must be one of those very basic things to species which didn’t live on moonbeams, sugars were fairly simple, as best he could recall, and a cool drink, a meal, and a change to comfortable clothing improved any disposition.

Narani accordingly went off to inform Bindanda, and he went for a shower that might relieve the stinging in his eyes—a discomfort worsened since he had rubbed them on the way down. Red-eyed, he was sure. Slightly smoky. But generally undamaged, except for seeing that clerk’s frightened face every time he shut his eyes… God, he was not cut out for Banichi’s and Jago’s line of work.

He scrubbed. Furiously. And began to shift mental gears, began to trust his surroundings and get the shivers out of his system.

He hoped their guest had taken their intervention in his situation as a rescue, not a dive from frying pan to fire. He had no idea what they were dealing with, beyond that—whether they were dealing with an ordinary soldier, a ship’s crewman, a belligerent warlord bent on conquest or perhaps some hapless scientist or maker of dictionaries who’d come in to learn what they were dealing with.

Who, among aliens, would logically comprise a team sent aboard an apparently war-wrecked station, their own handiwork? Someone like himself would be most logical… to human beings of a certain era of humanity. But that certainly wasn’t a given, here. For all they could know, it was a priest come to bless the event, a political activist who’d run aboard to stage a protest. Civilizations of advanced sort could be amazingly baroque.

And what would an individual of whatever original intent have been planning for six years of captivity in a glass cage?

In their guest’s position, Bren thought, he’d try to learn something, he’d try to escape with what he knew, and being unregenerate terrestrial primate—he’d try to stay alive to get revenge, if nothing else. What would Banichi or Jago do? Attempt to return to their aiji, to their association, working mayhem only on what frustrated that aim, bearing personal resentment not at all, except as someone got in their way. Humans had jails. Atevi had the Assassins’ Guild. Neither side could understand the others’ problem-solving.

And what was their guest thinking now? What frustrated instincts were they dealing with?

He got out of the shower and Jeladi helped him into his dressing-robe. His clothing was laid out on the bed, dignified, but not fussy. He approved Jeladi’s choice: he had yet to report to the dowager, among other pressing matters. His good blue coat was an excellent choice, a soothing color.

Jago came in while he was dressing, Jago with not a hair out of place—nor ever had had, that he had detected, not even while wrestling with their rescuee in the pod. She had changed uniforms for one that didn’t reek of fumes.

“No scratches or scrapes, one hopes, Jago-ji. How is our guest?”

“Well enough,” she said. “One should add, however, Bren-ji, this person has formidable teeth. He did attempt to use them, so Banichi advises us.”

“He was bitten?”

“Not successfully,” Jago said.

“Well, one is certainly warned,” Bren said, tugging at a cuff, arranging the lace—in his experience, high civilization discouraged biting. Which might only say how stressed and desperate their guest had become. “One hopes an intelligent species has no natural venom, and that his native bacteria are not something either atevi nor humans may easily share.” He had spent the voyage reading biological speculations, among other things, which now only made him nervous. “The difficulty with the air, nadi-ji. Have we resolved that to his comfort?”

“As best one can,” Jago said. “He seems to tolerate shipboard conditions well enough, and evidences no current discomfort. We have shown him the thermostat, the shower, the accommodation. Narani has provided his own cabin—he has hesitated to provide blankets, for security reasons, but our guest has not adjusted the temperature. He has exchanged the station garments for one of Bindanda’s robes, which was of sufficient size, and seems better pleased with that.”

Temperature preference satisfied. Gift accepted. He absorbed the information, comforted, after all that had gone on, simply to hear the lilt of Jago’s voice. Humanly glad, perhaps, in ways that didn’t address man’chi and the sensible feelings that mattered to any ateva—though he doggedly thought his bodyguard was more than pleased to have gotten him back again: that somewhere in their impulse toward man’chi, they must be equally warm and happy inside. He could scarcely think about the dire outcomes possible in their raid into Guild territory, but now that they were all safely through and back again, he began to have flashbacks of smoke and fire.

And belated panic.

“Gin-aiji is safe in her office,” Jago said smoothly. “But, as the paidhi-aiji may be aware, with less success. A robot is lost. We have, however established the location of guns guarding the fuel port.”

“And now we have Jenrette as well. And will release him. You followed that.”

“Yes,” Jago said. “Jase-aiji has him in the medical facility now; and will not trust him. Wise.”

His staff knew exactly what transpired on two-deck. He was occasionally astonished.

“I think his plan might even work,” he agreed. “If Sabin-aiji isn’t in Guild hands—or even if she is—Jenrette might act to save himself.”

“ Sigaiji ,” Jago said—an untranslatable word. An aiji no one would follow—born with the emotional makeup to lead, but not able to persuade followers to join him. Rogue leader was tolerably descriptive.

“I think he is,” Bren said. “I think in his case, that’s very apt.”

“Does he think Sabin is higher than he?”

In atevi minds, a very telling question. They had asked a man who might think his own beliefs the highest law—to rescue someone who claimed authority over him. In that thought, he was even less hopeful of Jenrette than he had been.

“One believes he can accept it, nadi,” he said to Jago, ”unless he knows he has gone much too far to regain her trust. Then he has to consider whether he believes he can die, and what that life may be worth to him.”

“One would not like to be Jenrette.”

“One would not, Jago-ji.”

“Even if he performs,” Jago said, “he is what he is. Not a person to rely on.”

“One agrees,” he said, and knew that that item was decisive in Jago’s mental files… decisive and a switch completely ticked over to foreigner . Not of our association.

“So Braddock-aiji has moved against Sabin, we have moved against Braddock; Braddock sends this person before he knew we were taking one of his assets away. Gin-aiji has lost a robot, but she urges another attempt, as soon as she can analyze what they saw. There are pictures.”

“Very good news.”

“One assumes that Braddock-aiji is taking other measures.”

“One hardly knows how to predict the Guild,” he said. “Their security has lost it one of its two prime assets. They would reassess, if they were wise. But if they follow true to form, certain subordinates will exert their energies to mislead the Guildmaster about their deficiencies.”

“One has known lords of the Association to do the same,” Jago said dryly.

“One has known lords of the Association to be completely paralyzed in such debates.” Recalling the Transportation Committee, of, God! such tame, quiet days. “One wishes they would remain paralyzed, but one fears Braddock-aiji will not act like the Presidenta of Mospheira—more like one of the ship-aijiin, without consultation. If he lets passengers board us, he will attempt to infiltrate his agents among them. I expect that, next. But the ship has foreseen unruly passengers, and installed precautions. So that becomes a smaller worry.” Crew had spent their voyage reorganizing systems and isolating those decks: granted anything less than a nuclear device, what happened on those decks should be limited to those decks. Switches governing air circulation, light, and temperature were all governed from the ship’s bridge. “One hardly knows, Jago-ji, what Braddock-aiji will do. Or what that ship out there will do.” He adjusted his cuffs. He had one of the most essential jobs of his life before him. “One assumes the dowager expects a report before I get to work.”

“She says: Visit when you have ascertained the nature and quality of this foreigner. Her own bodyguard has reported to her.”

Common sense and her own channels. Thank God. The dowager was a veteran of fast maneuvering and practical necessity.

“Shall we go with you to deal with this foreigner, Bren-ji? We both strongly urge it.”

“I entertain no other thought, Jago-ji,” he murmured. His initial session with their guest might be lengthy and tedious, and he wished his staff might snatch a little rest; but they were, themselves, skilled observers, and they had the strength and size and foreignness to keep their guest focused on communication, not thinking he could overwhelm a small individual of the same species that had kept him caged for six years.

So, yes, he decided his staff’s help might be a good thing.

Banichi joined them on their way down the corridor, Banichi and Jago neither one having yet found time to change to less businesslike kit, except to put away the heavier weapons and the heavy jackets. They had likely gone straight to a debriefing with Cenedi, which might already have involved the dowager—he rather bet that it had.

“One can observe our guest by way of the security station,” Banichi informed him, “should you wish to do that unnoticed, Bren-ji.”

“Excellent,” he said. Surprised that his staff had arranged surveillance? Not in the least. Narani’s cabin, so graciously tendered, had given their guest adequately sized furniture, an atevi-scale bed—and by fairly fast and discreet work, had given them direct surveillance on a monitor in the security station, where Asicho kept faithful watch.

“He has paced out the room, nandi,” Asicho reported when they stopped there to observe. “He has investigated the switches, tested the mattress, the chair and the cabinets, which are emptied, nothing damaged. He has bathed and dressed in one of Bindanda’s robes and nightshirts.” Tape accompanied this report, a quick skip through key actions, and a sequence of their guest in the bath, gray-skinned, with heavy folds that might indicate, unlikely as it seemed, given such a bulk, emaciation. Embarrassing, perhaps, to observe an individual in such a state, but necessary for their collective well-being.

“One fears they didn’t feed him near enough, nadiin-ji,” Bren murmured. “Or perhaps the station food disagrees with his stomach. We shall endeavor to better that. Advise Bindanda.”

“Yes,” Asicho said smartly, and did that.

In subsequent scenes their robe-clad guest drank multiple cups of water, five cups, as Asicho commented, before testing the bed gingerly and lying down.

Evolved in conditions of more water, rather than less. More vegetation rather than minimal, one might then guess. High water need. Heavy skin, the evolutionary value of which eluded his meager study. He wished he’d borne down just a little more on the theoretical end of his biology classes, back in his monofocussed youth. If a fact hadn’t applied to atevi, in his youthful arrogance, he hadn’t been interested. Now he was extremely sorry.

“Narani-nadi has discreetly estimated his size for better tailoring, nandi,” Asicho said sotto voce. “Bindanda is attempting to construct suitable clothing as quickly as possible.”

“A very good idea,” Bren said, with a mental image of their guest in atevi court attire. But who knew? Being dressed like his hosts would surely be a psychological improvement over the prison garb, an evidence of better fortunes.

“He seems in many points like us, nandi.”

“That he does,” Bren said. Four limbs, a similar musculature to move them, an upright stance and the spinal curve and gait that kept a bipedal creature from falling over. A not exclusively vegetarian dentition, Banichi informed him: meat was likely, then, on his menu.

And jaw curvature and fine control of tongue and throat for articulate speech? In that broad face, yes, likely so. In that large head and that ship waiting out there for six years, definitely a brain and a sense of purpose, however he communicated.

Eyes, two. Nose, useful to any species, short, broad, positioned above, not below, the mouth, a sensible design, in a human’s estimation.

A bullet head that sat down onto huge shoulders. Broad grasping hands, flat, broad feet that certainly weren’t going to fit into any boots they owned—nature of the toes wasn’t clear.

Huge rib cage. One assumed it protected the breathing apparatus and that digestion fit rather lower into the frame, the finish of that process as far from the intake as anatomy could manage, simply to give chemistry as much time to work as feasible… again, a reasonable arrangement, as seemed.

Sex indeterminate in folds of skin, if the location of the distinction was involved neither with respiration nor digestion, and the young, connected with that process, had to get out of the body somehow: again, design seemed to follow gravity. He as a pronoun was a convenience, not a firm conviction.

And while gravity and the need for locomotion, perception, and manipulation of the environment (wasn’t that what his professors had said?) might make biological entities look rather more alike than not—gravity had nothing in particular to do with the mind, the language, or the attitudes of a long cultural history, which could be damnably soft, mutable, and difficult to predict.

His professors would be highly useful right now. He wished he had the whole resources of the University on Mospheira, and their labs and their committees, to back him up.

He wished they were safely back in orbit around their own planet and he could take years doing this.

But they weren’t, and he couldn’t. He gathered himself up with a deep breath. “Do not hesitate to notify us, Asi-ji,” he said to Asicho, “if there should be any word from Jase or the dowager on any account.”

“One will be closely attentive, nandi,” Asicho assured him softly.

He left, Banichi and Jago close on his heels…

And outside, he discovered Cenedi. So the dowager was interested, and not entirely patient.

And with Cenedi and his two men came a very unofficial presence, Cajeiri, tagging the dowager’s men at a safe distance, looking as inconspicuous as possible. And—one should note, who hoped for quiet and sanity—Cajeiri stood eavesdropping, toy car in hand.

“The dowager inquires,” Cenedi said.

“I am proceeding immediately,” Bren said.

Cajeiri noted that look. “Might one just see this foreigner, nand’ Bren?”

Cenedi bent a stern look aside and down.

But, it flashed across Bren’s mind—in the naivete of that question: in the extreme pressure of time, to convince another species that one was not a warlike, ravening enemy—dared one think?

Dared one remotely think a child might be useful?

“Perhaps the dowager might permit him, Cenedi-nadi. What if we were to work on this foreigner what we worked upon Becker-nadi? What if this foreigner were to see we have young children and elder statesmen aboard?”

His own staff looked at him, appalled. Cenedi looked decidedly uneasy. “Hurrah!” Cajeiri cried.

Yet was it not the case, the paidhi asked himself? The fragile, troublesome side of every intelligent species must be its young—young in an intelligent species requiring a prolonged learning phase. Young who were apt to do any damned thing. Young who routinely made naturally forgivable mistakes.

How best, without words, to demonstrate one’s pacific intent, than to show one’s softer side? The dowager had rarely come under that description. But she could manage a grand graciousness. The ship’s crew venerated her.

“Perhaps, Cenedi-nadi, we shall invite our guest to the dining hall for refreshments—tired though our guest may be, he would surely like to know his situation, and perhaps we can demonstrate our hospitality. Perhaps the young aiji might indeed come and bring his toy. Though it is a very adult business, and the young aiji must bear extreme tedium with extraordinary patience. Perhaps the dowager herself would come and observe.”

Cenedi looked worried. “One will certainly relay this invitation, nandi.”

An invitation unwritten, testing the limits of atevi courtesy: but Cenedi clearly had no doubt the dowager would be amenable, and laying her own schemes on her next breath.

“Shall we speak to this foreigner, nadiin-ji?” Cajeiri asked.

“Perhaps,” Bren said, “we may convince him even our youngest are civilized and polite.”

“A subterfuge,” Cajeiri said with restrained excitement. “A subterfuge, Cenedi-nadi?”

“His new word,” Cenedi said, and to the offspring: “If mani agrees, you may be present and you may speak, young lord, but judiciously , and one does not believe the paidhi-aiji intends civility as a hollow subterfuge.”

“Yes, Cenedi-nadi!”

“We shall ask your great-grandmother,” Cenedi said—indeed, ask the dowager, who thought a headlong ride down a rocky mountain was sport, at her age. Cajeiri worshipfully tagged Cenedi down the corridor toward the dowager’s door.

Bren looked at Banichi and Jago, knowing— knowing that he was about to test the limits of reasonable risk and his staff’s resources. He would assuredly have his own fragile neck at risk, and if he showed a potential enemy their softer side, he also showed that enemy a softer target—not even figuring it might go all wrong and he might offend or disgust the individual they had to reach. There were no certainties. The fact was, there were no facts to work on: they had the what, but not a shred of the why.

“Safeguard the dowager and the heir at utmost priority. I insist, nadiin-ji. They would be the soft target, if I make any mistake. You will give me an opportunity to retreat. And I assure you, I promise you, I promise you twice and three times—I shall run.”

“One agrees,” Banichi said—viscerally as hard for his own bodyguard, that promise to abandon him, as a leap off a cliff. All instincts warred against leaving him. But they were not slaves to those instincts. They understood him. “Yes,” Jago said flatly.

“Nadi-ji.” A little bow. He trusted word was already passing, from them to Asicho, from Asicho to both staffs. Information flowed, swirled about them, a constant bath of attention and preparation.

And he walked calmly toward that other door, bent on testing the waters before he committed their more fragile elements. He rang for admission, as if their guest had any control over his own door, before Banichi reached out to the button and unceremoniously opened it.

Their guest, dressed in Bindanda’s blue bathrobe, met them on his feet, apprehensive, to judge by the rapid pace of the nostril slits. The room smelled of hot pavement.

“Good afternoon,” Bren said in Mosphei’, showing empty hands and making a small bow—aversion of the gaze was a fairly reasonable, though not universal, indication of quiet intent. He laid a hand on his own chest, avoiding a rude stare in this formal meeting, experimenting shyly with eye contact. A glance seemed accepted, maybe expected, though met with a stony stare in a face that held little emotion.

“Bren. Bren is my name.” A flourish of a lace-cuffed hand toward his staff. “Banichi. Jago.” An expectant, hopeful flourish toward their guest.

Who simply turned his back.

Well. There was a communicative gesture.

“Be respectful,” Banichi said in a low voice, in Ragi; but Bren made a quiet, forbidding gesture.

“Have patience, nadiin-ji. His treatment by humans was hardly courteous. It’s a very small defiance. Perhaps even a respectful dispute, in his own terms. Let me see.” He walked over to the corner of the room, gaining at least a view of their guest’s profile, a precarious proximity, though he had Banichi and Jago looming at his left.

“We would like to take you to your ship,” he said quietly, soothingly, to that averted shoulder. “We wish to take the occupants of the station onto this ship and leave this station. We are here to help, not hurt.”

It was a lengthy speech, in Ragi, certainly pure babble to alien ears. But it won a direct gaze, sidelong and, dared one think, perhaps reckoning that that was not the language, and therefore not the culture, he had met before.

“We hope you will be comfortable aboard until we can arrange your return to your ship,” Bren said in a low, talking-to-children tone, still in Ragi. “Narani, the senior director of my staff, has disarranged himself to provide you this comfort, giving you his own bed. Do treat his cabin with respect. He’s a very fine gentleman, and offers you the use of objects which he greatly values.”

A profile, now. A mouth like a vise, a brow that lowered over large eyes to shadow them—not actually an unpleasant face, once one tried earnestly to see the symmetry of it. But Jago had warned him there were very good teeth, and he could see for himself the huge hands, a grasp which had challenged even Banichi’s strength.

“We talked to your ship,” Bren said, this time in ship-speak. He kept the vocabulary small and repetitive and the syntax very basic. “They showed us pictures, how station took you. Your ship says bring you back. We say yes. We leave this station. We take all the people out of this station and go. We want peace with you and this ship.”

Now the full face, as their guest turned to face him—a scowl, was it, or a friendly face in sullen repose? And did turning toward him and meeting his eyes express courteous attention, or defiant insult?

Massive hand went to massive chest. “Prakuyo.”

“Prakuyo.—Bren.” He made a bow: one didn’t hold out an intrusive hand, not with atevi, at first meeting, and not to any foreigner, in his opinion, without knowing the other party’s concept of body space and invasion. On the contrary, he kept his hands to himself and dropped his eyes for a moment, primate respect, before looking up. “Do you understand, Prakuyo? We take you to your ship.”

The jaw remained clenched.

But the eyes darted aside in alarm as a disturbance reached the open door.

A very junior disturbance, as might be, who brought up short and wide-eyed, and who for a moment distracted him, distracted their guest— not , however, Banichi, as Jago alone gave a measured look at the doorway.

One hardly needed guess Cajeiri had escaped the dowager’s party.

“This is the foreigner,” Cajeiri surmised.

“Young lord,” Bren said, now that his pulse rate had slowed, “kindly go back to Cenedi. Immediately.”

“He’s as large as we are,” Cajeiri said, marveling. The heir, highly overstimulated by the situation and long bored, was being a seven-year-old brat.

“Go,” Jago said, just that, and the boy ducked back out of sight.

“Pardon. He’s a child,” Bren said calmly, as their guest continued to gaze at the vacant doorway—as if, next, fairies and unicorns could manifest. Interesting, Bren thought. Even encouraging. “This room is in our ship. We live here. This is not a prison.”

Prakuyo, if that was his name, turned a burning look his way.

“Do you understand?” Bren asked him. “Six years on the station—I think you might have learned good morning, hello, goodbye .”

“Damn dumb shit,” Prakuyo muttered, in a voice that sounded like rocks hitting together.

Had he just heard that? Damn dumb shit .

Yes, he had heard that. So much for good morning, good afternoon and other station attempts to establish communication.

“ Thank you,” Bren said all the same, and made a bow. “Go home . Does that make sense?”

“Madison.” It wasn’t a particularly happy tone.

“Do you want Madison?” Bren asked. That was the person who’d been in charge in that prison. He laid a hand on his own chest. “Bren, not Madison. I don’t know Madison. I make the law here. Do you want Madison?”

“Madison.” Prakuyo hit fist into palm, not a good indicator for Madison.

“Bren,” he said, laying a hand on his chest. “Thank you.” Another bow. And the paidhi-aiji, in a sense of timing that had served well enough among atevi, made a wide decision—that even a small advance in communication had to be rewarded, that body language and cooperation indicated they dared run the risk of a boy not being where he was supposed to turn up. He recklessly indicated the door and trusted his staff together could flatten their guest, if they had to. “Come, Prakuyo. Walk with me. Outside.”

That upset their guest’s sense of the universe. Nostrils worked hard. Need for more oxygen was a basic biological preface to high action, one could take that for a fair guess, but it could also accompany decision. Bren walked easily, cheerfully, to the door, bowed his courtly best and made a clear gesture of invitation outward—spying, in the process, a clear corridor.

Their guest advanced to the door. And ventured out. Bren showed him the way down the corridor, walking with him, Banichi and Jago a little behind.

“We live in these rooms,” Bren said, gesturing left and right, prattling on mostly to keep the tone easy as they walked. “My companions are atevi. I’m human. Not station-human. I live on this ship. What are you, Prakuyo?”

He got no answer to that attempt, not the dimmest hint of understanding. Prakuyo lumbered slowly forward, with heavy swings of his head and shifts of dark, large eyes, taking in every detail of a corridor Narani had done his best to render kabiu and harmonious. Certainly it had to be better to alien eyes than the sterile prison section: a little table, a few hangings… one hanging, to be sure, harmonizing the troublesome dent.

“Come in,” Bren said, showing their guest through the door into their dining hall.

Again, not ship-bland. Atevi-scale chairs sat around a large table. A tapestry runner relieved the sterile modernity of the arrangement. Wall hangings provided a sense of space and harmony. A graceful vase sat in the center of the table—a moveable object, Bren noted. It held lush greenery, from Sandra Johnson’s now wide-spread cuttings.

Prakuyo stood stock still.

Bren laid claim to Banichi’s ordinary chair on the doorward side—his security had hammered home such points with him; Banichi and Jago stood, not inclined to sit down, but their looming over the table intimated a threat that scarcely helped.

“Do sit, nadiin-ji,” Bren said quietly. Their guest picked a central chair on the opposite side and sat down… whether that was his preferred posture or not: the chairs here were at least of a scale that would bear his weight.

Prakuyo was cooperating, at least… cooperating, possibly, to learn what he could before making a break for the vase as a weapon. But they couldn’t act as if they expected that. Prakuyo’s momentary attention was for the vase—or the greenery, that anomaly in this steel world. His eyes showed numerous frown lines, a clue, at least, that the general lighting might be too bright.

“Jago-ji, dim the light a little.”

Jago rose and did that, and Prakuyo looked up, the frown lines relaxing.

The lights might be too bright, the air pressure was probably a little lower than their guest truly liked, but the cooler temperatures seemed not to bother him. He’d had all the water he wanted, on the whole, surely that brought an improvement in his mood.

“The station was not good to you,” Bren said, deliberately rattling on, to see if the vocabulary provoked a reaction—or whether their guest’s comprehension went beyond single words, to syntax. “Station did bad. Were you angry with them?”

Silence.

“Or were you angry at the ship?” Bren asked. “Did the ship go somewhere they shouldn’t have gone? Did they do something that offended you? Something that scared you?”

Silence still.

“Can I ask him what his name is?” Cajeiri turned up at the door. Another skip of the heart.

“One believes you have just done so, young sir. And his name seems to be Prakuyo. But if he doesn’t understand my language, I very much doubt he understands yours. Have you brought your car?”

Cajeiri brought it from behind him. Their guest looked alarmed.

“Run it end to end of the table,” Bren said.

“Shall I use the remote, nandi?”

Bright lad.

“You can. Just run it very slowly down the table.”

Down the sacred dining table. That was a daring enterprise. Cajeiri took the remote from his pocket, which Prakuyo watched apprehensively, and operated his car very slowly, quite circumspectly.

Bren paid all considerate attention to the toy, which made its way at a jerky pace past the antique vase of greenery and into his hands.

“Now call it back.”

Cajeiri did that. Grind and whir. Wobble and correct. The car did far better with grand movements, and one so hoped the young fingers would keep the rate steady and not zip it into their guest’s lap. By now Cenedi’s men were in the doorway, watching this performance.

Their guest, Bren marked in his peripheral vision, had looked ready to bolt at the first manifestation of the car, and at the remote control, and now just stared as the toy zigged and zagged and trundled safely back down the table.

“And back again,” Bren said. While the fate of worlds trembled in the balance, while armed security outnumbered the civilians. And while a traumatized foreigner watched a child’s toy wobble down a table top.

“Does he want to try it?” Cajeiri wanted to know.

“One hopes not to offend our guest’s dignity,” Bren said. “But our guest should know we do other things less terrible than shoot at those who don’t look like us, should he not?” He smiled. Deliberately. “Are we having fun, young lord?”

“Shall I make it go fast now?”

“Slowly,” Banichi said in his low tones. “Slowly.”

Surely if Cajeiri were demonstrating the car for another boy, fast would have been very impressive. But Cajeiri, despite one accidental spurt, dutifully concentrated on keeping the movement slow. And at that moment Bindanda excused his way past Cenedi’s two men, bearing a tray with a sizeable pitcher of ice water, and fine crystal cups, and a pile of white sugar cakes that smelled of fresh icing and recent baking.

“Excellent,” Bren said. Whirr went the car, rapidly back to Cajeiri. But the car was forgotten. Their guest’s attention was on those cakes.

“Danda-ji. Thank you.”

Their guest duly accepted a crystal cup of water, formally served, sipped it with restraint, accepted an atevi-sized tea cake, eyes sparkling with animation and excitement.

Dared one think that tea cakes had not regularly been on the station’s menu, for their prisoner? That for most of ten years, the fare had been ship-fare, bland yeasts and synth?

Cajeiri wanted his tea cake, too, but waited, hushed, toy car tucked out of the way, waiting his turn as Bindanda served all round, served Banichi and Jago as well, and deftly replenished Prakuyo’s cup with ice water.

“A welcome to our guest,” Bren said then, lifting his cup in salute. “ Welcome , Prakuyo-nadi.”

“Welcome,” Cajeiri said in great enthusiasm, and likewise lifted his cup.

Could such an immensely strong hand tremble? It did, and spilled water over the rim of the cup. Prakuyo drained another icewater, crunched the ice in, yes, very healthy grinding teeth behind those incisors—definitely an omnivore—and followed it with the cake. Bindanda poured yet another water, and with a re-offer of the plate, indicated Prakuyo should take more tea cakes, until he had fortunate three—in such arcane ways culture manifested itself.

Then their guest looked doubtfully at Bren, perhaps realizing he had just forgotten that cardinal precaution appropriate in prisoners—that he had just ingested doubtful cakes and suspicious ice water.

Greenery. Cakes with natural sweetness. Greatly appreciated: Prakuyo, or at least his culture, was not that long divorced from blue sky.

“It’s safe,” Bren said, lifted his cup and drank, and took a bite of cake. “ Tea cake . Safe. Eat.”

Prakuyo ate another, no question. The cakes disappeared, each almost at a bite.

“More tea cake?” Bren asked. “Danda-ji, perhaps an assortment of breads and cheese as well. A small offering of meat. One can’t know his customs. Provide a picture of the game offering, so he may know what it is.”

“Nandi.” Bindanda bowed and took the service and tray away for a refill.

Prakuyo’s gaze traveled after him, dared one say, with longing and deep thought centered on those tea cakes—perhaps telling himself that these tall black ones were very different from little varigated humans, offering much better cuisine.

“He’ll bring more food,” Bren said. Certain needs were, if not wholly satisfied with mother’s cooking and a sight of home, at least assuaged. Their guest’s facade of glum indifference had given way. That was a success. They had a few words, reinforced with food—dared they say their guest knew a Ragi word now, for tea cake? The situation with Gin and the fuel remained unresolved. God only knew what the Guildmaster and Jase were were doing with each other. But the paidhi’s universe shrank necessarily to this deck, this room, this table, and he carefully, slowly, drew out of his inner coat pocket a few folded sheets of precious paper, and out of his outer right pocket a writing kit.

In fair sketch, on a blank sheet of paper, he drew a burning sun, a planet, a station, a ship tied to the station with an umbilical, just exactly their situation.

“The world and the sun,” Cajeiri said helpfully in Ragi, leaning, elbows on table, past Jago. Then: “Is it our ship, or his ship?”

“Shall we see?” In Ragi. Then in ship-speak. “Ship,” Bren said. “Sun. Planet. Ship. Station. Here.” He tapped the table, waved a hand about the room. “Ship.”

“Ship,” Prakuyo said suddenly, explosive on the p , which alone distinguished that word from his other notable ship-speak phrase. “Bren ship.”

“Human and atevi ship. Human station.” Bren drew another ship, far distant, off to the edge of the paper. “Prakuyo ship.”

Prakuyo paid burning, deep attention to that.

“Shall you not ask him where he lives, nandi?”

Surely when the legendary paidhiin of the past had done their work, they’d done it without an inquisitive boy at hand.

But the toy, at least, was useful. “Car,” he said, in ship-speak, and indicated the car in Cajeiri’s possession. “Kindly make it run again, young lord, slowly.” Cajeiri ran it. “The car goes.” All the way to the end of the table. “The car turns. The car comes back.”

Not a helpful word out of their subject, but Prakuyo watched intently.

“Station.” This was the vase. And the drawing. “Ship.” This was the car. One hoped the capacity for abstraction existed in Prakuyo’s kind. One rather expected that basic gift in spacefarers. “Send the car to the end of the table, young lord. Just so.” In ship-speak: “The ship goes.” In Ragi: “Now to the vase, young lord, if you please.” In ship-speak. “Bren’s ship goes to the station.”

“Bren’s ship goes,” Prakuyo said obligingly, fighting a valiant battle with the consonants. “To the station.”

Bren drew hasty tall stick figures on the paper. Numerous. With a loop that made a station. “Human. Human go human ship.” Never mind grammar. Finesse came later. He had Prakuyo’s attention. “Prakuyo go Prakuyo’s ship.”

Long concentration. Tension, Bren much feared. Worlds hung in the balance.

The car whirred. Jerked forward on the table. Cajeiri grabbed it. Hugged it close, wide-eyed. Banichi’s attention and Jago’s was immaculately for Prakuyo.

“One is very sorry, nandi.” This from Cajeiri, with the offending car hugged tight.

And just about that moment there was quiet noise outside—Bindanda, Bren thought at first, and their second snack. But the approaching tap of a cane foretold a more notable intrusion. He rose, and Banichi and Jago did, Cajeiri, too, and bowed, as, sure enough, Ilisidi arrived, with Cenedi. The dowager bent a forbidding look at her great-grandson, then a benign and gracious one toward their guest, who slowly got to his feet and gave a little bow himself.

“Well, well,” Ilisidi said, clearly pleased, leaning on her cane, surveying the room. “Present this person, nandi.”

“This is Prakuyo, nand’ dowager. One fears communication is at a minimum.”

“Nonsense.” Ilisidi said cheerfully, and moved to take the seat at the head of the table, Cenedi assisting her with the chair. “He has a sense of courtesy; we shall manage. Sit. Sit, Cenedi. Make us a fortunate number. My great-grandson with his foolish toy will have us a war before we achieve understanding. Say to this individual that we consider war is foolish. That we offer alternatives. Let us get to the point, nand’ paidhi. Let us get this individual to his ship and get your troublesome relations to fuel us and get themselves aboard, shall we not?”

“Nandi.” Bren gave a little bow, then sank into his chair as others did, feeling overwhelmed.

And yet—weren’t they well on their way? Wasn’t it, after all, the ability to wish one another well—civilized and peaceful?

“One very much regrets the car, mani-ma.” This from a great-grandson whose whole universe still revolved around his own mistakes, his own necessities.

“We are quite sure,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand.

And in the next moment Bindanda hastened through the door with tea cakes and offerings of bread, seasoned curd and meat. With an illustration of the fish involved… wise choice. In no wise an intelligent-looking fish.

Narani too arrived, hard on Bindanda’s heels, with a tea service, tea, and a pitcher of bland fruit juice.

A meal had arrived.

“Serve, nadiin,” Ilisidi said, and they served with ceremony, settling a respectful hush upon the room, a proper appreciation of the chef’s efforts and the sacrifice of edible creatures and plants. Plates were laid out. Tea cups were filled. Each item was doled out with grace and intent. The illustration was presented to Prakuyo, demonstrating the meat dish.

Prakuyo observed, and by no means refused the fish. He attempted the eating-sticks, but his large, blunt digits—he had three, and a medial opposing one, like a thumb, but not quite—made it very clumsy.

“Prakuyo,” Bren said, requesting attention. He made a sandwich of bread and curd and meat. And offered it across the table on a saucer.

Prakuyo took the offering cautiously, carefully. And set it down next his own plate. And then a very curious vibration hit the air, deep enough to make the table quiver. Prakuyo simply sat there with head bowed, and it was clear this vibration came from his chest.

Then he got up from the table—security watched, poised, at this breach of custom; but Prakuyo turned his back and continued this strange humming that made tea dance in the cups.

“Is that the ship or is it him?” Cajeiri asked, alarmed. “Is he unhappy?”

One remembered this creature had been confined for most of a decade, and that it might not be sane. Or might be ill, for all they knew. One desperately hoped they hadn’t poisoned him.

At length Prakuyo turned to face the table. The dowager had graciously paused, having done away with a sandwich of her own. But now Prakuyo joined his hands together and carried them to his middle.

“Prakuyo An Tep,” Prakuyo said in a voice deep and still quivering with that strange sound, and laid a hand on his chest. “What want?”

Well, Bren thought, heart beating fast. Prakuyo hadn’t wasted six years of his sojourn among humans. Damn dumb shit wasn’t quite the limit of his understanding.

Bren rose, quietly, and with a gesture, invited Prakuyo back to his chair. “Sit. Eat. Good. We take Prakuyo to Prakuyo’s ship.”

Face contracted in some emotion, Prakuyo made a gesture to him, to the rest of the company. “We?”

“We.” Bren was, at first blink, puzzled, then saw, indeed, they did comprise a different sort of we , for someone whose universe had been, for six years, a very limited set of humans. Admittedly, they formed an odd sort of we under any less exotic circumstances… short and tall, strong and weak, young and old, different colors, different manners, different languages—all at one table and constantly changing back and forth between Ragi and ship-speak.

Was there not a step for beings, beyond just—civilized—or rationally adult?

“Not station we ,” Prakuyo said.

“No. Not station we . Ship we .” Bren made his oddly assorted group inclusive with a gesture, and Prakuyo all but trembled. The sound vibration shook cups on the table.

“We wish to go home,” Ilisidi said. “He wishes the same. Is this not the heart of matters?”

“One agrees, aiji-ma.” Of all civilized ideas at least among atevi and humans, a very potent one. Home.

“ We once regarded a foreign star in our skies with intense suspicion. Our associations were confused. Our order was overthrown. From such troubled waters rose the aishi’ditat . Was it to the good? No matter asking. It is. What is must be accounted, and only when it is accounted, what is kabiu will suggest itself.”

Play it by ear. Adapt. Abandon the plan. Look for the new pattern in events as they fell. It was not the human view of crisis management. But it was profoundly atevi, profoundly valid. Had not such thinking even become Mospheiran, over the centuries? Had not the paidhiin worked and fought within the university and the government to get that flexibility with their neighbors installed in place of a more rigid, history-conscious policy?

“Ilisidi, who is very wise, Prakuyo, reminds me that atevi once saw a new star appear in atevi space. Humans came down to the atevi. She says it’s not good, not bad. It is. We simply live together. Humans have a station. Atevi live on the station. We sit at one table. Prakuyo can sit at this table.”

Did Prakuyo pick out even a dozen significant words—and put them together in any sane way?

Intense humming. Prakuyo sought his chair back and leaned on it as if he were reaching his physical or emotional limits.

“These are very excellent cakes,” Ilisidi said, waving a hand at the nearest plate. And in Mosphei: “Sit with us, Prakuyo An Tep.”

Bren had to take a breath of his own. A full sentence, in Mosphei’.

Prakuyo said something deep and sonorous, a modulation of quivering sound. And abruptly he sat down again at table.

“I have books full of pictures,” Cajeiri piped up. “ I can show him words. Will he like to see those, nandiin?”

Clever boy. Precocious boy. Not even a bad idea—if those picture books told a little less about the atevi homeworld. But the very flavors that won Prakuyo’s interest admitted a planet. Stations anchored to planets. People occupying stations came from planets, and that ship out there would have tracked their entry, from what direction, and might easily find the world involved. The things he had once thought they might conceal seemed apparent now. They were in this game to the hilt, everything admitted. A visit to atevi space seemed likely. It was up to them, here, to see it was peaceful.

“Perhaps,” Bren said, and Ilisidi waved a negligent hand—which sent Cajeiri running (pursued by a sharp stare from his great-grandmother) out the door.

“Tea?” Narani asked, and offered a cup, which Prakuyo took in both hands. Prakuyo sipped it, seemed at first to find it strange, and then to savor it greatly, dumping in a considerable lot of sugar.

The food on Prakuyo’s plate disappeared as rapidly as that on Ilisidi’s—for that matter, on Cenedi’s and Banichi’s and Jago’s, long after Bren had reached his limit on tea cakes. He sat there waiting for a seven-year-old’s picture books, trying to think of the verbal routes he might use to reach some sort of abstract understanding. Friend hadn’t even crossed the boundary between what was atevi and what was human. Friendship equated with atevi association . But intimate, heart-deep divergence of how person connected to person remained elusive to this day. The constellation of emotionally mediated, non-rational, instinct-driven connections escaped them: one side simply did not perceive as the other did.

The one thing they had worked out was that truth was best and that politely pretending to understand was a lethal trap. Nearly impossible to straighten out a transspecies perception of betrayal or, worse, a real nest of lies. There was danger in every direction. But trust… a foregone conclusion of benign intent—could tip the balance at least toward a presumption of good behavior.

Banichi touched his arm—rare; but Banichi wanted his quiet attention.

“Jase-aiji informs us the foreign ship has begun moving toward us. He asks your presence.”

Damn.

But not nearly as heartfelt a damn ! as might be if they weren’t sitting at table with a critical condition satisfied—even satiated on tea cakes.

Jase needed to know that. Jase urgently needed to know there was progress.

“Dowager-ji,” Bren said. “Prakuyo-ji.” Two bows. “Forgive me. Jase needs me urgently. Prakuyo, ship wants me. I come back. Eat. Eat. Lot of food.” He bowed again to one and to the other, and ducked outside, Jago in attendance, Banichi having remained with Cenedi, security being stretched perilously thin in that room with a table dividing a very strong guest from two very fragile persons. “Jago, I need to go. I shall not be long. Stay here. Assist. If Jase must speak to that ship, I should be there.”

“Yes,” Jago said with economy, and Bren hurried down the corridor, already thumbing buttons on his pocket com to reach C1.

“This is Bren Cameron. I’m on my way up there. Tell the captain.”

Chapter 17

He was approaching the end of the corridor as C1 answered him. “ Mr. Cameron, sir, the alien craft is moving at a cautious pace; it will have been moving for some time. Indications are it moved shortly after the visible flash when we lost the robot .”

Reasonable. The question was what it intended or what it thought was going on. It was a short list, and one hoped it had simply observed that flash and gotten worried. “Has station noticed this movement?”

“ Captain Graham is talking to station administration now, advising them not to take any hostile action. ”

“As they value our collective lives, C1. I suggest you run the initial contact pattern for the alien. Send it and try to establish contact. Let them know we’re still alive and keeping our agreements.”

“ Captain Graham has already given that order. We are currently transmitting and repeating. ”

Jase was no fool.

Neither was he. He punched the alternate channel on his com unit as he reached the section door, passing Ilisidi’s guards, passing the door. “Isolate photographs of our guest, nadi,” he asked of Asicho. “Produce a good still image of him and reduce it to black and white, no grays. Send that image to the bridge. A picture that looks happy or serene, if possible to judge.”

“ Yes, nand’ paidhi. ”

He reached the lift, punched the call button, and changed com channels. “C1, Cameron here. Five-deck is sending you an image in a moment. Prepare it for transmission to the alien ship. I’m on my way up there in two seconds.” The lift car door opened. He stepped in, input his destination.

“ Bren ?” Jase’s voice, as the car started moving.

“We’re doing fine down here,” he reported to Jase. “His name seems to be Prakuyo, he speaks a handful of understandable words, and he’s currently stuffing himself on tea cakes and tea at the dowager’s table.”

Small silence. Then: “Get up here. Bren, get up here .”

The lift car didn’t move fast enough: it seemed forever until it let him out at the back of the bridge, and he headed straight for his first glimpse of Jase leaning over C1’s console.

Jase was talking with someone on com, angrily so, something about risk and responsibility and innocence. Then:

“Let us handle it, Mr. Braddock. I advise you, let us handle this ship and everything to do with it. You’ve got one hole in your station as is, and if you start shooting first, we won’t lift a finger to help you. I’m very serious about that.” Jase made a motion to C1, reached past the man and opened a small compartment in the console, extracting one of the communications earpieces. He handed it to Bren. Bren switched it on and stuck it quickly into his ear.

“… reject your credentials for this or any other such operation. You have no authority to contact that ship on your own behalf or ours .”

Patience ended. Ice entered Jase’s tone. “You had an alien hostage. Now we have him. You say let you manage communications between that ship and us; but if they contact us, we have no way to explain to them they’re supposed to talk to you, since in six years you don’t seem to have established any relations beyond a hostage situation. We’ve produced a set of communication files, we are using them at the moment, and you can see it’s not shooting. More, your population knows by now why we’re here, they know your hostage is in our hands, and we offer an alternative. Take our offer, sir. Come on board. Let’s shake hands and not even discuss old history.”

Jase wasn’t doing badly on his own.

“ Captain Graham, you are ordered to desist all independent operations, dock, and open your doors. ”

The one that could use a negotiator’s help was Braddock.

Unfortunately he wasn’t inclined to take help when it was offered.

“ Mr . Braddock,” Jase said quietly, “we’re providing you and your family a comfortable place in our colonial residency, where you can settle in far more comfort and safety than this station can ever offer. We’ve established contact with the alien ship and we have some confidence it won’t shoot unless provoked, but the point is, Mr. Braddock, it’s alien , it’s foreign , it’s not subject to either of us, and it’s apt to do any damned thing, which means we have to deal with it moment by moment. Negotiations are ongoing. If they break down, you can’t defend yourself; we can’t defend you, and we’re going to need fuel to get you and your station population to safety. Open the fuel port and allow an orderly boarding, for your own protection. The alternative is unthinkable.”

“ Captain Graham .” Different voice. God, it was Sabin’s voice.

“I’m here,” Jase said.

“ Captain Graham, relax. The Guildmaster and I are close to an agreement on the fuel and on the boarding. I have every confidence we can do everything we came to do. In the meanwhile, let’s get the preliminaries done. Hard dock. Then we’ll arrange for fueling and and orderly boarding. ”

Jase listened. And frowned darkly. “Captain. Good to hear from you. Why the silence?”

“ Station security precaution. We’ve reached an understanding. Bring the ship in .”

“Shall I move to the fuel port, captain?”

“ Negative. Bring her into personnel .”

“We took a ping off that explosion. We’re testing systems at the moment.”

“ You can test at hard dock, Captain Graham. Proceed .”

“Good try,” Jase said. “But nothing’s changed, Guildmaster. You don’t convince me, and pretense is only going to get us in trouble.”

Silence. The contact broke off on the other side.

“Synthesized,” Jase said. There was a look from C1, a deep breath. Bren heaved a deep breath of his own and put his hands in his pockets, chagrinned—silly lad from the island, he’d believed the voice halfway through that performance. He understood that a computer could in theory reproduce a face as well as a voice, but he’d never heard one do it, and it was an astonishingly good rendition. But linguistically—even computer-assisted—he’d heard definitively non-Sabin word-choices.

“Doesn’t encourage optimism about a solution,” Bren said.

“No. It doesn’t. I’m afraid she’s in a very great deal of trouble.” Crew overheard that, and Jase made no attempt to conceal the facts of the situation, even looked at certain of the crew as he said it. “Her orders took that into account. We hope she’s alive. But we can’t help her by giving in to the Guildmaster, and we can’t help her by putting the ship in reach of an armed takeover.”

“Jenrette knows,” Bren said. “Jenrette knows at least how and where he left her.”

“It doesn’t look good. But I have my orders. And just as urgently, we’ve got that ship moving in on us.”

“C1,” Bren asked the chief com post, “have you received the image from five-deck?”

“Yes, sir.” C1 pushed buttons. Prakuyo’s face, stark black and white, with drink in hand, lit a display. Happy? Their guest looked positively beatific.

An advanced technology might fake the celebratory pose—to judge by quasi-Sabin’s appearance—but the camera had to have Prakuyo’s living image to get that face and manner.

“I’d like to transmit that to his ship,” Bren said to Jase.

“Do it,” Jase said; C1 moved, and a reply window began ticking on the display.

“Brilliant,” Jase said with a deep breath, then asked, sotto voce: “Is he really that cheerful?”

“He’s enjoying the dowager’s company.”

Jase shot him a properly apprehensive look.

“Sir.” C1 suddenly called for the captain’s attention. “Mr. Braddock again.”

“Let him stew,” Jase said. “I’m not available.”

“He’s making threats, sir. About voiding the fuel.”

“He’s made them before.”

“Yes, sir.—The captain’s not available, sir. Sorry.”

“ C1 , do we still have contact with Mr. Becker?” Jase asked.

“Yes, sir,” C2 said. “He made it to the commercial zone half an hour ago, no problems.”

“We’re going to see action reasonably soon, I think,” Jase said. Meanwhile the lift had cycled, and opened. “We’re still short of experienced personnel, Bren. I don’t want to ask this—but we’ve just seen what hope there is of Mr. Braddock taking a reasonable view. We’ve got to lay plans to get into Central—maybe with local help. Maybe not. Our alternative’s pretty grim.”

Blowing the station up with people in it—even if one was Braddock—wasn’t palatable.

“Small-scale demolition? Take out the archive?”

“The way we were going to do it if we got cooperation. We do it without. We’re going to have to call on five-deck again to do this. Can Banichi and Jago do it?”

“If I go.” It was the last job he wanted, but he’d been helpful in the last try, and he was prepared to be stubborn. He saw refusal shaping Jase’s next word and he was faster. “If I go, Jase. What do you want, the whole mission stalled out because some scared stationer with a gun wants to fight my bodyguard, when if I was there it wouldn’t happen? We’ve got our routine down pat. We can do this.”

“You’re essential with the hostage.”

“What’s essential is to get him, alive, back to his ship. That’s already set up. He’s stuffed on tea cakes, happy as a freshman on break, and if I’m delayed, you can take over communicating with him—in your spare time.”

“The hell.”

“You ask for Banichi and Jago, you get me .”

“ They wouldn’t understand that.”

“I do. And you do. That’s enough.”

A deep, frustrated sigh. “Plan it,” Jase said.

“They already have, I’m relatively sure. We’ll review it, in light of what we know now.” He cast a look at the ticking reply window. Expected that reply any second. But the other side had to get organized to answer, and decide how it was going to answer…

Not that great a delay, however. Almost as the reply clock went negative, lines began to appear and assemble on that monitor, at C1’s station, mesmerizing process, line by line develop ment of an image. Bren couldn’t make out what it was yet, and meanwhile something had begun nagging him. “Sabin took most every security-trained crew member we had, except your bodyguard. If Braddock had to try to counterfeit her orders, she’s clearly not cooperating. Her com went silent—but I think we should take into account the possibility she’s not dead and not confined.” Sabin was a direct thinker, set a goal and go for it, no diversions. “She may have made a try at the fuel port. Or some target she thought she could get to with twenty men.”

Jase’s eyes, distracted by the com panel, shifted to him, flickering in rapid thought. “Jenrette.”

There was a man who’d gone initially to Braddock. Bet on it. Maybe sent to him—but certainly working for him. He’d betrayed Sabin and his shipmates. Or they couldn’t read character.

“She’s capable of sending Jenrette to Braddock,” Jase said, “to see how Braddock received him, and maybe what Jenrette would do next. Then Braddock sends him to us.”

“Or maybe she sent him precisely to disinform Braddock. She sends Jenrette to tell him one thing and she does something else, and doesn’t turn up in station offices.”

On the screen lines marched on, making a shape. Two beings facing one another, empty hands uplifted, one human, one Prakuyo’s kind.

“Echo it to them,” Bren said. Message received. “It’s good. I think it’s good.”

There was an uncharacteristic stir on the bridge, an infinitestimal head-turning, a collective deep breath.

“A good guess where the senior captain might have gone if she’s able,” Jase said calmly. “Either the fuel—or Braddock.”

“Captain.” C1. “Lt. Kaplan.”

“Go,” Jase said, and a man in a cold-suit appeared on monitor 3.

“Captain?” Kaplan said. “Captain, there’s action going on. There’s ten, fifteen people and God-knows all sort of baggage coming out the section doors, and we shot a safety line over there, and it took, but this doesn’t look orderly, not half.”

“Two at a time, Kaplan, no baggage, no hand baggage,” Jase said. “C1, get the cargo chief down there. Everything and every one scanned through.” Deep breath. “It’s started— if this isn’t one of Braddock’s gifts.”

It wasn’t good. It wasn’t when they’d have chosen to have it happen.

“All we can do,” Bren said.

“Kaplan,” Jase said. “Kaplan, cargo team’s coming. Keep it slow and calm. Route the cars to three-deck, no detours. If anybody needs medical, we’ll send medical to them—no way any stationer gets loose off three and four-decks.”

“Understood, captain. There’s kids in this lot. There’s an old man. They don’t look hostile. The old man’s got one of our fliers. But there’s more coming.”

“Boarding pass,” Bren said under his breath. “I told them it was a boarding pass.”

“Calm and easy,” Jase said. “Calm and easy, Kaplan. Be gracious.”

“Yes, sir,” came back, and in the background of that picture another suited figure, Pressman, most likely, was looking out the open lock.

“Shift to C2 and monitor,” Jase said to C1, and shot a glance at Bren. “A conspicuous gold-plated disaster is what they want, create a mess for us. They’ve taken our warnings and devised their own solution. And after the old man and the kids—bet their operatives will be in there.”

“Or a handful of security guards bent on getting their relatives out. Where I dropped those brochures—God knows which; and damn the timing.” He’d have wanted his own team out and clear; and they wouldn’t be. “We’ll have to go through them to get into the station. No question. We’ll have to lock the doors open to get back.”

“Can’t be helped,” Jase said. Something about the captaincy settled a look on the wielder, and Jase had gotten to have it—a furious, measuring glance, the distracted habit of a man tracking a dozen emergencies at once. While the image on the monitor took shape: Ship. Station .

Meanwhile the lift had arrived, crew coming up, Bren thought. But brisk steps presented Gin Kroger, in cold-boots and parka, still frosted from working God-knew-where.

“Heard there was a meeting up here,” Gin said. “Heard you were involved.” With a glance at Bren. “I’ll guess we’re going to do something.”

“We’re going to do something,” Bren said.

“We’re going in,” Jase said, “And we’ve got passengers coming on.”

Gin held up a disk. “Image. Fuel lock. Enhanced photo. Give me a suit and we can drill it.”

“Disable it?” Jase asked.

“Maybe,” Gin said. “ Maybe . I want a suit. I can stealth it with a spray can.”

“No,” Jase said.

“We can spend ten hours re-rigging a robot to reach into that angle while people are hammering at our doors or I can sneak out there with a hand-drill and do the job in half an hour.”

“A hand-drill.”

“This goings-on is the best cover we’re going to have,” Gin said, “right now, in the ship’s shadow, while the Guild’s busy with people trying to get to us. I can get in there, myself—”

“No way in hell, Gin!”

“Look, there’s a reason I’ve got the doctorate, captain, sir. They’re not going to blow that tank up. It’d take out the mast, which would take out the whole station. If the contact trigger’s tripped, the only kind of explosion they’ll want is to crank up the pressure and blow the explosive bolts: the tank’s already got provision to blow out if there’s a serious pressure anomaly, precisely to protect the mast integrity. The whole sensor system that runs it is just a limited kind of robot: that’s what they’ve rigged into. I know what I’m looking at in our remote images, and I’ve been talking to the atevi, who are very good at this sort of thing. They say the same. It all depends on power to that system, which I can take out.”

“We’ve got too many people in motion,” Bren protested. “Too many operations. We can’t rush one, Gin. Just wait. We may be able to get at this from inside.”

“If you’re threatening them, they’re going to threaten back, won’t they, to push the button and dump our fuel? I’m not a risk out there, I’m a precaution. I’ll kill the pump that could let them retaliate and save us a year mopping it up. We can patch the system back, no problem.”

“Do it,” Jase said. “Take a suit.”

“Got it,” Gin said, and turned and headed off at high speed.

“Damn,” Bren said.

“She’s at risk,” Jase said. “We’re all at risk. No one’s is more acute than anyone else’s if we let the Guild deal with that ship out there. I want them busy, Bren.”

“If we can get into Central we can get past that lock ourselves, with no loss of lives.”

“With your neck at risk.”

Different. He controlled that. Expressed one thought in Ragi, a cipher to the bridge crew. “We are doing all we can to gain our guest’s good will. But one missile from the station could undo all that.”

“We have to prevent it,” Jase said in shipspeak, “Becker’s loose in there, Sabin may be in there, the ship’s scaring hell out of Central, and we just let two people go on the station with a handful of travel brochures. C2, get Mr. Cameron a handheld, C1’s channels and output. Fast.”

“Sir.” C2 pulled a module right off his console, keyed it in half a dozen rapid motions, and offered it to Bren. “Just say image and you can key through images, say voice and you can talk to C1: don’t say console , sir: that’s straight to the keyboards. You won’t want that. Won’t want to carry that off the ship.”

“I have it,” Bren said, and tucked it into his coat pocket. His court finery.

“Add one thing to your plan. I want those accesses to the mast open. I don’t want Guild able to lock them against us. And come back if you can’t get through.”

Coming in the way they had before—taking a vulnerable pod-ride across that gap with the Guild paying full attention to them—he hoped not to do that again. Going in by the mast seemed highly attractive. With the bonus of having that key and those doors open, to let population into the mast.