The Pride of Chanur

V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Cargo dump?” Chur asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gods rot the kif.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a moment’s silence.

“All right to talk?” Hilfy asked.

Pyanfar nodded without comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We’re going home,” Hilfy surmised.

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

“Then the Faha — we could warn them.”

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

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

“They can take care of themselves.”

“After we brought the trouble here—”

“My decision,” Pyanfar said.

“I’m not saying that; I’m saying—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

“#. Need #, captain. #.”

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

“Sleep. Need sleep in jump.”

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

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

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

He looked up at her.

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

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

“You know for sure.”

“I’m sure.”

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

A shake of his head.

“No?”

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

“What, the wrong words?”

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

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

“And not ours?” Pyanfar observed.

Tully’s eyes sought toward her.

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

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

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

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

“That kif wants killing,” Haral said.

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

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

“Human.”

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

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

No answer,

“You didn’t know there was danger?”

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

“Kif?”

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

“Knnn, for the gods’ sake.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Aunt, I—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And among them, Starchaser.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shields,” Haral said.

“Not yet.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Second ship,” Tirun said. “34 by 32 our referent.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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