The Ship Errant

Chapter Nine

"Planet Five," Carialle said, turning all her video screens to the view of the dark hulk silhouetted by the distant sun. "The traitors live right here in the Cridi system."

"Let's take them," Keff said, leaning forward and slamming his fists together. In the navigation tank, strands of ion emission joined hundreds more in a skein around the black sphere, like webs tying up a fly. That was the center. So close, and yet no one knew it was here.

"Have you brushed your teeth and said your prayers?" Carialle asked, interrupting his concentration. "We can't destroy a base by ourselves, let alone a planet."

"No," Keff sighed, sitting back. Reason had been restored. "But we can get data to instruct a CW fleet. Let's see what's down there."

Keeping in the widest possible orbit, the ship circled around to sunside. It looked an inhospitable place, but there were sure signs of habitation, and the three moons, each the size of Old Earth, could have concealed fleets of pirates. Carialle listened on the frequencies she had observed the three assassins using. She picked up a familiar drone.

"Landing beacon," she said, putting the sound on audio for the others. "So far, nothing else. If there are detection devices out there I'm risking having another force come boiling after me, so I'm keeping thrusters ready to run back toward Cridi if necessary."

"What power emissions are you reading?" Keff asked, studying the astrogation tank.

"Not much. If they have any industrial complexes, they must all be underground. Residual decay in a lot of places on the surface, probably power plants from purloined spaceships. Another refueling depot, in the midst of one enormous junkheap. Radioactive dumping ground, ten degrees north of the equator, far from any of the heat vents. Read this spectroanalysis," she said, putting up a chart on one of her screens. "The atmosphere has a hefty ammonia content."

"Our archives say this burns us," Tall Eyebrow signed, looking at the molecular diagram. "Also smells bad."

"Then I'll need a full breather suit," Keff said, perusing the screen with a critical eye. "Oxygen. Grav assist. Maybe take one or both of the servo drones with me in case the gravity is too much."

"What are you talking about?" Carialle asked.

"I want to have a close-up look at the people who were just shooting at us," Keff said, but Carialle recognized the gleam in his eye. He'd looked the same way whenever they were sent on assignment to a planet suspected of sustaining life. He pointed at a spot on the planetary map, a field of craters near the refueling depot. "If you set us down there, I can get in and gather data, and be out before they know it."

"Wait a minute, Sir Knight. Yes, we may have encountered a brand new, sentient species, but that doesn't mean you should fling yourself into their midst."

"Cari, think of it-it's unprecedented. Two intelligent life forms evolving in the same solar system-and never meeting. Think of the furor at Alien Outreach. Think of being the only brainship team ever to bring home a prize like that." Keff began to see glory before his eyes, to hear the congratulations in his ears. Carialle interrupted his reverie.

"It's too dangerous! May I point out you just mentioned that these are the same people who were just shooting at us? Who murdered the crews of at least four starships? And who may have tried to kill me twenty years ago? Surely the ships sent messages with our description and video bits to home control on one of these obscure frequencies I've been trying to monitor. We'd be too easy a target landing near their spaceport, and I don't think they'll buy 'I come in peace' from the ship that just destroyed two or three of their craft. If you get caught, they'll kill you. I won't land."

"I haven't forgotten any of that, Cari, but we can accomplish a great deal if I can infiltrate them successfully. We do need data to support a Central Worlds deployment. I'm good at camouflage. All you have to do is land us very quietly in a nice, deep syncline, and give me sufficient data on the terrain. I'll find a bivouac. It'll take time for the CW ships to reach us…" Keff's eye was distracted from the intractable face of Carialle's Lady Fair image. He turned to stare fully at the navigation tank.

"Cari, jump! There's a ship coming up astern. We can hide behind one of those moons, maybe loop around to the nightside. Hurry! Why aren't your proximity alarms going off? Damn it," he said, hammering a fist down on the console. "I thought we scared that third ship into next Tuesday." He scanned the scopes looking for convenient asteroid belts, planetoids, or ion storms in which they could lose themselves. "There's nothing! We'll have to run. Can you read any armament…?"

"Keff!" Carialle shouted, blinking the displays on and off to get his attention. "It isn't the pirates. It's the Cridi. You'll recognize their configuration by the time it gets into range. Tad Pole persuaded the Cridi to launch their new ship in our defense."

"What?" Keff felt his jaw drop open with shock. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You've been raving so much I didn't have an edgewise to fit in a word. Long Hand is transmitting to me from the other ship. IT is translating her sign language to me, but it's slow going, with their rotten screens. Narrow Leg and the others scrambled as soon as we accomplished a successful takeoff. They want to back us up. Small Spot and Long Hand persuaded them to launch in our defense. They came along, and they brought Big Eyes, among others. I'll play you the audio. It's very amusing. I can hear Big Voice chirruping madly in the background behind everyone else."

"Big Eyes comes?" Tall Eyebrow signed, pleased. Keff looked appalled.

"No! Send them home. This is too dangerous."

"They have better defenses than we do, Sir Knight," Carialle said, patiently. "Besides, they want to help us. I think they recognize the risk they're taking."

"We can't let them, Cari," Keff said. Suddenly the small ship came fully into focus. It looked very small and vulnerable. He dashed a hand through his hair and stared desperately at the screen. "The pirates are armed to their masticatory appendages."

"And a moment ago you wanted me to land in their midst," Carialle said sweetly. Keff had a sudden, heartfelt temptation to kick her pillar.

"I'm trained to take risks," he said. "The Cridi are not. Why did they come?"

"Why? Sir Keff, you spent over a month convincing the Cridi to sign on with Central Worlds as a member nation with full privileges. You did a good job. They've taken the concept of alliance seriously, and they mean to back up what they say. How can they prove they're our equals and allies unless we let them?

"But not like this!"

"Then, how?"

"I help," Tall Eyebrow put in, with a quick sign, before Keff could object. "They, too."

"See?" Carialle asked. "I'm proud of them."

Keff wasn't convinced, but suddenly the rust-colored planet off Cari's starboard side looked more menacing. It would be useful to have backup. CW Fleet ships were months away. If they scrambled tomorrow, it would still take weeks to close the distance. He glanced at Carialle's pillar.

"Was it unanimous?" he asked.

"By no means," Carialle said. "Snap Fingers and his brood think they should mind their own business. But look at the ones who are risking their lives, who weren't sure that ship would even break atmosphere safely. But, there they are."

Keff glanced up slyly through his eyelashes. "Big Voice came, too?"

"Believe it or not, he did."

Keff raised his hands in surrender. "All right. But Alien Outreach isn't going to like this."

"Then, they can lump it," Carialle said firmly. "Would they rather have the pirates running around loose? This is the Cridi's necks on the block, too. It's their system, and for the last fifty years, their menace. These pirates took their freedom, and killed who knows how many Cridi astronauts. The Cridi have a right to be here."

"You're correct, as always, Cari. Let me talk to them. I'm going to eat crow." He sat down in his padded seat before the console. The 1028-square grid appeared on the screen, and coalesced into a rough mosaic of the face of Narrow Leg.

"Captain, Carialle and I welcome you back to space."

"We are successful!" the elderly Cridi squeaked, and IT echoed his tone of triumph. "It flies, it is sound."

"I never doubted it," Keff signed, with a grin. "I've never seen such careful construction. I'm glad you're with us." He cleared his throat, then emitted a short series of chirps. "X equals Y. X plus Y is greater than X. X plus Y is greater than Y. We are equals, and the two of us together are greater than we are alone."

Narrow Leg nodded his head. "That is evident. You honor us. Circling this planet. What must we know about it?"

Carialle spoke up. "We have traced the path of the villains who attacked the diplomatic ship. We have no fleet, no heavy armament, so all we can do is gather information, and send for help from the Central Worlds. We plan to infiltrate the planet's surface."

Narrow Leg's cheeks hollowed, and the faces of the Cridi behind him paled to mint green. They looked terrified, but all of them squeaked up at once.

"Tell us how we may help."

"I didn't want them down here with me," Keff said, sublingually, hunkering himself down further into the crevasse beyond the outskirts of the building they had designated as the spaceport. "I wanted them up there, where they could use their Core to help protect us, and you."

"Nonsense," Carialle said. "There's a delay in response time, even from space. I want them where they can be on the spot if you need them."

Keff didn't protest, but the sound of the plastic globes rolling along the rocky surface of the planet sounded louder than thunder to him. Tall Eyebrow paddled at the head of a party of scouts, heading around toward the other side of the compound. Big Eyes kept up gamely behind him, beside Small Spot and her father, but most of the homeworld Cridi frankly cheated and used their amulet power to levitate their new globes. They bobbed along behind the toiling group, sitting at their ease in the bottom of the transparent spheres.

"Darn it, TE, tell them not to do that," he growled into his helmet's audio pickup. "I know the extra gravity's uncomfortable, but I'd rather take a chance on movement being spotted than extraneous power transmissions." It was bad enough that the Cridi had to use the Core technology to keep the water in the globes from freezing on this cold world. They risked detection of their ship with every deviation from strict survival. "They might at least put down a physical twitch as indigenous wildlife. If there is any. What a bleak place."

A hundred meters away, the lead globe stopped and spun in place. The water inside sloshed upward. Tall Eyebrow made a few signs quickly and with authority toward the other globes. Keff was reminded abruptly that the insecure visitor to the Cridi homeworld was also the leader of the exiled Ozran-born Cridi, who kept his population together, alive, and sane in the most dangerous and deprived of circumstances. He admired the way TE threw in a tactful sign or two that alluded to the difficulty of using a travel globe, but added staccato chops for "absolute necessity." Reluctantly, Big Voice and the others lowered the spheres to the ground. The lead globe rotated 180 degrees, and the party set off again more slowly, but more loudly. Keff flattened himself down so that he could no longer see them. He studied his target.

There appeared to be little activity, but Carialle had detected at least four life-forms in the building. She had a hard time finding body-heat traces. The planet's surface was cold, but it was dotted with hot spots where volcanoes and geothermal vents broke through. Structures placed over these took advantage of the natural heat.

Most of the population had to be below ground, with only a few exits to the open sky. It was impossible to pick out individuals. Ammonia/oxygen flares ignited occasionally, and as swiftly, blew out. Carialle cursed as one trace after another that she was tracking suddenly vanished. Gravity was approximately one and a half times Standard norm; bearable for short periods. The "spaceport" was a ridge, the edge of a huge crater filled in over eons with dust and debris that had solidified into a flat plain. Architects had bored into, or more likely, out of the side of the hill overlooking the plain, and built onto it. Carialle reported that heat traces from inside the building registered at least 35 degrees C. That sounded much nicer than the surrounding landscape, which was bare and dusty where it wasn't covered with discarded junk from hijacked spaceships.

"What do these people eat?" Keff wondered out loud, his voice sounding hollow in his survival suit.

"Look at those domes, built to catch every meager ray, even magnify it," Carialle said. "Perhaps our ammonia-breathers photosynthesize, and live on water."

"Or the cities below ground are full of hydroponics," Keff said. "I don't see enough domes to support a breeding population of mitochondroids." In spite of the peril and the anger he felt at the pirates, he and Carialle had dropped back into the game they loved to play, anticipating the facts about an unknown race. "Is it possible this planet was a lot warmer once? Or do you suppose we've discovered silicophages?"

"It wouldn't be the first discovery of mineral-eaters," Carialle said, after running through her memory banks, "but it would be the first one that attained sentience and space travel."

"In stolen ships," Keff said, flatly. "What do we know about them so far?"

"From the emissions of the ship Tall Eyebrow damaged, body temperatures in range tolerable by humans, between twenty degrees C and forty degrees C. Size, from my readings in the structure ahead of you, they are larger than humans, but smaller than lions. Anything else, I must await data from you and our party of rolling frogs."

"Add to that, intelligent and dangerous," Keff said, nodding, but keeping his eyes pinned on the dome. "Well, I can't wait here forever. TE, I'm moving. Watch the building and stop anything that comes in after me."

"I hear," the small voice said in Standard over the helmet speaker.

Staying flat on his belly, Keff crept over the rise. On the other side was a steeply sloping valley. Long-departed rivers or perhaps the celestial pressures of planetary formation had crazed the plain with shallow canals. Keeping low enough to remain out of sight to occupants of the largest structure, Keff crawled on hands and knees. Fine silt, undisturbed for eons, rose briefly around him, then settled out in the heavy gravity, burying his tracks.

Parked a dozen kilometers away beside the Cridi spaceship in a lonely valley, Carialle watched his progress simultaneously on her charts and through the body-cam he wore on his tunic.

"You're coming to a T-intersection," she said, as Keff paused and reared up on his knees so she could see his precise location. "Take the left branch. No, the left one. The right one leads straight into a deep thermal vent."

Keff made his way along the turnings, wrinkling his nose against the clouds of dust even though he knew they couldn't penetrate his protective suit. His heads-up display told him the half-meter-high bank of fog into which he crawled at a low point in a ditch was heavy with ammonia and traces of other gases reduced to liquid. He gulped. One breach in suit integrity, and he was a green icicle. Never mind; he was committed to his mission. In some small way, he was helping Carialle to lay the ghosts of her past, as well as ridding the Cridi of a menace and avenging the deaths of the Central Worlds diplomatic personnel. A moon in its second quarter rose on the horizon and crept up the sky, throwing a little more light on his path. His canal dipped sharply as he crawled another ten meters, then light from the moon was cut off. In the blackness his suit-lights went on. He paused, waiting for the prickle between his shoulder blades that would tell him he was being watched. Nothing.

"You're almost underneath the building now," Carialle was saying. "If you go around to the right, you'll be in front of that hatchway."

Keff's back began to ache from the heavy gravity. He paused with hands on knees.

"It looks a long way up," he panted, staring at the black shape above him, picked out by distant pinpoint stars. His lungs dragged in oxygen.

"What are you building up all of those muscles if not for an effort like that?" Carialle asked dryly.

When she started making ironic comments, Keff could tell she was the most worried. He just shook his head. In an instant the aches in his lower back and thighs went away. "Just oxygen-starved," he said. "Just a moment." He reached into the gauntlet of his right glove for the control pad, and turned up the nitrox mix slightly. The faint hissing sound was a comfort.

In the gloom the building over his head looked ominous. The slab on which it was built had been slagged out of a lip of the ridge, so the people inside had at least stolen, if not evolved, heavy pyroconstruction equipment.

Keff heaved himself up. The domes began at a meter above the platform, giving him an expanse of blank wall against which he could conceal himself. Ahead of him, the platform widened out away from the domed windows to an apron that bore scorch marks from repeated launches and landings. Limp, metal-bound hoses lay on the ground in skeins. They led from the putative fuel tank, which stood on pylons around a fold of the ridge from the domes. To protect the glass from explosions, Keff thought, with an approving nod to the designers. A dusty accordion-pleated hood was bunched up around the entrance to the building. It seemed to be long enough to extend all the way to the edge of the platform. Not at all sophisticated, but it would scarcely ever need major repairs. He took the video pickup off his suit and held it up against the bottom margin of the clear wall.

"Can you see anything, Cari?" he whispered.

"Aqua foliage," Carialle replied. "Spiky, like evergreens-no, more like fan coral. I can't see anything moving, even on infrared. My sensors are still picking up those same four body traces. No one much seems to come up to the surface."

"If they're anything like us, it's too cold for them up here. I'm ten meters from the entrance. Where are you, TE?" Keff asked his suit mike.

"We see you, other side of edge," the globe-frog's voice piped. "Under-by tank-container."

"Back me up. I am going to try and enter. If I am not out in fifteen minutes from the time of my entrance, come in and help me. At that point, revealing we have Core technology will be moot."

"Sir Frog waits," the small voice said. Keff grinned.

He crawled the rest of the way to the rough plascrete arch. The entrance resembled an airlock, devoid of any security devices Keff could recognize. The pirates must have been very confident that no one knew they were here.

"Where are the guards, Cari?" he asked.

"All four are deep inside," she said. "It looks like your best chance."

Keff nodded to himself. "Here goes."

He stood up against the inside edge of the arch, hidden momentarily from sight of anyone in the dome. Carefully, he turned around. Inside a metal frame, two flat bars jutted out from the wall.

"I've only got a fifty-fifty chance of cocking up," he said, and a childhood singsong bubbled up from memory. He waggled his finger playfully between the two bars. "My mother said to pick the very best one, and you are it." With that, he stabbed the upper bar. It moved easily under his finger, depressing flat to the wall.

Immediately behind him, something heavy and soft dropped to the ground. Keff spun. He was now curtained into the enclosure by a metal and plastic mesh. Hissing erupted from the wall side. In a few moments, a door, large enough to admit a cargo container, slid upward.

Keff listened before he stepped inside, turning up his external mikes to the maximum. No alarms. No one seemed to have heard the airlock open.

"Looks like I'm all right," he whispered.

"For pity's sake, be careful," Carialle said in his aural implant.

He nodded, knowing she would pick up the physiological signs of the small movement. A blinking light on the other side of the threshold urged him forward into another sealed pocket of air. Keff stepped through just as the heavy door slid downward. It closed silently, which surprised him more than a solid bang would have. He heard more hissing, then the curtain and its fender rose, revealing the interior of the dome. A few spotlights stabbed their beams down at the floor, but mostly the arboretum was lit by the faint, distant sun. Bristly growths sprang out of flat, low dishes made of black ceramic on the shiny floor. The plants themselves-if they were plants-were a riot of neon blue, ultramarine, teal, acid yellow, and interplanetary-distress orange. Keff winced.

"Gack," he said quietly. "Their taste in horticulture is nightmarish."

"I told you so," Carialle said. "The colors suggested to me that the atmosphere inside was ammonia-heavy, like the outer atmosphere, but it isn't nearly as saturated as I thought. My spectroanalysis shows that it's much more dilute. Less than one-tenth. You could almost breathe it."

"How'm I doing?"

"You're still alone," Carialle said.

"That's strange," Keff said absently, peering around. "Look, could that be furniture?"

He turned so the video pickup on his chest was facing some metal and fabric constructs in a group amid the riot of spiky, sea-colored plants.

"I would say yes." Carialle studied the forms, and ran projections on an ergonomics program in her memory banks. "Something that prefers a sling to a seat-there's no back-so possibly not upright in carriage. It lies supported. A quadruped? Then why wouldn't it simply lie down on pads on the floor?" She drew image after image of arrangements of torsos and limbs, and rejected them all.

"Here are some divan pillows," Keff said. He turned to face fuzzy, covered pads the size of his bunk. "They're huge!"

"Whew!" Carialle whistled in agreement. "Keff, sit on one so I can see how much a body of your weight compresses the material. I need an estimate on what made those dents."

Keff complied, plumping down on one as if exhausted, which indeed he was beginning to be. He sat and gasped for a moment. The heavy gravity was telling on him. He hoped the Cridi were faring all right.

"Let me see," Carialle said. Keff rose and gave her a good view of his impression from different angles. "My estimate stands. I think they weigh about two hundred kilos apiece."

"I am not staying long," Keff said, positively.

Beyond the seating arrangements was an arched corridor. Like the platform outside, it had been slagged through the mountain with a melter drill of some kind. Down the passageway, Keff spotted the reflected flicker of blue and white lights. It looked familiar. He listened carefully at the entrance for a long time, then tiptoed toward the source of illumination. He passed closed hatchways with the same framed control bars in the wall beside them. At the sudden sound of escaping air, Keff flattened himself into the nearest door frame and held his breath. The noise stopped with a wheeze and a bang.

"Probably a compressor," Carialle commented. "Primitive." Keff nodded, the back of his helmet tapping against the wall. The echo bounded off both ways down the empty hall, sounding like water dripping into a pool.

He waited a moment, then slipped noiselessly into the corridor once again. His heads-up display told him it was three degrees warmer in here than it had been in the atrium. He was undoubtedly already under the lip of the excavated mountain. He looked forward to exploring the labyrinth of caves that underlay this building, but with a suitable escort of CW militia for backup.

"Here's your glow," Carialle said, as he counted the eighth doorway.

"Computer screens," Keff breathed, peering around the frame. On a low table that had once been a galley counter in a Central Worlds ship sat antique CPUs and square monitors. Boxes of jumbled chips and tapes and datasolids sat on the floor beside the table. He edged in so the camera eye on his chest would send the image back to the ship.

"More salvage," Carialle said, severely. "That is a year-old Tambino 90-gig unit. Those are CW special issue screens, and those input peripherals are from half a dozen different systems reaching back a thousand years. And yes, some of that discarded junk is Cridi."

Keff glanced around, wondering how far away the guards were. "Could you crack the data storage system?"

"Sonny, I cut my diodes on tougher stuff than this. Hook me up, and we'll copy everything in the memory. That'll give CenCom plenty to go on."

"What about viruses?"

"Not to worry. I'll isolate the files in a separate section and make them 'read only' outside of that drive base. I have all that spare memory installed for our diplomatic mission. Using it for hacking an enemy system is much more interesting than using it for lists of trade goods and historical texts, wouldn't you say?" There was fierce satisfaction in her voice. "Use the port IT has been attached to. That should be sufficient. You can use the same memory later for language translation."

"Right," Keff said, starting toward the setup. He put one knee on the hanging sling. Suddenly, the computer emitted a loud beep, then a siren wail.

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed, leaping backward. "It's got a proximity alarm. Do they hear me? Are they coming this way?" He stared at the doorway.

"Don't panic," Carialle said, her voice changing to a deep baritone to be heard over the shrill alarms. "I don't hear any high frequencies from motion detectors. It might be a timer."

"It has attracted attention. I hear something." Keff's audio pickups detected a faint shuffling sound. "They're coming this way!"

He put one eye around the edge of the door and flung himself backward when he saw a huge shadow looming toward him. "I'm trapped. TE, keep out! I'll get free if I can."

"I hear," the Ozranian's voice said, sounding worried.

"Right you are, Sir Knight," Carialle said, suddenly. "All four bodies are moving toward your location. We've got a visitor coming from space, too."

"What?"

"Looks like Ship Three," she said. "It's alone. I'm tracking… updates as available. You hide, now!"

The shuffling sounds grew louder. Keff cast about frantically for a place to hide. He threw himself behind stacks of storage containers just as the feet reached the doorway. Stifling groans of pain from the ribs he bruised in his headlong dive, he flattened himself against the wall and hoped the barrier between him and the aliens was stable.

"They're big ones, all right," Carialle's voice said very quietly in his aural canal. "Two hundred fifty, a hundred seventy, and two hundred ten kilos respectively. The fourth one has gone through to the domes. Probably to watch Ship Three land."

"No way out," Keff said.

"Not yet. Your respiration and blood pressure are up. Take a few deep breaths. Take a drink of water. How is your oxygen supply?"

"Okay," Keff muttered sublingually. He heard a slight sound coming toward him and held his breath. He cursed both CW Exploration and Diplomatic for not allowing their ships to carry even defensive weapons. A stun gun would be useful right now in extricating him from this place. The brutes would kill him with the same lack of pity they showed the crew of the DSC-902. The sound continued past him. The next thing he heard was dragging-one of the aliens hauling in a sling from the atrium. They planned to stay in this room, probably until Ship Three landed. It took a mental effort to restart his breathing. He dragged in a gasp of air, then held his breath again.

"They can't hear you," Carialle reminded him, calmly. "Your helmet muffles sound effectively."

"I know," he whispered, "but because I can hear me I think they can. I'll relax."

Keff turned up the gain on his audio pickups. The aliens were talking. Their voices were surprisingly musical: deep, resonant, like the call of brass horns. He tried to separate the sounds into words and decided he didn't yet have enough data to go on. The hail from the approaching ship came in over the speakers faintly. Apparently Tall Eyebrow's improvised missiles had done some damage to the ship, because the transmission kept cutting in and out. He sensed concern in the voices of the ground crew.

Minutes dragged past. His muscles cramped because of the awkward position in which he lay, but he didn't dare shift to ease them. Sweat began to trickle out of his hairline, over his face and neck, and down between his shoulder blades. It itched infuriatingly. He blinked his eyes to clear drops off his lashes. The chatter of voices, both within the room and on the distant ship, reached a crescendo of agitation. Keff thought he heard the words "Central Worlds," in passing, but decided he was trying to read too much into the meaningless multisyllabic babble. Suddenly there was a hush in the room, and he felt the ground shake. The dome made a grand echo chamber for the boom! the ship made when it landed.

"Three point five on the Richter scale at the epicenter," Carialle said. "That ship has no boosters left to soften touchdown. TE did good work. It probably won't be able to to take off again."

"We ought to disable it entirely before we leave here," Keff whispered, "just to make sure."

Hissing and groaning from the airlock compressors heralded the arrival of Ship Three's crew. The ground staff greeted them with unmistakable relief. A couple of them hunched past the gap in the boxes behind which Keff was hiding. He heard the hubbub of vocal greeting, and the shifting of feet as they went through their handshake-equivalent ritual, whatever it was. The brawn maneuvered himself so he could peer through, and got his first glimpse of the aliens. He realized with a shock that their faces were just slightly farther from the floor than his. They did walk on all fours! He willed the new arrivals to stay where they were, and as if they could hear him, they did. At first he saw only partially-opaqued helmets and vast protective suits. One by one, the aliens sat back on invisible haunches, took off the helmets and shed gauntlets. Keff vibrated with impatience until one of them moved in front of the gap again.

"Big flat faces," he told Carialle in staccato bursts of narration, "weird eyes. Sleek head, widens to neck. Sandy pelts, slightly fuzzy, like the garden cushions. Claw hands."

One of them moved too close to the cartons and shut off his view with a slick, oversuited shoulder. Keff withdrew his head very slightly, and waited. The body moved away, and the fabric of the coverall slid downward to reveal the creature's back.

"Cari, they have wings!"

Carialle's voice was a businesslike hum in his ear. "Vestigial wings? That says a lot about the devolution of this planet's bios…"

"No," he hissed, excitedly. "Full-sized wings. Like bat's wings, but with longer fur."

"Do you know what that means?" Carialle asked, astonished, adding up the facts in a microsecond. "This planet isn't hollow. There's no air mass to support flight. Its surface gravity is huge! That means there are no underground passageways, no millions of separately evolved sentients living cheek by jowl with the Cridi. That's why the difference in the air quality between outside and inside. They're strangers. This is an outpost, too! Where do they come from?"

"I don't know!" Keff whispered.

He shifted to get a better view, feeling the boxes with his gloved hands to make sure they wouldn't slip. He found another gap, closer to the computer setup, and applied his eye to it.

"I keep seeing flashes of claws and talons. I think there's a pair of vestigial fingers on the wings, where, er, where primary feathers would be, beside that pair of hands on the forelimbs that is used for manipulative as well as locomotive purposes. I'm getting a glimpse of heavy haunches."

"That would explain the slings," Carialle's voice said. "Four hands! Fascinating."

Keff heard the ticking of claws on the smooth floor. One of the aliens paused just on the other side of the containers, giving Keff a good look at it. The brawn peered at the set of the narrow head; the placement of the wings on the broad, golden back; the noble, handsome face. "You know, they look rather like griffins."

Carialle immediately accessed the Myths and Legends handbook, found the cross-reference for Griffins, subhead: Gryphons, then cross-referenced it to encyclopediae and classical works from the European subcontinent of Old Earth. "Those griffins had eagles' beaks and lion's tails."

"These have no nose, but those mouths… if they are mouths…"

The "griffin," answering a query from one of its unseen fellows, spread the halves of its upper lip, and Keff blanched at the sharp white fangs behind it. "That's a mouth, all right," he said. "We need to file a report with the CenCom, but first I have to get out of here."

"How?"

"I don't know, yet," Keff said.

"We will come to help," said a faint voice in his helmet.

"TE, no," he whispered into his audio pickup. "Stay out. Cari, tell them no. Don't let them."

The sound of his own voice dropped like a pin into the silence of the room. Keff felt the prickles race down his back. He looked up to find a Griffin staring down at him, surprise in its vertically-striped eyes. He scrambled crabwise away from it behind the boxes, but there was nowhere to go. The alien followed on all fours, tracking him on the other side of the crates. Panicking, Keff kicked over stacks of containers. They fell heavily, breaking open to scatter components across the feet of the aliens. He dove across the last stack and rolled an upright position in the corner, hands ready to strike.

"You're right, Sir Knight," Carialle said. "They do look like griffins. Be careful!"

Six of them stood in the room, with the rest crowding the corridor. All of them gawked at him with big, flattish eyes, faces expressionless. None of them moved, but with the advantage of big muscles and wings, they could wait until he was vulnerable. Keeping one hand up in defense, Keff felt his way along the wall, hoping for an escape door, though he'd known this room was a dead end when he had entered. They tracked his progress, calmly, unemotionally, waiting. Their assurance prompted all sorts of horrible scenarios in Keff's imagination. He panted, and his vision swam with blackness around the edges with the difficulty of drawing a deep breath.

One of them moved at last. The lead griffin, the one who had found him, started toward him with wings and spike-like fingers spread. The foreclaws, balancing out the big haunches behind, had fierce talons over ten centimeters long that ticked on the shiny, stone floor. Its big wings obscured the beasts behind so Keff couldn't tell what they were doing. Mustering for an attack? Keff flattened himself against the bulkhead, preparing to spring, wondering if his unarmed combat training would help. Where did you pivot to throw something with four legs and an unknown center of gravity? Would tossing it onto its wings disable it long enough for him to escape? The great beast loomed up closer and closer. The top lip split to show the sharp, gleaming fangs and a strip of orange-pink gums above them. The creature was saying something, but Keff could only hear the pounding of blood in his ears.

In the distance, Keff heard the sound of rushing air. The griffins, in a body, turned to look. Keff blessed the distraction. He took his best opportunity, and sprang over their heads.

He had miscalculated the drag of the extra gravity, and fell in the midst of the enemy. Half the aliens were distracted by the noise coming from the domes. The rest turned back to Keff. A couple of them grabbed for his arms with their foreclaws and wing-hands. He rolled away, shaking hard to get loose. The long nails scrabbled on the fabric of his suit. He thought he heard his sleeve rip, and winced. He stood against the wall, panting. More hands reached for him, and his eyes registered a confused blur of wings, claws and eyes. He grabbed a wrist and twisted. One of the griffins cried out. Another added its howl of surprise. Keff, flat on the floor in a jumble of boxes, raised his head as eight globesful of Cridi sailed into the room in midair.

"What takes so long?" Tall Eyebrow's voice said very clearly in Keff's helmet.

"TE, I told you to stay out!" Keff shouted.

To his surprise, the griffins froze in place when they saw the Cridi. Their eyes were wide, not with amazement, Keff thought, but with loathing.

"Slayim!" The word issued with clarion power from one throat, and was echoed by all the others. Every griffin rose to its hind legs and lunged for the Cridi.

Tall Eyebrow stared at the charging griffins for one astonished second, then Big Eyes's globe batted his from behind, sending it careening out of the way just before a griffin landed on it. More of the lithe aliens leaped straight for Big Eyes herself. Narrow Leg's globe shot in front of his daughter's, and the griffins showed their long teeth. The two globes revolved around one another, and bobbed straight upward, with three griffins snapping and clawing for them.

"Hey!" Keff shouted, throwing himself into the fray. "Leave them alone!" He bounded in between two griffins who were on their back toes, giving them almost three meters of reach, clawing for Narrow Leg's pilot, whose globe had retreated to the safety of the ceiling. One of the griffins spread its wings, knocking Keff sprawling and accidentally batting another griffin in the back. The alien who had been struck turned away from Small Spot. The Ozranian was cowering underneath the computer desk. He scooted out from his hiding place and hurried to hover behind a pile of boxes beside Long Hand, under siege from an alien who reached long wing-fingers around from one side of the stack, then the other. Another griffin dove for the two exiles. Keff gathered himself up and launched, ramming the first griffin under the right wing with his shoulder. It turned, a surprised look on its face, its powerful wings battering at him. Keff felt his helmet skew, and the next breath he inhaled hurt. He coughed painfully. He kicked the griffin in the chest, and to his own amazement, sent it sprawling backwards on its tail. The beasts were bottom-heavy! He assessed and docketed this fact, wondering why he was thinking so slowly, and why he heard a roar coming from under his right ear. He felt sick.

"Keff! Seal that," Carialle ordered in stentorian tones. Keff's head was ringing, from nausea and the volume of her voice. "Keff, can you hear me? Your suit has been breached. You're breathing ammoniated air. Are you all right? Keff!"

"Yes," he gasped shortly, and coughed again. He retched, and caught himself before he threw up. His hands fumbled for the neck of his suit, and he refastened the flapping lip of plastic. Clean, sweet-tasting nitrox flooded his face. Gratefully, he drew in lungfuls. "I'm all right. I. Am. Truly."

Carialle's voice melted with relief. "Thank goodness."

Keff didn't have time to regain his full strength. Two more griffins had joined the pair jumping at Big Voice.

"Aid!" shrieked the plump councillor. "Aid²!"

The other Cridi globes, led by Tall Eyebrow, levitated to assist their compatriot. Swats from claws and wings sent them scattering like a bunch of marbles. Big Eyes' globe hit the wall, and bounced to the floor. The young female lay in her ball of water, her dark eyes staring at nothing. A griffin, spotting her helplessness, tensed its muscular haunches and prepared to spring. A feral grin split its lip.

"Grab them!" Carialle shouted in Keff's ear.

"How?" Keff asked.

"Tell the Cridi! Catch!"

Keff turned and caught Narrow Leg's eye. The human clapped his cupped hands together and pulled the invisible handful toward his body. The elder Cridi nodded sharply.

"Sense!" Narrow Leg's single word echoed through every Cridi amulet. He pointed the fingers of both hands at the griffins, and they froze in place. The springing griffin stiffened in midair, and dropped heavily to the floor on its belly.

The room grew abruptly silent. Ten, ornamental, hexapodal statues in various warlike attitudes glared silent hatred at nothing.

"Nice work," Keff said. He took a deep breath, and sank to the floor. His legs, now aching from lack of oxygen, no longer wished to support him. He felt his sleeve for tears; it was intact. "Good job, everyone. Are you all right?"

"We, yes," Narrow Leg said. "Not used to self-defending. Thank you." Keff only nodded in return. Every other movement hurt.

The Cridi gathered from every corner to assess damage. Tall Eyebrow rolled hastily to his ladyfriend's side. An invisible hand scooped up some of the water in Big Eyes' globe and splashed her cheeks with it. The female blinked. She sat up and turned to smile at him. Tall Eyebrow almost collapsed with relief. Big Eyes clicked her globe gently against his, palm outspread. He opened his hand gently on the inner surface of his sphere, matching hers palm to palm. The two of them floated over to rejoin the others. Keff grinned indulgently.

Big Voice's container was scratched where it had struck the corner of a metal container, but it was not punctured. The stout councillor was voluble in his relief, babbling and waving frantic signs at all of his fellows and Keff. The others, though frightened by the attack, were more curious. Narrow Leg studied the captured aliens closely. He was struck by the hate on each face.

"Their pulses fast," he commented to Keff, near him on the floor. "Anger. Who?"

"I don't know," the human signed. "We've never seen this species before."

"How many?"

"Only ten, what you see here," Keff said.

"Ten?" Big Voice squawked, waving his hands in the confines of his plastic globe. "Thousands! Millions! I thought to be torn alive!"

"Hush!" Big Eyes snapped. She turned to Keff. "Why no more?"

"Because they don't live here," Keff said. "They're invaders. This system is, er, only of Cridi. These come from elsewhere."

"Of course this system is ours," Big Voice said. "Of course." He floated away, muttering about the piles of computer equipment and speculating on their value. "Cridi, alone."

"His mind is clouded," Narrow Leg signed, sympathy on his old face. "Too much to understand at once."

"Most interesting body structure," Carialle said, as Keff looked around at the captives. When the brawn had his breath back again, he hauled himself to his feet. "It feels almost obscene to be able to examine living creatures this way."

"Yes, but it's the only way to study them without getting torn to ribbons," Keff said. "They're strong! Did you see how fast they were moving, even in this gravity? They'd be super-creatures on a Standard planet."

"But they're not natives of this one," Carialle said. "In spite of those magnificent wings they couldn't fly up to get at the Cridi on the ceiling."

"Terrible monsters," Tall Eyebrow signed. He had stayed by Keff as the human took detailed video of the griffins. "More than any in the game we play. Why much hate?"

"I don't know," Keff said. "But I don't think we'd get much of an answer out of them if you released them now."

"What fearsome beings," Long Hand signed, her eyes enormous. Small Spot, color returned to his face, nodded vigorously in agreement.

Narrow Leg rolled in close for a good look, and bumped against Keff's leg for attention. "These are the destroyers of spaceships?"

Keff shook his head. "Ones like them, perhaps. I have no idea if this crew have been around for fifty years."

"We should destroy them," Gap Tooth, one of Tad Pole's crew signed, his small face set. "Killers!"

"We can't do that," Keff said quickly.

"Why not?" Big Eyes demanded. "They killed some of your people. Their friends or ancestors killed ours. They die!"

"No!" Keff said. "We don't do things like that. I can't execute anyone. That's against my code of ethics, as well as my instructions."

"Why?" Narrow Leg said, but the question was not for Keff. "Ask them why."

"I can't," Keff said, raising his hands to show helplessness. "I don't speak their language. It would take time to learn theirs. We can't keep these beings like this. I'm frustrated, but any further action is out of my hands. It's up to my superiors to make a decision like this."

"Not our superiors," said Big Voice, catching Keff's sign out of the corner of his eye. "We are superiors."

"But you are under my instructions here," Keff said, signing with strong gestures. "It's always possible that we could be making a mistake. The matter deserves investigation."

All the Cridi broke out in protests. Narrow Leg held up his hands. "Let us be guided by those with experience in such matters. What should we do?"

"We'll disable their spaceship so they can't leave. That will make sure they're here for the CW inspection ships to find. We can search for armaments, and in the meantime, try to discover clues as to where they came from."

"I want to know more about them, too," Carialle said. "This is just an outpost. There is no superior intelligence directing operations from here. I want to hunt them back to their source, find the big fish. I have unanswered questions, too."

Keff repeated Carialle's words to the Cridi. "In the meantime, let's glean what we can from this site."