“Have ‘em make the time. Can you think of anything more important we’re doing here, for us or the Minervans?”

“No, but I know I’m not objective about it. Thanks for seeing things the same way.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

For a moment, the look he gave her made her feel more naked under her long johns than she had during any of the who-knew-how-many times before when he’d happened to see her wearing a lot less. She also realized she didn’t dislike the feeling. She rather wished Irv looked at her that way more often.

Telling herself it would be purely in the nature of an experiment, she thought about kissing Emmett again and making a proper job of it this time. Just then, though, from behind the privacy curtain Louise called, “Come on, Emmett, get back here and help me make sense of this latest weirdness from Houston.”

“Be fight with you-have to make sure the decks get swabbed, though,” he said.

Sarah snapped off a parody of a salute and made a face at him as he disappeared. “Aye, aye, Captain Bligh.” Saved by the bell, she thought as he went back to the rear of Athena.

She sternly told herself not to wonder whether she had been saved or thwarted.

As if to put that question to rest, she waylaid Irv when he got back to the ship, all but dragging him to their cubicle. She had no complaints once they were there; even if Irv took her for granted out of bed, she liked what he did in it. Finding that that was still so relieved her more than a little.

“Well,” he said as she slid off him, “what brought that on?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, hoping her guilty start did not show.

Evidently it didn’t. “You’ve been too busy to be interested almost since we landed,” Irv said, “and now you go and rape me. Don’t get me wrong-I kind of like it. I’ve missed you, if you know what I mean.”

“Mmhmm,” she said, wondering who had been taking whom for granted. “I do know. I’m sorry. It’s just that-”

“-we’re busy all the damned time. Yeah. I know.” He poked her in the fibs.

She yelped. “What was that for?”

“For not answering my question.”

“Oh.” She tried to keep things light. “Does it really matter where you get your appetite, so long as you eat at home?”

When Irv didn’t answer right away, she was afraid she had made things worse instead of better. She could not tell what was going on behind his eyes. That worried her, too; back on Earth she’d never had trouble reading him. When had she stopped being able to, and why hadn’t she noticed?

Then his face took on an expression she recognized: mischief. He rearranged her on the mattress pad. “Best idea you’ve had in a while,” he said. Of themselves, her fingers tightened on the back of his head.

Tolmasov took a skipping half step to stay up with Fralk. Comfortable Minervan walking pace was a little faster than what was comfortable for him. “You building all boats you need?” he asked.

“Da, Sergei Konstantinovich, we will have enough,” Fralk answered.

His Russian was better than Tolmasov’s command of the local language. Knowing he needed the practice, the pilot tried to get his thoughts across in the Skarmer tongue anyway. “You having all males you need to go in boats?”

“Da,” Fralk said again. His three-armed wave encompassed the camp growing outside Hogram’s town. He and the human were a couple of kilometers away, walking and talking as Tolmasov might have with a friend back on Earth.

Something made a noise in the bushes off to one side of the path. Things had been making noises in the bushes all along; by now the Russian paid no attention to them. Fralk also had ignored them-till now. Now he turned blue and started moving away from the bushes that hid whatever was making the noise.

Tolmasov backed off, too. “What is that?” he asked, pointing to the animal he faintly glimpsed through foliage.

“A krong,” Fralk said; it was not a word Tolmasov had heard before. “I did not know they came so close to the town anymore,” the Minervan went on. “With luck, it will have just fed and not be interested in eating anything else.”

When the pilot heard that, he unslung his Kalaslmikov and clicked the change lever down from safe to full automatic. Whatever a krong was, it didn’t sound like a household pet.

The beast emerged from the undergrowth. Tolmasov was surprised to discover that he recognized it. He doubted there could he many kinds of brown and white, long-legged, big-clawed large predators in the Minervan ecology. This had to be the same sort of animal as the one that had attacked Valery and Shota in the rover.

Fralk was getting bluer and bluer. Tolmasov did not blame him. Had he been facing this monster unarmed, he would have been frightened, too. Even with a rifle in his hands, he wished for zoo bars between the krong and him.

The animal let out a low, growling squall, almost what. the pilot would have expected from an angry leopard. The krong did not charge at once, though. It slowly sidled forward. It kept more eyestalks on Tolmasov than on Fralk. Minervans it knew; he was an unknown quantity.

Its cry rose to a shriek. Even if Tolmasov did not, Fralk knew what that meant. “Run!” he shouted. “Here it comes!”

The krong’s first bound showed it was faster than a Minervan. It went straight after Fralk. Either it had decided Tolmasov was not dangerous or it hoped to deal with him after it had slain the more familiar prey.

The bark of the AKT4 rose above the krong’s screams. As the first bullets slammed into it, the animal changed direction with the agility of most Minervan beasts. It rushed at its new tormentor. Tolmasov fired in short bursts, watched blood and tissue spray from the wounds he made. He was wishing for something heavier than a Kalashnikov-say, an anti-tank missile when, less than five meters from him, the krong went down at last.

Fralk had stopped fleeing as soon as he saw the krong was no longer after him. Now he slowly came back toward Tolmasov and the dead beast. His eyestalks kept shifting from it to the Russian and back again, as if he could not choose which was more important to look at. He was still bright blue.

“More krongii around?” Tolmasov demanded. He was trying to figure out how many rounds were left in his magazine and swearing at himself for not carrying a spare.

But Fralk answered, “No. They hunt alone.” He spoke his own language; he was still too rattled to use Russian. Several of his eyes went toward the krong again. “You killed it.” Green began to take the place of blue on his skin.

“Da,” Tolmasov said shakily. He was doing his best not to think about how close the krong had come to making it mutual. Big game hunting, which he had always slighted, suddenly looked a lot more like work.

“You killed it,” Fralk repeated. Now his eyestalks turned toward the pilot-or rather, Tolmasov saw in a moment, toward his Kalashnikov. The Minervan said, still in his own speech, “You spoke of this weapon before. I am sorry, but I have forgotten its name.”

“Firearm,” Tolmasov supplied automatically. “Rifle, to be exact.”

“Rifle. Spasebo. “Fralk was pretty much himself again, if he could remember to say thank you in Russian. He went on in that language. “What we have to give you so you give us rifle? You say once firearms more strong than ax, hammer. Now see much more strong. What we give, to get rifle?”

Damnation, Tolmasov thought. So far as he knew, none of the Russians had ever fired a shot where the locals could hear it-Shota and Valery met their krong away from what passed for civilization here. But now Fralk knew what bullets could do… Sure enough, he was staring with four eyes at the chewed up carcass by his feet. “What we give, to get rifle?” he said again.

“Fralk, I am sorry, but I do not think we can sell you a rifle,” Tolmasov said.

“Why? Only want to use rifle on Omalo. Fill Omalo full of holes, like krong here full of holes.”