“I know. Better there than anywhere near me.”

“Indeed. They were to monitor its ferocity as it grew larger, under close guard. The cunning and cruelty of the Zardalu has been a legend for eleven thousand years, since the time when they controlled most of the spiral arm.”

“Yeah. I’m from Zardalu Communion territory, remember? I’ve heard that sort of talk all my life.”

“Then you will be suitably surprised if someone suggests to you that it is nonsense. Yet that is what the report from Miranda indicates. The young Zardalu is powerful. It is endlessly, voraciously, hungry. But it is neither remarkably vicious nor unusually dangerous. Less so, the Miranda team suggests, than half-a-dozen other species in the arm — including yours and mine.”

Nenda sat down on one of the plush settees of the passenger suite and took an absent-minded gulp from the bottle. The news was another surprise, his second of the day. But was it a shock?

He sniffed. “I’ve wondered myself how we did it. We tangled with the Zardalu on Serenity, and then twice on Genizee. And every time they came off second best when they ought to have creamed us. You could say once was dumb luck, but three times in a row—”

“ — suggests that other factors may be at work. My own conclusion exactly. Our experiences suggest that the surviving strain of Zardalu are but a feeble shadow of their ancestors, the old race who spread terror across the galaxy. The testing team on Miranda lacks our data, but they also are much perplexed. They wonder if the benign environment in which the Zardalu has been raised since infancy has had a profound effect upon its nature. To provide a possible answer to that question, they offer a reward — a most substantial reward — to anyone able to deliver, for their study, one adult Zardalu that has been reared in its natural environment. That raises a question. We are following Darya Lang to the Anfract. Suppose we find that her trail leads within the Anfract, and points directly to Genizee? What would you propose to tell Quintus Bloom, should he ask you to guide him there?”

“I’d have a sudden and terrible loss of memory. I wouldn’t be able to figure out any way to get us to Genizee — and you better not either. I don’t want him grabbing a Zardalu for himself an’ bagging all the money.”

“Agreed. However, if you had reason to believe that at an appropriate future time, Quintus Bloom for some reason would not be present on board the Gravitas…”

“I might find I could remember again, all of a sudden. You know what a mystery the human mind can be.”

Atvar H’sial nodded. The pheromones had faded to nothing, but Nenda had the feeling that she was satisfied by his answer. She lifted up onto her four hind limbs and silently left the passenger suite.

Once she had left, Louis began to have second thoughts. The idea of the Zardalu as less than ultimate monsters was one that he needed time to evaluate, but he certainly did hate the idea of Darya Lang stranded among them on Genizee. Was she there now? Should he be looking for her? If so, how was he going to make Quintus Bloom and Atvar H’sial agree to that?

Louis followed Atvar H’sial out of the passenger suite and continued his inspection of the Gravitas. He was a man who believed in knowing as much as possible about any ship he was asked to fly. This one was certainly worth knowing. If the news from Miranda was a surprise, the ship itself was no less of one. It was big as well as richly furnished. The only thing missing, to Nenda’s knowledgeable but possibly biased eyes, was a decent weapons system.

Well, he had spotted a dozen places where that could be added, when the right time came. And for a hundredth of the value of the ship’s other fixtures.

He wandered into another self-contained passenger suite, this one over-furnished in an elaborate baroque style. The autochef offered unusually exotic and spicy dishes, more likely to excite than soothe the diner. All the floors were covered with deep, soft rugs, and the bedroom, when he came to it, was dominated by a huge circular bed with mirrors set above it. He walked across the thick pile of the carpet, intending to glance at the bathroom and see if this one too was furnished with its own hot tub.

As soon as the door opened and he could see inside, he jerked backwards.

The bathroom wasn’t just furnished. It was occupied. A woman was reclining in the tub, immersed so that only her head, bare shoulders, and legs from the knees down showed above the foam and the perfumed water. She turned her head at the sound of the opening door and gave Louis an unselfconscious nod of greeting.

“Hello there.” Glenna Omar’s smile was warm and welcoming. “Did Atvar H’sial tell you the news? I’m going to be her assistant! Isn’t it wonderful? I wondered how long it would be before you and I ran into each other again. And lo and behold — here we are.” She reached for the side of the tub and began to stand up. “Well, I think I’ve simmered enough for one day. Unless you’d like to… No? Well, if you would just hand me that towel…”

Louis had lived too long to think that closing your eyes in a crisis could help. He stared at Glenna’s foam-flecked pink and white form, reached for the long towel, and swore silent revenge on Atvar H’sial.

“You, me, and Quintus,” Glenna went on. She stepped forward into the held towel, and kept moving until her body was rubbing up against Nenda’s. “This is going to be an exciting trip.”

Apparently surprises, like so many other things in life, were apt to come in threes.

The Gravitas was one of the Fourth Alliance’s most advanced ships. For all its size, it handled like a dream and could be operated by a single pilot.

That certainly suited Louis Nenda. They were going to the Torvil Anfract, where inexperienced personnel would be something between a hindrance and a disaster; and after the job was over, the fewer extra hands on board, the better.

The ship had just cleared their sixth Bose Transition point, skipping in four days from the prosperous and well-settled Fourth Alliance to the outer limits of the Zardalu Communion. The travelers encountered at the transition points had changed along the way, from predominantly human merchants, tourists, and government bureaucrats, to beings whose species was sometimes almost as hard to determine as their occupation. Nenda had identified Cecropians, Hymenopts, Lo’tfians, Varnians, Scribes, Stage Three Ditrons, Decantil Myrmecons, what looked to Nenda like a pair of the supposedly-extinct Bercians, and one Chism Polypheme. That had given him a bad moment, because he and Atvar H’sial had stolen the Indulgence from a Chism Polypheme, back inside the Anfract. But this one was not Dulcimer, seeking revenge. It merely glared at Nenda with its great slate-gray single eye, reached out its five little arms, growled, “Keep your distance, sailor!” and wriggled the green corkscrew body past him.

For Nenda, the best thing about their outward progress was its effect on Glenna Omar. She was like Darya Lang when Louis had first met her, straight from the sheltered and innocent life of Sentinel Gate — although innocent might be the wrong word for Glenna. As the presence of aliens increased, together with evidence of poverty and barbarism, she became gradually more subdued. She would still rub her foot over Nenda’s or Bloom’s at dinner, or sit nudging knee to knee. But it was half-hearted, an automatic going-through-the-motions with the genuine spirit lacking.

That gave Nenda time to do what had to be done, and concentrate his mind on the Torvil Anfract. What he had told Quintus Bloom was perfectly true; he had been into the Anfract, and returned in one piece. Few beings could make that boast. What he had not told Bloom was that once he had escaped from the Anfract, he had said that he would never go back.