Or been kidnapped. "Get us the sale, Blueshell. Greenstalk will be okay… OOB: Plan B." He grabbed a headset and pushed off from the console.

Ravna rose with him. "Where are you going?"

He grinned. "Out. I thought Saint Rihndell might lose his halo when the crunch came — and I made plans." She followed him as he glided toward the floor hatch. "Look. I want you to stay on deck. I can only carry so much snoop equipment; I'll need your coordination."

"But — "

He went through the hatch head first, missing the rest of her objection. She didn't follow, but a second later her voice was back, in his headset. Some of the tremor was gone from her voice; the old Ravna was there, fighting out from under her other problems. "Okay, I'll back you… but what can we do?"

Pham pulled himself hand over hand down the passageway, accelerating to a speed that would have left a lubber caroming off the walls. Ahead loomed the uncompromising wall of the cargo lock. He swatted a hand gently at the wall and flipped head over heels. He dragged his hands precisely against the wall flanges, slowing just enough so the impact with the hatch did not break his ankles. Inside the lock, the ship had his suit already power up.

"Pham, you can't go out." Evidently she was watching through the lock's cameras. "They'll know we're a human expedition."

His head and shoulders were already in the suit's top shell. He felt the bottom pushing up around him, the seals fastening. "Not necessarily." And by now it probably doesn't matter. "There are plenty of two-arm/two-leg critters around, and I've glued some camouflage to this outfit." He cupped his chin in the helmet controls and reset the displays. The armored pressure suit was a very primitive thing compared to the field suits of Relay. Yet the Qeng Ho would have given a starship for this gear. He'd originally put the thing together to impress the Tines, but it's going to get some early testing.

He chinned up the outside view, what Ravna was seeing: his figure was unrelieved black, more than two meters tall. The hands were backed with carapace-claws and every edge of his figure was razor sharp and spined. These most recent additions should break the lines of the strictly human form, and hopefully be intimidating as hell.

Pham cycled the lock and pushed off, into the wormheads' terrane. Walls of mud stood all around, misty in humid air and swarms of insects.

Ravna's voice was in his ear. "I've got a low-level query, probably automatic: 'Why you send third negotiator?'"

"Ignore it."

"Pham, be careful. These Middle Beyond cultures, the old ones, they keep nasty things in reserve. Otherwise they wouldn't still be around."

"I'll be a good citizen." As long as I'm treated nice. He was already halfway to the concourse gate. He chinned up a small window from Blueshell's camera. All this high-bandwidth comm was courtesy of the local net. Strange that Rihndell was still providing the service. Blueshell seemed to be negotiating still. Maybe there wasn't a scam… or anyway, not one that Saint Rihndell was in on.

"Pham, I've lost the video from Greenstalk, just as she went into some kind of tunnel. Her location beacon is still clear."

The concourse gate made an opening for him, and then Pham was in the crowded, market volume. He heard the raucous hubbub even through his armor. He moved slowly, sticking to the most uncrowded paths, following guide ropes that threaded the space. The mob was no problem. Everyone made way, some with almost panicky haste. Pham didn't know whether it was his razor spines or the trace of chlorine his suit "leaked". Maybe that last touch was a bit much. But the whole point was to look nonhuman. He slowed even more, doing his best not to nick anyone. Something awfully like a target-designation laser flickered in his rear window. He ducked quickly around an aquarium as Ravna said, "The terrane just complained to your suit: 'You are in violation of dress-code' is how the translation comes out."

Is it my chlorine B.O., or have they detected the guns? "What about outside? Any Butterflies in sight?"

"No. Ship activity hasn't changed much during the last five hours. No Aprahanti movement or change in comm status." Long pause. Indirectly from the OOB bridge he could hear Blueshell talking with Ravna, the words indistinct but excited. He jabbed around, trying to find the direct connection. Then Ravna was talking to him again. "Hei! Blueshell says Rihndell has accepted the shipment! He's onloading the agrav fabric right now. And OOB just got a commit on the repairs!" So they were ready to fly -except that three of them were still ashore, and one of them was missing.

Pham floated over the top of the aquarium and finally caught direct sight of Blueshell. He tweaked the suit's gas jets very carefully and settled down beside the Rider.

His arrival was about as welcome as finger-mites at a picnic. The scrimshawed one had been chattering away, tapping his articulated artwork on the wall as his helper translated into Trisk. Now the creature drew in his tusks, and the neck arms folded themselves. The others followed suit. All of them sidled up the wall, away from Blueshell and Pham. "Our business is now complete. We don't know where your friend has gone," said the Trisk interpreter.

Blueshell's fronds extended after them, wavering. "B-but just a little guidance is all we need. Who — " It was no use. Saint Rihndell and his merry crew kept going. Blueshell rattled in abrupt frustration. His fronds angled slightly, turning all attention on Pham Nuwen. "Sir Pham, I am doubting now your expertise as a trader. Saint Rihndell might have helped."

"Maybe." Pham watched the tusk-legs disappear into the crowd, pulling the trellises behind them like a big black balloon. Ugh. Maybe Rihndell was simply an honest trader. "What are the chances that Greenstalk would abandon you in the middle of something like that?"

Blueshell dithered for a moment. "In an ordinary trade stop, she might have noticed some extraordinary profit opportunity. But here, I — "

Ravna's voice interrupted sympathetically, "Maybe she just, uh, forgot the context?"

"No," Blueshell was definite. "The skrode would never permit such a failure, not in the middle of a hard trade."

Pham shifted windows around inside his helmet, looking in all directions. The crowd was still keeping an open space around them. There was no evidence of cops. Would I know them if I saw them? "Okay," said Pham. "We have a problem, whether I'd come out or not. I suggest we take a little walk, see if we can find where Greenstalk went."

Rattle. "We have little choice now. My lady Ravna, do please try to reach the tusk-legs interpreter. Perhaps he can link us to the local Skroderiders." He came off the wall, rotated on gas jets. "Come along, Sir Pham."

Blueshell led the way across the concourse, vaguely in the direction Greenstalk had gone. Their path was anything but straight, more a drunkard's walk that once took them almost back to their starting place. "Delicately, delicately," the Skroderider responded when Pham complained about the pace. The Rider never insisted on passage through clots of critters. If they did not respond to the gentle waving of his fronds, he detoured all around them. And he kept Pham directly behind him so the intimidation factor of the razored armor was of no use. "These people may look very peaceable to you, Sir Pham, easy to push around. But note, this is among themselves. These races have had thousands of years to accommodate to one another, to achieve local commensality. To outsiders they will necessarily be less tolerant, else they would have been overrun long ago." Pham remembered the "dress-code" warning and decided not to argue.

The next twenty minutes would have been the experience of a lifetime for a Qeng Ho trader, to be within arm's reach of a dozen different intelligent species. But when they finally reached the far wall, Pham was grinding his teeth. Twice more he received a dress-code warning. The only bright spot: Saint Rihndell was still extending the courtesy of local net support, and Ravna had more information: "The local Skroderider colony is about a hundred kilometers from the concourse. There's some kind of transport station beyond the wall you're at."