"You . . . you do not know . . . what you are saying . . ." Selar's face had gone dead white.

"Maybe not," agreed Soleta. "Maybe I don't know what I'm saying at all. Maybe I'm completely crazy . . . except I know what I saw, Selar. I know what I felt and experienced. Whether you like it or not, whether you want to admit it or not . . . what you're going through right now is the first stages of Pon farr.Your bad experience the first time threw your system off, but now the mating frenzy is back with a vengeance. And I have absolutely no idea what you're going to do about it."

And Selar had the sick feeling that, somewhere in the ship, Burgoyne was sniffing the air and grinning. And she wasn't far wrong.

VII.

THROUGH THE CORRIDORSof the Kayven Ryin,Si Cwan moved with the utmost care, flexing his arm to work out the kinks in his shoulder.

He was alone.

He had given Zak Kebron the slip, for Kebron had quickly made it clear he had no intention of letting Cwan handle matters the way he wanted to. The idea of not using any of the hand weapons, for starters, was intolerable to Kebron. In his arrogance—at least, arrogance the way Si Cwan saw it—Kebron felt that he himself did not have to depend on weapons. But he was of the forceful opinion that if Si Cwan had the opportunity to use a weapon on Zoran, he should take it. That nothing was going to be accomplished by treating the situation as a grudge match.

But this had gone far beyond grudges. Si Cwan knew, beyond any question, that he was going to kill Zoran. He simply had to. Honor would not allow anything less. And he had to do it with his bare hands. This was not a question of honor allowing anything less, but rather his simple determination to make Zoran's punishment as painful as possible.

So Si Cwan had, moving quickly, left the Brikar behind. He'd been subtle about it; give him some credit. He'd darted down a corridor at a faster clip than the Brikar could maintain, and then run off down a connector, slid through a maintenance tube, and next thing he knew, he was on his own. And if he should live long enough to be in a position where he need make excuses, he could always simply claim that they had become accidentally separated from one another. Accidents, after all, did happen.

He heard a noise.

It was definitely not Zak Kebron. He already knew that rock-steady footfall. No, it was quick, extremely light-footed. He would almost have thought it was the movement of a small animal, so fast and nearly insubstantial was it. But Si Cwan wasn't fooled, not for a moment.

He crouched down and moved like a giant spider, arms and legs operating in perfect synchronization. He presented as minimal a target as possible, should it come to that.

He moved past one room, the door to which was closed, and from within he thought he heard something. A quick footfall, or perhaps something on a table within that was slightly jolted and sent skidding. Something. He paused outside the door, crouching to one side, trying to determine whether or not he should burst into the room. It could very well be that someone was waiting for him to do precisely that, and had a vicious weapon aimed squarely at the door.

Or perhaps they had anticipated that he would think entry through the door was a trap . . . and were instead aimed at the ceiling, or at a vent, hoping that he would make his entry that way.

He still had the plasma blaster slung across his shoulders, and practicality began to rear its ugly head. He still had every reason to want to throttle Zoran . . . but by the same token, he had a few more reasons to want to continue to live.

Well . . . perhaps using the plasma blaster wouldn't be such a crime after all, as long as the killing blow was struck by hand. That was, after all, the important thing.

He unslung the blaster, aimed it squarely at the door, and fired. At such close range, the plasma blast plowed through the door like acid through paper, and Si Cwan leaped headlong through the door, shoulder rolled and came up to face . . .

. . . nothing.

He was inside a laboratory, and there was no evidence of anyone else there. There was a beaker rolling across a table. Other than that, nothing.

He muttered a curse as he slung the plasma blaster over his back. The noise of the plasma blaster would undoubtedly attract Zoran or his compatriots there.

Orelse Kebron himself, which would leave Si Cwan with explaining to do and an undesired ally at his back. Si Cwan felt that if there was one thing he did not need, it was someone watching out for him.

He thought that up until the moment that the ceiling crashed in on him.

It caught him completely by surprise as an overhead grating slammed down onto him, driving him to his knees. A split second later, Zoran dropped down from his hiding place overhead inside one of the engineering service ducts, and landed squarely on Si Cwan's back.

He drove a vicious blow to the base of Si Cwan's neck, to the hard cluster of muscles situated there, and by all rights it should have paralyzed Si Cwan from the neck down for approximately five minutes. In the short term, it did the job. Si Cwan thudded to the ground, unable to feel anything in the rest of his body. The fall spilled Zoran to the floor as well, but Zoran rolled away and came quickly to his feet. Si Cwan struggled furiously, trying to regain command over his movements, as a sneering Zoran approached him.

'Too easy. Much too easy," he said.

The humans had a phrase for it: mind over matter. The mind belonged to Cwan, and the matter was— in this instance—his own body. He refused to acknowledge the physical reality that he was helpless. He would not allow himself to die helplessly in a paralyzed condition. It simply could not, would not be done. His brain sent commands to the rest of his body to respond, sending synapses roaring through him like photon torpedoes.

Against all odds, against anything that Zoran would have deemed possible, Si Cwan's legs slammed upward. They did not do so with all the force that they usually possessed. But it was sufficient as his legs scissored around Zoran's at the knees. Before Zoran could move, Si Cwan forced himself to twist at the waist. He felt sluggish, torpid, but slow for Si Cwan was still lightning for most anyone else. The move was enough to collapse Zoran's leg, and Zoran went down to find himself on the floor, face-to-face with the enraged Si Cwan.

Si Cwan rolled over, half leaping and half lunging toward Zoran. He landed squarely on his opponent, grabbed him firmly by the ears, yanked upward and then down, slamming Zoran's head onto the grated floor. Zoran's head rang from the impact, and with a roar and an effort fueled by the explosion of pain behind his eyes, Zoran shoved Si Cwan off himself. Si Cwan rolled over toward a table, saw an opportunity, and quickly upended the table, sending it tumbling toward Zoran. Zoran barely managed to scramble out of the way, and by the time he was on his feet, so was Si Cwan.

They stood there for a moment, catching their respective breaths, their chests heaving, their hatred almost palpable.

"It's been ages, Si Cwan," snarled Zoran.

"Where are the other two? Rojam and Juif, they must be nearby."

"You don't think I'd give away our strategic position, do you?" In point of fact, they were nowhere nearby. The confrontation was strictly between Zoran and Si Cwan, which was how Zoran had wanted it.

Yet Si Cwan smiled with thinly veiled contempt and said, "Did you embark on this stupidity on your own? Or, even better . . . did they accompany you on this endeavor and then take the opportunity to abandon you? Is that it? Have your cheerfully domineering ways managed to grate on them after all these years? That would not surprise me. No, not in the least."