His staff had gathered up their carry-on baggage, of which there was a fair quantity.

Tano was with the servants. “One has the manifest, nand paidhi,” Narani said to Tano in his hearing, “so that baggage may find the quarters. How shall I deliver this document?”

This, in a space increasingly complicated by loose passengers, baggage, straps, and elbows.

Something banged. Nothing advised what the various bleeps, beeps, bangs, and thumps were, but he thought it might be the hatch, and in the next moment a wave of cold wind came through the shuttle.

He had to forget Jase then. He cast grim looks at his security, sure that he needed to stay with them, because, being atevi, theywould assuredly stay with him, and he wanted no misunderstandings. The possibility of abrupt, wrong movement all rested with him, with the relative position of him, his guard, and threat. He dared not let overzealous station security create a moment of panic.

“If they do jostle us, Nadiin,” Bren said, drifting up beside Banichi and Jago, “recall they don’t feel man’chi, and may make apparently hostile moves. They are foreigners. Be restrained. Be very restrained. Don’t show weapons.”

“Yes,” Jago said, that disconcerting Ragi agreement to a negative.

The Mospheirans pushed through their midst, evidently intending to be first out. “Let them, Nadiin,” Bren said, by no means inclined to argue with Kroger’s sense of proprieties.

Kate and Ben, more hesitant, drifting free, looked distressed, worried as they passed, clutching drifting luggage.

“Understood,” Bren said to the junior staff. “Go on past. Best if you do go out first. Best if the first thing they see isn’t atevi. Good luck to you.” His servants waited, cramped to the side, while Kroger and her team exited.

“Go,” he said then, and went forward, using the seat backs for propulsion. Jase stayed close, experience and unthought confidence in the environment in the way he gauged distance ahead of him and checked a small movement with unthought precision.

A little of the motion sickness quivered through Bren’s stomach, or indigestible fear. He imitated Jase, using the same technique of small pushes and stops against the seats to avoid bumping into his servants. “Nadiin-ji. Follow Banichi and Jago. Do not make sudden moves, no startling of the humans.”

The air in the ship had turned from mere cold to truly bitter, breath-steaming cold. His hands were numb. Within the air lock, it was worse still; the chill turned any moisture in the air to ice. He met the handline there, took hold, regretting gloves had not been part of the arrangement in their shirtsleeve environment, as he followed Kate’s feet out into the bitter chill of the access.

There a handful of ship worker-personnel, suited against the cold, wearing masks and goggles, likewise clung with gloved hands to the rigged line. The Mospheirans had gone on, a line of bodies the brain kept saying was ascending a rope through water. Perception played tricks, in a stomach-wrenching glance at an environment of metal grids and pipes and insulated walls.

In the same moment the workers saw what was coming: the body language wasn’t as definite in zero-G, but Bren saw it. First: Jase; we know him, glad to see you. Then: That’s a stranger,coupled with, Omigod, they’re large, they’re alien, and there are more of them than us.

Jase reached out a bare hand to one of the anonymous workers and caught a gloved grip. “Luz?”

“Jase.” The word came muffled through the mask. Josefin was the name on the orange protective suit. “Jase!”

“This is Bren Cameron behind me. His staff. Atevi security. And his servants. I hope the message got here.”

“Yes,” Luz said. “Yes. Mr. Cameron.” Bren drifted along with the assistance of the rope. Exposed flesh, face, ears, and fingers—burned and chilled in the dry cold. The inside of his nose felt frosted, his lungs assaulted. He held out his own hand, had it taken, gingerly, in a grip that hurt his cold fingers.

“Thank you for the welcome. My bodyguard and staff, thanks. Glad to be aboard.”

“Yes, sir,” was the answer. Luz Josefin, a woman with dark eyes behind the goggles, seemed paralyzed an instant, then said, “Yes, sir. Hurry. You’ll freeze. Watch your hands. Warm your ears when you get inside.”

“Thanks.” Bren moved along rapidly then, fingers having lost all feeling. Jase was with him. His staff followed. The atevi crew hadn’t exited—wouldn’t yet; they and the pilots, with their separate hatch, would still be at work, checkout and shutdown. Bren concentrated on getting himself and his security to the end of the rope and the doorway he saw ahead before he lost all muscle coordination… and before Kroger might shut the door in their faces.

“Air lock.” Jase shoved him through, using leverage. “Watch those controls. Don’t push any buttons.” He bumped Mospheirans, couldn’t help it, tried not to kick anyone.

“Are enough of us going to fit?” he asked Jase in Mosphei’, and was glad to see another crewman, wearing bright yellow, standing guard over the lift controls.

His staff packed themselves in. There was a directional arrow on the wall, and the attendant hauled at the Mospheirans, saying, “Feet to the floor,” until they had squirmed and rotated into some sort of directional unity, “Feet down,” Jase said. “Watch the luggage, Nadiin, push it to your feet.” The door shut by fits and starts, wedging them and their baggage in, and Bren blew on the fingers of one hand, asking himself how fast frostbite could set in on the one maintaining a hand-grip.

“Never been this way but once,” Jase said. “Should have remembered gloves. Sorry. Sorry about this.”

“Yes,” Bren said with economy, teeth chattering. “Gloves have to go on the list.”

The car moved.

“Hold on,” Jase said. “ Jai! Atira’na. Don’t let go.”

“Hold on!” Jago echoed, amused, as it proved understatement. Bags settled, forcing themselves among atevi feet. Kate’s bag traveled to the floor and thumped.

“We’ll go through the rotational interface,” Jason said in Ragi, and repeated it in his native accent. “Don’t let go the handholds at any time.”

It was a curious sensation, a little like going from flying to mildly falling, resting very lightly on a floor, then weighing more and more. Where does this stop? Bren’s senses wanted to know with panicked urgency.

The Mospheirans had been told no large hand baggage. This was a point the Mospheirans had clearly noticed, and probably resented like hell right now, as his four servants fought desperately to keep theirs organized. Tano and Jago helped, shoving items back in the shifts of stress.

A lift, hell. It didn’t lift, it suddenly moved sideways, like a small plane in a thunderstorm.

It dropped.

Came to a stop. Definitive stop, Bren decided, and relaxed an ice-burned stranglehold on the safety grip.

The door opened on light, warmth, a beige wall and an official welcoming committee, men and women in blue uniforms, all the expected signs of rank… uniforms identical to uniforms in historical paintings, in old photographs, in plays and dramas.

It wasn’t teleconferences anymore. It was living history looking them in the face as they got off the lift, one of those perception shifts: home, for Jase, to him and the Mospheirans, history, like someone dressed up for a play—while the atevi saw this uniformed lot as… what else?… the very emblem of the foreigners who had dropped from the sky.

Bren immediately recognized two of the faces he’d seen previously on a viewing screen: Captain Jules Ogun, third-shift, dark-skinned, white-haired. In real life, he had curiously few wrinkles, as if some sculptor’s hand had created them, then smoothed them out again. He was over eighty years old, and had the body of a younger man.