"They brought the predators with them?" Drusni echoed. "Why in the world would they do that?"

"They had no choice," Latranesto said mildly. "Look at your companions. Look at yourself, for that matter. What do you see?"

Manta frowned at the others, and in the fading light saw them looking back at him with equal confusion. What was Latranesto getting at?

And then, suddenly, he had it. "The skin lumps," he breathed, flicking his tails at the bulges dotting Pranlo's fins and body. "All those predators that have tried to take a bite out of you and gotten covered up."

He looked at Latranesto in confusion. "But they're dead. Aren't they?"

"Are they?" Latranesto asked. "Are they truly dead, or are they merely in a very deep sleep?"

"Good point," Manta conceded. "I don't know."

Latranesto flipped his tails in a shrug. "Neither do I. Neither do any of the Qanska. All we know is that when the Wise reach the next world, their outer skin is torn away and all those buried within are revived."

"A remarkable capacity for regeneration," Manta murmured.

"What was that?" Drusni asked.

"I was just remembering one of the first things I ever heard about the Qanska," he told her. "That you have the ability to recover and rebuild your bodies after an attack. Maybe the Vuuka and Sivra have something of the same ability."

"Or perhaps it is a unique property of the journey itself," Latranesto suggested. "There are a great many things about the journey that we don't know."

He flicked his tails. "We're not a problem-solving race."

The light of the sun was gone now, Manta noticed, with only the diffuse glow coming from deep inside the planet still there for them to see by. "So now you know the truth," the Counselor said after a ninepulse. "What will you do next?"

"Well, the first thing to do is get some sleep," Manta said.

"Sleep?" Drusni asked. "I thought we were in a hurry to get this whole thing up and swimming."

"A reasonable hurry, yes," Manta agreed. "But it's hardly desperate. It's sundark, we're all tired, and I need some time to digest what Counselor Latranesto has told me. Besides, we have to go find the nearest human probe before we can talk to them."

"I thought you could speak with them at any time," Drusni said.

"I don't know if I can or not anymore," Manta said. "Besides, that method works in English. I'm not sure how well I know that language anymore. Simpler to find a probe."

"There's one near the herd where Druskani and Prantrulo's children swim," Latranesto said. "It's less than a nineday away."

"Sounds good," Manta said. "We'll leave at sunlight."

He gazed out into the swirling winds. "And on the way," he added, "I'll tell you what I think the problem is, and why we'll need the humans' help to solve it."

Latranesto sank downward toward the lower levels, where his natural buoyancy balance would let him sleep more comfortably. Drusni and Pranlo locked fins and drifted off to sleep together on the wind.

Leaving Manta alone in the darkness. Trying to figure out what in the Deep he was going to do.

Because as of right now, the bargaining plan he'd tentatively worked had gone straight down the Great Yellow Storm. How could he bargain in good faith with a stardrive that didn't exist?

Especially for a stardrive the humans could probably never even get to?

But one way or another they had to get the humans' help. The more he thought over his theory, the more he was convinced that the Qanska could never fix this by themselves. They needed the humans; and the humans wouldn't give that help without something in return.

Unless he conned them out of it.

The thought made his fins squirm. He could certainly argue that the humans had it coming to them.

They'd sent him here under false pretenses, lying to him and the Qanska both as to their intentions.

Not to mention that grand kidnapping/extortion attempt. That alone was a huge debt they owed the Qanska.

But at the same time, the Counselors and the Leaders and the Wise hadn't exactly been forthright about their goals for this project, either. How much did that take off the humans' debt? What was the right equation to use, or the proper credit/debit balance?

No. There was no equation to use here, no balancing of ethical scales. Whatever the humans had done to him and the other Qanska, lying to them would be wrong. He would not allow himself to sink to that level.

And with that decision made, the rest of it fell simply and quietly into line. He could still bargain with Faraday; but he would make it clear from the beginning that he would be bargaining only for the secret of the stardrive, not the stardrive itself. If the humans balked at that, then they would just remain forever in ignorance.

But they wouldn't. Manta had once been human, after all. He knew them better than that.

Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his fins and let the wind take him. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day. He'd better get some sleep.

"Colonel Faraday?" The muffled voice called, the words half buried in the staccato of nervouswoodpecker tapping on his door. "Colonel Faraday!"

"Hold on," Faraday said, throwing off the blankets and blinking his eyes at his clock. It was just after four in the morning; and unless he was still dreaming, that was Hesse's voice out there in the corridor.

"Colonel Faraday?"

He wasn't still dreaming. Pulling on his slacks, Faraday grabbed a shirt and stepped to the door.

Liadof's men still had a passcard to his room, but he'd learned how to gimmick the door at night to give himself a little privacy. Draping the shirt over one shoulder, he flipped on the light and pulled off the access panel to the opening mechanism. A couple of wires put back where they belonged, and the door was functional again. Pulling on his shirt, he keyed the release.

Hesse had the slightly disheveled look of a man who's just thrown on his own clothing, and there was something tensely wild around his eyes. "Sorry to wake you, sir," he said as he stepped inside.

His voice, now that Faraday could hear it more clearly, was as agitated as his eyes. "We've got a situation here."

"What are you talking about?" Faraday asked cautiously, the skin on the back of his neck beginning to tingle. Something was very wrong here; Nemesis Six wasn't due at Prime for at least another week and a half. There shouldn't be any crises happening now. "What's happened?"

"I don't know," Hesse said, his breath coming in ragged gasps as if he'd run the whole way from his quarters. "All I know is that Liadof's been called urgently to the Contact Room, and there's word she's about to call you there, too."

Glancing back at the closed door behind him, he reached into his inner jacket pocket and slid out a folded sheet of paper. "I wanted to get this to you before that happens," he continued, holding it out toward Faraday, "It's the guarantee from my backers that you wanted. Here; you have to sign it."

"Put it on the desk," Faraday instructed him, sitting back down on the bed and snaring his shoes.

"Open it up and lay it out; I'll read it while I finish dressing."

"Do it fast," Hesse warned, fumbling the paper open and smoothing it out on the desktop. "They could be here any minute."

Faraday stepped past him and sat down at the desk. It was official document paper, he saw: ripproof, fire-proof, tamper-proof. This was serious business, all right. Leaning over to pull on his shoes, he began to read. The undersigned does hereby declare and state that he stands in alliance with the Citizens for Liberty—

"The Citizens for Liberty?" he asked, frowning up at Hesse. "Isn't that the group that's been protesting the Mars crackdown?"