The silence about the table was mortal. Pyanfar cleared her throat. Others’ ears were back, eyes dilated.

“They come,” Tully went on quietly. “Find my friend dead. They # angry, hit me, bring me out toward this second ship. Outside. Docks. I run. Run — long time. I come to your ship.” He ducked his head, looked up again with a wan, mahendo’sat smile. “I make the keyboard right for you.”

“That kif wants killing,” Haral said.

“Tully,” Pyanfar said. “I understand why you’re careful about questions about where you come from. But I’ll lay odds your space is near the kif — you just listen to me. I think your ship got among kif, and now they know there’s a spacefaring species near their territories, either one they can take from — or one they’re desperately afraid is a danger to them. I don’t know which you are. But that’s what the kif wanted with you, I’m betting — to know more about you. And you know that. And you’re reluctant to talk to us either.”

Tully sat unmoving for a moment. “My species is human.” She caught the word from his own speech.

“Human.”

“Yes, they try ask me. I don’t say; make don’t understand.”

“Your ship — had no weapons. You don’t carry them?”

No answer,

“You didn’t know there was danger?”

“Don’t know this space, no. Jump long. Two jump. # we hear transmission.”

“Kif?”

He shook his head, his manner of no. “I hear—” He pointed to the com, which remained silent. “That. Make that sound.”

“Knnn, for the gods’ sake.”

He touched his ear. “Say again. Don’t understand.”

“Knnn. A name. A species. Methane breather. You were in knnn territory. Worse and worse news, my friend. Knnn space is between stsho and kif.”

“Captain,” said Geran, “I’d lay bets with a chi the stsho had a finger in this too. Their station, after all… where the kif felt free to move him about the dock in public… I daresay the kif didn’t get any questions at all from the stsho.”

Pyanfar nodded thoughtfully, recalling the stsho official, the change in that office or that officer. A smiling welcome, impassive moonstone eyes and delicate lavender brows. A certain cold went up her back. “Stsho’d turn a blind eye to anything that looked like trouble, that’s sure — Imp,” she said, seeing Hilfy’s laidback ears and dilated eyes, “pay attention: this is the way of our friends and allies out here. Gods rot them. — Eat your dinner.”

Tully stirred his plate about, turned his attention back to that, and Pyanfar chewed another bite, thoughtful.

Knnn, kif, stsho… gods, the whole pot had been stirred when this Outsider, this human, dropped into the middle of it. An uncomfortable feeling persisted at the back of her neck, like a cold wind of belated reason. The whole dock at Meetpoint, zealously trying not to hear or see anything amiss, with a fugitive on the loose and the kif on the hunt…

There was no particular evil in the stsho — except the desire to avoid trouble. That had always been the way of them. But they were different. No hani read past the patterns. No hani understood them. And, gods, if the knnn were stirred up — along with the kif…

She swallowed the dry mouthful and washed it down with a draught of gfi, poured herself another cupful. Tully ate with what looked like appetite. Food disappeared all round the table, and the plates rotated for second helpings.

“I’m going to put Tully on limited assignment,” she said. “He can’t read, sure enough. But some things he can do.” He had looked up. “Niece,” she said, “you’re no longer junior-most on The Pride, this run. Ought to make you happy.”

Hilfy’s brown study evaporated into disquiet. “He’s junior-most?”

“A willing worker,” Pyanfar said, with a wrinking of her nose. “Your responsibility in part, now.”

“Aunt, I—”

“I told you how it was, niece. Hear? You know what we’re dealing with, and what stakes are involved?”

“I hear,” Hilfy said in a faint voice. “No, I don’t know. But I’m figuring it out.”

“Kif,” Geran spat. “They’re different, when the odds go against them.”

“Once—” Haral said, and winced. The knnn song was back again, shriller. “Rot that.”

“Close,” Pyanfar judged. It was exceedingly clear reception. She met Haral’s eyes facing her down the length of the table, more and more uneasy. The song continued for a moment, too loud to talk above it, then wailed away, gibbering to itself into lower tones.

“Too rotted close,” Haral said. “Captain—”

Pyanfar started to push herself back from table, surrendering to anxiety.

“Chanur Captain,” com said far more faintly, a clicking voice speaking the hani tongue. “Chanur Captain — don’t trouble to acknowledge. Only listen…”

Pyanfar stiffened, looked toward com with a bristling at her nape and a lowering of her ears. Everyone was frozen in place.

“The bargain you refused at Meetpoint… is no longer available. Now I offer other terms, equal to the situation. A new bargain. A safe departure from this system, for yourself and for the Faha ship now at dock. I guarantee things which properly interest you, in return for one which doesn’t. Jettison the remnant of your cargo, hani thief. You know our ways. If you do the wise thing, we will not pursue you further. You know that we are the rightful owners of that merchandise. You know that we know your name and the names of your allies. We remember wrongs against us. All kif… remember crimes committed against us. But purge your name, Pyanfar Chanur. More, save lives which were not originally involved in your act of piracy. Give us only our property, Pyanfar Chanur, and we will take no further action against the Faha and yourself. That is my best offer. And you know now by experience that I mahe no empty threat. Is this matter worth your sure destruction and that of the Faha? Or if you think to run away again, deserting your ally, will you hope to run forever? That will not improve your trade, or mahe you welcome at stations who will learn the hazard of your company. Give it up, thief. It’s small gain against your loss, this thing you’ve stolen.”

“Akukkakk,” Pyanfar said in a low voice when it had done. “So.”

“Aunt,” Hilfy said, carefully restrained. “They’re going to go after Starchaser. First.”

“Undoubtedly they are.” The message began to repeat. Pyanfar thrust herself to her feet. “Gods rot that thing. Down it.”

Chur was nearest. She sprang from her seat and turned down the volume of the wall unit. Others had started working themselves out of their places, Tully among them. Sweat had broken out on his skin, a fine, visible dew.

“Seal the galley,” Pyanfar said. “Secure for jump. We’re moving.”

Hilfy turned a last, pleading look on her. Pyanfar glowered back. And with Geran urging him to move on, Tully delayed, putting out a hand to touch Pyanfar’s shoulder. “Sleep,” Tully pleaded, reminding her, panic large in his eyes.

“For the gods’ sake put him out,” Pyanfar snarled, turned and thrust her own plate and some of the nearer dishes into the disposal, shoved others into the hands of Haral and Tirun and Chur, who were throwing things in as fast as they could snatch them. Hilfy started to help. “Out,” Pyanfar said to Chur.

“That business in the airlock… get its lifesupport going. Move it!”

Chur scrambled over the top of the table and ran for the doorway in a scrabbling of claws. Pyanfar turned with fine economy and stalked out in her wake, toward controls. Tirun limped after her, but Pyanfar had no disposition to wait. Anxiety prickled up and down her gut, disturbing the meal she had just eaten, sudden distrust of all the choices she had made up till now, including the one that had a slightly crazed Outsider loose on the ship in a crisis; and knnn near them; and their eyes blinded and their ears deaf to the outside…

She walked into the darkened bridge, slid into the well worn cushion which knew her body’s dimensions, settled in and belted in, heard the stir of others about her, Tirun, Hilfy, Haral. The kif voice continued over com. Elsewhere she heard Tully pleading with Geran over something, trying to get something through the translator which he could only half say. She started running perfunctory clear checks, all internal, threw a look toward her companions. Haral and Tirun were settled and running personal checks on their posts, rough and solid and intent on business. Hilfy had her ears back, her hands visibly shaking in getting her boards ready. So. It was one thing, to ride through kif fire at Meetpoint… quite another to face it after thinking about it.