"I figure," Hilfy said, to fill the quiet, and to answer questions Tully did not ask, "Goldtooth rendezvoused here with the human fleet. That's why he kited out on us at Kefk. He and Ehrran came in here, he got stuck here, in a standoff with Akkhtimakt. Maybe he got Akkhtimakt pried loose from the station. He did that much for the stsho. But Ehrran's on her way to Anuurn. Bet."
"Godsrotted well has to be," Haral muttered. "But with Goldtooth in it we got to wonder, don't we?"
''Like what happened here?'' That bothered her. The whole arrangement of things bothered her. The lack of methane-breathers. And Akkhtimakt and Sikkukkut, if they both wanted to be fools, could go on trading that position till the suns all froze. Every few shipboard days, every few ground-bound months, one side could do a turnaround at Urtur or Tt’a’va’o or Kefk or wherever, and come in and strafe the other who had taken possession of Meetpoint. Or Kefk. Or wherever. If ships got to trading positions like that, time-dilation got to stretching lives wider and wider; no in-system passages. No slow-time. Just run and run and run as long as a ship could take it and a body could take the depletion. A merchant ship did its jumps with a lot of slowtime and dock-time in between; and a tradeoff like that could do as much timestretch in a month of their own perception as a trader did in a decade. Before flesh and bone and steel had gone their limits. "Wonder is he didn't come in on Kefk."
"Kefk's got two guardstations. Kefk's got position on him."
Tully stared at them both. He had lost that, probably. But of a sudden the problem had found itself a cold spot in
Hilfy's gut. She took a sip of her cup to warm that cold and licked the soup off her mustaches.
"Sikkukkut's got something in mind. He's sure not going to sit here."
"There are fools in the universe," Haral said. "What if he isn't? What if he's not sitting still here? What if he's got something else in mind?"
But Goldtooth was out on the Tt’a’va’o vector. Methane-breather territory. Logical choice: the stsho feared the humans like plague. Stsho would deal with Ehrran; they would deal with the kif before they dealt with Goldtooth and his human allies. They would go with the known villains.
Stsho had no armaments. No capability for that kind of stress. Stsho would run if they could. Evade it all.
Tc'a and chi and-gods save us- knnn-they're not here, they're always here. Where are they? Knnn aren't afraid of anything. They won't run. Avoid, maybe; run in panic-not the knnn. Ever.
"Methane-breathers," Hilfy said. "Gods rot it, Haral. It's a trap. Sikkukkut's and Goldtooth's both."
Haral's ears flagged and lifted again, and a thinking look got through the exhaustion in Haral's eyes.
"Hilfy." Tully held his cup between his knees and his brow furrowed with worry under its fringe of pale wet hair. "Goldtooth not go Tt’a’va’o."
"You mean you know that?"
"I think. He come-turn, go whhhsss, like Tt’a’va’o Not."
"You mean he faked a jump? Stopped out there in deep space? You think he can do that?"
Tully might or might not have gotten all of that. "Mahe," he said. "Human do."
"Stop a jump short?"
"Same."
"Good gods."
"Makes sense," Haral said. "If they've got the stuff to do that. If they got it from humans- He waits here to fake a run."
"And Ehrran runs for good and real and leaves hani here to catch it when Sikkukkut came through? Gods-be, she's got a treaty with the stsho!"
"Give her credit. What could she do-if Akkhtimakt was here first. Goldtooth wanted Akkhtimakt intact. He's shoving the two kif into a fight, by the gods, that's what he's doing!" Haral rubbed her graying nose and it wrinkled up again. "Let them weaken each other before he throws the humans at them and before the mahen forces come in here. That's what he's up to. Let Jik hang; let Jik keep at least one gods-be kif halfway tame if he can while Goldtooth sets it up so he can take out both kif. That's what the mahendo'sat would really like. Throw the humans at 'em. Let the humans get shot up. That's why he left Jik behind at Kefk."
"No mahen workers left here onstation, I'll bet on that."
"Gods-rotted sure. Goldtooth could have had the word out long before this. Routed everything out of here. Cleared it all out when the stsho broke that treaty."
"Eggs to pearls Goldtooth's left a spotter here."
"No contest."
"It's still insystem," Hilfy said. "It's still in position to get whatever happened here, maybe there's more than one of them, huh? Maybe a couple of spotters, one drifting out slow, going to fire up when it's outside normal pickup, just sneak out of here. And if Goldtooth's out there in the deep and those fool kif that were tailing him jump all the way to Tt’a’va’o-"
Haral's ears lifted. The exhaustion melted from her eyes and replaced itself with a hard, hard look. "Keep going."
"Goldtooth might wait for news. Before his turnaround. If he makes one. He may have put more than one or two spotters on the outside of this system. He's used up all his credit with Sikkukkut himself, he's out there in the dark with the humans, with the tc'a that Jik was working with, he's got some credit with the han, maybe some with the knnn. What if he decided there wasn't any choice and he just lets the kif fight it out?"
"Maybe that's the safest thing we could all do."
"But-"
"I'm listening."
"But-you know the mahendo'sat are going to save their own hides. Ehrran's left him. We can't speak for the han. We got kif going to go head-on against each other with the humans on their backside. If both of them get busy, if the mahendo'sat hit them in the back-neither Akkhtimakt nor Sikkukkut can stand for that chance. They're in a mess. They can't leave the mahendo'sat armed at their backs. They're kif, and Goldtooth's going to attack and they know it. My gods, we got one kif making a threat against Anuurn. What's Akkhtimakt going to threaten, huh? Or is he just going to turn around and send a ship apiece at every mahen world and station?"
Haral's ears were all but flat. She was still listening.
"Ask Skkukuk," Tully said suddenly.
"Ask him what?" Hilfy asked.
''He kif. Ask what kif do."
"He's not on Sikkukkut's level. If he'd outthought him, we'd have Skkukuk to worry about."
"Kif mind. Lot dark. / go ask."
"Man's got a point," Haral said. "But no way we talk to the kif. Better we talk to the captain. Py-an-far, you understand me, Tully?"
"You think I'm right?"
"I been in space forty some years, kid, I never been real close to kif on their terms. You have. And you speak main-kifish. Which I still don't, not real well. But I've had a look at our passenger, 'bout enough to get an idea or two. And between the mahendo'sat and that kif, I'm real anxious. We got that other bomb aboard. And sorry as I am for him, he scares me worse'n Skkukuk."
"Jik," Hilfy murmured. And took another sip that failed to warm her gut.
'He's got a lot on him," Haral said, "and much as we owe him and he owes us-first, he's hurting; second, he's been hurt, by the kif and by his own partner and by us on top of it all; and thirdly, he's mahendo'sat and seeing his whole species in danger, and maybe he's got more information than we've gotten out of him. What's he going to do?"
The cold got worse. For one uneasy moment Hilfy could not even look at Tully. For one uneasy moment he was like Jik, alien and full of strange motives and unpredictabilities.