"And the stsho have got it.
"Number four's coming in," Chur yelled over the rising thunder of machinery, and the fourth can locked through and rumbled down the track toward them as they scrambled to meet it. Chur got to it first, crouched down and tugged fruitlessly at the lid. "It's locked too."
"Gods and thunders!" Pyanfar yanked her pistol from her pocket and fired past Chur into the lid mechanism, stalked down the row and fired at the next and the next and the next. Maintenance lights on the lids went out. The smoke of burned plastics curled up in the actinic light, mingling gray with their breaths. "Get torches if you have to! Get those lids off."
"It's coming!" Chur cried, tugging at the smoking lid, and Hilfy dived to help, past Pyanfar's own numb-footed advance on the can.
It was fish, a flood of dried fish, that sent its stench into the supercooled air; the next one, dried fruit. The third-
"This is it," said Chur, pawing past the cascade of stinking warm shishu fruit, for a second white lid showed through the spilling cargo. She reached it on her knees and wrenched the lock lever down, tugged with all her might at the lid and tumbled back as it came free.
A form like some insect in its cell lifted a pale, breather-masked face in a cloud of steam as the inner air met outer. With a muffled cry Tully began to writhe outward, in a frosting stench of heat and human sweat that almost overcame the fish and fruit. Chur helped, kneeling — seized Tully's white-shirted shoulders and dragged him free in a tumble and slide of fruit, in a cloud of breath and steam from his overheated body.
He gasped, struggled wild-eyed to his feet, hands flailing.
"Tully," Pyanfar said-he was blinded by the lights, she thought; he looked half-drowned in the heat that narrow confinement had contained. "Tully, it's us, it's us, for the gods' sake."
"Pyanfar," he cried and threw himself into her arms. "Pyanfar!" — losing breather-cylinder and hoses and stumbling through the stinking fruit in which he had slid outward. He pressed his steaming self against her, his heartbeat so violent she felt it through his ribs.
"Easy," she said. Hunter instincts. Her heart tried to synch with his. "Careful, Tully." She kept her ears up all the same, carefully disengaged his shaking arms and pushed him back. His eyes were wild with fear. "You safe. Hear? Safe, Tully. On The Pride."
He babbled in his own tongue. Water poured from his eyes and froze on his face. "Got," he said. "Got-" and abandoned her to dive back into the can, pawing amid the tangle of discarded breathing apparatus and trampled fruit, to stagger up again with a large packet in his grasp. He held it out to her, wobbling as she took it from his hands.
"Goldtooth," he said, and something else that did not get past his chattering teeth.
"He's going to freeze," said Chur, throwing one of the two coldsuits about his thinly clad, hairless shoulders.
And perhaps he only then recognized the others, for he cried "Chur," and staggered a step to fling his arms about her, shivering visibly as the cold disspated the last of his heat. "Hilfy!" — as Hilfy unmasked herself; he reached for her.
But his legs went and he slid almost to the ground before Hilfy and Chur could save him.
"Hil-fy!" — foolishly, from a sitting posture on the burning cold deck, with Hilfy's arms about him.
"Get him up," Pyanfar snapped at them both. "Get him to the lift, for the gods' sakes!" — waving them that way with the packet in one hand, for her feet were freezing and Tully's wet clothes were stiffening, with crystals in his hair.
He made shift to walk when they had pulled him up. He hung on them the long, long course down the tracks to the platform stairs, and labored the metal steps with them supporting him on either side and Pyanfar shoving from behind. He faltered at the top, recovered as they heaved him up with his arms across their shoulders.
"Hang on." Pyanfar reached the lift and punched the button for them, held the door open on that blast of seeming heat and the glare of light while Hilfy and Chur between them dragged Tully in and held him on his feet. A dull white frost formed on the lift surfaces.
"Paper," Tully mumbled, lifting his head.
"Got." She closed the door after her and sent the car hurtling forward. Chur held Tully tight against her body and Hilfy pressed close on the other side as the car reached the forward limit and started its topside climb.
"Get him to sickbay," Pyanfar said as it went. "Get him warm and for the gods' sakes get him washed."
That brought a lifting of Tully's head. His beautiful golden mane was wet with melting frost and clung to the naked skin about his eyes. He stank abysmally of fish and fruit and scared human.
"Friend," he said. It was his best word. He offered that, and that frightened look. In distress Pyanfar reached out and patted his shoulder with claws all pulled.
"Sure. Friend."
Gods, not to be sure of them. And to have come this far on hope alone.
"Got — Pyanfar, got-" His teeth chattered, no improvement to his diction. "Come see you —
Need — need-''
The lift stopped on lower decks, hissed its doors open. "Take care of him," Pyanfar said, standing firm to stay aboard. "And do it fast. I want you on other business. Hear?"
"Aye," said Chur.
"Pyanfar!" Tully cried as they dragged him out. "Paper-"
"I hear," she said, and held the packet as the door closed between them. "I got it," she muttered to herself; and remembering another matter, put a hand into her pocket and felt the ring beside the gun barrel, a ring made for fingers, not for ears. Only mahendo'sat and stsho wore finger rings, having no under-finger tendon to their non-retractile claws; having one more joint than hani had. Or kif. Not to mention t'ca and knnn and chi.
A human hand was mahe-like. Tully had been in kifish hands once. They had gotten him from them. And gods knew he would not forget it.
Gods-rotted Outsider. A few minutes dealing with him and she was shaking all over. He had a way of doing that to her.
"He's all right?" Haral asked as she arrived sore-footed on the bridge.
"Will be. Shaken. I don't blame him." She settled to her chair, filthy as she was, and curled her frost-singed feet out of contact with the floor. Haral, immaculate, had the diplomacy not to wrinkle her nose. "You hear that Ehrran business?"
"Some."
"Got ourselves one fat report going home, I'll bet. Tirun and Geran in?"
"They're dumping out that fish and fruit. Getting rid of the stuff. Spoiled cargo, we call it. Send it out as garbage."
"Huh." She leaned back into the chair, hooked a claw into the plastic seal of the packet and ripped it open.
"What's that?"
"Expensive," she said.
The fattish packet yielded several clips of papers, a trio of computer spools. She read labels and drew a deep breath at finding the document Goldtooth had given into Tully's hands — virtually indecipherable mahen scrawl, a printed signature, and hand-printed at the top: Repair authorization in crabbed Universal Block.
". . good repair. .", she made out. That the rest of it was unreadable gave her no comfort at all.
Another document, pages thick, swarming with neat humped type in alien alphabet. She flipped through the pages with further misgivings.
Human? She guessed as much.
The third document (typed):
Greeting, it said. Sorry go now, leave you this.
Got lot noise on dock, got kif, got trouble, got one mad stsho give me trouble. I send can customs, trust stsho Stle stles stlen not much far. He Personage on this station, got faint heart, plenty brain. If, Stle stles stlen, you reading this I promise cut out you heart have it for last meal.
Tully come big trouble. Mahen freighter Ijir same find his ship, human give him come. "Bring Pyanfar," he say, all time "Pyanfar" not got other word. So I bring. One stubborn fellow.