"That you, Sikkukkut?"
"Strange. I can tell hani apart."
"Get off my dockside."
"I came to follow up my message. The ring. How did your passenger receive it?"
"I forgot. Frankly, I forgot."
"Can it be he couldn't receive it? Damaged in shipment, might he be? That would distress me."
"I'm sure it would. Get out of my way."
"Your crewwoman's calling help, is she?"
"You won't want to stay around to see."
The thin wrinkled snout acquired a chain of wrinkles. "So you're putting out. Beware of Kita Point."
"Thanks."
More wrinkles. "Of course. There are such limited ways out of Meetpoint. Except for those the stsho permit. Except for us — who go where we like. I wonder where Mahijiru is."
"Don't know, then? Good."
"Your sfik will kill you."
"My ego, is it? — Come on, Hilfy." She started forward, picking a course to The Pride just out of kifish long-armed reach. But he moved to intercept them.
"We are both hunter-kinds, hunter Pyanfar." And with a twitch of that long hairless nose: "Kif are better."
"Hani are smarter." She had stopped, hand in pocket. "I have a gun."
Sikkukkut's long black nose gained wrinkles and lost them. "But being hani — you dare not use it unless I prove armed. This is the burden of a species its hosts fear not."
"It's called civilization, you earless bastard."
A dry kifish sniffing, like laughter. "The stsho are grass to us. You will not join with me."
"In a mahen hell."
He lifted both hands, palm outward. "I do not challenge, hunter Pyanfar."
Her hand tensed on the gun, to be quick; but the tall kif turned his black-cloaked back and walked off with that peculiar stalking gait.
"Sfik," Hilfy muttered, who was the linguist among them. "Means like pride, like honor, if the kif had any."
"If," Pyanfar said, staring after the kif and not forgetting a sweep about to see if there were confederates lurking: there were not. "That mouth may speak hani; that brain's pure kif. Move it. Get out of here."
"I have a gun," Hilfy said, backing away as she was told. "Come on, aunt. Let's both get out of here."
"Huh." She backed, turned, grabbed Hilfy by the arm and both of them hastened up the rampway into the access, headon into Tirun and Chur who were coming out.
"Good gods," she said when her heart had restarted.
"Sounded like you had trouble," Tirun said.
"It walked off," she said, and gathered them all up, marched them ahead of her past the safety of the airlock. Chur shut the door.
"Kif?" asked Tirun then.
"Kif," she said, and looked around sharply at movement to her left, where Geran stood, with Tully.
"Got talk," he said.
"Geran, for the gods' sakes I said settle him."
"It's urgent, captain."
"Everything's urgent. Get in line."
"Aunt," Hilfy said, with that kind of look Hilfy could get when something was utterly out of joint.
"Got paper," Tully said, breathless. "Got-" The translator garbled over mangled hani words.
"Get me a plug, will you?" One materialized out of Hilfy's pocket, and she put the audio into her ear. "Tully, what are those papers?"
"Got paper say human come fight kif # # need hani."
"Rot that translator. I'm losing that." "Human come fight kif." A very cold lump settled to her stomach. "Why, Tully?"
"Make kif #. Friend, Pyanfar. Bring lot human come fight kif." The cold grew colder still.
"Sounds like," said Tirun, "more than one ship involved."
"They want help," said Hilfy. "That's why he came. That's what I think he's saying. It's nothing to do with trade."
"Gods," she muttered, and looked up, at an earnest human face, at four crew-women with iaces taut with the same kind of thoughts. "Kif know this, Tully?"
"Maybe know," he said. He drew a great breath and let it go, held out his hands as if appeal could get past the translator. "Come long way find you. Kif — kif make trouble # one time fight Goldtooth friend."
"Goldtooth," she said. The name was a bad taste in her mouth. "What am I supposed to do with you? Huh?"
"Go Maing Tol. Go Anuurn."
"Gods rot it, Tully, we got kif up to our noses!"
His pale eyes locked on hers, desperate. "Fight," he said. "Got make fight, Py-an-far."
She lowered her ears and brought them up again, glancing round at her crew. Scared faces.
Looking to her for answers.
"Ought to give him to Vigilance," she muttered, "and advertise it to the kif."
No one said anything. She imagined the consequences for herself if she did that. The fragile Compact broken wide open, kif chasing a han deputy ship.
Or Ehrran leaving him on a stsho station, where not a hand would be raised to prevent kif from walking in and doing what they liked. Kif would do anything, if profit in doing it outweighed the profit in restraint.
"Where we taking him?" Tirun asked. "Maing Tol, Goldtooth says."
"Captain — We do that and that blackbreeches'll have our ears. Begging the captain's pardon."
More questions of her orders. She stared at Tirun, at a cousin, an old comrade; at another Chanur whose life was at risk.
"You want to turn him over to Ehrran, Tirun?"
Tirun stood there with her ears down, with rapid thinking going on behind her eyes. "We could send another can to Vigilance," she said. "Let that kif bastard wonder."
The idea struck her fancy. But: "No," she said, thinking of those same consequences. "Can't risk it. Come on." She seized Tully by the arm and dragged him into motion, then abandoned the grip as she headed for the lift. "Get Tully settled. Get his drugs for him and get up to the bridge."
"Go?" Tully asked, close at her heels. "Pyanfar go Hoas?"
"Urtur," she said, reaching the lift. She looked back as Chur and Hilfy took him by the arms.
Tirun punched the door and held it. "Going to Urtur. Going fast. Take the drugs. Stay out of the way.
Understand?"
"Got," he said, and let them pull him off down the hall. She stepped into the lift and Tirun got in and pushed the buttons.
One worried look from Tirun. That was all.
"I know," she said, which summed it up. She pulled the presentation case from the pocket where she had put it, opened it as the car shot upward.
A note. Beware Ismehanan-min, it said.
Meaning Goldtooth.
She handed it to Tirun.
The door opened on the upper corridor.
Chapter Five
There was quiet on the bridge, a great deal of calm and quiet, considering the situation, Khym brimming with questions, and a handful of exhausted crew. No one said a word. Six pairs of eyes were on her, expecting her to come up with something remarkably clever.
1.2 billion credits. Hilfy still looked to be in shock.
"Got a few problems," Pyanfar said, sinking into her chair, which was turned to face the bridge at large. "I think we'd better take that docking clearance the stsho promised and get ourselves our of here before they change their minds. Chur, Hilfy, you sure Tully's set, got his drugs, knows to stay put."
"Aye," Chur said.
"I don't promise we get a calm ride out of here. And we're going to push it hard. We're headed for Urtur. We're stripped. We can one-jump it. When we come in there we keep our ears pricked and get the news. Gods send it isn't kif. - Questions?"
Dead quiet.
She picked up a courier cylinder from the document pocket on the side of the chair. "Chur."