And the robot scan was still not showing them added to image of Urtur system. It was not direct scan-image. It was computer-generated; and the computer failed to put their existence on the screen.
"We've got an error," Haral said. "Bastard beacon's giving us Kshshti heading, wants us to take starfix on Maing Tol. Put that lane request through again, Hilfy. It's gone crazy."
"Hold that." Pyanfar stared at the message coming up on her number one screen. She keyed the Print on: it hummed and spat out hardcopy into the documents bin. Strings and strings of codes. More codes. Theirs...
Ana Ismehanan-min, it said, to good friend.
Advise you got bad trouble Kita Point.
Beacon give you now new heading.
I fix with Urtur authority, number one good.
Go Kshshti route.
Know got close kif, but Kita got too many kif.
Mahen ship, kif ship, got two hand number ship.
Mahen ship not got be everywhere too quick.
Sorry this trouble.
You one-jump Kshshti number one fine, no trouble, no stop middle of dark like Kita.
You reach Kshshti you give authorization code *Hasano-ma*.
You do good; Know you number one quick thinker. Kif not catch.
"You egg-sucking bastard!" The restraint held her seated and half cut off her wind. She took a clawed swipe at the tray and slammed the printout onto the clear space of the panel; but the screen kept on feeding codes and the printer kept on going in idiot persistence.
"Message from beacon," Hilfy said, carefully unperturbed. "Blinker alarm advises us acknowledge and accept new heading."
She cut the screen output. The printer, undefeated, hummed and spat out yet another sheet.
Second message. More codes.
Urtur station advise you course change big urgent.
You not be register on system scan.
Beacon blank you image give you cover. Go quick.
"Beacon's not malfunctioning," she muttered. "It means it. That bastard Goldtooth set something up with Urtur. They're routing us to Kshshti."
"Kshshti's half kif," Geran protested. "We go in there-"
"It's a one-jump. He's right in that, if Kita's blocked. At least we won't be out in the dark nowhere with the kif. . Call up Records: what's Kshshti got for muscle?"
"Searching," Chur said.". . Got two hunter-ships assigned from Maing Tol; stats show ten percent stsho calls, sixteen t'ca-chi, thirty-two kif, fifty-one mahendo'sat-I don't get any assurance on those hunter-ships being there. Based there, it says."
"Fine." She gnawed at her mustaches and twitched her ears while the beacon went into its Acknowledge-comply routine and com flashed warning lights. Tick-tick. Tick. Tick-tick-tick. Haos was still possible. So was Kura. The stsho. The han. "We go with it. Don't see what else to do. Beacon's going to blow a circuit otherwise."
"We're pretty deep in the well," Haral said, understated caution. The star had them firmly now: vector shift meant total dump. Meant a rough reacquisition, fighting to get more V back than a star wanted to give them.
"Got no choice, have we? Advise Tully. Can't wait around."
Hilfy relayed. "Tully's coherent. He says go."
"Set it," Pyanfar said, and raked the last printout from the bin.
And stared. It was not the comp readout she had expected. That was on the bottom of the tray. Another beacon-sending had come in, autoed into the printout bin.
No codes this time. Perfect hani.
Hani ship "The Pride of Chanur": avoid Kita.
Akkhtimakt has established watchers there.
You will not come alive through that space.
Be no fool.
A shiver went over her skin.
"Hilfy."
"Aunt?"
"You read that number-three message?"
A silence. Hilfy searched her bin.
"Who sent that?" Hilfry wondered, quiet and hoarse.
"Someone fast," she said.
"Brace for dump," Haral said.
The vanes cycled in, a dizzying pulse half-forming their hyperspace bubble, a ripple like vision through oil.
It let them go and Haral began their realspace course-change then, a long sickening hammering of correcting directionals and mains. G hauled at an already outraged gut.
"Got the Maing Tol fix," Haral said. And a long, long while later, when the engines reached null- V and kept burning: "We just passed null."
And later, as bodies ached in one long misery: "Closing on mark."
"Go when ready," Pyanfar said. Urtur's dust had not hit the hull yet, but the place always sent the wind up her back.
Blanked off station scan, for the gods' sake. A ship hurtling dark and unreported through Urtur system with Urtur Station's collusion, a risk to other ships-
Fearing what? Kif insystem?
"Stand by the pulse." Haral's voice cracked with fatigue.
"Want me to take it?"
"I've got it set. Stand by."
Another pulse, another queasy moment neither here nor there. There was the bloody smear of a red light on the board.
"Vane two red," Pyanfar muttered. "Stop it there."
"We're a shade off V."
"What blew?" (Khym, weakly.) "There something wrong?"
"Regulator in the vane column," Pyanfar said, blinking it all into focus again. Her bones ached.
"Ship doesn't like all this change of mind. Tirun, I want an interrupt check on that vane."
"Right." Tirun's voice shook with exhaustion. No complaints. "Sure like to know why it didn't cut off."
"Solve it from inside."
"Urtur's no gods-rotted place for a walk."
"We in trouble?" Khym asked.
"Just got a little mechanical problem. Still got one backup left on that system. Regulator ought to have shut the vane down short of blowing what blew. I think our problem's there. That's an in-hull problem. No big trouble." But it was trouble. Something made it blow. And Kshshti was a long, long one-jump. Big stress. If that vane went- "What's our transit time?"
"Got-" Haral said, "-48.4 hours to next jump."
"We'll find the glitch by then." She powered the chair back, needing room to breathe. Another quarter turn of the chair and she saw Khym sitting there, head leaned back against the cushion, breathing in slow, careful intakes, looking her way with a bleak curiosity. He had not been sick. Was not. Was plainly determined not to be.
Holding it, she guessed.
"Tully wants to come topside," Chur said.
"Fine." She was numb, with a certain insulation between herself and calamities back at Meetpoint, and the one back there on their tail. She looked aside as all number-four screens acquired an image from The Pride's outside eyes, habit when they arrived at a place. Haral had done that, reflex or a statement: no panic. Just routine operations.
Urtur was spectacle enough, to be sure, one great fried egg of a star and system magnified in their pickup, a yellow star for a yolk that glowed hellishly in the flattened disk of dust that surrounded it.
Planets swept dark orbits in the disk, accreted rings of their own. Urtur's worlds were mostly gas giants, with a few well-cratered smaller planets buried in the muck.