No place for a walk indeed. Particles would hole even a hardsuit in short order.
Mahendo'sat owned Urtur system, doing mahen things like poking about in the dust hunting clues to why Urtur was like it was — for pure curiosity, which was why mahendo'sat did a great many peculiar things. But at the same time and practically, they maintained a case for the methane-breathers, who thought methane-dominant Elaji a fine fair place, with its clouds aglow with the constant flicker of lightnings and meteors making streaks by the minute in an atmosphere already greenhoused by previous impacts. Oxy-breathers got photos of the surface. Tc'a revelled in it, and mined rare metals, and had industry in that hell.
Knnn too.
And where, she wondered, considering that deficient scan image, was their own private knnn?
Blocked off scan the same as they, and out of range of their own pickup?
Gone, perhaps. Off their track entirely.
She did not trust that. Not finding the knnn simply meant they had not found it.
The Pride did a minor course correction, a gentle push at her left. For any ship going crosswise to the dust circulation, Urtur transit was a matter of finding the most useful hole in the debris and presenting as little as possible of the vane surface to the particles during ecliptic transit.
They had damage enough to contend with, gods knew.
"Get her set and we go auto for a while. You can do those checks after we get some food in you, Tirun. - Who's on galley?"
"Me," said Hilfy.
"Get on it." And not without thought: "Crew-youngest always gets the extra duty. You help her, Khym."
Khym just stared at her from the oblique, a desperate, half-drowned stare. Hilfy turned her chair, released her restraints and levered herself out of it. Khym moved then, got up like a drunk and held onto the chairback for a moment.
Work, indeed work.
And he followed Hilfy without a backward look, by the gods, the ex-lord of Mahn on galley duty, no complaints. She drew a long slow breath and remembered youth, Mahn, its fields, the house with the spring.
And a tired elder hani who tried to begin all over. At bottom. In a dimension he hardly understood.
"Going to be one lot of mad shippers," Tirun muttered. "Remember that rush order from that factor?"
"Bet Ayhar nabs it," Chur said.
Pyanfar released her restraints and got to her feet. Her joints ached and there was fire down her back.
She stopped in midstretch. Tully was there in the doorway, ghostlike silent in the white noise of The Pride's working. He rested one arm on the doorframe, and stood there, barefoot, in simple crew-woman's breeches and nothing else, looking wan and cold. No more friend, no more Py-anfar.
Just that bruised, cornered look that wondered if anyone had time for him.
"I know," she said. "We get you fed."
"Safe?" he asked. He knew ships, enough to feel The Pride faltering-and himself alone and knowing all too much. "Ship-" He made a helpless motion. "Break?"
"Got it under control," she said. "Fine. Safe, all fine."
The pale eyes flickered.
"Fix soon," she said. Fear looked back at her, habitual and patient. She beckoned him and he left the door and walked all the way inside. Mobile blue eyes flicked this way and that, scanning monitors for what they could read, quick and furtive move. They centered on her again.
"Got talk." He had gotten a little hani. She grew accustomed to his slurring speech. The translator spat useless static. "Got talk, please got talk."
"Maybe it's time we do." A great uneasiness came over her, things out of joint. Males and tempers and their old friend Tully, whose alien face had that strange, distracted movement of the eyes.
Fear of them as well as well as kif? And suspicious reprobate that she was: Lies, Tully? Or plain self-interest from the start?
"Sure," she said. She stank, reeked; she thought instinctively of baths, of males and quarrels and a thousand lunatic distracted things like impacts at this speed, and the vane that showed intact in the image on Tirun's screens (but it was not, inside, and that could be bad news indeed.) Urtur. Docking with, likely, kif about. And not a hope of help. Urtur had no muscle adequate to fend off anything.
Poor human fool, we could lose us all here, don't you know? They'd move in, take what they liked, you foremost - "Gome on," she said to the crew at large, who were all tremble-handed at their work.
"Break it off. We eat, get some sleep." She caught Tully by the arm. "You come and tell me, huh?"
Chapter Six
The dust whispered on the hull like distant static, above the other sounds-abrading away, Pyanfar reckoned; but their vanes were canted edge-on to it, the observation dome and lenses were shielded, and that was the best that they could do. So The Pride exited this fringe of Urtur with a little polish on her hull. They made what speed they could through the muck at system-edge.
Meanwhile-
Meanwhile they crammed shoulder to shoulder into the galley. They had already extended their table with a fold-out and a let-down bench end when na Khym became permanent. Now they squeezed a few inches each and got Tully in, a company of seven now, unlikely tablefellows. But Tully was still wobbly in his moves, his hands shaking as he gulped cup after cup of carbohydrate-laced gfi and nibbled at this and that; while Khym — Khym ate, plenty, for one who had been wobbly-sick half an hour ago. Pyanfar shot glances his way — misgiving (he bade fair to make himself sick) and halfway pleased (he had lasted the rough ride, by the gods, and gone white-nosed as he was to galley duty, and was on incredibly good behavior.) There might not have been another male at table for all the attention Khym paid between his plate and the rotating center-section with the serving-trays.
There was silence at table, mostly — a little muttered discourse as Tirun and Chur and Haral brought their vane-problem to table with them, and worried it like a bone. A little "have this," and "try that," from Hilfy who tried to slip a little more substance under Tully's ribs.
No harrying, no pressure — take it slow, she thought. And: Keep him calm, keep everything low-key. . the while she watched him relax at last, their old friend, old comrade. It was as if he had — finally — come back to them the way he had been, easier and finally letting go — Time then to talk of things, when he might tell them the truth. Perhaps they had cornered him, pushed him too much, assured him too little. Perhaps he felt the panic in the air and only now felt easy. Perhaps now there would be truth.
"Your House send you?" Khym said suddenly, looking straight Tully's way, and sent her heart lurching past a beat.
Tully blinked that into slow non-focus. "Send?" the translator queried, flat-voiced. . O gods, trust indeed, wide-eyed innocence. "Send me?"
"I don't know that they have Houses," Pyanfar said, and found her fingers flexed and the claws out. Khym tried the situation. She knew him. And she knew Tully. Of a sudden the silence round the table was absolute. She wanted to stop it, to shut it off, and there was no way, no way with Khym in bland, smooth attack-mode. Hunting, gods rot him. Pushing for reaction, the crew's and hers.
"Don't use big words. Translator can't handle them."
"House isn't a big word."
"Stick to ship-things. Technical stuff. You don't know how it comes out the other side."
"Say again," Tully said.
"I asked who sent you."
"# # send me."
"See?" said Pyanfar. "You get a word it won't make sense."
"Name home," Tully said. "Sun. Also call Sol. Planet name Earth. Send me "