Things went chaotic for the moment: Haral swore and started switching systems. Images flickered on the monitors in rapid sequence. "Gods!" Pyanfar hissed, putting kif and airlocks out of her mind in the press of worse disasters. She rang the general alert to bring the crew up. "We got anything to give them?"
"Station's not jamming us," Haral said. "We can output our own scan to our friends out there, but it's not much, in our position. We can beacon them in to dock right enough."
Aft, the lift was working, crew on the way from lowerdecks to the bridge as fast as feet and The Pride's, lift mechanism could carry them. The alarm bell rang in spurts, drowning other sound at intervals.
"Message from central," Tirun said. "Kif say—say: compliments of the hakkikt and they won't interfere with the docking of our ships. This is relayed . . . We've got another calclass="underline" stsho—that's a protest. Mahendo'sat—a group is protesting to the kif and wanting rescue. They're stuck in some shops down the way and they're afraid to go outside. They want police. Meanwhile the kif are saying mahen crew will handle docking for Aja Jin and Vigilance—The hakkikt's compliments again."
There was a soft noise, a wheeze of leather upholstery: Chur made it back alone and took a post. There were running steps in the corridor behind.
"What we got?" Chur asked straightway.
"Got a kifish takeover of the whole gods-forsaken station," Pyanfar muttered. "Got a gods-be kif in our gods-be access—Get back to bed!''
"Give me that," Chur murmured to Tirun, all business; and business went on in mutters and com-chatter.
A thunder of steps, scrape of claws on decking; more bodies hit the cushions, one, two, three: Haral delivered a terse briefing to late-arriving crew and Pyanfar let it go, finding more and more information popping up on her screens as stations came alive. Vigilance and Aja Jin were still proceeding on their approach toward docking: "Negative. No fire," she answered the query from the inbound mahendo'sat. "Brief them on it, Tirun." She spun her chair half about and saw The Pride's bridge more crowded than it had been since Kshshti: Hilfy and Khym were both at posts.
"Kif are counting on us to calm it down," she muttered to the lot of them. "Gods rot it, they're pushing us hard as they can push. Gods-cursed kif bastard knows we won't fire cold."
Hilfy swiveled her head half-about. "He's got Tully," she said, once and tautly. So it was said. The line was drawn.
And gods be feathered if she wanted to be put under pressure to do what she already told herself she was crazy for doing on her own. Like sitting pat at dock instead of tearing loose and running with what she had.
"So we've got our own detainee," Pyanfar said, puzzling Hilfy: she saw the ears cant in bewilderment. She opened a channel below to the accessway com. "Skkukuk. What do we do with you?"
The kif had tucked down in a ball. It stood up and straightened. "I am freezing, hunter Pyanfar."
"Good. What if I blow your head off? Would the hakkikt like that? You offend him somehow?"
"I lack all status with him."
"Hope to gain it, do you?"
"I am hopeless, unless your sfik is greater than it seems."
She laid her ears back. "Kif, you want to live?"
"Naturally."
"Strip and get inside that lock. Leave the robes in the lock. Walk into the main corridor. And wait there."
It bowed, hands tucked away again.
She leaned and keyed the outer hatch open, powered the chair around and met Hilfy's quick, flat-eared stare. "Got ourselves a sfik item down there. Tully it isn't. We'll see what we've just been handed. Tell Vigilance and Aja Jin we're playing this business out and staying at dock; they can do what they like about it."
"We've got scan image going out," Haral said. "Jik says affirmative, he's still coming in."
"Gods hope he isn't kidding," Geran said.
"Gods hope," Pyanfar muttered. Visions of attack assailed her. One swift blast at the dock from either of her two incoming allies and it was ail over. But she trusted Jik. She hoped. "Khym. Come on."
"You going down there?" Hilfy asked, turning her chair about.
"Nose to that board, youngster. Stay put. Come on, Khym. This one's yours."
Khym's ears came up. He had not looked so cheerful since they took him into fire on the docks in the Kshshti mess.
She had her pocket gun in one hand, a com unit at her belt with the gain turned up full as the two of them rode the lift down. Khym had his bare hands; and those were not bad odds-—unless, she thought, the kif down in their airlock had a knife or worse: gods witness, they were not a warship, to have security precautions and detectors. They went on guess-work, took the gamble—
—lunatic, a small voice said. For a bedraggled, half-crazed human's sake, to risk The Pride.
"Don't push it," she said to Khym while the lift was on the way down. She thumbed the safety off the pistol. "Gods forbid it's called our bluff and brought us a grenade."
"What do you do then?" Khym asked.
"Throw it back, for godssakes! How should I know?" The thought ruffled her nape-hairs. And punching the button on the in-lift com: "Haral—Stand by that inside hatch release!"
The lift door whisked open. She walked out after Khym with her gun ready in her hand.
"Now, captain?" Haral asked.
"Now." -
A corridor and a half away the airlock's inner hatch opened. Pyanfar grabbed Khym by the arm and jerked him over to the side of the corridor where there was vantage.
Like a black slither of freefall oil, -the kif rounded the corner and stood there a good distance down the longest corridor The Pride had—stood there, all gangling gray-black nakedness, hands out to show that they were empty.
"All right," she said, never taking the gun off the kif s middle. "You keep those palms out, kif, and keep them in plain sight."
"The air stinks."
"It stinks out there too, kif. Just come a bit forward. Stop right there. Khym, go to the lock and get its clothes. Search them for weapons."
"There is my knife and my pistol," the kif said.
"Fine. Move it, Khym."
Khym went—not without queasiness, that passing in the corridor. Khym flattened his ears as he went by the kif. The kif half turned its head, the hunched shoulders, the forward thrust of the long jaw become something strangely serpentine and graceful. The kif continued the motion in reverse, swinging back to her. The hands lifted, showing empty palms.
"You're mine, huh?" Pyanfar said sourly. "What's Sikkukkut got in mind in this exchange? I don't trade my claim on the human. Hear?"
It made a slow move of its hands. "I hear."
"So answer, you earless bastard. What are you doing here?"
"Waiting," it said.
"For what?"
It gave a kifish shrug. "I don't know."
"You hand me puzzles, kif, I'll skin you."
Khym reappeared in the corridor behind the kif with his hands full of black cloth and leather. "Knife and gun," he called out. " Nothing else."
"Bring its robes. Give them to it."
He brought them. Dropped them at the kif s side.
"May I?" the kif asked.
She motioned with the gun. It bowed its head and moved very slowly, gathered its belongings and held them to its chest with that hunch of shoulders and lowering of head peculiar to kif. It looked sinister in one instant, beaten and pathetic in the next, in each shifting shadow on the gray-black, wrinkled skin.