Chanur's Homecoming

They left behind a scrap of message, to persist after them. Danger to Anuurn. Assist.

10

. . . Down. . . .

. . . one more time. ... . . . “Kura Point, Pyanfar.”

She was young. Back in Urarun’s day. Green kid on her first trip back home again. Looking forward to Anuurn and swaggering about the estate.

See me. Ring and all. Got this scratch dockside at Meetpoint, I did.

Difference of opinion, me and a Jesur crewwoman.

Gods bless. What were we fighting about?

No matter. We healed fast in those days.

“Meet you at the door, Hal.” With a slow and heavy-lidded look, while a gray nosed spacer (that was the name: Pura Jesur) Pura Jesur thought she could push a couple of Chanur kids and have a bit of fun. Herself and Haral, insubordinate and full of young arrogance toward a rival ship’s crew. And drunk. That too.

Gods save us.

Urarun Chanur being the captain on the old Golden Sun. She retired as captain two voyages after. Chanur clan took the ship out of service, sold it finally to Thusar, where it ran under the name of Thusar’s Merit, a little ship. A lot of ship, for a little clan like Thusar, new to spacefaring. Chanur retired the shipname. Transferred the crew eventually, as many together as they could, to the newbuilt Pride. Urarun Chanur died in her sleep one night planetside.

. . . “Captain.”

“I got it, we’re on, aren’t we?"

“We’re running smooth.”

How’s Chur? Calm down, she won’t answer yet. Can’t answer. Gods-be drugs. No. Tully’s with her. “Tully. Report. How is Chur?”

A long pause. Muzzy human. Tully was always hard to rouse after jump.

“Tully? How’s Chur, Tully?” Is she alive, Tully? F’gods-sakes, answer back there. “She sleep.”

“Are you sure? Is she all right?” With Geran listening. But it was what Geran had to know.

“She sleep,” Tully’s voice came back again. “We’ve got acquisition on our escort,” Geran said, dead calm, onto business. “We’re still doing fine, captain.”

/ have no nerves, captain. The job gets done. For the ship and all of us.

“No buoy here, either,” Haral muttered. “No sign of anything.” She drank down the concentrates. Her hand shook. She wadded up the foil packet and thrust it into the bin after, and wiped her face. An appalling lot of hair came away. Teeth were sore, when she pushed them with her tongue. One felt loose. That more than any wound she had ever suffered made her afraid; not of dying. Of time. Of the inevitable wall that said this far for a body and no further, courage and wit and skill notwithstanding. Where are we? Is what I remember true? Gods, how did I get here? Get this old?

Kif. Kif out in front of us. It’s all true. No hallucination. Gods, if it were a hallucination, if I was back there with Urarun all this time, if I never knew these things, if these friends, this ship, this terrible mess-were all illusion—

Earflick. A weighty number of rings chimed and rang against each other.

Old graynose. Yourself, Pyanfar. Here. In this gods-be mess. Wake up. Come back. You’re fuzzed and drifting. . . . . . . when did I get old?

Haral beside her. A flash and flicker of monitors at her board. Scan information vanished for a checklist, one critical moment. Reappeared again. Haral had missed a switch and changed all the priorities in a rippling flicker of screens. Haral had missed. That never happened. “You on?”

“I got it, cap’n. Sorry. That’s confirm on Aja Jin. They’re in on schedule.” Vermin. Little vermin. drop again. ... . . . reform. ". . . got us stable.”

“Hilfy. Relay that. Tell our relief we’re looking for ’em up here fast as they can do it. Skkukuk, you’re discharged. Get some rest.”

“Hakt’, I should check the filter traps."

“Do it fast, then. Go to it."

“Yes, hakt’.” Long hour til jump-out.

And still days down. She did not want to know how many. The figures were lost in her jump-mazed brain.

Akkhtimakt’s ships were indisputably in front of them, already gone, in transit toward Anuurn. Of the two missing probes, nothing. Their own escort was there, that was all.

She forced another nutrients-packet down. Swallowed and listened to an eerily deserted nowhere, the dark mass of Kura Point, its little beacon extinguished. Not a place hani had ever found it economical to put a station, it was just an astronomical oddity, Kura Point Mass, a lump of rock that just incidentally made hani an independent species-making a route to Meetpoint and other species through hani space only, and not through mahen Ajir, to the sure annoyance of the mahendo’sat.

An accident of nature that had cut four months off the Anuurn-Kura run and saved the whole hani species from becoming a dependency of the mahendo’sat.

It just sat there radiating away, dead and quiet. A chancy, spooky place where hani met and hailed each other, glad of another voice in the tomblike silences. Have a breakdown here and a ship just sat and waited for rescue. Which might bankrupt a running ship. Weeks waiting on help and months getting a repair crew out from Anuurn or Kura star.