Chanur's Homecoming

They were husband and wife before she walked him home. Out there on the border of Chanur land, as if she were some landless scoundrel and he some equally landless lad with hopes. She knew what she had married before she got there. A romantic, who, gods help her, asked her ten thousand questions, what was it like in space, where did she go, how long was she staying, would she come to see him every time she came back to the world?

He was ingenuous and reckless and a veritable encyclopedia of trivialities and natural science. He loved poking about under logs and into ponds, as devoted to hunting out curiosities as he ever was in hunting the game in which Mahn hills were rich; he could study a flower for whole minutes. Or the color of her eyes. She was not sure she liked being studied, there under Anuurn summer skies. She had come up to Mahn after a husband for politics, for finance, because they had dealt with him indirectly and believed his sister, that he was a decent domestic administrator and a man with some legal sense and no disposition to quarrel with Chanur; a fast few days in Mahn, a satisfaction of certain urges that were about to come on her, and which were misery on shipboard-and she ended up with a shy-smiling young man who did a fool thing like trespass and let himself be led off into the bushes and who spent whole minutes telling her how unusual her eyes were and (being Khym) what the statistical frequency of gold-and-bronze was with her ancestry.

She had known then she had gotten herself an odd one.

—aren’t we coming out?

—Gods and mahen devils, what are they doing up there? Is that the drop?

It was. The Pride came down with a vengeance; Khym moaned; and she did; and heard the curses over com about the inlaid program in Nav, about the fools who had laid it in and the condition of Tauran stomachs.

Got to get up there. Second dump, I got to.

They had laid in food stores in the room, pinned to the console. She groped after them, packets the same as they used on the bridge. Dared not retract the net. Not till she got an all-clear.

Then over com: “Gods fry it to a mahen hell! What is that thing?”

She jabbed the com button, fighting with the net. “What is it? What’s going on up there? This is Pyanfar Chanur, gods rot it, what’s going on?”

Delay.

“Gods blast you, don’t you give me authorizations on my own ship! Give me Sirany! What in a mahen hell’s going on up there?”

“Chanur. We’re stable. Proceed with crew change.”

“Gods be.” She retracted the safety restraint, rolled over and got her stiffened legs off the edge and hauled her sore torso upright. “Oh, gods.” Never, never make love in jump, oh my ribs, my back, o gods. She got herself upright, swallowed down a rush of nausea and reeled and staggered, limping, toward the door.

A black streak shot down the hall, about ankle-high, squealing as it went.

“Gods and thunders!”

The Dinner was loose again.

She came reeling and limping her way onto the bridge with the crew-call sounding out over the general address, and grabbed the back of observer-two seat to steady herself while she got a look at the monitors, at scan, at a situation that looked tranquil enough, except for the kif running silently ahead of them. No firing here. No output from station either.

They were in hani space, and Kura, the second-largest station in that space, was dead silent at least as far as buoy output went.

“Kif’ve tripped a warning,” she surmised suddenly, and staggered her way toward Sirany Tauran, grabbing the back of her seat to hold herself steady. “That’s where buoy went. Shut itself up the moment it got kifish ID. Which kifish ID it got and how long ago, that worries me. Has our escort made it in? Did they overjump us?”

“Neat and sweet, they did, about two hours’ worth. Got plenty of power on those ships, and their emissions trail’s strong and clear. Covering up everything.”

“Have we got a message going out? I auto’ed a message for Kura.”

“Aye, captain,” the com officer said. “We’re three minutes out of response time.”

“It tells Kura what we can. Advising any ships here to get home. Fast.”

“Same I sent,” Sirany said. “Same all the others been sending, their own ships’ wrap on it. The mahe’s been transmitting coded stuff, long burst just before we left Urtur.”

“Huh.” More than huh. But not with Sirany. Worry broke out all over again. Jik’s still with us. Still on our side. She scanned the monitors and saw the positioning of ships, the still-broken pattern, the hole where Tahar ought to be and was not. “No sign of Tahar.”

“No sign.”

She gnawed her mustaches and waited, eye on the chrono. “We get any response?”

“Negative.”

“We got some godsrotted vermin run through here,” Sirany said.

“I know it. We cleaned it out once. Skkukuk’s gods-cursed food supply. Something’s got loose again.”

“F’godssakes. What are the things eating?”

“The ventilation filters.”

“Lifesupport?”