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 crewwoman’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