it twice. We’re getting out of here.”
Vanes cycled in, a brief, stomach-wrenching lurch to a higher energy state.
Nausea threatened. Instruments recycled with a flurry of lights, recalibrating.
She checked the nav fix on Urtur.
“Knnn no change,” Chur said.
Second pulse.
“Helm to one.” Controls flashed live under her hands as Haral handed it over.
They were up to V, outbound. “Stand by jump. Fix on that knnn to the last
gods-rotted second.”
Knnn had policy, somewhere in their moves. Black hair-snarls animate on long
thin legs, they built good ships — far better ships than oxy-breathers could
survive, unless things also went on in them that played games with stress.
Nothing could talk to knnn but the leathery, serpentine tc’a, and tc’a brains
were manifold matrices.
Nothing could reason with knnn but tc’a. Time was, knnn took anything they
liked, stripped ships in midcourse, raided the earliest stations: so stsho said.
It was before the hani came. Tc’a got through the concept of trade — at least
so knnn left something in their forays. Now they darted manic-fast into
methane-breather sectors, deposited some object, which might be anything, and
skittered off again with whatever they wanted — which might, again, be
anything.
Tc’a coped. Chi did, one supposed; but chi, looking like a collection of yellow,
rapid-moving sticks, were crazier than knnn. And tc’a themselves were hazy on
trade-concepts. Gods knew how they ran their worlds. No outsider did.
“Mark to jump: five minutes.”
“How’s that knnn?”
“Still– It just cycled, captain.”
“I want better news. That’s four and counting.”
“Continuing to cycle. That’s into our lag-time–” Meaning that in the lag of
lightspeed information the knnn might be doing other things.
“Rot the book.” She shoved the jump cycle in.
–dropped
–seatfirst–
–topside down–
–rightside up
–back again in here and now, and the stomach still wanting to turn itself
inside out–
There was that wretched halfway-there, while senses swam, fingers took an hour
clenching on controls, instruments underwent a slow ripple of lights that took a
subjective day arriving at nothing special at all —
Solidity then, with one focus, sharp-edged and dreadful as the soft
uncertainties before, with endless fascination in the angles of counters, the
colors, the textures. A mind could get lost in the endless detail of a
counter-edge.
Pyanfar swallowed against the dry mouth and copper taste that came with
compressed time, flexed hands that had not flexed for three-odd weeks local. The
chronometers showed a dubious 3.2 days. The body reacted: would shed hair and
old skin within the hour as if entropy had hit, not quite three days’ worth, but
some: and Tully’s drugs would wear off, while the bowels and kidneys had other,
later consequences, and blood sugar went through loops and dives, obscuring
sense and hazing senses and doing things to the stomach.
Beep went controls.
She shoved the Dump down hard.
Second phasing in and out of hyperspace, bleeding off velocity in the process.
Third.
Her stomach heaved. She held her jaw clenched. The copper taste was worse.
Beep.
“That’s Urtur beacon confirmed,” Haral read off. “Heading zero, nine, two.”
Automatic alarms went off in her skull, memories she had forced there weeks ago.
“Geran! ‘ware of kif. Do we have company?”
“Checking.”
Three subjective days since she had done out-bound at Meetpoint and she felt the
ache in her shoulders. “Khym. You all right?”
An incoherent answer; he sounded alive.
“Got Urtur beacon,” Haral said. “Tirun. Sort it.”
“Aye.” That was Urtur beacon information coming in, constant-send, giving
incoming ships the exact position of objects insystem so far as known. Course
assignment would come, as soon as bounce-back time had delivered their presence
to Urtur’s robot outrange beacon and its automated systems computed them a lane.
“Advise Beacon,” Pyanfar said, “that we’re through-traffic. Get your star-fix.”
Her hands shook. Crew would be in no better state. She wanted a drink, imagined
floods of liquid, iced, deluges of flavors. Even tepid. Brackish. Anything.
“Fix on Kirdu,” Haral said. “Affirmative. Laying course for Maing Tol via Kita
Point.”
“Message sent,” Hilfy said.
“How long to station signal?”
“About two hours,” Tirun said. “That’s 2.31. Beacon doesn’t show any ship in the