Chur blinked. Blinked and found Jik there, when she had remembered only dimly why he was there at all. Their little galley table held more places than usual. Space folded itself. A lot of things fit.
“Push them out of the system,” Chur said then. “That’s what we have to do. Cut them to ribbons on first encounter. The han knows they’re coming. The mahendo’sat have told them. Haven’t you, Jik?”
“A,” the mahendo’sat said, and shrugged.
“There was Banny Ayhar. Ayhar went on to Maing Tol. You gave them a message, Jik, when they shot me at Kshshti. I’ve figured their course home. That’s where they’d have gone. Nothing would stop them. Not with what they knew. Not with what you gave them to carry. Isn’t that so, Jik?”
“Good guess,” Jik said, in better hani than he usually spoke. He leaned his elbows on the table. “Bad luck at Kshshti dock. How you know ’bout Maing Tol?”
”I told her,” Geran said. ‘ ‘Told her the message was all right. Gods, she got a hole in her gut defending it, you think I wouldn’t tell her that? It was important, after all.”
“Better be. I got a hole in my gut to prove it. You think I’m going to lose track of something like that? Banny Ayhar went on to Maing Tol and I know she went with something of yours. I know what I’d have done in Banny Ayhar’s place. I’d have gotten out of there fast. I’d have run for home the safest, shortest way. And the Personage at Maing Tol would have a thing to say to the han about then, wouldn’t he, knowing he had to arrest that whole crew or let them go. Let them go with a message. Let them go with a whole mahen company to see them home.”
“I’m not at controls,” Pyanfar said. “I’ve been thinking about something like that. I’ve hoped it was so. But this isn’t my shift. Not my watch.”
“I told you that,” Geran said.
“Hey, you think I don’t keep track of things? I’m better than that. I know where I am. I’ve known all this time. You think it’s easy running calc in your head? I know where every ship could be. And how long. I know their mass and their cap. I know what their drop time is. I got gray hairs in this game. I know our competition, don’t I? Not competition this time. Our help. All the help we got. Trust me, captain. I got it figured for you.”
”Not my watch,” Pyanfar said again.
And left the table. Was gone.
So did others. “I’m sorry,” Jik said. “I’m not here.”
Then she was alone with the crew again. Khym left. Then she did.
There was deathly quiet. Tully was anchor, in a long dark sea.
She reached out and carefully, in motion that took the better part of a day, perhaps, in timestretch, disconnected herself.
. . . down again. . . . gravity slope.
It was hard to move at all. But Chur did that, levered herself to the side of the bed and remembered-she could have forgotten nothing-to put the safety back. For Tully’s sake.
Longer still down the corridor, which reeled and snaked and kept going into the lighted bridge. Perhaps it took a day to walk it. Dark things skittered and moved, ran like black, rapid serpents in the corridors.
New logical track: moving and breeding. Feeding where they could. Insulation. Plastics. Ignoring barriers.
Akkht-bred. Like the kif.
Alert within jump.
. . . down and still falling. . . .
She made it as far as the captain’s place. And leaned there. “Captain,” she said, perhaps another day in the saying of it: “The mahendo’sat. A message has gone to them. A message can have reached from Maing Tol to Iji. Ayhar of Prosperity will have come home. From Kirdu to Kita is one jump. A ship can have gone to Iji from there. From Kirdu to Ajir, one; from there to Anuurn. Our ships will have heard. They’ll come home, captain. As we are, coming home at the earliest possible. The mahendo’sat will not have resisted this move. The quarry goes to the small valley, but hunters cross the hill. That is only reasonable.” Words slurred. She watched the slow twitch of a listening ear. Not her captain, but this stranger. Tauran. She knew that too.