Acorna, perhaps because her own loneliness had helped her identify with his, had been drawn to Aari. When an emergency signal had called Becker away from narhiiVhiliinyar, Acorna and Aari had shipped out with him. They had been able to help in a crisis that had threatened some of Acorna’s human friends as well as the Linyaari. As a result of their intervention, a branch of a Federation-wide criminal organization had been destroyed and many off-planet Linyaari, including Acorna’s beloved aunt, had been rescued, along with all the other captives of the criminals. Acorna, Becker, Aari, and Acorna’s Uncle Hafiz, who had also been on hand for the rescue, were now in great favor among her people.
Acorna could have stayed comfortably on narhiiVhiliinyar once her aunt and the other ship-bred and ship-chosen Linyaari returned to the planet. But she had decided instead to leave with Becker and Aari.
She wasn’t sorry. She might have been born on a peaceful planet populated by beings who had the ability to understand one another telepathically, but her upbringing had made her different, and that was sometimes a problem, both for her and for her people. Space was familiar to her, and its diversity of races, species, and personalities stimulated her. Of course, right now, just being here, quietly charting coordinates, resting her eyes by watching the stars, wasn’t very stimulating, but the serene surroundings felt wonderful. She was comforted by the routine watch, at peace with the universe.
Perhaps, she thought, happily ever after, the permanent version, only happened in fairy tale, bat happy every once in a while wa^ r&ftful ane) healing.
The cabin lights flicked on, bringing the harsh light of the day shift to her starlit world. She blinked a few times until her eyes adjusted.
“Yo, Princess!” Becker said. “Your watch is over. Whatsa matter with you sitting there typing in the dark? You’ll ruin your eyes that way, didn’t anybody ever tell you?”
He strode up to stand behind her, peering over her shoulder so intently his brushy mustache, which closely resembled RK’s ruff, brushed her horn. Becker smelled strongly of the aftershave he had begun to use about the time he began to shave again, shortly after she arrived. It wasn’t that he was trying to impress her in a courtship. and mating fashion, she knew. It was simply a rather old-fashioned, by human standards, sign of gender acknowledgment and respect. “Hey, now, how about that? You’ve charted the whole journey from the time we left narhiiVhiliinyar the first time, to that moon where Ganoosh and Ikwaskwan held your people captive, and all the way back again! I figured, with all the excitement we ran into, and all the hopping around we had to do, nobody would ever be able to figure that one out. How’d you 2o that?”
“You kept good notes, Captain,” she said, smiling.
“Well, it’s terrific! And you did it so fast, too. Where’d a sweet young thing like you learn that?”
“Elementary, my dear Becker,” Aari said, sauntering up behind the captain and towering over him. Tall, slender, and graceful now that his injuries had healed, Aari -was whiteskinned and silver-maned. These were traits he shared with Acorna and the other Linyaari space travelers.
Aari had been reading a trashed-out copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes lately. Becker and Acorna could see the immediate result of his current venture into fiction in the -way that Aari had layered two baseball caps from Becker’s collection, so that the bill of one hat stuck out in back above his long silver mane, the other in the front. It was not only a pretty good imitation of a traditional deerstalker, but the hat covered the indentation in Aari’s forehead where his horn had once been. Aari also clutched a Makahomian ceremonial pipe between his teeth. It was a bit longer than an antique meerschaum, but with Aari’s height, he could carry it off. The Holmesian effect was only spoiled by the RECYCLER’S RONDY ‘84 logo on the front of the cap facing them, along with an embroidered trash container rampant beneath the lettering.
“Space-bred and space-chosen Linyaari,” Aari said, “develop a heightened sense of navigational interrelationships between space and masses, even energy fluctuations. Many of those relationships are imprinted telepathically upon our brains by our parents when we’re young. That is partially how I was able to guide you to narhiiVhiliinyar though I had never been there myself.”