Chanur's Venture (13 page)

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

range. It's not picking us up."

"Beacon signal," Hilfy said. "Aunt -- We're getting a code-call off beacon.

We've got a message waiting. Stand by."

"Huh." A cold feeling settled to Pyanfar's stomach. "Put it through on one." The

beacon robot had output something triggered by The Pride's automatic ID, like a

tripline. They came into system, beacon affirmed their identity and spat out

what it held memory-stored for them. Expensive mail. Very.

And the robot scan was still not showing them added to image of Urtur system. It

was not direct scan-image. It was computer-generated; and the computer failed to

put their existence on the screen.

"We've got an error," Haral said. "Bastard beacon's giving us Kshshti heading,

wants us to take starfix on Maing Tol. Put that lane request through again,

Hilfy. It's gone crazy."

"Hold that." Pyanfar stared at the message coming up on her number one screen.

She keyed the Print on: it hummed and spat out hardcopy into the documents bin.

Strings and strings of codes. More codes. Theirs . . . Ana Ismehanan-min, it

said, to good friend. Advise you got bad trouble Kita Point. Beacon give you now

new heading. I fix with Urtur authority, number one good.

Go Kshshti route. Know got close kif, but Kita got too many kif. Mahen ship, kif

ship, got two hand number ship. Mahen ship not got be everywhere too quick.

Sorry this trouble.

You one-jump Kshshti number one fine, no trouble, no stop middle of dark like

Kita. You reach Kshshti you give authorization code *Hasano-ma*.

You do good; Know you number one quick thinker. Kif not catch.

"You egg-sucking bastard!" The restraint held her seated and half cut off her

wind. She took a clawed swipe at the tray and slammed the printout onto the

clearspace of the panel; but the screen kept on feeding codes and the printer

kept on going in idiot persistence.

"Message from beacon," Hilfy said, carefully unperturbed. "Blinker alarm advises

us acknowledge and accept new heading."

She cut the screen output. The printer, undefeated, hummed and spat out yet

another sheet.

Second message. More codes. Urtur station advise you course change big urgent.

You not be register on system scan. Beacon blank you image give you cover. Go

quick.

"Beacon's not malfunctioning," she muttered. "It means it. That bastard

Goldtooth set something up with Urtur. They're routing us to Kshshti."

"Kshshti's half kif," Geran protested. "We go in there--"

"It's a one-jump. He's right in that, if Kita's blocked. At least we won't be

out in the dark nowhere with the kif . . . Call up Records: what's Kshshti got

for muscle?"

"Searching," Chur said. ". . . .Got two hunter-ships assigned from Maing Tol;

stats show ten percent stsho calls, sixteen t'ca-chi, thirty-two kif, fifty-one

mahendo'sat-I don't get any assurance on those hunter-ships being there. Based

there, it says."

"Fine." She gnawed at her mustaches and twitched her ears while the beacon went

into its Acknowledge-comply routine and com flashed warning lights. Tick-tick.

Tick. Tick-tick-tick. Haos was still possible. So was Kura. The stsho. The han.

"We go with it. Don't see what else to do. Beacon's going to blow a circuit

otherwise."

"We're pretty deep in the well," Haral said, understated caution. The star had

them firmly now: vector shift meant total dump. Meant a rough reacquisition,

fighting to get more V back than a star wanted to give them.

"Got no choice, have we? Advise Tully. Can't wait around."

Hilfy relayed. "Tully's coherent. He says go."

"Set it," Pyanfar said, and raked the last printout from the bin.

And stared. It was not the comp readout she had expected. That was on the bottom

of the tray. Another beacon-sending had come in, autoed into the printout bin.

No codes this time. Perfect hani.

Hani ship The Pride of Chanur: avoid Kita. Akkhtimakt has established watchers

there. You will not come alive through that space.

Be no fool.

A shiver went over her skin.

"Hilfy."

"Aunt?"

"You read that number-three message?"

A silence. Hilfy searched her bin.

"Who sent that?" Hilfry wondered, quiet and hoarse.

"Someone fast," she said.

"Brace for dump," Haral said.

The vanes cycled in, a dizzying pulse half-forming their hyperspace bubble, a

ripple like vision through oil.

It let them go and Haral began their realspace course-change then, a long

sickening hammering of correcting directionals and mains. G hauled at an already

outraged gut.

"Got the Maing Tol fix," Haral said. And a long, long while later, when the

engines reached null-V and kept burning: "We just passed null."

And later, as bodies ached in one long misery: "Closing on mark."

"Go when ready," Pyanfar said. Urtur's dust had not hit the hull yet, but the

place always sent the wind up her back.

Blanked off station scan, for the gods' sake. A ship hurtling dark and

unreported through Urtur system with Urtur Station's collusion, a risk to other

ships--

Fearing what? Kif insystem?

"Stand by the pulse." Haral's voice cracked with fatigue.

"Want me to take it?"

"I've got it set. Stand by."

Another pulse, another queasy moment neither here nor there. There was the

bloody smear of a red light on the board.

"Vane two red," Pyanfar muttered. "Stop it there."

"We're a shade off V."

"What blew?" (Khym, weakly.) "There something wrong?"

"Regulator in the vane column," Pyanfar said, blinking it all into focus again.

Her bones ached. "Ship doesn't like all this change of mind. Tirun, I want an

interrupt check on that vane."

"Right." Tirun's voice shook with exhaustion. No complaints. "Sure like to know

why it didn't cut off."

"Solve it from inside."

"Urtur's no gods-rotted place for a walk."

"We in trouble?" Khym asked.

"Just got a little mechanical problem. Still got one backup left on that system.

Regulator ought to have shut the vane down short of blowing what blew. I think

our problem's there. That's an in-hull problem. No big trouble." But it was

trouble. Something made it blow. And Kshshti was a long, long one-jump. Big

stress. If that vane went-- "What's our transit time?"

"Got--" Haral said, "--48.4 hours to next jump."

"We'll find the glitch by then." She powered the chair back, needing room to

breathe. Another quarter turn of the chair and she saw Khym sitting there, head

leaned back against the cushion, breathing in slow, careful intakes, looking her

way with a bleak curiosity. He had not been sick. Was not. Was plainly

determined not to be.

Holding it, she guessed.

"Tully wants to come topside," Chur said.

"Fine." She was numb, with a certain insulation between herself and calamities

back at Meetpoint, and the one back there on their tail. She looked aside as all

number-four screens acquired an image from The Pride's outside eyes, habit when

they arrived at a place. Haral had done that, reflex or a statement: no panic.

Just routine operations.

Urtur was spectacle enough, to be sure, one great fried egg of a star and system

magnified in their pickup, a yellow star for a yolk that glowed hellishly in the

flattened disk of dust that surrounded it. Planets swept dark orbits in the

disk, accreted rings of their own. Urtur's worlds were mostly gas giants, with a

few well-cratered smaller planets buried in the muck.

No place for a walk indeed. Particles would hole even a hardsuit in short order.

Mahendo'sat owned Urtur system, doing mahen things like poking about in the dust

hunting clues to why Urtur was like it was -- for pure curiosity, which was why

mahendo'sat did a great many peculiar things. But at the same time and

practically, they maintained a case for the methane-breathers, who thought

methane-dominant Elaji a fine fair place, with its clouds aglow with the

constant flicker of lightnings and meteors making streaks by the minute in an

atmosphere already greenhoused by previous impacts. Oxy-breathers got photos of

the surface. Tc'a revelled in it, and mined rare metals, and had industry in

that hell.

Knnn too.

And where, she wondered, considering that deficient scan image, was their own

private knnn?

Blocked off scan the same as they, and out of range of their own pickup?

145

C. /. Chenyh

Gone, perhaps. Off their track entirely.

She did not trust that. Not finding the knnn simply meant they had not found it.

The Pride did a minor course correction, a gentle push at her left. For any ship

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,