The ghost nodded and vanished. "That's it," Melinda said encouragingly. "That's all you do. It's just like relaying messages through someone else when your own phone's broken."

Which Pheylan had always hated doing. "You were starting to tell me what all this was about."

"It's our radio signals," Melinda said. "It turns out they're extremely painful to Zhirrzh Elders."

"To be accurate, to the fsss organs of the Elders," Thrr-gilag put in. "To us they are called Elderdeath weapons—"

He stopped as the ghost reappeared. " 'I'm fine, Pheylan,' " he said. " 'We're in a bit of a tight situation at the moment, though. Do you have any way to get a message off Dorcas?' "

Pheylan looked at Melinda. "Do we?"

"Colonel Holloway has two Corvines," she said. "They're the ones who decided not to go on Aric's mission to rescue you. The question is whether the Zhirrzh blockade ships out there would let them pass."

Pheylan gestured at the ghost. "Go ahead, take that back."

The ghost vanished again. "What you call radio is to us Elderdeath weapons," Thrr-gilag said, picking up the thread of the earlier conversation. Probably standard practice with the Zhirrzh, Pheylan decided, given the built-in time lags of their communication system. "They were used once in a war, by the Svrr family of the Flii'rr clan. That family was afterward destroyed."

"What do you mean, destroyed?" Melinda asked.

"The fsss organs of the adults were destroyed and the adults executed," Thrr-gilag said, his voice taking on an oddly unsettling tone. "The Elders' fsss organs were also destroyed. The children were renamed and scattered to other clans."

The ghost returned. This time, instead of speaking to Pheylan, he jabbered at Thrr-gilag in their own language. "The Overclan Prime sends you a message," Thrr-gilag said. "He does not know your language, so I will translate."

His tone changed. " 'Pheylan Cavanagh, this is the Overclan Prime. I have asked Warrior Command about the warship over Dorcas. It is damaged and cannot maneuver, but it is still capable of attack. Any messenger you send must be warned to avoid it.' "

"Can't he just order it not to shoot?" Melinda asked.

"I will ask." Thrr-gilag spoke to the ghost, who vanished.

Melinda crossed the room to Pheylan's side. "I know this is pretty new for you, and probably hard to accept," she said quietly. "But I really believe they're telling the truth."

Pheylan thought back to that first battle. To the attack on the Jutland, as it transmitted the first-contact package... the widening of that attack to the other ships, as they all switched from laser communication to battle-coded radio signals... the systematic destruction of the honeycomb escape pods with their blaring emergency radio beacons.

And his rescue from a similar death, after he'd disabled his own beacon. "No," he told his sister slowly. "Actually, it's not all that hard to accept."

The ghost returned and again held a brief conference with Thrr-gilag. "From the Overclan Prime," Thrr-gilag said. " 'Warrior Command has not been informed of this conversation. Many of the clan leaders would violently not approve of negotiations with you, especially with the current attack on the Zhirrzh ship trapped on Mra. Many will believe the Mrachanis and Human-Conquerors are cooperating in this attack.' "

Pheylan chewed at his lip. "Does the Overclan Prime know if the Mrachanis have begun trying to get through the Zhirrzh ship's hull yet?"

"Why?" Melinda asked as Thrr-gilag translated for the ghost.

"I'll tell you after we find out," Pheylan said. "If they are, I want to know what method they're using."

The ghost vanished. Ninety seconds later he was back.

"The Mrachanis are indeed attempting to penetrate the hull, Pheylan Cavanagh," Thrr-gilag confirmed after the usual consultation. "They are using metal cutting tools, focused light, and explosive devices."

Pheylan smiled grimly. "In that case you can tell the Overclan Prime that no official human groups are involved in this. We know how to break Zhirrzh hulls, and it's not the way the Mrachanis are trying."

Thrr-gilag's tail twitched out of its usual steady corkscrewing motion. "You have found a way? How?"

"We had a tech team studying the buildings you left behind after I escaped," Pheylan told him. "They figured it out. The method's probably already back on Earth; it certainly could be on Mra by now if the Peacekeepers were involved."

Thrr-gilag's tail twitched again. "I will inform the Overclan Prime."

He spoke to the ghost, who vanished. "Are you sending all this to my father, too?" Pheylan asked. "He needs to know what's going on."

"He is hearing everything," Thrr-gilag assured him. "The Overclan Prime has insisted. It is by his authority that he hopes to persuade the other Human leaders."

"Good," Pheylan said. "Then when your communicator gets back, I've got some suggestions to make to him."

Beside the door Klnn-dawan-a suddenly hissed something and jumped toward Pheylan's table. "Someone is coming," Thrr-gilag said, grabbing two of their instruments and tossing her one of them. Pheylan dropped back flat on the table, wondering fleetingly whether he should feign pain or nervousness or defiance or whether it really mattered—

Abruptly the door slammed open against its stop, and a tall Zhirrzh strode in, three others behind him. Two of them, Pheylan noted, were carrying the well-remembered riflelike weapons. The tall Zhirrzh snarled something, and the two guards took up positions flanking the doorway, weapons angled just over the occupants' heads. Thrr-gilag said something, was answered by the tall Zhirrzh. Again Thrr-gilag spoke, gesturing. "Is there a problem?" Pheylan asked loudly into the conversation.

For a moment the tall Zhirrzh eyed him with what was probably a glare of some sort. Then, with a contemptuous-sounding noise, he spat something. "He asks you to be silent," Thrr-gilag translated.

"Why should we?" Pheylan demanded. The tall Zhirrzh was looking around the room now, his eyes searching the tables and miscellaneous human and Zhirrzh equipment in a way Pheylan didn't like. "We're involved in this too, you know. We deserve to know what's going on."

"Please be silent," Thrr-gilag said, his tone sounding urgent. "He is Mnov-korthe, agent of the Overclan Seating, and he has command here now. You will merely get us into trouble—"

He broke off, his tail twitching again. Mnov-korthe's roving eyes had abruptly stopped. With two long strides he stepped to the equipment table off to Pheylan's right, pulling away a rumpled piece of material from Pheylan's jumpsuit leg to reveal the short, slender cylinder that Melinda had hidden there. The cylinder she had earlier had hidden inside the vital-signs monitor.

Pheylan shifted his gaze to his sister. Her face was rigid, her eyes wide with the dismayed awareness of imminent disaster. Slowly, as if deliberately playing to the sudden tension in the room, Mnov-korthe picked up the cylinder. He turned to Thrr-gilag, lifting it triumphantly in front of him—

And then, through the open door, came the hard thunder crack of a distant explosion.

Mnov-korthe spun around toward the door, barking something to the guards and flicking his tongue toward the dusky village landscape outside. The last part of his speech was punctuated by three more explosions, this group coming in rapid succession. Pheylan hoisted himself back up into a sitting position, trying to look past the Zhirrzh to see if he could tell where the blasts were coming from. He couldn't; but even as one of the two guards stepped out through the doorway, he caught a glimpse of two ghosts outside. No doubt reporting on the explosions—

And then another ghost appeared directly in front of Mnov-korthe. It was their ghost, Prr't-zevisti, the one who'd been carrying their messages back and forth.