She turned to Skaffen-Amtiskaw. " Howlong are we on this ship for?"

"Thirty days?" Skaffen-Amtiskaw suggested.

Sma gritted her teeth and looked round the fairly cosy-looking but — compared to the echoing spaces of the old power station mansion — rather small cabin. "Thirty days with a crew of viral masochists and a ship that thinks it's a cuddly toy." She shook her head, sat into the bed field. "Subjectively, drone, this could be a long trip." She collapsed back into the bed, muttering.

Skaffen-Amtiskaw decided right now would probably still not be the best time to tell the woman about Zakalwe being missing.

"I'll just go and take a look round, if you don't mind," it said, drifting towards the door over the neat line of bags that was Sma's luggage.

"Yeah, on you go," Sma waved one arm lazily, then shucked off the jacket and let it fall to the deck.

The drone had almost made it to the door when Sma sat bolt upright, a frown on her face, and said, "Wait a minute; what did the ship mean about"… rather fuzzily specified destination"? Doesn't it know where the hell we're going?"

Oh-oh, thought the drone.

It spun in the air. "Ah," it said.

Sma's eyes narrowed. "We are just going to get Zakalwe, aren't we?"

"Yes. Of course."

"We're not doing anything else?"

"Absolutely not. We find Zakalwe; we brief him; we take him to Voerenhutz. Simple as that. We might be asked to hang around for a bit, overseeing, but that isn't definite yet."

"Yes, yes, I expected that, but… where exactly is Zakalwe?"

"Where exactly?" The drone said. "Well, I mean; you know, that's…"

"All right," Sma said, exasperated, "approximately, then."

"No problem," Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, backing off towards the door.

"No problem?" Sma said, puzzled.

"Yes; no problem. We know that. Where he is."

"Good," Sma nodded. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well," Sma said loudly, "where is he?"

"Crastalier."

"Cras…?"

"Crastalier. That's where we're heading."

Sma shook her head, yawned. "Never heard of it." She flopped back in the bed field, stretching. "Crastalier." Her yawn deepened; she put a hand to her mouth. "You only had to say that the first time, goddamit."

"Sorry," the drone said.

"Mmm. Never mind." Sma put out one hand, waved it through the bedside beam that controlled the cabin lights, so that they dimmed. She yawned again. "Think I'll catch some sleep. Take my boots off, will you?"

Gently but quickly, the drone slipped Sma's boots off, gathered her jacket and hung it in a walk-in cupboard, swept the bags in there too, then — as Sma turned over in the bed field, eyes fluttering closed — the drone slipped out of the room.

It hovered in the air outside, looking at its reflection in the polished wood on the far side of the corridor.

"That," it said to itself, "was close." Then it went for a wander.

Sma had arrived on the Xenophobe just after breakfast, by ship time. When she awoke, it was early afternoon. She was completing her toilet, while the drone sorted her clothes into type and colour order and hung or folded them in the cupboard, when the door chimed. Sma wandered out of the little bathroom area, wearing a pair of shorts, her mouth full of toothpaste. She tried saying Open, but the toothpaste apparently stopped the room monitor from recognising the word. She walked over and pressed the door-open instead.

Sma eye's flicked wide; she yelped, spluttered, jumped back from the door, a scream gathering in her throat.

The instant after her eyes had widened, before the signal to jump back from the door had travelled all the way to her leg muscles, there was an impression of almost invisibly sudden movement in the cabin, belatedly followed by a bang and a sizzling sound.

There, stationed between her and the door, were all three of the drone's knife missiles, hovering roughly level with her eyes, sternum and groin; she was looking at them through a haze of field the machine had also thrown in front of her. Then it clicked off.

The knife missiles swung lazily away through the air and clicked back into Skaffen-Amtiskaw's casing. "Don't do that to me," the machine muttered, returning to sorting out Sma's socks.

Sma wiped her mouth and stared at the three-metre tall, brown and yellow coloured furry monster cowering in the corridor outside the door.

"Ship… Xeny, what the hell are you doing?"

"I'm sorry," the huge creature said, its voice only a little deeper than when it had been baby-sized. "I thought if you didn't relate to a small furry animal, perhaps a bigger version…"

"Shee-it." Sma said, shaking her head. "Come in," she called, heading back for the bathroom area. "Or did you just want to show me how much you've grown?" She rinsed out the paste and spat.

Xeny squeezed through the door, stooped, and sidled into a corner. "Sorry about that, Skaffen-Amtiskaw."

"No problem," the other machine replied.

"Ah, no, Ms Sma," Xeny called. "I actually wanted to talk to you about…"

Skaffen-Amtiskaw went still, just for a second. There was, in fact, a fairly lengthy, detailed and slightly heated exchange between the drone and the ship's Mind during that time, but Sma was only aware of Xeny pausing as it spoke.

"… about having a fancy-dress party, this evening, in your honour," the ship improvised.

Sma smiled from the bathroom area, "That's a lovely idea, ship. Thank you, Xeny. Yes; why not?"

"Good; I just thought I'd check with you, first. Any ideas about costumes?"

Sma laughed. "Yeah; I'll go as you; make me one of those suits you're wearing."

"Ha. Yes. Good idea. Actually, that might be rather a common choice, but we'll make it two people can't go as the same thing. Right. I'll talk to you later." Xeny lumbered from the room and the door slid shut. Sma appeared out from the bathroom area, slightly surprised at this sudden departure, but just shrugged.

"Short but eventful visit," she observed, rummaging through the socks Skaffen-Amtiskaw had just carefully arranged in chromatic order. "That machine's weird."

"What do you expect?" Skaffen-Amtiskaw said. "It's a star-ship."

— You might (the ship Mind communicated to Skaffen-Amtiskaw) have told me you were keeping the size of our target destination from her.

— I am hoping (the drone replied) that our people already out there will find the guy we're looking for and give us an exact position, in which case Sma will never need to know there was ever any problem.

— Indeed, but why not just be honest with her in the first place?

— Ha! You don't know Sma!

— Oh. Do I take it she's temperamental?

— What do you expect? She's a human!

The ship prepared a feast, and put as many human-brain-chemistry-altering chemicals into the various dishes and drinks as was normally regarded proper without attaching a specific sanity warning to each bowl, plate, jug or glass. It told the crew about the party, and rearranged the social area, setting up a variety of mirrors and reverser fields (with a total guest list of only twenty-two — not including itself — making the place look suitably crowded was one of the major obstacles it faced in trying to encourage the feel of a serious, thorough-going whoopee).

Sma breakfasted, was shown round the ship — though there was little to see; the ship was almost all engine — and spent most of the rest of the day reviewing her knowledge of the Voerenhutz cluster's history and politics.

The ship sent formal invitations to each of the crew, and specified a strict rule of No Shop Talk. It hoped that this, plus the narcotic wealth of the consumables, would keep everybody off the subject of where exactly they were heading for. It had toyed with the idea of just telling people there was a problem here and asking them not to talk about it, but suspected there were at least two of the crew who would take such a proscription as a challenge to their integrity requiring them to raise the issue at the first possible opportunity. It was on occasions like this that the Xenophobe tended to consider changing its status to that of an unstaffed ship, but it knew it would miss the humans if it did decide to ask them to leave; they were fun to have around, usually.