"Doing so with transcendent joy," said the Ib.

The probe was launched, built up speed, pierced the shortcut. They all held their breaths. Even Rhombus's pump, which operated without guidance from the pod, apparently sensed that something important was happening.

Its central orifice temporarily halted its constant sequence of open, stretch, compress, and close.

And then the probe returned. Rhombus's ropes whipped his console, making loud slapping sounds as they did so, and the framed-off area filled with the probe's recorded images.

Thor was grinning from ear to ear. "I never thought I'd be glad to see that thing again," he said, jerking a thumb at the image of the green star.

Keith breathed a long sigh of relief. "Thank — thank the God of Alluvial Deposits."

"According to the probe's hyperscope, the darmats have moved well away from the exit point," said Rhombus.

"Excellent. Thor, take us home. Execute the course we discussed earlier. I want to have a word with Cat's Eye."

Chapter XXI

Starplex moved through the intergalactic abyss toward the shortcut.

The ship — seeming minuscule amidst all the emptiness — gathered speed as it approached, Thor revving up the thrusters. When it touched the shortcut, a ring of violet fire passed over the vessel as it traversed six billion light-years — 60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers — in the blink of an eye. There was a spontaneous cheer from those on the bridge as the holographic bubble was filled again with countless stars.

Keith felt his eyes stinging, the way they had the last time he'd returned to Earth.

Thor immediately began making manual adjustments; they hadn't been monitoring the green star long enough to know its exact trajectory away from the shortcut, and his guess of where it would be was somewhat off.

He soon had the ship settled into the parabolic course Keith wanted — a much wider parabola than their previous passing, avoiding any dangerous proximity to the green star, which now once again dominated the holo bubble.

"Scan for the Rum Runner's transponder," said Keith.

"Doing so," said Lianne. But then, a moment later, "I'm sorry, Keith.

There's nothing."

Keith closed his eyes. She could be safe, he told himself, she could have gone through to another exit, she could — "Tachyon pulse!" said Rhombus in what PHANTOM translated as a shout.

Keith swiveled around to look at the shortcut, now swelling into a purple-limned shape — in the exact cross sectional outline of a Commonwealth probeship.

"It's the Rum Runner!" crowed Thor.

"Incoming signal," said Lianne. She touched keys and a hologram of Rissa's beaming face appeared inside a floating frame.

"Hello, everyone," said Rissa. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Pdssa!" said Keith, rising to his feet.

"Hello, darling," said Rissa, smiling radiantly. "Rhombus," said Keith, "can they dock with us, given the course we're on?"

"They can if I give them a tow with a tractor beam."

Keith was grinning widely. "Please do so!"

"Okay, guys," said Rhombus, "prepare to be grabbed by a tractor."

Longbottle's gray face popped up next to Rissa's. "Prepared are we!

Home we come!"

"Locking on," said Thor.

"Thor," said Keith, "do you have a fix on Cat's Eye?"

"Yes. He's about ten million klicks ahead, at about nine o'clock to the green star."

"I've located a vacant frequency in the darmat babble, in case you want to talk to him," said Lianne. "Somebody must have left the conversation recently."

"Excellent," said Keith. "Keep track of it. As soon as Rissa's back on board, I'll want to open communication."

"We'll have the Rum Runner in docking bay seven in about three minutes," said Rhombus.

Keith was anxious as hell. He tried to hide it by checking status reports on his monitor screens, but his mind wasn't registering the words. At last, the' starfield split and Rissa appeared, framed by the corridor beyond. Keith ran to her, and they hugged, then kissed. The rest of the bridge crew cheered as she entered. A moment later, Longbottle popped up in one of the two open pools. Rissa knelt down beside him and rubbed his bulging forehead. "Thanks for getting us home safe and sound, buddy," she said.

"We're doing a quick parabolic path," Keith said to them.

"I don't think the darmats can grab us this time, but I want to communicate with them — find out why in the hell they attacked us."

Rissa nodded, stood up, kissed Keith once more, then moved over to her workstation. She pressed keys, calling up the translation program.

"Do we still have a vacant frequency?" asked Keith.

"Yes," said Lianne.

"All right. Let's jump into the conversation. Lianne, open a channel from my console with automatic translation, but put a five-second delay in before you send whatever I say."

He looked at Rissa. "I'll speak directly to Cat's Eye, but if I say anything wrong or something that you don't think will translate properly, jump in, and we'll reword the message before it goes out."

Rissa nodded. "Ready," said Lianne.

"Starplex to Cat's Eye," said Keith. "Starplex to Cat's Eye. We are friends. We are friends." Keith glanced at a counter. At light-speed, it would still be thirty-five seconds before the message reached Cat's Eye, and almost that long again before any reply would arrive.

But no reply came. Keith waited an extra full minute, then another.

He touched a key and tried again. "We are friends."

Finally, after a forty-second delay in addition to the round-trip signal time, a reply came through. Just two words, in a curt French accent: "Not friends."

"Yes," said Keith. "We are friends."

"Friends not hurt," came the reply, with no delay beyond that caused by transmission times.

Keith was taken aback. Had they somehow hurt the darmats? It was almost inconceivable that they could injure such giant creatures.

Still… perhaps the sampling probes had caused pain. Keith didn't have the slightest idea how to apologize; the vocabulary Rissa had built up didn't deal with such concepts.

"We did not mean to hurt you," said Keith.

"Not directly," said Cat's Eye.

Keith spread his hands and looked around the bridge.

"Anybody understand that?"

"I think he means whatever injury we caused wasn't a direct injury," said Lianne. "We didn't hurt them, but hurt — or were going to hurt — something that was important to them."

Keith touched the transmit key. "We intend no injury to anything. But you — you deliberately tried to kill us."

"Make you. Not make you."

Keith keyed the mike off. "'Make you. Not make you,'" he repeated, shrugging helplessly. "Anybody?"

Lianne lifted her hands, palms up. Jag moved all four of his shoulders.

Rhombus's web was dark.

Keith reactivated the mike. "We want to be friends again."

The response time was getting shorter as Starplex's parabolic course brought the ship closer to Cat's Eye. "We want to be friends again, too," said the darmat., Keith thought for a moment, then: "You say we injured you somehow. We did not intend any injury. So that we don't do it again, will you tell us what we did wrong?" The delay time was nerve-racking. Finally: "Attacking each other."

"You were bothered by the battle?" asked Keith.

"Yes."

"Worried that explosions would hurt you?"

"No."

"But then why did you fling those ships into the star?"

"Afraid."

"Of what?"

"That your activities would destroy… destroy… point that is not a point."

"The shortcut? You were afraid that we would destroy the shortcut?"

"Yes."

"No explosion could damage the shortcut. It's not fragile."

"Did not know."

Jag barked softly. "Ask him why he cares."