"Hout!" shouted the mook. "How!"

"Yeah, yeah," Uclod said. "We’re coming."

He took a step toward the gash in the wall. I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Wait — we must do this correctly."

I glanced around the room and saw what I wanted, lying against one wall: the black Explorer jacket I had brought from Melaquin. Snatching it up, I pushed my arms into it, discovering the fit was very fine indeed. The coat was not so heavy, and not at all tight; it also hung down to the middle of my thighs, quite long enough to cover my digestive bits if and when I finally forced myself to eat opaque foods. I took another moment to straighten the garment and fasten the snip down the front, just as I had seen Explorers do. Then I stepped out through the hole and historically made First Contact.

"Greetings," I said in a loud clear voice. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg yourHospitality."

For a long moment, nobody spoke. I could see the mooks’ faces through their clear visors; several appeared disconcerted to be confronted by someone dressed as one of their own Explorers. "I come in peace," I said. "My name is Oar. An oar is an implement used to propel boats."

Someone gasped at the far end of the room. I turned and saw an unarmored person standing in the doorway.

"Oar? Oar?"

Festina Ramos hurled herself across the floor and wrapped her arms around me.

A Fervent Reunion

I myself am not given to spontaneous displays of emotion (at least not the happy hugging emotions), but I embraced her gladly with all my strength. When you think you have been captured by dire navy villains, then are unexpectedly reunited wife your very best friend… well, of course, you are filled with boundless joy. You want to enfold her and squeeze her and say foolish things, thinking all the white what a mistake it was to don a jacket that is now just a stuffy barrier between the two of you.

But it is odd how quickly boundless joy acquires bounds again: suddenly you remember you are being watched by little orange criminals and large-muscled women, by hard-eyed mooks and a cloud shaped like a man. In a single heartbeat, you become most clumsy and feigned — you find yourself wondering how you look in the spectators’ eyes, and you worry it is not quite proper to be all happy and hugging and open, for fear they will think you are an ignorant simple-head. Your body stance feels all wrong: your friend is so short and you are so tall that perhaps you look ungainly bending over her, like a great oafish giant stooping over a delicate flower. You tell yourself, No, I will not push away my friend just because I have grown self-conscious… but you are self-conscious, and whether you choose to back off mumbling or to continue clinging with stubborn determination, it has now become a show for other people.

Which makes you feel an unworthy friend for letting such thoughts enter your mind. You become most angry with yourself; and the next thing you know, you have stepped back abruptly, and you fear you might even be scowling.

Why does one behave like that? It is a great infuriating mystery. But perhaps I should blame the Shaddill who created my race. They gave us defective brains, not only prone to becoming Tired, but also subject to floods of embarrassment at times we should not be embarrassed at all. I am sure persons of natural origin do not turn shy and standoffish during hugs with old friends.

But I did. Perhaps I had even upset poor Festina by pulling abruptly out of her arms… so I forced myself to squeeze close again, then lowered my lips to the top of her head and kissed her hair. "I told you," I said in a voice that sounded overload, "I am not such a one as can die. You were very most foolish to believe I could be killed by a silly little fall."

Festina made a noise that might have been either laughter or weeping — I could not tell because she had buried her face in my coat. A moment later she stepped back, wiped her sleeve across her eyes, and gave a beaming smile. "You’re right. I should have known better."

It was pleasant to see her smile so happily, though Festina was exceedingly ugly, even for an opaque person. She had a large violet blemish on her right cheek: what she called a port-wine birthmark. When last I saw her, she had concealed the blemish under a patch of artificial skin… but now the great blotch was open to the world again, exposed for all to see. Perhaps she had removed the patch in mourning for me — which made me feel proud and throbby inside, though it also brought tears to my eyes.

She was such a good friend.

See No Evil

"So, Oar," Festina said with a laugh, "you’re alive and causing trouble again. Do you mind explaining what you’re doing in the middle of nowhere? And why your Zarett self-destructed a few minutes ago?"

"We were fleeing the evil stick-people," I said, hurriedly wiping my tears. "Starbiter — died with great heroism, striking the enemy vessel and rendering it impotent."

"Enemy vessel? We haven’t seen any other ships." Festina raised her eyes to the window at the rear of the room. "Lieutenant, did we register anything like that?"

A disembodied voice answered, "Negative, Admiral."[7]

[7] — Since I had seen her last, Festina had apparently risen from lowly Explorer to lofty Admiral — but she assured me this did not mean she was evil like Alexander York, because her admiralship was more a legal fiction than an actual Rank Of Power.

Behind me, Uclod snorted. "It’s time to repair your scanner, folks. The damned ship was hard to miss. Just before you showed, it was close enough to see with the naked eye."

"There’s the problem Festina said. "Our navy ships can’t see anything with the naked eye — we’re limited to cameras and sensor arrays. I once asked a navy construction contractor if it would really he impossible to build a nice simple porthole into every ship. She nearly had a stroke, laughing at the dimwit Explorer who knew nothing about preserving hull integrity."

"So you didn’t see the Shaddill ship?" Uclod asked.

"We saw your Zarett whizzing along at the most godawful speed ever clocked. The bridge crew couldn’t believe their readings; they decided your beast must be suffering some cataclysmic flame-out, burning energy way beyond safety limits. They predicted she’d explode any second… and sure enough, she expelled your escape pod, then zipped away and blew herself to space dust."

"You didn’t see her hit anything?"

"She exploded in empty space," Festina said. "I was watching the vidscreen myself."

Uclod rolled his eyes. "We are so fucked." He looked to Lajoolie as if waiting for her to agree, but she barely responded. The big Tye-Tye woman was attempting to hide behind foggy Nimbus, as timidly fearful as when she first met me.

Apparently, Lajoolie was poor at dealing with strangers.

"What’s wrong?" Festina asked.

I did not know if she was asking why Lajoolie was frightened or why Uclod looked dubious about Starbiter exploding on her own. Since Lajoolie would not enjoy a discussion of her cowardice, I decided to take charge of the conversation. "Your Science devices are blind," I told Festina. "The evil stick-people can obviously deceive your machines… and if Starbiter did not completely incapacitate the villains, they may be creeping up on us even now."

My friend called to the back window, "Still nothing on the sensors?"

The unseen lieutenant answered, "Negative, Admiral."

"What about communications?" Uclod said. "The Shaddill were jamming all signals in the neighborhood. Did you detect that?"

Festina’s eyes narrowed. "We are having problems — we lost contact with the Admiralty navigation grid a few minutes ago. The techs are looking into it." She glanced at the window. "Do we have communications back, Lieutenant?"