The ships had gotten off station to keep the kif there, and the kif were still there, indeed they were; were running the halls of station — kif loose with revenge in mind, a hakkikt who might see his own survival doubtful and revenge very much worth having.

She faced about again, feet braced against the jolts as the truck lurched over uneven ground. Haral fought the wheel with desperate turns and reverses, following the track they had walked now, the beaten line of their own prints in the tall grass, where there would be fewer hidden pits and hummocks.

“Hope Aja Jin’s still in place,” Haral muttered.

“Hope Hinukku and the rest are,” Pyanfar said, bracing her hand against the dash. “If we’ve got more kif than we had — if they’ve gotten a call out for reinforcements…”

“Lagtime’s on our side.”

“Something had better be,” Pyanfar said. “Gods, for a com.”

Haral shook her head and gave all her strength to the wheel, slowed as they jolted toward the slope of the stream. The truck lumbered its way over the grassy bank, clawed its way over muddy bottom and rocks, slewed about and found purchase on the other bank, headed up again, with the ungainly wedge that was Rau’s Luck growing closer and closer.

A light was flashing, sun-bright against the ship. Pyanfar pointed to it, and Haral nodded. The Rau saw them coming. Running lights began to flash, red and white, blink code.

It was the message they already had. Haral flashed the headlights, a desperate snatch back at the wheel.

Planetary speeds. In the time it had taken them to get this far from the house, a jumpship could cross an interworld distance. And perhaps some were doing that. The han was intact, the structure of Holdings which could decide policies; but the loss of Gaohn Station—

She cursed herself, to have assumed any revenge would be too great for Akukkakk’s pride; to strike at stations — he had done that; no one struck at worlds, not in the whole history of the civilized powers.

Except the kif… it was rumored that they had done so, in their own rise off their native world, in the contests for power. They had once struck at their own.

XIII

The engines put on thrust, a hollow roar of the downworld jets, and the Luck lifted. Pyanfar dropped into the rear of the dark control pit as the deck came up, hit heavily and crouching and tucked down, straightening the blanket and pillow she had gotten to pad her back in that nook, on the pit floor behind the Rau’s three cushions. The captain lifted her hand, signal that her presence was noted, and reached at once back to the board in front of her. The Luck went on rising; the gear thumped up into the housings and the pressure mounted. Pyanfar discovered a pain in her shoulder and struggled a little against the blanket to relieve it.

Not so steep a lift compared to the angle at which they had landed: the lander flew, of sorts, vertical lift at first, and then an angled flight which still had aft for downside, g-wise. The primaries cut in with a thrust which settled all her gut differentially toward her spine.

Some of their company were well off, aft, in the padded passenger shell: Tully and Khym and Ginas Llun were settled there, in thick cushions; and Haral, to keep them company and settle problems. The unlucky rest rode the boards, tilting cushioned partitions expanded from the next bulkhead — blind, dark misery, packed in like fish, four across, the back of the next cushion tilting back and forth almost in one’s face… gods, gods, to ride like that with the ship going into trouble aloft — she felt guilt for being where she was, in what relative comfort she had.

The copilot let an object fall to her. She reached with difficulty and gathered the plastic-wrapped article from the angle of the pit where it stayed fast, unwrapped the earplug and thrust it in. No information was coming in during their ascent, only static, but having the contact helped.

Station had gotten that one message off, had still been sending it out when ascent began, which meant that the station central command had been in hani control and that stationers had their hands full, sparing no one to answer questions. It kept going, meaning that the kif had not gotten to it to silence it — or that they had had no critical interest in doing so.

But the docks — She pictured the workers fled in panic, disorganized, having no preparation against such an action as the kif had taken. Attacking stations was not a thing hani would do; therefore it was not reasonable; therefore there was no contingency.

Gods blast such thinking, and the complacency which fed it. Gods blast her own; and hani nature, that they ran each for their own fragmented concerns, because all the world was set up that way. She had had no choice in going home to Chanur, because a hani would go on with challenge while the house caught fire, until the fire singed his own hide. Hani always went their own way, disdaining Outside concerns, pricklish about admitting they would not be in space at all but for the mahendo’sat explorers who had found them — but that was so. And hani went on doing things the old way, the way that had worked when there were no colonies and no outside trade; when hani were the unchallenged owners of the world and hani instincts were suited to the world they owned.

But, gods, there were other ecosystems. They had another one going, in the Compact itself; and they dealt with distances wider than the grassy expanses of Anuurn’s plains; and with creatures of instincts which had proven equally capable of being right in other ways.

In one unimagined hell, the kif way had worked best; and gods, even the chi way had worked somewhere, lunatic as they seemed, incomprehensible to Outsiders. And Tully — who sometimes made half sense, and at other times made none at all.

Had Goldtooth despised her for her desertion, because being hani she had had no choice but to go, in the face of every reason to the contrary? Shame pricked at her, the suspicion that all hani-kind had failed a mahen hope, that hope which had lent those two ships; and that somewhere up above might be the wreckage of her mahen allies and The Pride itself, with a kif waiting to blow this shell of a lander to vapor and junk, along with the hani brain who had just figured out something critical to the species, far too late.

Madness. The angle had her brain short of oxygen. There was a grayness about her vision. She felt nothing any longer in her backside and her arms and her legs, and the pressure kept j on building.

Engine sound changed. They were leaving the-envelope of I air, still accelerating. She blinked and struggled to move her neck, saw through a blur telltales winking in the darkness, saw j a flare of light as the scan screen cleared. She blinked again, trying to see past the silhouetted arm of the copilot, making out something large and close to their position.

“…Luck,” a voice snapped through the plug into her ear, I “this is The Pride of Chanur. We’ll match with you and lock on.”

Tirun.

If she could have leaped up and shouted for joy she would I have done so. Pinned by the g force, it was all she could do to smile, a strained and difficult smile, with her heart hammering against her ribs and the blood bringing pain to her extremities.

Then the Luck’s engines stopped, and she gasped a reflexive breath in the sudden relief. The invisible hand which had pressed her to the deck was gone, and she reached in a practiced hand-over-hand to the com board, drifting feet toward the overhead and tucking down again to reach the mike. “Hurry it, Tirun, for the gods’ sake. And to the Rau: “Where are the kif? Can you pick them up?”