“Got deal,” said Goldtooth. “Got friend Jik repair, same you get at Kirdu. Chanur fix, a?”

“Rot you—”

“Got deal”

“Got,” she admitted, and suffered another slap on the shoulder. She looked at Tully, thinking of Chanur balance sheets, debits and credits. Looked at him looking at her with those odd pale eyes full of worship. Behind him an accessway had opened. His own kind had come, gods, a bewildering assortment, pale ones and dark ones and some shades in between. “Tully,” she said, signed with her eyes that he should look, and he did.

He froze for the instant, then ran for them, hani-dressed and hani-looking, ran to his assorted comrades, who were clipped and shaved and clothed top and bottom in skintight garments shod besides. Hands reached out to him; arms opened. He embraced them all and sundry and there was a babble of alien language which echoed off the overhead.

So he goes, Pyanfar thought with a strange sadness — and with a certain anxiety about losing a valuable contact to others — to Llun, by the gods, who would be eager to get their own-claws in; and Kananm and Sanuum and some of the other competitors in port. Pyanfar shed Goldtooth’s arm and crossed the dock toward the knot of humans, her own companions following her. Tully brought his people at least halfway when he saw her, came rushing up and grabbed her hand with fevered joy.

“Friend,” he said, his best word, and dragged her reluctant hand toward that of a white-maned human, whose naked face was wrinkled as a kif’s and tawny-colored like a hani’s.

The captain, she thought; an old one. She suffered the handclasp with claws retracted, bowed and got a courteous bow in return. Tully spoke in his own language, rapidly, carrying some point — indicated one after another of them and said” their names his way — Haral and Tirun, Geran and Chur and Hilfy; and the mahendo’sat at least by species.

“Want talk,” Tully managed then. “Want understand you.”

Pyanfar’s ears flicked and lifted, the chance of profit within her reach after all. She puckered her mouth into its most pleasant expression. Gods, some of them were odd. They ranged enormously in size and weight and there were two radically different shapes. Females, she realized curiously; if j Tully was male, then these odd types were the women.

“We talk,” Goldtooth interposed. “Mahe make deal too.”

“Friend,” Pyanfar told the humans in her best attempt at I human language. Tully still had to translate it, but it had its effect. “I come to your ship,” she said, choosing Tully’s small j hani vocabulary. “Your ship. Talk.”

“I come too,” Goldtooth said doggedly, not to be shaken. Tully translated.

“Yes,” Tully rendered the answer, grinning. “Friend. All friend.”

“Deals like a mahe,” Pyanfar muttered. But that arrangement was well enough with her. She suddenly conceived plans — for the further loan of two mahe hunter ships on a profitable voyage.

“Captain,” Haral said, touching her arm and calling her attention to a cluster of figures coming out of the dockside corridor.

Llun were on their way — Kifas Llun herself in the lead of I that group, come to answer this uncommon call at Gaohn Station, a score of black-trousered officialdom trailing after her.

They would demand the translator tape, that was sure. Pyanfar thrust her hands into her waistband. “Friends,” she assured Tully, who gave the approaching group anxious looks, and he in turn reassured his comrades.

“Hilfy,” Pyanfar said, “Chur, no need for you to stand through this. Go to the ship. Geran, you go and take care of them, will you?” — “Right,” Geran agreed. “Come on, you two.”

No protests from them. Chur and Hilfy started away in Geran’s keeping and Tully delayed them to take their hands one by one as if he expected something might keep him from further good-byes.

Gods, she had no desire to deal with the Llun or anyone at the moment. Her knees ached, her whole body ached, from want of sleep and from strain. She felt a span shorter than she had come across that blink from Kirdu. They all must. Tully too. She wanted—

She wanted to have time… to talk to her own; to find out who else of Chanur was hurt; to call Kohan…

And somehow — to talk to Khym. To do something, anything for his misery, in spite of what others thought and said.

“Geran,” she called out at the retreating group. “Khym too. Get him aboard and tend to him. Tell him I said so.”

A small flick of the ears. “Aye,” Geran said, and went off in Khym’s direction while Chur and Hilfy made their own way back. Pyanfar turned to the arriving Llun with a dazzlingly cheerful smile, fished the tape from her pocket and turned it over to Kifas at once with never a fade of good humor.

“We register these good Outsiders, our guests, at Gaohn nation,” Pyanfar said, “under Chanur sponsorship.”

“Allies, her Chanur?” There was a frown of suspicion on Kifas Llun’s face. “Nothing the Tahar said weighs here now with us… but did you send for them?”

“Gods no. The knnn did that. Knnn who got a bellyful of kif intervention in their space, I’d guess; who found these Outsiders near their space and decided in their own curious fashion to see to it that they met reputable Compact citizens of a similar biology — snatched them ,up in synch, they did, and they took the hakkikt out the same way, may they have joy of him. They’re traders, you know, ker Llun, after their own lights. I’ll wager our human friends here don’t know yet what’s happened to them or how far they are from home or how they got here. They’ll have drugged down and ridden out the jumps it took to get them here; and gods know how many that was or from where.”

“Introduce us,” the Llun said.

“I’ll remind you,” Pyanfar said, “that we and they have gone through too many time changes. We’re not up to prolonged formalities. They’re Chanur guests; I’m sponsoring them and I feel it incumbent on myself to see that they get their rest… but of course they’ll sign the appropriate papers and register.”

“Introductions,” the Llun said dryly, too old and too wise to be put off by that.

“Tully,” Pyanfar said, “you got too rotted many friends.”

It was what she expected, grueling, a strain on everyone’s good humor, and entirely over-long, that visit to station offices. There was some restraint exercised, in respect to family losses, in respect to frayed and lately high tempers; in respect to the fact that for one time out of a hundred, hani had worked together without regard to house and province, and the cooperative spirit had not entirely faded.

There was gratitude to Goldtooth and the mahe ships who got station privileges and repair. Gaohn Station was all too anxious to share the bill with Chanur, aching to get Aja Jin into the hands of Harn Shipyards, to be studied and analyzed during the course of the work. The mahendo’sat were evidently satisfied with the situation — smug bastards, Pyanfar thought, bristling somewhat as all hani did, at the unhappy truth that the mahendo’sat were always ahead of hani, that mahendo’sat technology which had gotten them into space in the first place was responsible for keeping them there. The mahendo’sat were apparently ready for their allies to see the hunter-ships, at least. Rot the Personage and his small fluff with him.

Station was eager too for a look at the human ship; and doubtless the humans entertained some suspicions about that and everything else, but it was a fair question what they had in their power to do about it.

They were, at least for the moment, effectively lost.

“We find home,” Tully said, “not far from Meetpoint. Know this. Your record, your ship instruments — help us ”

“Not difficult at all,” Pyanfar said. “All we have to do is send your records through the translator and get our charts together, right? We come up with the answer in no time.”