ii

The Istran shuttle was an appalling relic. There was little enough concession to comfort in the station, but there was less in the tight confines of the vessel which would take them down to surface. Only the upholstery was new, a token attempt at renovation. Raen surveyed the machinery with some curiosity, glanced critically into the cockpit, where pilot and co-pilot were checking charts and bickering.

The Istrans had settled in, all nine of them, Merek Eln and Parn Kest, the several business types and their azi guard. Warrior had taken up position in the rear of the aisle, the only space sufficient for its comfort and that of the betas. It closed both chelae about tire braces of the rearmost seats, quite secure, and froze into the statue-like patience of its kind.

Jim came up the ramp, and after some little perplexity, secured the whole carrier into storage behind the Eln-Kest’s modest luggage…forced tire door closed. Raen let him take his seat first, next the sealed viewport, then settled in after, opposite Merck Eln, and fastened the belts. Her pulse raced, considering the company they kept and the museum-piece in which they were about to hurtle into atmosphere.

“This is quite remarkable,” she said to Jim, thinking that Meron in all its decadent and hazardous entertainments had never offered anything quite like Istran transport.

Jim looked less elated with the experience, but his eyes flickered with interest over all the strangeness…not fear, but a feverish intensity, as if he were attempting to absorb everything at once and deal with it. His hands trembled so when he adjusted his belts that be had trouble joining them.

The co-pilot stopped the argument with the pilot long enough to come back and check the door seal, went forward again. The pilot gave warning. The vessel disengaged from its lock and went through the stomach-wrenching sequence of intermittent weightlessness and reorientation under power as they threaded their way out of their berth. The noise, unbaffled was incredible.

“Kontrin,” Merek Eln shouted, leaning in his seat.

“Explanations?” Raen asked.

“We are very grateful—”

“Please. Just the explanation.”

Merek Eln swallowed heavily. They were in complete weightlessness, their slight wallowing swiftly corrected. The noise died away save for the circulation fans. Istra showed crescent-shaped on the forward screen, more than filling it; the station showed on the aft screen. They were falling into the world’s night side, as Raen judged it.

“We are very glad you decided to accept transport with us,” Eln said. “We are quite concerned for your safety at Istra, onstation and onworld. There’s been some difficulty, some disturbance. Perhaps you have heard.”

Raen shrugged. There were rumours of unrest, here and elsewhere, of crises; of things more serious…she earnestly wished she knew.

“You were,” Merek On said, “perhaps sent here for that reason.”

She made a slight gesture of the eves back toward Warrior. “You might ask it concerning its motives.”

That struck a moment of silence.

“Kontrin,” said sera Kest, leaning forward from the seat behind. “For whatever reasons you’ve come here—you must realise there’s a hazard. The station is too wide, too difficult to monitor. In Newhope, on Istra, at least we can provide you security.”

“Sera—are we being abducted?”

The faces about her were suddenly stark with apprehension.

“Kontrin,” said Merek Eln, “you are being humorous; we wish we could persuade you to consider seriously what hazards are possible here.”

“Ser, sera, so long as you persist in trying to tell me only fragments of the situation, I see no reason to take a serious tone with you. You’ve been out to Meron. You’re coming home. Your domestic problems are evidently serious and violent, but your manner indicates to me that you would much rather I were not here.”

There was a considerable space of silence. Fear was thick in the air.

“There has been some violence,” said one of the others. “The station is particularly vulnerable to sabotage and such acts. We fear it. We have sent appeals. None were answered.”

“The Family ignored them. Is that your meaning?”

“Yes,” said another after a moment.

“That is remarkable, seri. And what agency do you suspect to be the source of your difficulty?”

No one answered.

“Dare I guess,” said Raen, “that you suspect that the source of your troubles isthe Family?”

There was yet no answer, only the evidence of perspiration on beta faces.

“Or the hives?”

No one moved. Not an eye blinked.

“You would not be advised to take any action against me, seri. The Family is not monolithic. Quite the contrary. Be reassured: I am ignorant; you can try to deceive me. What brought the two of you to Meron?”

“We—have loans outstanding from MIMAK there. We hoped for some material assistance…”

“We hoped,” Parn Kest interrupted brusquely, “to establish innerworlds contacts—to help us past this wall of silence. We need relief…in taxes, in trade; we were ignored, appeal after appeal. And we hoped to work out a temporary agreement with MIMAK, against the hope of some relief. Grain. Grain and food. Kontrin—we’re supporting farms and estates which can’t possibly make profit. We’re at a crisis. We were given license for increase in population, our own and azi, and the figures doubled our own. We thought future adjustment would take care of that. But the crisis is on us, and no one listens. Majat absorb some of the excess. That market is all that keeps us from economic collapse. But food…food for all that population… And the day we can’t feed the hives… Kont’ Raen, agriculture and azi are our livelihood. Newhope and Newport and the station…and the majat…derive their food from the estates; but it’s consumed by the azi who work them. There are workers enough to cover the estates’ needs four times over. There’s panic out there. The estates are armed camps.”

“We were told when we came in,” Eln said in a faint voice, “that ITAK has been able to confiscate azi of some of the smaller estates. But there’s no way to take them by force from the larger. We can’t legally dispose of those contracts, by sale or by termination. There has to be Kontrin—”

“—license for transfer or adjustment,” Raen finished. “Or for termination without medical cause. I know our policies rather thoroughly, ser Eln.”

“And therefore you can’t export and you can’t terminate.”

“Or feed them indefinitely, Kontrin. Or feed them. The economics of the farms insist on a certain number of azi to the allotted land area. Someone… erred.”

Eln’s lips trembled, having said so. It was for a beta, great daring.

“And the occasion for violence against the station?”

“It hasn’t happened yet,” one of the others said.

“But you fear that it will. Why?”

“The corporations are blamed for the situation on the estates. Estate-owners are hardly able to comprehend any other—at fault.”

There was another silence, deep and long.

“You’ll be glad to know, seri, that there are means to get a message off this world, one that would be heard on Cerdin. I might do it. But there are solutions short of that. Perhaps better ones.” She thought then of Jim, and laid a hand on his knee, leaning toward him. “You are hearing things which aren’t for retelling…to anyone.”

“I will not,” he said, and she believed him, for he looked as if he earnestly wanted to be deaf to this. She turned back to Eln and Kest.

“What measures,” she asked them, “ havethe corporations taken?”

No one wanted to meet her eyes, not those two, nor their companions.

“Is there starvation?” she asked.

“We are importing,” one of the others said at last, a small, flat voice.

Raen looked at him, slowly took his meaning. “Standard channels of trade?”