"Thank you, sir."

Admiral Eberhard doesn't have to brief scout pilots like me, but I appreciate his courtesy. Like I said, the mortality for small ships is high, and that little extra personal touch makes a spaceman try that much harder to complete his mission successfully.

"Permission to come aboard." The voice, rather deeper than I'd expected, issued from the air-lock corn unit.

I took a look and damned near blew a mess of circuits. "She" was a feline, an ironically suitable brawn for an Ocelot Scout like me, but she was the most amazing... colors, for her short thick fawn fur was splashed, dashed, and dotted by a crazy random pattern of different shades of brown, fawn, black, and a reddish tan. She was battle-lean, too, with a few thin patches of fur on forearm and the deep rib cage, which might or might not be scars. At her feet was a rolled-up mass of fabric, tightly tied with quick-release straps. I'd seen Hrrubans before, of course: they're one of the few species in the Alliance who, like humans, are natural predators, and consequently make very good combat fighters. I'm not poor-mouthing our Allies, but, without naming types, some definitely have no fighting potential, though as battle support personnel they have no peer and, in their own specialties, are equally valuable in the Alliance war with the Khalians. "A shacking goo," as the man said.

This representative of the Hrruban species was not very large: some of their troops are big mothers. I'd say that this Hrruban was young - they're allowed to fight at a much earlier age than humans - for even the adult females are of a size with the best of us. This one had the usual oddly scrunched shoulder conformation. As she stood upright, her arms dangled at what looked like an awkward angle. It would be for the human body. She held herself in that curious, straight-backed, half-forward crouch from her pelvis that Hrrubans affected: the way she stood, the weight on the balls of her furred feet, thighs forward, calves on the slant, the knee ahead of the toe, indicated that she stood erect right now, by choice, but was still effective on all fours. Khalians had once been quadrupeds, too, but you rarely saw one drop to all fours, unless it was dying. And that was the only way I wanted to see Khalians.

"Permission..." she began again patiently, one foot nudging the folded bundle of fabric beside her. I opened the air lock and let her in.

"Sorry, but I've never seen an Hrruban quite like you before...."

I ended on an upward inflection, waiting for her to identify herself.

"B'ghra Hrrunalkharr," she said, "senior lieutenant, Combat Supply."

And if survival is low for brawns, it's even lower for Combat Supply personnel. If she had made a senior lieutenancy, she was good.

"Hi, I'm Bil Hansing," I replied cheerily. Ours might be a brief association but I preferred to make it as pleasant as possible.

She flung a quick salute with her "hand" turned inward, for her wrist did not swivel for a proper Navy gesture. Then the comers of her very feline mouth lifted slightly, the lower jaw dropped in what I could readily identify as a smile.

"You can call me Ghra, easier than sputtering over the rest of it. You lot can never get your tongues around r's."

"Wanna bet?" And I rolled off her name as easily as she had.

"Well, I am impressed," she said, giving the double s a sibilant emphasis. She had lugged her bundle aboard and looked around the tiny cabin of the Ocelot. "Where can I stow this, Bil?"

"Under the for'ard couch. We are short on space, we Ocelots!"

I could see her fangs now as she really smiled, and the tip of a delicate pink tongue. She quickly stowed the bundle and turned around to survey me.

"Yeah, and the fastest ships in the galaxy," she said with such a warm approval that my liking for her increased. "Mr. Hansing, please inform the bridge of my arrival. I take it you've got the data. I'm to share the rest of my briefing when we're under way."

She was polite but firm about her eagerness to get on with what could only be a difficult assignment. And I liked that attitude in her. With an exceedingly graceful movement, she eased into the left-hand seat, and latched the safety harness, her amazing "hands" (they weren't really paws - Khalians have paws - for the "fingers" on her hands had evolved to digit status, with less webbing between them for better gripping) curving over the armrests. The end of her thickly furred tail twitched idly as the appendage jutted out beyond the back of the cushioned seat. I watched it in fascination. I'd never appreciated how eloquent such a tenable extremity could be.

Nevertheless, duty called and I alerted the bridge to our readiness. We received an instant departure okay, and I released the pressure grapples of the air lock, gave the starboard repellers a little jolt, and swung carefully away from the Gormenghast.

I enjoy piloting the Ocelot. She's a sweet ship, handles like a dream, can turn her thirty meters on her tail if she has to, and have, though not many believe me. I remind them that she's a Mark 18, the very latest off the fleet's research-and-development mother ship. Well, five years galactic standard ago. But I oversee all maintenance myself and she's in prime condition, save for the normal space wear and tear and the tip of one fin caught by a Khalian bolt the second year I commanded her, when Het and I ran a pirate blockade in FCD 122/785.

Of course, she's light on armament, can't waste maneuverability and speed on shielding, and I've only the four plasma cannons, bow and stem, and swivelers port and starboard. I'd rather rely on speed and zip: the ship's a fast minx and I'm a bloody good driver. I can say that because I've proved it. Five GS years in commission and still going.

I pumped us up to speed and the fleet was fast disappearing into the blackness of space, visible only as the slight halo of light where they were still firing to clear lanes through the damned dust, and that quickly dispersed - those telltale emissions, which could prove very dangerous. That is, if Khalians were looking our way. Space is big and the convoy was two light-years from its destination at Persuasion, slowing to move cautiously through the congested globular ASD cluster to make our ultimate orbit about ASD 836/934. Everywhere in this young cluster there was dust, which was a navigational hazard despite its small to minuscule size.

The reason the fleet was convoying such an unwieldy number of ships through this sector of space, adjacent to that known to be controlled by Khalians, was to reinforce the sizable and valuable mining colony on Persuasion 836/934-and strengthen the defenses of two nearby Alliance planets: the water world of the Persepolis, whose oceans teemed with edible marine forms chockful of valuable protein for both humanoid and the weasel-like Khalians, and the fabulous woods of Poinsettia, which were more splendid and versatile in their uses than teak, mahogany, or redwood. In the ASD sector the Khalians had only three planets, none valuable except as stepping-stones, so that a takeover of the richer Alliance-held worlds had a high probability factor, which the Alliance was determined to reduce by the reinforcement of troops and material in this convoy. Or once again the great offensive strike planned for Target, the main Khalian base in Alliance space, would have to be set back.

As the tremendous entry speed was reduced, the convoy was, of course, vulnerable to any Khalian marauders during the six months that maneuver took. FTL is the fastest way to travel: it's the slowing down that takes so much time. (You got one, you got the other. You live with it.) So Alliance High Command had created a few diversions in sectors BRE, BSF - attacks on two rather important Khalian-held planets - and had thrown great fleet strength into the repulsing maneuver at KSD: a strategy that was evidently working, to judge by the lack of visible traces of Khalian force hereabouts. In FTL, you have obscurity, Alliance or Khalian; but in normal space, the emissions of your normal drive make ever-expanding "cones," which are detectable in normal space. The large number of ships included in our convoy increased the detection factor to any spaceship crossing the cone trail. Cones were, fortunately, not detectable from a planetary source, but the plasma bursts would be - that is, if Bethesda had the right equipment.

If we could be spared any further unforeseen incidents, the convoy had a good chance of relieving Persuasion and the other worlds before the piratic weasels could summon strike elements to the ASD area.

I had never actually been near a Khalian. Maybe my decorative brawn had. I intended to ask her as soon as I had locked us on course. Ghra's tail tip continued to twitch, just slightly, as we reached the Ocelot's cruising speed. I had now programmed in the data to reach Bethesda, and to reenter normal space at three planetary orbits away from it, on the dark side. I checked my calculations and then, warning Ghra, activated the FTL drive and we were off!

Ghra released the safety belt and stretched, her tail sticking straight out behind her. Good thing she couldn't see me gawping at it. Scout ships with a good pilot like me, and I'm not immodest to say so, could utilize the FTL drive between systems, where the fleet, if it wanted to keep its many vessels together in some form of order, could not.

"If you'll put what is now the spaceport area of Bethesda on the screen, Bil, I'll brief you," she said, leaning forward to the terminal. I screened the relevant map. She extended one claw, using it to show me the landing site. "We're to go in north of the spaceport, low, where they won't be looking for anything. Just here, there're a lot of canyons and ravines. And a lot of volcanic debris, some of it bigger than your Ocelot. So you can pretend you're an old mountain fragment while I mosey into the settlement to see the OTS."

"And when the sun comes up and shines off my hull, it'll be bloody plain I'm no rock."

She gave a rippling chuckle, more like a happy growl. "Ah, but you'll be camouflaged by the time the sun rises," she said, pointing her left hand toward the couch under which her bundle was stored.

"Camouflaged?"

She chuckled again, and dropped her lower jaw in her Hrruban smile. "Just like me."

"Huh? You'd stand out a klick away."

"Not necessarily. D'you know why creatures evolved different exterior colors and patterns? Well, markings and colors help them become invisible to their natural enemies, or their equally natural victims. On your own homeworld, and I'll cite the big felines as an excellent example" - she twitched her dainty whisker hairs to indicate amusement, or was it condescension for us poorly endowed critters?- "tigers have stripes because they're jungle inhabitants; lions wear fur that blends into the veldt or grasslands; panthers are mottled black to hide in tree limbs and shadows. Their favorite prey is also colored to be less easily detected, to confuse the eye of the beholder, if they stand still.

"A major breakthrough in Khalian biological research suggests that they are blind to certain colors and patterns." She indicated her sploshed flanks. "What I'm wearing should render me all but invisible to Khalians."

"Ah, come on, Ghra, I can't buy that!"

"Hear me out" She held her hand up, her lustrous big eyes sparkling with an expression that could be amusement, but certainly resulted in my obedience. "We've also determined that, while Khalian night vision is excellent, dawn and dusk produce a twilight myopia. My present camouflage is blended for use on this planet. I can move with impunity at dawn and dusk, and quite possibly remain unseen during daylight hours, even by Khalians passing right by me. Provided I choose my ground cover correctly. That's part of early Hrruban training, anyhow. And we Hrrubans also know how to lie perfectly still for long hours." She grinned at my skeptical snort. "Add to that inherent ability the fact that Khalians have lost what olfactory acuteness they originally had as they've relied more and more on high tech, and I doubt they'll notice me." Her own nostrils dilated slightly and her whiskers twitched in distaste. "I can smell a Khalian more than five klicks away. And a Khalian wouldn't detect, much less recognize, my spoor. Stupid creatures. Ignored or lost most of their valuable natural assets. They can't even move as quadrupeds anymore. We had the wisdom to retain, and improve on, our inherited advantages. It could be something as simple and nontech as primitive ability that's going to tip the scale in this war. We've already proved that ancient ways make us valuable as fighters."

"You Hrrubans have a bloody good reputation," I agreed generously. "You've had combat experience?" I asked tactfully, for generally speaking, seasoned fighters don't spout off the way she was. As Ghra didn't seem to be a fully adult Hrruban, maybe she was indulging herself in a bit of psyching up for this mission.

"Frequent." The dry delivery of that single word assured me she was, indeed, a seasoned warrior. The fingers of her left hand clicked a rapid tattoo. "Khalians are indeed formidable opponents. Very." She spread her left hand, briefly exposing her lethal complement of claws. "Deadly in hand-to-hand with that stumpy size a strange advantage. A fully developed adult Khalian comes up to my chest: it's those short Khalian arms, incredibly powerful, that you've got to watch out for."

Some of the latest "short arm" jokes are grisly by any standards: real sick humor! And somehow, despite your disgust, you find yourself avidly repeating the newest one.

"Khalians may prefer to use their technology against us in the air," Ghra continued, "but they're no slouches face-to-face. I've seen a Khalian grab a soldier by the knees, trip him up, and sever the hamstrings in three seconds. Sometimes they'll launch at the chest, compress the lungs in a fierce grip, and bite through the jugular vein. However," Ghra added with understandable pride, "we've noticed a marked tendency in their troops to avoid Hrrubans. Fortunately we don't mind fighting in mixed companies."

I'd heard some incredible tales of the exploits of mixed companies and been rather proud that so many of the diverse species of the Alliance could forget minor differences for the main objective. I'd also heard some horror tales of what Khalians did to any prisoners of those mixed companies. (It had quickly become a general policy to dispatch any immobilized wounded.) Of course, such tales always permeate a fighting force. Sometimes, I think, not as much to encourage our own fighting men to fight that much more fiercely as to dull the edge of horror by the repetition of it.

"But it's not going to be brute force that'll overcome them: it'll be superior intelligence. We Hrrubans hope to be able to infiltrate their ground forces with our camouflages." She ran both hands down her lean and muscled thighs. "I'm going to prove we can."

"More power to you," I said, still skeptical if she was relying on body paint. While I was a space fighter pilot, I knew enough about warfare strategies to recognize that it was only battles that were won in space: wars are won when the planets involved are secured against the invader. "There's just one thing. You may be able to fool those weasels' eyes, but what about the humans and such on Bethesda? You're going to be mighty visible to them, you know."

Ghra chuckled. "The Khalians enforce a strict dawn-to-dusk curfew on their captive planets. You'll be setting us down in an unpopulated area. None of the captured folk would venture there and all the Khalian air patrols would see is the camouflage net."

I hoped so, not that I personally feared Khalians in the air or on the ground. For one thing, an Ocelot is faster than any atmosphere planes they operate, or spacecraft. Khalians prefer to fly large vehicles: as far as we know they don't have any small or single-crew craft. Which makes a certain amount of sense - with very short arms and legs, they wouldn't have the reach to make effective use of a multiple-function board. Their control rooms must be crowded. Unless Khalians had prehensile use of their toes?

"Yeah, but you have to contact the OTS and he lives in the human cantonment. How're you going to keep invisible there?"

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. "By being cautious. After all, no humans will be expecting an Hrruban on Bethesda, will they?" She dropped her jaw again, and this time I knew it was amusement that brought a sparkle to those great brown eyes. "People, especially captive people, tend to see only what they expect to see. And they don't want to see the unusual or the incredible. If they should spot me, they won't believe it nor are they likely to run off and tattle to Khalians."

Then Ghra stretched, sinews and joints popping audibly. "How long before reentry, Bil? Time enough for me to get a short nap?" Her jaw dropped in an Hrruban grin as she opened the lid of the deepsleep capsule.

"Depends on how long you want to sleep. One month, two?" Scout ships are fast but they also must obey the laws of FTL physics, and I had to slow down just as the convoy had to, only I could waste my speed faster by braking a lot of it in the gravity well of Bethesda's sun.

"Get us into the system. We'll have plenty of time to swap jokes without boring each other," she said as she took two steps to the long cabinet that held the deepsleep tank. She pulled it out and observed while I set the mechanism to time and calibrated the gas dose. Nodding her approval, she lay down on the couch, attached her life-support cups suitable for her species with the ease of long practice. With a final wink, she closed the canopy and then her eyes, her lean camouflaged frame relaxing instantly as the gas flooded the compartment.

Ghra was perceptive about the inevitable grating of two personalities cooped up in necessarily cramped conditions for too long a time with little activity to defuse energy. We brain ships are accustomed to being by ourselves, though I'm the first to tell new members of our Elite Corps that the first few months ain't easy. There are benefits and we are conditioned to the encapsulation long before we're placed in any kind of large, dangerous equipment. The good thing about being human is our adaptability. Or maybe it's sheer necessity. If you'd rather not be dead, there is an alternative: and if we, who have had bodies and have known that kind of lifestyle, are not as completely the ship we drive as shell people are, we have our uses and I have come to like this new life, too.

The Ocelot plunged on down toward the unseen planet and its mission. I set external alarms and went into recall trance.

As the Ocelot neared my target, a mild-enough-looking space marble, dark blues and greens with thin cloud cover, it roused both Ghra and me. She came alert right smart, just as a well-trained fighter should.

Grabbing a container of the approved postsleep fortified drink, she resumed her seat and we both read the Ocelot's autoreports.

The detectors identified only the usual stuff - comsats, mining transfer gear, solar heater units - but nothing in orbit around Bethesda that could detect the convoy. The only way to be dead sure, or dead, was to check down below as well. Ghra agreed. Dawn was coming up over one of the water masses that punctuated the planet. They looked more like crater holes than natural subsidences, but there had once been a lot of volcanic activity on Bethesda.

"How're we going to make it in, Bil? Even with what the settlers put up, the Khalians could spot us."

"No, I've lined the Ocelot up with the same trajectory as a convenient trail of meteoritic debris. You can see the planet is peeked with craters. Perfect for our purpose. Even if they have gear sensitive enough to track the Ocelot's faint trail, they'd more than likely figure it was just more of the debris that's already come in."

"I had a look at Het's data on the planet," Ghra said. "Bethesda's spaceport facility had been ample enough to take the big colonial transport jobs. Last recorded flights in before the Khalian capture were for commercial freight lighters but the port could take the biggest Khalian cruisers and destroyers, not just those medium pursuit fighters."

"What did Het say about Khalian update on the invasion?"

Ghra shrugged. "That is unknown. We'll find out." She grinned when I made one of those disgruntled noises I'm rather good at. "Well, they could be busy elsewhere. You know how the Khalians are, mad keen on one thing one moment, and then forget about it for a decade."

"Let's hope the decade doesn't end while we're in this sector. Well, we've got a day or so before we go in, did you hear the one about..."

Ghra told me some even I hadn't heard by the time I was ready to activate the trajectory I'd plotted. I matched speed with a group of pebbles while Ghra did a geology game with me. I thought I'd never see the last of the fregmekking marbles, or win the game even though we were getting down at a fair clip. Ghra was betting the pebbles would hit the northern wasteland before we flattened out for the last segment of our run. Whose side was she on?

Ducking under the light cloud cover, I made a low-altitude run over the nightside toward the spaceport and the small town that serviced it. The Khalians had enslaved the planet's small resident human population in their inimitable fashion, but there might just be some sort of a night patrol.

"Here's our objective, Ghra," I told her as we closed in our landing site, and screened the picture.

She narrowed her eyes, mumbling or purring as she memorized landscape. The town had been built along the coastline, and there looked to be wharfs and piers but no sign of sea traffic or boats. Just beyond the town, on a plateau that had been badly resculptured to accommodate large craft landings, was the respectably-sized spaceport, with towers, comdisks, quarters, and what looked like repair hangars. Infra scan showed two cooling earthen circles, but that didn't tell us enough. I got a quick glimpse of the snouts and fins of a few ships, none of them warm enough to have been flown in the past twenty-four hours, but I didn't have time to verify type and number before we were behind the coastal hill. I dropped the meteor ruse just in time to switch on the gravity drive and keep us from planting a new crater.

"And there" - I put an arrow on the screen - "is where I make like a rock. You'll be only about five klicks from town."

"Good." She managed to make the g into a growl, narrowing her eyes as she regarded the picture. Her tail gave three sharp swings. "May I have a replay of the spaceport facility?" I complied, screening the footage at a slower rate.

"Nothing fast enough to catch me, Ghra, either in the atmosphere or in space," I replied nonchalantly. I made the usual copies of the tapes of our inbound trip for the Mayday capsule. Commander Het collects updates like water rations. "Strap in, Ghra, I'm cutting the engines. Het found me a straight run through that gorge and I'm using it."

That's another thing about the Ocelot, she'll glide. Mind you, I was ready to cut in the repellers at any moment, but Het had done me proud in choosing the site. We glided in with due regard for the Ocelot's skin, for we'd be slotted in among a lot of volcanic debris, some of which was, as Ghra had promised, as large as the Scout. No sooner had we landed than Ghra retrieved her bundle and was hefting it to the air lock, which I opened for her. Locked in my sealed chamber, I couldn't be of any assistance in spreading the camouflage net, but she was quick, deft, and very strong.

"Have you got a combutton, Bil?" she asked when she had returned, her breath only a little faster than normal. She walked past the console into the little galley and drew a ration of water. "Good, then you'll get the gen one way or another." She took a deep draught of the water. "Good stuff. Import it?"

"Yeah, neither Het nor the admiral like it recycled." I chuckled. "Rank has some privileges, you know."

Shamelessly, she took a second cupful. "I need to stock up if I have to lie still all day. It's summer here." She ran a claw tip down the selection dial of the supply cupboard and finally pressed a button, wrinkling her nose. "I hate field rations but they do stay with you." She had ordered up several bars of compressed high-protein/high-carbohydrate mix. I watched as she stored them in what I had thought to be muscle but were carefully camouflaged inner forearm pockets.

"What else are you hiding?" Surprise overwhelmed tact.

She gave that inimitable chuckle of hers. "A few useful weapons." She picked up the button I had placed on the console. "Neat! What's the range?"

"Fifteen klicks."

"I can easily stay in that range, Bil." She fastened the little nodule to the skull side of her left ear, its metallic surface invisible in the tufty fur. "Thanks. How long till dawn?"

I gave her the times for false and real dawn. With a cheery salute she left the Ocelot, and I listened to the soft slip of her feet as long as the exterior sensors could pick up the noise before I closed the air lock. She had been moving on all fours. Remembering old teaching clips about ancient Earth felines, I could see her lithe body bounding across the uneven terrain. For a brief moment, I envied her. Then I began worrying for her.

I had known Ghra longer than I knew most of my random passengers and we hadn't bored each other after I roused her. In her quiet, wryly humorous way, her company had been quite a treat for me: If she'd been more humanoid, and I'd been more like my former self... ah, well! That's one of the drawbacks for a gig like me; we do see the very best, but generally all too briefly.

Ghra had sounded real confident about this camouflage scheme of hers. Not talk-herself-into-believing-it confident, but certain sure-there'd-be-no-problem confident. Me, I'd prefer something more substantial than paint as protection. But then, I'm definitely the product of a high-tech civilization, while Ghra had faith in natural advantages and instinctive talents. Well, it was going to take every asset the Alliance had to conquer the Khalian pirates!

Shortly before Bethesda's primary rose in the east, Ghra reported.

"I'm in place, Bil. I'll keep the combutton on so you'll know all I do. Our contact's asleep. I'm stretched out on the branch of a fairly substantial kind of a broad-leafed tree outside his window. I'll hope he isn't the nervous type."

An hour and a half later, we both discovered that he was not the believing type either. But then, who would have expected to be contacted by what at first appeared to be a disembodied smile among the broad leaves shading your side window. It certainly wasn't what Fildin Escobat had anticipated when his implant had given him the warning zing of impending visitation.

"What are you?" he demanded after Ghra had pronounced the meeting code words.

"An Hrruban," Ghra replied in a well-projected whisper. I could hear a rustle as she moved briefly.

"Arghle!"

There was a silence, broken by a few more throaty garglings.

"What's Hrruban?"

"Alliance felinoids."

"Cat people?" Fildin had some basic civics education.

"I'm camouflaged."

"Damned sure"

"So I'm patently not Khalian...."

"Anyone can say they're Alliance. You could be Khalian, disguised."

"Have you ever seen a Khalian going about on all fours? The size of me? With a face and teeth like mine? Or a tail?"

"No..." This was a reluctant admission.

"Speaking Galactic?"

"That's true enough," Fildin replied sourly, for all captive species were forced to learn the spitting hissing Khalian language. Khalian nerve prods and acid whips effectively encouraged both understanding and vocabulary. "So now what?"

"You tell me what I need to know."