The Cridi and Keff swooped in through the door. The Cridi froze their globes to the walls and Keff grabbed the nearest permanent fixture as the airlock slammed shut and Carialle applied full thrust. He was shoved almost all the way to the floor by sheer force, and the roar of the engines threatened to shake his grip.

"Care, care!" Big Voice shrieked. He and half a dozen healers threw their arms across Thunderstorm's body. Their stentorian voices rose in protest, and the patient moaned. Healing impedimenta went flying in every direction, clattering into the bulkheads.

"Sorry," Carialle said over general audio, not taking the time to manifest her frog image on the wall. "It's going to be a rough ride. Cridi, brace everyone and everything that's rolling around loose!"

"We hear!" the shrill voices responded. The external viewscreens swiftly turned from golden to blue to black as Carialle burst out of atmosphere.

As soon as he could move again after the initial push, Keff handed himself toward the crash couch and flung himself into its depths. He started to strap in, when a small human hand reached up and clutched the side of the chair. Keff sat up, and yanked Mirina Don onto his lap. It was a tight fit, but there was just room for both of them. He pulled the straps over her hip and locked them down. She and Keff were pressed almost face to face.

"Oh, please," she said, her soft brown eyes filled with tears. She appealed to Carialle's pillar. "My brother is on that ship. Aldon will kill him. Zon is my only family. Aldon was going to let us leave after we landed here."

"If you can speak to him, do it," Carialle said, concentrating on following the pirate's path precisely. Not one extra centimeter must come between them. "I don't want him dead. I want to talk to him."

"If I help, will you let us go?" Mirina asked. She looked at Carialle's pillar, and back to Keff, who shook his head sadly. "They'll put me in prison. I couldn't stand it."

"I can't," Keff said, helplessly. The desperate look on her face tore at his heart.

"All we can do is try to save lives," Carialle said crisply. "Talk to him. What's the frequency?"

"Reasonable?" Bisman's fierce grimace filled the whole screen. "Reasonable to land and let a CW flunky pick through my brain? They bought you last night, didn't they? You and that sawed-off muscleman."

Mirina had no time for pride. She could see Zonzalo behind Aldon. The boy looked absolutely terrified. She had to do whatever it took to get him to land without harming her brother. He could call her whatever names he wanted to. She clasped her hands.

"Please, Aldon. Carialle swears she means you no harm. You have some information she wants. Maybe she'll trade you a favor for it."

"No promises," Carialle cut in. "All I want is a talk. What happens after that is up to the CenCom."

"This is what I say to your CenCom," Bisman sneered. He nodded his head to one side, and Mirina saw Glashton's hands move toward the controls for the Slime Ball. A tremendous jerk rocked the brainship. Mirina was flung backwards. She would have fallen if Keff and the Cridi hadn't caught her. She grabbed the edge of the console and leaned in closer.

"We can't take many of those," Carialle said, grimly. "The Thelerie might have fuel we can use, but no repair facilities."

"Please, Aldon," Mirina begged. "Listen to me. Let Zon go. He's never done you any harm. I'm the one you want. Bring him back, and you can do whatever you want to me."

"Go to hell, Mirina. You're a traitor." Bisman turned away from the screen, but at least he didn't cut off contact.

"We need the Cridi," Keff said, over the top of Mirina's head.

"I will help," one of the little green frogs said, floating away from the Thelerie working on Thunderstorm. "That one is in no danger now."

Mirina was itching to know how the Slime had learned to speak Standard, or why they were so friendly to humans, and she'd give ten years of her life to know how it was flying in midair like that. When Keff gave the order to hang on tight, she dropped back into the crash couch and held onto him. The amphibioid hung like a spider in the air beside the screentank. On it, the image of the reiver ship grew larger and larger.

"All right, Big Voice," Carialle's voice said, softly. "Reach out for the pirate. Gently, but so he knows he's been grappled. Now, hold it, but not hard, like an egg or a piece of fruit. Now Now I wish your landing personnel were here. They know exactly how to do it. Go on. Good." I wish your landing personnel were here. They know exactly how to do it. Go on. Good."

"So. I see," Big Voice said, gesturing slightly with one surprisingly large hand. The long fingers were coated in a kind of twinkling golden metal. It was a kind of activator. There was a Slime Ball here on this ship. There had been the whole time, and she never knew it!

In the tank, the reiver juddered and hesitated. Mirina was nearly kicked out of the chair by another pull from the Slime Ball aboard the red ship. So this is what it felt like when they used the tractor device on other people: terrifying, inexplicable, intangible, and inexorable. She thrust herself in next to Keff among the padding.

"They must turn back and land at once," another one of the amphibioids ordered, from its place on the wall. "Their Core is overheating! It may explode."

"Mirina," Sunset bleated, from his place on the floor. "Stop the ship jostling! My mentor is injured. This hurts him! How could Bisman do this?"

"He's a bad man, youngster," Mirina said, craning her head over the edge of the chair. Her heart sank at the terrified Thelerie's face. "I should never have let you or any of your people come aboard with him. Heaven knows I shouldn't have done so myself."

"Stop him," Sunset begged Keff.

"I am stopping him," Big Voice said. "Less noise! Must concentrate."

"Bring it back," Narrow Leg interrupted. "That old Core has reached its end. Can't you hear the frequency?" He followed this with a series of shrill whistles that Keff and Carialle inexplicably seemed to understand.

"Oh, no," Keff said, his face set.

"The Slime will kill them all," Sunset said, trembling.

"No." Thunderstorm stirred and raised a feeble wing-finger to the youth's hand. "They are our friends, too," he whispered. "It is not true they are evil. The humans misled you. I am sorry you learned a lie."

"All I know is broken and lost today," Sunset said, his noble head drooping. Thunderstorm wrapped a wing around him. Mirina felt heartsick.

"I've always cared what happened to you," she said to Sunset.

"That is true," Thunderstorm assured the youngster. Sunset nodded.

"She is my friend. Zonzalo, too."

"Yes," Mirina said, shortly. "He is." Zonzalo must survive. As if she could will him back to safety, she stared at the screen. Bisman's face was shining with sweat. His fingers clutched the navigation controls as Glashton fought to control the Slime Ball. The look on his face told her what the Slime had warned about was happening. Zonzalo had huddled himself into a knot of arms and legs and shock webbing. She was relieved to see that the reivers were too busy trying to manage the ship to think of using him as a negotiating tool. Big Voice tightened his fingers slightly, and the crew on the other ship jerked heavily backward.

"Bisman, land or you'll explode," Keff said urgently. "The Cridi say that you don't have much time before the device you're carrying goes critical! We don't want anyone to die. Turn back at once. Hurry!"

Glashton, visible over Aldon's shoulder, nodded a white-eyed yes to him. Mirina breathed a silent thanksgiving as he backed the engines down.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Carialle timed it so her tailfins touched the ground just before the pirate's did. Keff flung himself up and out of his shock webbing as soon as the altimeter hit zero, not waiting for an all-clear. The Cridi followed him in a stream, except for Big Voice and Small Spot, who elected to stay behind with Thunderstorm and the healers. Tall Eyebrow lifted Keff before he stepped off the ramp, and they sailed lightly over the mud toward the pirate ship. Mirina ran out after them.

"Take me with you!" she shouted. "I have to go to my brother!"

Big Eyes doubled back and picked her up. The woman squeaked in surprise as she was surrounded by an envelope of Core power, then rode in goggling silence the rest of the way.

On the plain near the pavilion, Keff spotted Noonday's white pelt, surrounded by a host of golden backs. Long-eyed like all those of her kind, she saw him long before he'd seen her, and was waving a wing-hand for him to join her. He squinted to bring the artificial lens in his eye to full magnification, and signalled that he was heading toward the newly landed ship. He saw her nod, and go back to talking severely to the others. Keff thought he recognized some of the Thelerie from the remote base in the crowd. The ship behind them was unmistakably Ship Three.

"Hurry!" Narrow Leg cried, flying on ahead as fast as Core power could propel him. "The Core goes critical!"

Tall Eyebrow and the others swept after him. The pirate's ramp lowered, and crew began to pour out of it. Keff and the Cridi flew in over their heads, making for the control room. The pilot stood up. Keff grabbed his wrist and signalled to Wide Foot, who drew him into the air and flew aft toward the exit with him. Zonzalo Don stared up at his sister, hovering in the air with no visible means of support. Keff took him by the shoulders and flung him, with Narrow Leg's help, up into Mirina's arms. Three of the Cridi surrounded Bisman, who cowered down into his chair with his hands above his head. The leader was airborne before he even had a chance to unfold.

"Everybody out!" Keff boomed, pitching his voice over the frightened cries of the crew fleeing for the exit. "Condition red!" He could feel hot gusts of air coming from the aft section. The Core must be back there. No time to remove it. The ship was doomed. "Hurry!"

They emerged into the open air. Waves of heat followed them. The pirates flung themselves out into the mud, gasping for breath.

"It ends," Narrow Leg said. He opened his hands to envelop the group. Keff felt something like a light curtain drop onto his back just before a deafening explosion and a kick of invisible force sent him somersaulting away from the pirates' ship. Plastic globes of Cridi and human bodies hurtled sideways past him. Keff landed with a squashy thud in the yellow mud. He picked himself up on hands and knees, spitting, to watch a plume of fire and smoke rise up from the two halves of the ship, now a hundred meters apart.

"Spacedust," Bisman spat, speaking for the first time. He had landed face first in the mud a dozen meters from Keff. "The hell was that?"

"Something you stole, and never understood," Keff said. "Tad Pole!" he exclaimed, looking up just in time.

"I see," Narrow Leg said. The old Cridi spread his hands again as the debris from the broken ship began to rain down on them. Sections of circuitry, piping, flaming rags, pieces of hull and deck plate, crates of parts, and thousands of little flat pieces of metal pattered down, and bounded off the invisible forcefield ten meters above them like hailstones pinging against a plexiglass dome. The debris splatted down into the mud around them, peppering the landscape. Hundreds of square fragments of metal hammered down on the invisible shield, bouncing off in all directions. Keff realized with a feeling of shock, that he recognized what they were. As soon as Narrow Leg signalled the all-clear, Keff crawled out over the mud, picking through them, searching for one in particular. Suddenly, he spotted the one he was looking for. He pounced on it and put it in his pocket. He turned to his allies and their cowering captives.

"Now, let's go back and see Carialle."

Thunderstorm had been settled in Keff's chair like an eagle on its nest, and Noonday occupied the other, so Keff had to stand in the midst of the huge crowd that filled the main cabin. A dozen Thelerie guardians, sitting up on their haunches with their bronze pole-arms ready, surrounded all ten pirates from the hidden base and most of the crew of the now-destroyed raider. The rest were outside, with more of the Sayas's guard. Carialle gazed from a dozen camera eyes at Aldon Bisman, whom Keff had made to stand in front of her pillar. She felt as if she was hammering on a prison door, almost out into the sunshine, if only he would talk! The key was in this obstinate man's mind. He stood with his hands behind him as if on parade rest, staring straight ahead of him, looking at nothing.

"You were in this vicinity twenty years ago, weren't you?" Carialle asked, zooming in on his face with her closest camera eye. Such an ordinary face: human, male, Earth-Indo-European descent, about sixty, confident, choleric. Apart from empirical data, his face gave away no details. "P-sector, not too far from this system."

The man kept his expression blank, though his respiration went up slightly. Keff reached forward and poked him in the shoulder.

"Tell the lady," Keff said, as Bisman turned his head to glare. "She went to a lot of trouble to have you taken alive. The Cridi would cheerfully have split your ship apart in space and left you to die in vacuum. Talk."

"Yeah," Bisman said, at last. His narrow face was coming out in spectacular bruises, whether from the rough landing or Keff's fists, Carialle could not be sure. "I was there. My father's ship. He found this system fifty years ago. It was close to a new CW trading corridor. Easy meat."

"You were stripping wrecks for parts?" Carialle asked. He nodded silently, suspiciously. She almost trembled to ask the next question. "Do you remember one in P-sector that had been destroyed by an explosion in its fuel tanks? It was a Central Worlds Exploration scout. Twenty years ago. Think. You spent about two hours at it. You walked up and back on the hull, four times, two hundred and thirty steps in all." She saw him start, as if she had read his mind.

"I don't have to think," Bisman said, tightlipped. "Yes, I remember one like that. It was hard to tell if anything good was left, it was in such bad shape. Half the tail was missing, all of the control section was slag."

"Would you swear to that?" Carialle asked at once.

"If I had to." His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why?"

"Did you know," Carialle asked, feeling her nerves prickle and ordered them under control, "that you were stripping a brainship? A live brainship? My My ship?" ship?"

Bisman's cheeks paled and hollowed as his mouth dropped open. His eyes went wide. "I'd never never," he choked on the last word and tried again. He looked up straight into her camera eye. "Madam, I would never hurt one of you. Never! What kind of character do you think I am?"

"Did you know?" Carialle asked.

"You've killed a lot of people," Mirina asked, shocked, staring at the man. "Why stop at that?"

"You dumb brawn," Bisman said, whirling to point a finger at her through the crowd of upright Thelerie. "You fool fool! Think of how many people you've bilked out of their savings, Madam Don! You're going to prison, too! You don't get any points for virtue."

Mirina was pale, too, but she confronted him bravely. "You can say a lot of things, Aldon, but you can never accuse me of murder. Did you do it?"

"No! I didn't know," he said, turning back to Carialle's pillar. "It wasn't intentional, madam. I'd never have left a living being in space like that. You don't. Spacer's law. If I'd had any idea...if there'd been a sign of life. We monitored for transmissions. There was a beacon going, but what about it? You must have been nearly dead, ma'am. I didn't bomb you."

"I know," Carialle said. "It was sabotage."

"They did the job thoroughly," Bisman said, fervently. "You...it was a fused lump. I can't believe you were alive in that that."

"Oh, I was. I could hear you. You laughed laughed. I've been hating you for twenty years," Carialle said, "wondering why you didn't help me get out of there."

"I didn't know," Bisman said, his cool poise shattered. "I swear, none of us did. We saw the hulk, and spotted some components I knew we could boost. We were just trying to make a few credits. But I know the law of space, and I'd hope it would protect me too," he said earnestly. "If I'd had the least least iota you were alive inside it, I'd have towed you somewhere." iota you were alive inside it, I'd have towed you somewhere."

"Somewhere?" Keff asked, shoving his face into the man's and making him back up a pace. "Like that illegal base at the edge of the Cridi system, for example? So you could finish your salvage?"

Bisman faced Keff down with a snarl. "We heard nothing, brawn. That ship was dead, dead, dead so far as I was concerned. If you'd seen how it looked, ma'am, compacted downlike, you would think so, too. There were damaged capacitors firing off now and again nearly blinding us or burning through our gloves, backup batteries imploding up and down the hulk. I'd have put any residual warmth down to those. We didn't have the best equipment, ma'am. That's why we were salvaging. There could've been a heartbeat deep in there, but I swear we checked."

"Not enough," Keff growled.

"Keff, let him alone," Carialle said. "I believe you." The prison door opened, and she saw sunlight beyond it. She felt immeasurably better. "Thank you for the truth." She sighed. "I only wish I had some solid proof to add to your statement."

"I have some," Keff said, pulling the scrap of metal out of his tunic pocket. "I found it in the field when it was raining ship parts." He held it up to the nearest camera eye. Carialle zoomed in on it, but she didn't need magnification. The small titanium square said "963." It was her original number plate.

"I never noticed that one," Mirina said. "He had a whole collection of those from the ships we gutted among the junk he collected. They were his trophies. I'd have recognized it if I'd seen it. They gave me Charles's." She took a square of metal out of her pocket and showed it to Carialle's camera eye over the food synthesizer. On the fragment was etched "702." "I suppose you heard the whole story."

"Yes," Carialle said. "I'm sorry."

"Now we have physical proof and a confession," Keff said, rubbing his hands together. "We can take this back to the CenCom and shove it up a certain person's nose."

"We have also heard confessions," Noonday said from her nest, looking around for some manifestation of Carialle's to address. Carialle produced the Lady Fair image on the nearest screen over the console, and had it meet the Sayas's golden gaze. "We have those who have shamed us before you now. What will you have us do with them?"

"You'd better ask the Cridi," Carialle said. "I think they have the first claim on reparation."

Big Voice and a few of the others popped up above the crowd. All of the Melange Thelerie protested. The one called Autumn raised her voice.

"Spare us the Slime!" she said desperately, pushing forward to address the image. The guardians crossed their back-scratchers to bar her way. "Only the sacred humans can dictate our fate. I will otherwise kill all my crew."

"Be silent," Noonday said severely.

"We're not sacred," Keff said, shaking his head. "and by the way, I don't think we're your beings of legend. Do you know, Cari, a little idea occured to me. Noonday, let me suggest something to you. Your legend concerns four-limbed, wingless creatures from the stars who were supposed to help you winged ones to fly in the void. Is that right?"

"It is our most beloved story," Noonday said, nodding her great head.

"How old is it?" Keff asked.

"How old? Told for, mmm, one thousand six hundred of our years."

"Narrow Leg," Keff asked, turning to the Cridi captain, "when did the Cridi explore this system and reject it as a possibility for settlement?"

Narrow Leg's eyes twinkled, and he bobbed up and down near the ceiling. The rest of the Cridi looked curious, but he made a few quick hand signals, and they laughed merrily.