“I’ll circle around, ram one up their tractor beam, and blow them to kingdom come.” Uncle Joh, his mustache bristling in full battle mode, was in his element. Next to salvage and his friends, he liked fighting best and couldn’t understand the Linyaari aversion to violence.

  “No!” Khorii and Melireenya cried at once. “Mikaaye—” Khorii said.

  “My son is aboard one of their ships,” Melireenya explained.

  “A Linyaari pirate?” Uncle Joh sounded justifiably baffled.

  “It’s kind of an exchange program, Jonas,” Captain Bates explained.

  “What kind?” Uncle Joh demanded.

  “Kind of a quasi-hostage, quasi-training, quasi-reform program,” Captain Bates replied. “Mikaaye volunteered, and Melireenya doesn’t object, do you, Melireenya?”

  “Only if someone tries to blow up the ship he’s on,” Melireenya said. “I think communication is in order rather than an exchange of weapons fire. Especially since all of the shuttles and the Balakiire are now within firing range as well and since your shuttle has fed her missiles to the beast below, Captain Becker, we are all unarmed.”

  Uncle Joh said a number of other rude expressions, and scowled as ferociously as RK when he attacked Khiindi. “Those fleas on the face of the galaxy sure know how to pick their moment,” he said. “I got them now, you know. They’ve been listening in, and they uncloaked just to jeer at me. I could have seen them before if I hadn’t been instructing Elviiz on the ethics of interspecies interactions.”

  “Oh good,” Father said. “You can relax, Melireenya. The danger from Joh is over now. He has returned to employing words of more than one syllable to express himself. We can concentrate on the threat from without now.”

  “Can you thought-talk with Mikaaye from this distance, Melireenya?” Mother asked. Ship-to-ship telepathic contact was rather difficult, especially when one of the ships was running as far from the others as it could, but close family connections could often communicate over even more vast distances. “Is he on that ship? If he is, can he tell us what their plan is?”

  As they communicated from shuttle to shuttle, the Balakiire’s docking hatch opened to admit the wii-Balakiire, and the Condor’s docking hatch opened to admit its shuttle.

  “Hang on, gang,” Uncle Joh said. “There’s not room for two shuttles there, but if Hap and Captain Bates suit up, Maak will come out and attach your shuttle to our hull and pull you in.”

  “We will maintain surveillance in the meantime, Joh,” Khaari assured him.

  “Fine, while we load the shuttle, you track the pirates, and we’ll track you,” Uncle Joh told her.

  “Do you think Jalonzo and Abuelita and the other people down there will be all right?” Khorii asked her parents.

  “As long as they continue to surround themselves only with organically based materials, they’ll be fine,” Mother said reassuringly.

  “Maybe once the inogre has eaten everything in the city it will starve to death,” Ariin put in, sounding cheerful.

  “That would be terrible,” Father chided Ariin for her ka-Linyaari unkindness. “Perhaps we should find a way to feed it.”

  Ariin had no response for that, but they could all tell she was appalled by what she saw as their father’s naïveté. She had not been raised, as Khorii had, among people who still remembered how Aari had been tortured by the horrible Khleevi, escaped, and lived to tell the tale. Despite the terrible things they had done to him, he had still retained his innate goodness and not let himself be twisted by the experience. To Aari, all life was valued—theoretically even his former captors. Just because the Khleevi hadn’t been interested in peaceful cohabitation didn’t necessarily mean this creature wasn’t either.

  Father simply smiled at Ariin, and said, “Since Maak had to leave the bridge to help your friends, I will go help Joh.”

  “We should go help the newcomers with their gear,” Mother said, then smiled at Ariin. “I think in time you will come to trust your father as I do. His ideas may sometimes seem odd, but the best ideas often do.”

  Khorii thought Mother ought to know. She had had plenty of odd ideas of her own over the years. As a Linyaari raised by humans, she was considered even odder than Father was, but like Father, she had long ago earned the respect of more conventional Linyaari.

  By the time they helped Captain Bates and Hap out of their pressure suits and oxygen helmets and brought them to the lounge, another crisis was under way.

  On the remote screen, the surface of Paloduro had been replaced by an image of the Mana, suspended in space except for a slender strawlike tube down which something bumpy was pouring itself, seemingly endlessly, into the ship.

  “They’re boarding her,” Captain Bates said as she walked into the lounge. She didn’t sit but watched the scene with fascination and anger. “So much for Coco’s promise. He accepted Mikaaye, waited until I was gone, and…”

  Suddenly the tube, which had been stretched more or less taut, broke loose at one end and people began floating out of it. They wore pressure suits, too, and others attempted to gather them back in.

  Melireenya spoke, her face appearing beside the other images on the screen. “It’s not what you think. Mikaaye says they needed the Mana. The ‘ghosts’ aboard the Black Mariah continued damaging her until they formed the larger creature. The taking of the Mana is not so much a hijacking as an evacuation. The captain had a terrible time getting everyone to go, and now it looks as if the Black Mariah has been—there, do you see?”

  The ship had reappeared somewhat beyond the waving tube. It bulged, straining, and broke into several large pieces as they watched. Sludgy inogre oozed out between the pieces, covered them, and slowly absorbed them. Before it had finished devouring all of the visible pieces, however, parts of it froze, turning white and motionless in the vacuum of space. Finally, from within its core, it extruded one tentacle that clutched at the tube.

  The last of the evacuees had been plucked from space and pulled through by a rescuer attached to a cable apparently moored to the Mana. As the tentacle made a final desperate lunge, it caught the free-floating end of the tube.

  Almost simultaneously, the Mana accelerated, and the tube broke free from its hull, where it was sucked into the creature until the tentacle also hung rigid and still from its body.

  “It ate too much. It ate too fast,” Uncle Joh chanted, no doubt quoting one of those ancient Terran aphorisms of which he was so fond.

  Ariin smiled unpleasantly, and for a change it was not aimed at Khorii or Khiindi. “I see now the wisdom of Father’s kindness. Without protection from space, the creature freezes and dies.”

  “We cannot actually be sure it’s dead,” Mother said. “But unless it is thawed, rehoused, and fed again, it should be moribund for all intents and purposes.”

  Captain Bates rose from her seat in the lounge and headed for the bridge, saying, “Hail the Mana now, Joh. I want to have a couple of choice words with my clan daddy, Coco.” Khorii followed. The new screens were great, but they didn’t show what was happening on the bridge itself.

  “This is the Condor calling the Mana and all crew and passengers,” Uncle Joh was saying into the com. “Everybody okay?”

  Captain Coco stood behind Jaya, his heavily ringed hands on her shoulders as if he were a kindly uncle. Every tribally beaded braid was in place, and his expression was as cool as if he lost a ship to a ravenous monster every day.

  “How good of you to ask,” he said suavely. “We all made the move to our new home before the destruction of our previous quarters reached—ah—critical mass. We were overcrowded anyway, which was to be expected, although the virulence of the creature that stowed away was not. We were heading for Corazon to lighten our load, but detected that it had similar problems. So fortunate for us that you happened to be waiting between us and the surface with this commodious ship. Asha, I love the décor of my new cabin.”

  “You can’t keep the Mana, Coco,” Captain Bates told him. “We had a deal. You know how the clans despise a welcher.”

  “They’ll understand. The Mana was the only available ship large enough to hold all of our people. Even our cabin boy Mikey the Horn agreed that we had no alternative, isn’t that right, lad?”

  Mikaaye, looking shaken but relieved, peered around the captain, and with a feeble smile, said, “Arrrrgh.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” his mother asked from the Balakiire.

  “Occupational jargon, Melireenya,” Captain Bates told her. “An all-purpose kind of answer.”

  “So I suppose you’re going to demand that we turn over the passengers to you now, eh?” Captain Coco said, as if sneering at the very idea.

  “Not really, no,” Captain Bates said, giving Uncle Joh a wide-eyed look that was probably supposed to look innocent but, accompanied by a shrug, invited Uncle Joh to play along with her.

  “No room,” Uncle Joh said with a shrug of his own. “This look like a passenger liner to you, bub?”

  “Then you don’t care what we do with them? Aisha, don’t play games with me,” Coco scolded Captain Bates. “You are very attached to these kids. You were ready to lay down your life for them when last we met.”

  “Wrong, Coco. I was ready to lay down your life for them,” Captain Bates corrected him. “And I will do it yet if any harm comes to them. You took command of their ship, now you’re responsible for them.”

  “What am I supposed to do with them?” he demanded. “I have women and children enough already.”

  “A few more shouldn’t make any difference then,” she said. “They’re a package deal.”

  “Tell you what, buddy,” Uncle Joh said. “We were on our way over to Dinero Grande, where the rich and powerful used to live. We’re checking on a cargo for Hafiz Harakamian himself. Why don’t you stick with us and see if we can’t turn up a newer, fancier model than that old bucket for you and your band of merry men, women, and children? Then you can leave the Mana to the kids that own it, no harm done, and you haven’t made an enemy of Jonas P. Becker.”

  Khorii didn’t know what to expect from that—possibly an offer to blow them out of the sky. Fortunately, she knew the cargo ship was not heavily armed, whereas the Condor was always equipped with a full array of weapons salvaged from many different eras. Most of them didn’t work very well, of course, since Uncle Joh spent too much time on more functional modifications for his ship, but armed combat should be avoided. The Linyaari were against it on principle, and she was against it because all of the people she cared about most were within range of ship-launched weapons. Someone could get hurt. Someone probably would get hurt since that was, to the best of her understanding, the general idea behind weapons.

  “Jonas Becker, son of Theophilus Becker, of Becker Intergalactic Recycling and Salvage Enterprises, Ltd?”

  “That’s what it says on the side of the ship,” Uncle Joh said.

  “Sorry, I don’t have my reading glasses on,” Coco apologized. “Spoils the image.”

  “I got a few pair around here somewhere if you need more,” Uncle Joh said. “Sounds like you’ve heard of our firm, huh?”

  “Heard of you? You and your father are legendary among my people. Those who do not know us well believe we are only murderers, thieves, kidnappers, and brigands. This belief is not entirely without foundation, but the truth is, we foster our reputation for fearsomeness and mystery. What few people realize is that we are among the earliest and most innovative recycling experts in the universe, and much of what my generation does was taught to our people by your own honored father.”

  “Izzat right?” Uncle Joh asked, nonplussed. He looked to Khorii for confirmation. Khorii shrugged. She’d met the pirates but claimed no special knowledge of them.

  “Indeed. He was an honored adopted elder of our clan.”

  “I had no idea,” Uncle Joh said.

  “Me, neither,” Captain Bates admitted. “Must have happened before Mom and I joined them. Now that I think of it, I did hear some of the senior people, when they were looking at a particularly useless scrap of something, ask each other, ‘What would Off do?’ But I thought at the time they were referring to some sort of cleanser.”

  “You should meet my lady friend Andina,” Uncle Joh told her out of the side of his mouth. “She knows all about cleansers and stuff.” To Coco, he said, “So, you going to hang with us and look for some awesome salvage or what?”

  “We’d be honored.”

  On another private com band Melireenya said, “Mikaaye is reading him, and he is sincere.”

  “Okay then, boys and girls, we’re burnin’ starlight,” Uncle Joh said, using another of his strange and unusual Terran expressions that were unlike any that Khorii’s other human friends employed. “Dinero Grande or bust.”

  Khorii and Captain Bates returned to the lounge. Mother was no longer there.

  “Where did she go?” Khorii asked Ariin.

  “She went to find Maak and Elviiz,” Ariin said. “Did you know she can analyze the mineral and chemical content of something just by looking at it? She has determined what the sludge thing is made of, and hopes with the help of Maak and Elviiz to develop a defensive weapon that will defeat, if not destroy, it.”

  Khorii sighed. “And I was afraid I’d miss something if I stayed here.”

  Ariin looked chuffed at being one-up, but said placatingly, “You can’t be everywhere at once any more than I can. Maybe that’s why we’re twins.”

  And to Khorii’s surprise, when Khorii sat back down in the seat next to her sister’s, Ariin gave her a brief and somewhat awkward hug.

  The moment was cut short when RK jumped onto their chair backs and prowled back and forth, purring and demanding attention. Ariin pulled her arm away and stood up quickly. She was still nervous around cats.

  Khorii wondered how Khiindi was and what he was doing. She missed him. Of course, she particularly missed his being her little cat, but she found she had also begun to miss Grimalkin. If he was here, he’d probably turn into Puss from the story, pounce on the inogre, and wrestle it to the ground.

  With that thought, she knew she had fallen asleep and was dreaming. The real Grimalkin was far more likely to turn himself into Khiindi and hide behind her.

  Chapter 20

  Grimalkin didn’t need Pircifir’s ship in order to leave Vhiliinyar. Even less did he need children to cramp his style. However, as long as he was in the post-Khorii time period, he was stuck in small cat form. The plague and its mutations unfortunately fell into that time period, and though he could attempt it, he doubted it would do any good to try to convince Odus to refrain from doing something potentially disastrous before he’d done it. Odus was not amenable to warnings. His unjustified confidence in his own genius kept him from believing anyone trying to deter him from his chosen path, least of all Grimalkin. He and Odus had never actually come to blows, but they had never been companions either. Grimalkin attributed their antipathy to what he considered to be his own empathetic nature. He always knew and cared what others thought and felt, if only to use it to manipulate them. Odus had no clue about others or an interest, other than for the purposes of scientific experiment, in obtaining one.

  It wasn’t that Grimalkin felt especially responsible for Odus’s actions, because for a change, he’d actually had nothing to do with it other than help introduce the creature—in its most benign form—to his own people. But he was aware of the outcome as far into the future as he and the girls had traveled. Furthermore, he was enough of a time traveler to realize that it wasn’t safe even for his people to toy with the entity whose ancestors had formed their homes. A creature like that might know where you live and find a way to time travel back and—who knew?—look up its predecessors and in the process destroy his race, the unicorns, and the Linyaari as well. No, he told himself, he didn’t feel at all responsible, but he did think it was in his own best self-interest to put a stop to this. He just did not see how he could do it as a small cat in the same time as the youngsters occupied now.

  No, he needed to stay in a time in which he could maintain humanoid form long enough to pilot a ship to the coordinates Odus had indicated, and only then, if he could not foil Odus earlier, go forth into the plague-ridden future on little cat feet. He could be a very beguiling cat. He had had lots of practice. He ought to be able to persuade someone to deactivate the freeze placed on his little feline self so he could communicate with Odus enough to deal with the problem the scientist’s tinkering had created. If not, of course, especially if someone got his crono away from his comparatively helpless furry form, he, all of humanity, and possibly his own race were in deep trouble.

  That didn’t deter him however. He was intimately familiar with deep trouble, having been in some degree of it one way or another for so much of his life.

  The wealthy citizens of the Solojo system chose to live on Dinero Grande because it was the most beautiful of the three planets clustered closely together in its part of the system. It boasted wide, tranquil meadows, broad, clean rivers and streams, distant, gorgeous mountains, and a few small, calm seas perfect for pleasure craft.

  The homes were all large estates, containing houses, stables, garages, gardens, and landing zones for the personal spacecraft residents used to obtain supplies both necessary and luxurious from Rio Boca, the import/export and intergalactic relations center of the system.

  A great many of Dinero Grande’s wealthiest and most illustrious citizens had been aboard the Estrella Blanca’s ill-fated maiden voyage. Their homes had been closed up before they left, and any staff members not attending their employers had been sent on holiday. Most of them would have gone to Corazon, where the Carnivale was under way.

  In these isolated, empty homes, the plague had killed no one, and without plague-ridden bodies to grow from, the inogres did not develop either. The gardens had grown freely into tropical jungles choking the pathways and filling the fountains of the palatial homes. The tiled courtyards were pried loose and upended by unattended root systems.