Acorna's World Part 1

Acorna's World.

by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.

One.

Roughly six 'weeks after she had joined the crew of the Condor, flagship of Becker Interplanetary -SLmRecycling and Salvage Enterprises, Ltd., Acorna sat on "salvage watch" at the helm of the ship, surrounded by the softly glowing console lights in the c.o.c.kpit and the billions of stars beyond. She felt contented, almost as if she were once more home-back in the first home she could really remember, the mining ship she had shared with her adopted uncles. Behind her for the moment were the intricacies of Linyaari society and culture. Before her instead were the intricacies of the universe as recorded in the notes, tapes, and files of Captain Jonas Becker and his ill.u.s.trious parent, astrophysicist and salvage magnate Theophilus Becker.

To give herself something to do during the long watch, she was charting those notations methodically so that the planets, moons, wormholes, black holes, "pleated" s.p.a.ce, "black water" s.p.a.ce, and other locations visited by the Beckers could be easily relocated, and the sites where they had once been could be revisited if the need arose.

Becker had grumbled at first when she started this ch.o.r.e. Since the death of his adoptive father, Theophilus Becker, from whom he had inherited both the ConSor and the salvage business, Jonas Becker had been lord and master of the Condor, with only Roadkill (or RK for short) the huge Makahomian Temple Cat he had rescued from a wreck, for company. Becker didn't like his belongings tampered with or moved. But Acorna had found plenty of evidence that RK periodically made nests out of the hard copies of the notes, often shredded them when he felt the urge, and, in a few sorry instances, had added his own personal ( and remarkably pungent ) contributions to them when he was displeased with the state of his shipboard toilet. Though she could easily eradicate the odor and the stains, nothing could make the shredded notes legible again. It was high time someone charted the notes before RK had his way with the lot of them. After a few "reasonable discussions," Jonas had stopped grumbling and let Acorna get on with her task.

At first RK had stayed at the helm to a.s.sist Acorna with her job, but later had wandered off in search of food or a sleeping companion, probably Aari, the only crew member other than Becker currently aboard.

Like Acorna, Aari was Linyaari, a race of humanoid people -with equine and alicorn characteristics (including a flowing, curly mane and feathery hair from ankle to knee, feet with two hard toes each, and three-fingered hands with one knuckle on each digit instead of two. The most striking characteristic of the Linyaari, to humans anyway, was the shining spiral horn located in the center of their foreheads. But in Aari's case, the horn had been forcibly removed during tortures he'd suffered while he was a prisoner of voracious bug-like aliens) the Khieevi. While Aari's other wounds had been healed on narhiiVhiliinyar, the world to which the Linyaari had fled when the Khieevi had invaded their original homeworld Vhiliinyar, Aari's horn had not regenerated.

This was an appalling wound for a Linyaari. A Linyaari's horn had amazing (almost magical, even) properties. The horns had the ability to purify anything-including air and water and food, to heal the sick, and also acted to some extent as an antenna for psychic communications among the Linyaari.

Acorna had learned a great deal more about the powers of her horn and about her people when she had returned with a Linyaari delegation to narhii-Vhiliinyar. Unfortunately, once she had arrived, her aunt and two other shipmates had been dispatched into s.p.a.ce again to deal with an emergency, and Acorna had been left among strangers to try to adjust to her native culture, a culture she'd left behind while she was still a baby.

Her only two real friends on narhii-Vhiliinyar had been the eldest elder of the Linyaari people, Grandam Naadiina, and Maati, a little girl -who was the viizaar's messenger and the orphaned younger sister of Aari.

When Becker had made his unauthorized landing on narhiiVhiliinyar to return Aari and all the bones from the Linyaari graveyard to the new Linyaari home planet, Acorna, Grandam, and Maati had been in the greeting committee. Aari at that time had still been terribly deformed from his ordeal with the Khieevi, and the viizaar Liriili and some of the less sensitive and compa.s.sionate Linyaari had not made his return easy.

Acorna, perhaps because her own loneliness had helped her identify with his, had been drawn to Aari. When an emergency signal had called Becker away from narhii-Vhiliinyar, Acorna and Aari had shipped out with him. They had been able to help in a crisis that had threatened some of Acorna's human friends as well as the Linyaari. As a result of their intervention, a branch of a Federation-wide criminal organization had been destroyed and many off-planet Linyaari, including Acorna's beloved aunt, had been rescued, along with all the other captives of the criminals. Acorna, Becker, Aari, and Acorna's Uncle Hafiz, who had also been on hand for the rescue, were now in great favor among her people.

Acorna could have stayed comfortably on narhii-Vhiliinyar once her aunt and the other ship-bred and ship-chosen Linyaari returned to the planet. But she had decided instead to leave with Becker and Aari.

She wasn't sorry. She might have been born on a peaceful planet populated by beings who had the ability to understand one another telepathically, but her upbringing had made her different, and that was sometimes a problem, both for her and for her people. s.p.a.ce was familiar to her, and its diversity of races, species, and personalities stimulated her. Of course, right now, just being here, quietly charting coordinates, resting her eyes by watching the stars, wasn't very stimulating, but the serene surroundings felt wonderful. She was comforted by the routine watch, at peace with the universe.

Perhaps, she thought, happily ever after, the permanent version, only happened in fairy tale, bat happy every once in a while wa^ r&ftful ane) healing.

The cabin lights flicked on, bringing the harsh light of the day shift to her starlit world. She blinked a few times until her eyes adjusted.

"Yo, Princess!" Becker said. "Your watch is over. Whatsa matter with you sitting there typing in the dark? You'll ruin your eyes that way, didn't anybody ever tell you?"

He strode up to stand behind her, peering over her shoulder so intently his brushy mustache, which closely resembled RK's ruff, brushed her horn. Becker smelled strongly of the aftershave he had begun to use about the time he began to shave again, shortly after she arrived. It wasn't that he was trying to impress her in a courtship. and mating fashion, she knew. It was simply a rather old-fashioned, by human standards, sign of gender acknowledgment and respect. "Hey, now, how about that? You've charted the whole journey from the time we left narhii-Vhiliinyar the first time, to that moon where Ganoosh and Ikwaskwan held your people captive, and all the way back again! I figured, with all the excitement we ran into, and all the hopping around we had to do, n.o.body would ever be able to figure that one out. How'd you 2o that?"

"You kept good notes, Captain," she said, smiling.

"Well, it's terrific! And you did it so fast, too. Where'd a sweet young thing like you learn that?"

"Elementary, my dear Becker," Aari said, sauntering up behind the captain and towering over him. Tall, slender, and graceful now that his injuries had healed, Aari -was whiteskinned and silver-maned. These were traits he shared with Acorna and the other Linyaari s.p.a.ce travelers.

Aari had been reading a trashed-out copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes lately. Becker and Acorna could see the immediate result of his current venture into fiction in the -way that Aari had layered two baseball caps from Becker's collection, so that the bill of one hat stuck out in back above his long silver mane, the other in the front. It was not only a pretty good imitation of a traditional deerstalker, but the hat covered the indentation in Aari's forehead where his horn had once been. Aari also clutched a Makahomian ceremonial pipe between his teeth. It was a bit longer than an antique meerschaum, but with Aari's height, he could carry it off. The Holmesian effect was only spoiled by the RECYCLER'S RONDY '84 logo on the front of the cap facing them, along with an embroidered trash container rampant beneath the lettering.

"s.p.a.ce-bred and s.p.a.ce-chosen Linyaari," Aari said, "develop a heightened sense of navigational interrelationships between s.p.a.ce and ma.s.ses, even energy fluctuations. Many of those relationships are imprinted telepathically upon our brains by our parents when we're young. That is partially how I was able to guide you to narhii-Vhiliinyar though I had never been there myself."

"Hmm," Becker said, surveying his shipmate's latest odd outfit. "You make me wonder if my old man might not have been part Linyaari. You're sure finding your way to the planet wasn't simple deduction?"

Aari looked puzzled. "No, Joh. We do not use footprints, types of mud, or tobacco ashes to do this thing. It is a matter of the mind."

"Must be," Becker said. "Acorna's indicated the wormholes and black s.p.a.ce with a precision that you don't see on regular charts, given the instability of the features being charted and the dangers of getting close enough to map them thoroughly. Even got the whole wormhole system we ducked back through to blast Ganoosh and Ikwaskwan to kingdom come."

Acorna glanced up from her charting and shrugged. "We were there. The notations of the holes and folds are roughed out in your notes, and made precise in my mind." She paused to consider something else Jonah had said. "About your father-he is probably not part Linyaari. I do not think it is possible for our two species to interbreed. In the pictures you have shown me of your father, he certainly doesn't look Linyaari, though I will admit his intuition about such matters as spatial relationships, as well as yours, seems to me to be similar to some of the psychic abilities our race possesses. I can certainly understand that, lacking a crew and managing all phases of your operation alone, as you do now and as your father did *when you were a child, you did not take the time to properly collate and chart your observations. But, frankly, only psychic ability would explain how you were ever able to find anything in this chaos." Her spread hands took in the mounds of papers, chips, and recorded tapes scattered around the console.

"I usually know which pile or computer file to access for what I need," Becker protested. "At least, I did once," he muttered. Then he added graciously, "But I'm sure it'll be helpful to have it all nice and orderly."

Roadkill jumped up on one of the piles of hardcopy and sent the papers into an avalanche that slid clear across the deck.

"RK, you silly cat, you already had your chance at these," Acorna said, madly grabbing for the flying papers.

The cat chased the furthest sheets until they settled to the floor, pounced upon one and shredded it with his back feet, then abruptly lost interest and began washing his brindled belly instead.

Acorna bent down and shuffled the papers, somewhat the worse for wear, back into order.

"I'm pleased you approve, Captain. The task needed doing and it keeps me productively occupied."

"Yeah, I guess you must have been pretty bored after you reprogrammed that junked replicator I had in Cargo Hold Two to make all my favorite dishes, so I wouldn't have to eat cat food when I got busy, and after you and Aari turned Deck Three into a hydroponics garden for your own noshing needs, while you meantime inventoried and catalogued all my remaining salvage."

"It was not so much, Captain. It's not as if I am new to this sort of thing. I used to replicate food and help grow my own meals when my uncles and I lived aboard our mining ship. I also catalogued our specimens and a.s.sisted with charting. I like to be helpful."

"No kidding! Between you and KEN," he said, referring to the all-purpose KEN-6^0 android unit that they had acquired, more or less by accident, during the Condor's last voyage, "the way he keeps the ship soooo-"

"Shipshape, Joh?" Aari offered. "I have been reading the nautical works of Robert Louis Stevenson, and that term is employed to describe a flawlessly maintained vessel."

"Yeah, what you said," Becker agreed. "Between you two and Aari, I could take up knitting or basket weaving in the spare time I got these days."

"A very good idea, Joh," Aari said. "You have some excellent references on crocheting, beadwork, handweaving, pottery making, and origami, as well."

"You should know, buddy. I'm glad you've been getting so much out of the pile of old books I found in that landfill, not to mention the vid collection. But let me "warn you-steer clear of the do-it-yourself veterinary books." Becker glanced down at RK who had one leg poised in the air and was looking up at him with suspicious, wide, golden eyes. In a stage whisper Becker continued, "I once tried some stuff out of one of those vet guides on the cat there. Bad idea. Neither of us came out whole."

Aan looked puzzled. "Why would I read veterinary books, Joh? If 'Riidkyii' "that was as close as Aari's Standard could come to p.r.o.nouncing Roadkill's name"becomes sick, Acorna could heal him. We have no need for the invasive measures described in those books."

"d.a.m.n good thing, too," Becker huffed. "The problem with using invasive measures on ol' Riidkyii is he can't get it straight *who's the invader and -who is the invadee. We were both short a few bits of choice anatomy after that little adventure. Luckily, Roadkill and I eventually got put back together, courtesy of the Linyaan." He turned to Acorna and said, "While we're on the subject, you know you're welcome to the library, too. Princess. Anytime."

"Yes, Captain Becker, that is very kind of you, but I already accessed most of the reading selections you have available during the time I lived with my uncles and guardians. I was raised by humans unlike Aari, who had no previous exposure to human culture until he met you. So I won't be using the books. The vids are another matter. However, I regret very much that we have only vid goggles available to view the films. It would be such fun if we could all view them together."

Becker gave her a sly look from under his brushy eyebrows. Her psychic powers had been increased while she lived among her own people, but she didn't need them to know that he understood what she really meant. Teasing, he said, "Of course, really, only two people oughta watch at a time because somebody should be on salvage watch."

He knew that she wished to share the books and vids with Aari so that he wouldn't spend quite so much time alone, and so that they would have something to enjoy together. She blushed a little. "I simply thought it would be more companionable."

"Yes, Joh," Aari said, "And, as far as salvage watch goes, you once performed all the ship's duties alone, and your metabolism requires that you sleep for long periods. You must have let the ship's computers take over occasionally then. You could certainly do so now. I do not see the difficulty of sharing these vids."

Becker chuckled and shook his head. "What is it with you guys? Mutiny? But, okay, "we'11 keep an eye out for something we can convert to a full screen setup for vids instead of the goggles."

"Thank you, Captain," Acorna said. She believed Aari would be much better off if he didn't spend nearly all of his time on his own. He had spent years alone in a cave on the deserted planet Vhiliinyar, hiding from the Khieevi who'd tortured him, before Becker had found and rescued him. Aari hardly knew how to speak to people anymore. And every time he disappeared while she was not on 'watch and Acorna decided to go to him to try to initiate a conversation, Captain Becker always seemed to have some task he needed her a.s.sistance with or some errand for her to run. RK, too, tried to deter her. His claws and piercing cries could be quite eloquent, even to one who possessed no higher understanding of cat language than vulnerable skin that could be spoken to with fang and claw. She sensed her friends were possessed by some sort of male protectiveness toward Aari. She was sure it -was not a reasoned response to her actions, but she was hard-pressed to understand it. She meant her fellow Linyaari no harm, and sought only to lead him to a deeper healing than had been necessary with the wounded she had previously treated.

She was also as perplexed as she "was amused by Aari's "literary disguises," as Becker called them. They were funny and sad at the same time. As he adopted the headdresses and costumes of various characters in the books and vids he was exposed to, Aan looked less like a maimed Linyaari and more like an interesting, if rather oddly dressed, human. Of course, she herself had at times donned disguises that covered her horn and feet so that she could pa.s.s for human, and it had been a useful skill. But in Aari's case, she sensed a huge chasm of loss underlying his attempts to be someone else. It was as if he no longer considered himself fully Linyaari. The horn transplant the doctors had attempted on narhii-Vhiliinyar had not taken. A living horn transplant from a close relative might be possible with a specimen from Maati when she was older, but could not be attempted just yet while her horn -was still growing. They'd have to wait until she'd reached full adulthood before they could risk harvesting enough tissue for a successful transplant for Aari.

The com unit b.u.t.ton lit and emitted a beep as Aari replaced the fallen papers on the console, lifted RK to his shoulders, and headed back into the hold to continue his reading.

"You get it, Acorna," Becker said. "It's probably for you anyway."

She flipped the toggle, fully expecting to hear the voice of either her aunt, viife()haanye ferliii Neeva, checking to make sure she was all right, or that of the viizaar Liriili, spouting yet another list of instructions and requests that Acorna was to pa.s.s on to her contacts in the Federation in general and to her Uncle Hafiz in particular.

Since the rescue of all the off-planet Linyaari s.p.a.cefarers, amba.s.sadors, teachers, students, scientists, engineers, healers and their families, and the subsequent return of those rescued to narhii-Vhiliinyar, just six weeks before, big changes appeared to be taking place on the Linyaari world. According to Neeva, the governing council had been in almost continuous session, trying to decide if, when, and to what degree the Linyaari should end their isolationist policy with regard to most of the galaxy, and whether they should open trade alliances with Federation planets and companies.

The council had already unanimously decided on a most favored trade alliance with House Harakamian, the empire Uncle Hafiz had recently handed over to his nephew Rank Nadezda, one of Acorna's adopted uncles. The Linyaari hadn't yet decided whether or not to allow House Harakamian vessels enter Linyaari s.p.a.ce, however. At this point, the majority of the council favored off-planet trading at some mutually agreeable location. But that wasn't a unanimous view. Some of the more progressive Linyaari s.p.a.ce travelers even favored entering the Federation. As they pointed out, isolation had failed to protect their people from the Khieevi or from capture and mistreatment at the hands of Edacki Ganoosh, the Kezdet robber baron. The vocal minority of the council felt that knowledge of other civilizations, both friends and foes, was better protection for a peaceful people like themselves than ignorance and isolation.

Since most of the Linyaari diplomatic corps was currently recovering from their ordeal on narhii-Vhiliinyar, the council was entrusting all of the Linyaari's initial overtures to the Federation to Acorna, who was a newly appointed Linyaari amba.s.sador and also, conveniently, Hafiz Harakamian and Rafik Nadezda's adopted niece. The council completely ignored her protestations that Becker did not intend to return immediately to federation s.p.a.ce, preferring for the moment to search for salvage in the galaxies occupied by the Linyaari and their current trade allies, an area neither he nor any other Federation-licensed salvage company had previously explored. Acorna had pa.s.sed on the Linyaari council's messages to Hafiz before his flagship, the Sharazoi), departed from Linyaari s.p.a.ce.

Hafiz's last message to the ConSor, and to Becker in particular, had been suspiciously expansive and nonchalant.

"Of course, dear boy," Hafiz had said, "there is no need for you to hasten your business on our account. By all means stay in this congenial universe. Get acquainted. Find useful refuse. As long as Acorna is happy, her Aunt Karina and her other uncles and I are content. We'll see each other soon enough."

Perhaps Hafiz was really serious about retiring after all? In Acorna's experience, it -was very unlike him to fail to seize a business opportunity by the throat and milk it for all it was worth. If he wasn't retiring, he was clearly up to something.

So she had reason to hear from many people of her acquaintance just at this moment. But this time the corn unit surprised her. When a face appeared briefly on the screen, it was not her aunt, or another Linyaari, or even the wily Uncle Hafiz. Instead, a heavily bovine face was being transmitted, male and jowly with a curving brownish horn above each ear. It spoke in a language Acorna didn't understand, so she reached for Aari's LAANYE, a Linyaari device that collected samples of unknown languages, a.n.a.lyzed them, then served as both a translator and a sleep-learning device to implant foreign languages into the brain of anyone who wished to learn them. But the transmission trailed off just as she got the machine activated.

According to the LAANYE, the last word the creature had said translated as "Mayday" or "SOS" in Linyaari. The only other words she'd caught in the transmission before the screen turned to white, crackling static were "Niriian" and "Hamgaan)." She did recognize the race of the creature who'd appeared on her com screen. He "was from the planet Nirii-the Niriians "were regular trading partners of the Linyaari. Acorna scanned the frequencies, trying to pick up the signal aeain, but to no avail. Becker put his hand over hers and pointed. She followed his finger and saw that the screens of the long-range scanners he used to detect possible salvage showed blips of white light in several locations. One of them was backed by a ma.s.s of green light. "There," he said. "There's a solid ma.s.s under that one. According to the readout, it's a small planet with an oxygen-based atmosphere. If the ship was seeking refuge, that would be the most likely place in this sector of s.p.a.ce to retreat to. Let's go see what we can find."

Acorna nodded. "Yes, I see what you mean. Given the direction of the signal's probable source, it is likely that the salvage is the distressed vessel whose broadcast we just received. The LAANYE translated the last word before the message was interrupted to mean 'Mayday.' Possibly the signal we intercepted was a general one sent as the ship's systems were failing during some sort of accident or attack. I feel sure we received it only because we were within range of their emergency transmitters. If the signal had been meant for us, the broadcast would have been in Galactic Standard or in Linyaari."

Becker shrugged. "Yep. That's the way I've got it figured. Don't get your hopes up, though. We're probably not going to find the cowboy who was transmitting the mayday alive, or anybody else. None of those blips on the scanners look like an intact ship. But we may be able to tell what got him from the fragments. The time stamp on the message is a couple of days ago-if the problem was indeed an attack instead of an accident, whatever nailed them seems to be long gone."

So we will check the situation out and report exactly -what happened to the Federation?" Acorna asked.

Yeah, eventually," Becker said. "But mostly -we'll know what to avoid ourselves."

Intricately twisted vines and stems joined and twined, braided, knotted, and separated before bursting into jewel-toned rainbows of richly hued blossoms, reminding Acorna of pictures she had seen of the ill.u.s.trated borders in Celtic holy books from ancient Earth. Except that this vegetation was no mere border, but a lush tropical jungle so interconnected that it was impossible to tell where one plant stopped and the next began.

At first, the tangle of plant life looked impa.s.sible. She, Captain Becker, RK, and Aari had stood on the lowered platform of the robolift, overwhelmed by the sight of it. Becker was fingering the sharpened blade of his machete while Aari held the portable scanner, waiting for it to indicate the hiding place of the large piece of salvage that had shown up on the Condor's screen.

Acorna was busy cataloging the minerals and elements that made up this planetoid. She had already notified the others that no breathing apparatus would be required-the atmosphere was void of any substances lethal to carbon-based life forms and far richer in oxygen than Kezdet or narhii-Vhiliinyar, and the soil was as rich in nitrogen. Of course, that was just her scientific opinion. In practice, once she was actually faced with it, the air was so heavily scented with the aromas of the flowers it felt too thick to breathe, laden with a heady mixture the like of which she had never smelled before. She detected elements of the incenses that had perfumed Uncle Hafiz's palace, like cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, and the kind of human cooking known as baking, and also smells like mint, rose, violet, lavender, gardenia, and lily of the valley, but all were much deeper and mixed together with new scents-things she'd never smelled before. The end result was so intense that it almost took on substance and color.

Captain Becker said the place reeked like a high-priced bawdy house, *which seemed to please him. Aari had sniffed curiously. "I have no basis for ascertaining the validity of your comparison, Joh, but I defer to your knowledge of such matters." For their excursion dirtside, Aari had removed his Holmesian baseball caps and pipe in favor of a colorful scarf tied around the top of his head and a plaskin patch, inked black, over one of his eyes. Acorna deduced, Watson-like, that he had been reading Treasure Inland and -was a.s.suming a piratical disguise in lieu of his Holmes persona. Though he was giving the soil a very Holmesian inspection, what he could see of it from where they stood.

Soil was clearly foremost in RK's mind, too. The ship's cat leaped off the platform and hopped through the vines-which parted, almost as if the cat's reputation had preceded him, to allow him to pa.s.s easily through them. The roots and trailers along the ground seemed to shrink away as RK pawed the soil, turned his back on his work, and deposited his own ecological contribution to the planet.

Acorna started after the cat but Becker touched her arm and said, "Wait. Let us see if he gets out again okay."

The cat pawed backward to cover his work but the vines and other ground cover were already creeping back across the pile. Roadkill looked behind him, saw that this -was happening, gave a little shake that could have been a cat's version of a shrug, and bounded back through the path that had cleared for him on his way in. He then hopped up onto the robolift platform and proceeded to wash his whiskers, as if they had been somehow affected by his previous ch.o.r.e.

"Okay, then," Becker said.

"That way, Joh," Aari informed him after consulting the scanner, and pointed in the direction from which the cat had just come.

"Well, then, onward." Becker raised the machete in one of the dramatic gestures he was fond of and pointed. RK leaped to his shoulder and the four of them dismounted the platform. As they set out, the jungle growth shrank even further away this time, leaving a wide lane open before them. It gave Acorna an odd feeling to see the plants moving and shifting out of their way. Becker walked over to one side and raised the machete to hack at a thick stalk, but the stalk bent in the middle to retreat from him.

"Wait, Captain," Acorna said. "The plants seem to be trying to accommodate us by getting out of our way. It hardly seems right to cut them."

Becker gave her a look. "Yeah, well, we don't know how long it will take us to find the ship. And we don't know what *wrecked it. We might be looking at the cause of the trouble right now. How do we know these plants "won't close up around the Coru)or and bury it so deep we -won't be able to get it loose again? They're several stories high, after all. We -wouldn't even be able to see the suns if they had decided not to part for us."

"I think 'decided' is a relevant term in this case," she said. "These plants seem to have some kind of limited sentience, or at the very least the ability to react quickly to stimuli. I think it might be wise to sheathe the machete. Maybe we had better not make them angry. Besides, we could find the ship with the portable scanner, couldn't we?"

"Yeah, but I always like to have a backup plan," Becker said, -while putting the long knife away.

Aan dug in the pocket of his shipsuit and pulled out a ball of shining thread. "I have just the thing, Joh." He tied one end to the robohft and held the rest in his hand. "We can leave a trail behind us, like Theseus seeking the Minotaur in the labyrinth. This also works very well in eaves when searching for lost cascades of gold and jewels."

"Caskets, buddy," Becker said.

"As you wish," Aan agreed amiably, and began unrolling his ball of string.

"Ow," Becker said as his shoulder -was punctured by the claws of the suddenly hyper-alert ship's cat, -who hunkered down and switched his brindled gray and black tail, his ears perked and his eyes intently following the gleaming thread as it unwound behind Aari. "Belay that, mister," Becker said.

The cat immediately leaped from Becker's shoulder to Aari's. "Aaargh," Aari said, rolling his as instead of his rs. "Avast there! It is my faithful paro, Pol."

RK made a dive for the thread. Acorna intercepted the cat and received a few scratches for her trouble.

"I am sorry, Kh.o.r.n.ya," Aari said. "I think Riid-Kiiyi does not wish to be a paro."

"It's all right," she said, cuddling RK up close to her body and scratching him gently under the chin. He immediately abandoned his quest to play with the string in favor of purring and rubbing the side of his face against her skin.

The small party set out into the jungle. The vegetation now made a path as wide as the Coru)or, the stalks bending almost flat to avoid contact with the people pa.s.sing among them. The heady fragrance turned to an acrid stench.

"Sheesh," Becker said, holding his nose. "What are these, skunk vines?"

Acorna looked around. "No. They are the same sort of plants as the rest, but see how the flowers are closing up and the scent they are emitting is changing? It is as if they are afraid of us."

"Hmmm, well, it does smell like the last guy who tried to gyp me out of some money he promised me," Becker admitted. He leaned closer to a stalk and the stench grew stronger. "Joh, don't," Aari said.

"Just testing," Becker said. "Sony, plants. No harm intended."

Aari was busy unwinding twine with one hand and holding the scanner with the other. "It should not be far now, Joh," he said. "The salvage is just ahead."

An opening in the canopy was visible before them, and Acorna saw a long cylindrical pod lying among some twisted and charred stalks right in their path.

Becker prodded it and turned it over. Beyond it, they could see other bits of the downed ship visible among the stalks. Although there was nothing overtly useful in the wreckage they could see, Becker decided he wanted to haul all of the pieces back to the Condor. "We might be able to figure out why the Niriians sent the mayday," he said. "Maybe find some clue to *who exactly they were, what kind of trouble they were in, who attacked them." He scratched his head. "Don't think that this is a normal part of my business, Acorna, because it's not. Finding wrecked ships, yes, but not stumbling on the wreckage before it's cold. And I have a funny feeling about this one."

"Me, too," Acorna said.

Aari looked up, surprised at their words. "I apologize, Joh, Kh.o.r.n.ya. I did not realize that you had not understood the Hamgaar()'s, broadcast. I would have translated it for you if I'd known."