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  The second run-through exhausted Kithri’s patience. She ordered Lennart out, turned off the ship’s lights and closed the door firmly behind them.

  The fire had died to a heap of embers and the damp breeze felt even colder. Kithri put the last of the wood on the fire and rolled up in one of the emergency blankets, her back to Eril. Lennart crawled back into his spacesuit and wished them both the equivalent of a good night.

  As he lay looking up at the stars and waiting for sleep, Eril’s thoughts drifted to the burst of radio noise and the infrared trace that had vanished so mysteriously. They couldn’t have been natural. Somewhere in that seemingly deserted city there was something alive, something that used machinery...

  o0o

  Eril knew that Kithri was gone even before he came fully awake, as if some part of his mind, even sleeping, was aware of her. He raised his head and looked around. A few feet away, Lennart lay stretched on his back in his space suit, snoring gently. From the overhanging branches came the occasional twitter of night creatures.

  Silently Eril got to his feet and stepped out from the shelter of the umbrella tree. Above his head, stars swam in a profusion of milky light, dense and luminous. One small moon wore a faint blue halo as it rose on the far side of the city, flanked by two steady points of planetary brilliance.

  Anybody out there?He waited there for several minutes, just beyond the perimeter of the tiny camp, head thrown back, staring at the celestial display. Then he spotted a dark figure against the paleness of the spacefield.

  Kithri stood hugging her arms to her body as he walked up to her. After a pause, she said, “We’ve got the answer to one question, at least. That’s our night sky up there. Ours today, not thousands of years either way. I’ve looked up at those stars a million times, dreaming of the day I’d be out there, too. See that one?” She pointed. “The miners call it The Dewdrop. When we first came, I used to wish on it.”

  Eril shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He cleared his throat. “What do you think of our spacer?”

  “I know exactly how he feels.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Don’t talk scut!” Kithri snapped. “All you had to do was get back on your ship and take off! You could jet over to Terillium or Nouveau-France whenever you wanted to! You have no idea what it’s like to be buried alive down here — no cities, no trees, n-no flowers. Nothing but dust.” Her words came out in a flood, hot and wild like tears. “Oh, sure, there are choices, even for someone like me — whoring insystem or marrying some farmer who might say two words in a year. Or chipping jaydium. All those years of running and hoping... What a fool I was to think I’d ever make it!”

  Eril’s tongue wouldn’t move. A wave of unexpected empathy surged through him — what would it have been like for him, stranded on such a desolate world, looking up at the sky night after night? Knowing that the jaydium he sweated for would see the stars before he would? He’d end up even more bitter than she was.

  They stood in silence, looking up at the stars. After a while, he said, “So we’re on Stayman, but it’s not our Stayman. If this can happen to us, anything can. Out of all that glory up there, what do you want, really want?”

  She shuddered and whispered something he couldn’t hear. He tried to put his arm around her and she shied away like a frightened deer. “I made you an offer in the mountains,” he said, “and I meant it. But until we get back — I don’t want things to stay this way between us — all prickly, as if we had nothing —”

  “One trip down a wormhole is hardly enough to make us lifemates.”

  “Kithri, let’s not throw away what happened to us in duo. It’s still there, I know you can feel it too. We need time to know each other better, to learn to trust one another...” There was much more he wanted to tell her, far beyond these stumbling words. He let them trail off.

  After a pause, she said, “Do you think we can get back...to our own Stayman?” Her voice sounded low and tired, as if all the fight had gone out of her.

  “I think it’s too early to give up.”

  He reached out again, fully expecting her to jerk away. “You’re wound up tighter than a drum. How about I rub your back for you? No — ” to her quick flinch, “I meant a back rub, nothing more.”

  Kithri followed him back to camp and stretched out on her stomach on one of the micropore blankets, her head pillowed on her arms. Eril lay down beside her and pulled the second blanket over both of them. Using his free hand, he began rubbing her back with the gentle, insistent pressure he learned years ago.

  Her muscles were stronger and better defined than those of the women he’d trained and flown with. Slowly the tautness seeped away, leaving a supple resilience he found pleasurable to touch.

  “Mmm, that’s nice,” she murmured. “Hank and I sometimes swapped shoulder rubs after a haul, when he was still hoping it would lead somewhere.”

  “Sounds like Hank. Did he ever give up?”

  “Let’s say we reached an agreement. If I wouldn’t trick for my passage, it didn’t make sense to do it for my duo partner and then pay twice to get offplanet.”

  “Hank wouldn’t have seen it as payment. More like a privilege. According to Avery, he was quite a catch, and she’s got high standards.”

  “I tried that — before Hank — for the sake of a warm body the next morning. It didn’t help. It only made things worse, like he was in bed with my body and not even me.”

  “What about — us in duo?”

  She sighed so gently he felt the passage of her breath through the air, rather than hearing it.

  Eril laid his head down, still stroking her back. His hand brushed her curls. An image leapt to his mind, amplified by the residue of their duo unity — Kithri as a young girl, her hair long and loose, streaming down her back. Kithri dancing through fields of flowers, her bare feet kicking up little sprays of pollen. Then he saw her, curls hacked short and skin choked with dust, clutching a mug of stale brew, sitting alone rather than endure the old lechers in the tavern. He wished he hadn’t tried to defend Hank.

  Kithri rolled on her side facing him, the blanket draped like a tent between their bodies. Eril let his hand slip from her shoulder. They were so close he could feel the heat of her body on his face. He remembered her mouth on his and the softness of her breasts against his body.

  She said, “What was all that recruitment stuff really about? I don’t doubt there is such a thing as the Courier Corps and that you have something to do with it, but I don’t know what. If they picked you as a spokesman, they’re a pack of idiots. You sounded worse than a tri-vid advertisement. And if that’s all you are, why is it so damned important that I join? Do you get a bonus for signing me up, or what?”

  Eril hesitated, thinking how he’d handle one of Avery’s friends. He could tell her how much he wanted her, how beautiful she was in the light of the two moons. He could promise that this time she would really see the stars, that he was her ticket, not the jaydium. She’d fall into his hand like a ripe peach.

  “Or did you mean it about learning to trust each other?” Kithri said, and all his schemes fell apart.

  “The Corps is real, but I’m no spokesman for it,” he said slowly, a little astonished at what popped out of his mouth. “In fact, unless I show up with a qualified duo partner in hand, I’m not in it at all.” That is, if we ever get back...

  “You, or every applicant?”

  “Me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because I blew it once too often.”

  There was a moment of silence, during which something seemed to be wrong with Eril’s heartbeat — too loud, too fast, rattling the bones behind his eyes.

  “I thought you were some kind of war hero, like Hank.”

  “Oh!” His laugh came out a sharp, bitter bark. “That part’s true. I have a drawerful of medals to prove it — Four Sectors, Albion —”

  “Albion! You were there?”

  Eril nodded, even though she couldn
’t see him. She said, “And you — you must have been the team that survived...”

  “I went where my squadron commander said to. It was ratshit luck. You got away, too.”

  “That was years ago, before the war,” she said. “I was still a kid, I had nothing to say about it. In fact, I was damned pissed when I found out we didn’t have to leave.”

  “I thought people didn’t.”

  “My father volunteered for the Stayman mission. Volunteered! I suppose it was a good thing in the end, or neither of us would’ve made it.”

  “I take it he didn’t.”

  Another sigh in the darkness. “He died...after a long illness.”

  Back in the tunnel she mentioned cutting off the supply of lithicycline... That’s the treatment for neurodyscrasia. Eril shuddered. No one deserved to die like that. She must have nursed him through it...

  “It never made sense why he’d leave Albion for someplace like Stayman,” she continued. “It was years before the Alliance Declaration. Sure, some people must have seen the war coming, but who’d’ve thought Albion wouldn’t be safe? Anyway, the Feds snapped him up. They needed a chemical geologist, so they didn’t ask any questions. So we went, and stayed alive.” She turned back on her stomach, facing away from him.

  As Eril began rubbing Kithri’s back again, he was struck by the bland, dispassionate tone in her voice. With duoenhanced awareness, he could feel her desperate homesickness, her anger and confusion at her father’s actions, shadows of the things she couldn’t tell him. Well, he hadn’t been forthcoming with all the unflattering details of his own fall from official grace, his own...shadows.

  Time, he had said, they needed time to learn to trust each other. Time...

  Still, it was surprisingly pleasant, lying beside her on a star-strewn night, feeling her warmth and the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.

  Chapter 10

  Night-faring insects chirped and whirred from the foliage of the umbrella trees, a descant counterpoint to Lennart’s rhythmic snores. Eril wasn’t sure of the exact moment Kithri fell asleep and her muscles went from tense to buttery under his fingertips. Her breathing became soft and regular. Soon he too drifted off, one hand flung across her back. His body grew warm and heavy, so heavy...

  So heavy, gravity sucking him down into the denseness of the earth...

  Heavy...

  Suddenly Eril was no longer lulled three-quarters into sleep. He didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but something...

  Lennart snored on, oblivious, but the insects had fallen silent. The instincts that had warned Eril of impending disaster so many times during the war now shrilled in alarm. He got ready to scramble to his feet, force whip in hand and ready for action.

  The world froze around him.

  He couldn’t move, not even his eyelids. He could barely breathe as an iron band held his ribs like a vice. Something warm and steely clamped tight over his mouth. Prickles of ice flared up all over his body.

  Air! screamed his burning lungs.

  Calm — he had to stay calm. Just one breath, he swore to himself — one breath, nice and slow. Air in...air out...

  Panic receded to a muted roar.

  Air in...air out... He could feel a faint, shallow movement in his chest. His heart raced loud and strong in his ears. Cold sweat covered his face.

  The next thing Eril felt was a slight stinging on his temples as something was torn loose.

  “Ccan yyou unndersstand mme?”

  The words reverberated in his ears with a curious, distorted echo. Somehow he managed to open his eyes. His vision whirled, doubled, and finally came to an uneasy fusion. A moment later he made out a slender silhouette backlit by artificial yellow-green light, bending over him. The clamp over his mouth was suddenly released. He felt a gentle touch behind one ear.

  “There, the translator should be working better now.” The voice was light, flowery and unmistakably feminine. “The sound-duplication effect will fade as your auditory associational cortex filters out the redundant signals. You can understand me, yes?”

  “Nn-unh!” Eril tried to sit up, but his body was still inert as frozen clay. His mouth flooded with metallic-tasting saliva. He swallowed hard.

  “The tangle will wear off in a few moments. Don’t worry, it’s a harmless dose. As soon as you’ve recovered sufficiently, I’ll release your companions. I’m sorry to have to restrain you, but under the circumstances the precaution was unavoidable.”

  What circumstances?

  The female humanoid — Eril immediately thought of her as a woman — disappeared from his field of view. He took another breath, deeper than before, and found he could move a little if he didn’t do it too fast. Tingles shot down his arms and legs. The sensation of being half-frozen eased. Moving slowly and deliberately, he managed to haul himself upright.

  The woman adjusted her portable light source to illuminate the camp circle. Eril’s vision cleared enough so he could make out Lennart, unbound and apparently unharmed, several yards away.

  Kithri sat at a point equidistant from both of them. Her huge gray eyes were pools of darkness above her sallow cheeks. She rubbed them with the back of one hand.

  “Kithri? Lennart — are you all right?” Eril’s voice came out in a croak.

  “What happened to us?” said Kithri, equally hoarse.

  “Holy shit,” Lennart groaned, shaking his head as if his ears were plugged. “Is this what you folks call a welcoming committee?”

  Eril’s mouth jerked open, despite a wave of protest from his still-numb muscles. Surely he’d misheard the spacer — he must be more befuddled than he realized.

  “I apologize if the tangle disoriented you,” their captor said. “I didn’t know who you were and the only people who could be here without my prior knowledge would be either pirates or illegal amateurs. I had to discover which you were before you damaged the site.”

  She moved into the circle of light, still talking. Eril got his first good look at her. Unbound shoulder-length hair floated like a golden cloud around her oval face. Full, crimson lips and dark eyebrows contrasted vividly with her flawlessly pale skin. Her chin was softly rounded, her neck long and graceful, her eyes as green as almond-shaped emeralds. She wore a one piece garment like a tightly belted jumpsuit, which accentuated her narrow waist and curving hips.

  “I had to use the tangle to keep you safe until I could be sure,” she continued. “As soon as I saw your craft, I realized you were neither of these, something unknown, and then I needed to install the translators in your cerebral speech centers. It was just as well you were unconscious. I didn’t have to anesthetize you.”

  “Tr-translator?” Yes, she had said something about a translator. Something surgically implanted?

  “So that’s why you started coming in loud and clear all of a sudden,” Lennart commented. “I thought my brains were still on strike.”

  Kithri scowled at the alien woman. “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Brianna Jheridian.” She turned slowly toward Kithri and answered calmly. “As a licensed xenoarchaeologist, I am legally authorized to be on this planet. Now you tell me who you are, and where you came from.”

  “Give us one reason why we should trust you!” Kithri said. “You sneak into our camp, knock us senseless with that tangle thing, plant your translator devices in our brains, and now you expect us to just tell you —”

  “No, you misunderstand my intention,” Brianna interrupted. She sat down beside Kithri, positioning herself so that the light fell full on her face. Kithri stared back, looking drab and rumpled beside her.

  Watching the two women, Eril felt his hackles rise.

  “Listen to me, No-body out of No-where,” Brianna said to Kithri. “I am a scientist, first and foremost. I neither deal in nor condone political manipulations. My goal is the preservation and appreciation of intelligent species diversity. Yes, I had to safeguard this site. But I treated your bodies with the same cautions I would h
ave used on my own colleagues.”

  Brianna’s tone impressed Eril as much as her words. He realized he’d been unconsciously swayed by her beauty, which was enough to turn the average man to putty. But unfavorably swayed, because he’d grown up scrapping with an older sister who was every bit as gorgeous. Avery wouldn’t have hesitated to use all her allure to get what she wanted, even if it meant playing to the two men, polarizing the group and making Kithri look unattractive — even ugly — by comparison, in order to discredit her. For a dangerous half-second Eril had been tempted to judge Brianna by Avery’s behavior.

  Not fair, he realized. Also not wise, when she was offering a reasonable explanation for her actions. He couldn’t think of any graceful way of saying, So sorry I knocked you out and treated you like criminals, but it was all a misunderstanding, I was just doing my job.

  She wasn’t their enemy, and wouldn’t become one if he could help it. But he had to take that risk and trust her first.

  “I’m Colonel Eril Trionan,” he said, “of the Fifth Federation Star Service. And that’s Kithri Bloodyluck of Stayman and Commander Lennart Pascal of the United Terran Something-or-other.”

  “Space Command,” said Lennart.

  Kithri glared at Eril, but said nothing. He thought she looked more miserable than angry.

  “I don’t know any Federations, fifth or otherwise,” Brianna moved closer to Eril, shaking her head. He saw, for the first time, the lines of tension around her mouth, the faint trembling of her hands with their shadowy markings. She was every bit as scared as he’d been — and in a much more vulnerable position, one against three. It must have taken courage — or desperation — to let them wake up instead of finishing them off while they lay helpless.

  “Unless you’re from outside the Dominion Sphere...” Brianna said, curiosity wrestling with caution on her features. “You clearly aren’t Tribesmen. You’d need a galaxy-class starship to cross those distances, and only a zipper could have landed without my alarms sounding. So how did you get here?”