Dangerous Ground

22

Dangerous Ground

    “We may have been—er—previous,” noted BrTl with a slight cough.

    “If you mean our suspicions may have been misdirected when we thought the plasmo-blasted Full College was all we had to worry about, you’re right,” said Jhl sourly.

    “Wasn’t that you, that claimed the yellow-haired lordship from Y-K-W had distant cognates in it?” he inquired fuzzily.

    “Uh—was it? Wasn’t it both of us?” returned Jhl fuzzily.

    “It could have been, now you come to mention it,” he conceded sadly.

    There was a short silence.

    “May I have another look?” asked Jhl delicately.

    “Be my guest,” he groaned.

    Jhl had another look. She couldn’t see that BrTl’s shield had been penetrated, but there were certain indications of a sort of almost denting, as by the probe of a Y-K-W.

    “Say it, say it, get it over with,” he groaned.

    “Probed. Not Space Patrol, BrTl. Very definitely the IG Minerals Commission,”—he shuddered all over, but fortunately they were on the ship—”and, I’d say, nothing below the rank of Commissioner.”

    BrTl gulped.

    “Think yourself lucky you were only probed, with very little result. A’ailh’sa and The Mk-L’ster have been positively raked over,”

    He shuddered, but admitted: “Just as well we didn’t leave much in her head that any being above Class 1593, what am I saying, any being listed under the Act, would be interested in. What about him?” he added cautiously.

    “I’ve cleaned it up a bit,” admitted Jhl, pulling her ear, “and I’ve got a nice shield in there. Not even dented. Actually, not even spotted.” She gave him a wry look.

    “Congratulations, go to Advanced Pilot Training,” he groaned.

    “Mm.”

    “And Rh’aiiy’hn?”

    Jhl smiled. “He’s getting really good.”

    “Eh?” he gasped.

    “Oh, Blerrinbrig’s, no!” she said with a startled laugh. “No, but it took an appreciable effort for this putative Commissioner to penetrate it.”

    “Almost-certain Commissioner, isn’t it? What’s next? Can they arrest a Regent on F-Day plus one?”

    “If the Intergalactic Minerals Commission applied themselves they could probably arrest a Regent before he’d even heard of the Federation! But don’t worry, Trff’s decided it likes him.”

    “Just as well!” BrTl had a short brood on matters. “Who or what is this almost-certain Commissioner?”

    “I think—I’m seventy percent sure—it, or rather he, is Captain Marvel.”

    “WHAT?”

    When the echoes had ceased quivering, Jhl sighed: “Don’t say it. I know: we’ve all known him for years, he’s been your boon-companion ever since your neck-hair learnt to filter properly, he’s introduced five megazillion generations of raw young Space Service cadets to their first Orbiting Vvlvanian Moonblaster Specials—”

    “Ten.”

    “All right, to their first ten Orbiting Vvlvanian Moonblaster Specials,” she said coldly.

    “Don’t be like that! It can’t be him, Jhl, he’s been around since Blerrinbrig was a pup: he’s at every F-Day celebration across the two galaxies, with his Vvlvanian-cursed Carnival Extrava—Oh.”

    Jhl eyed him drily. “Mm. Cursed good cover, isn’t it?”

    “Uh—yeah,” he gulped. “But... Captain Marvel and His Carnival Extravaganza? It’s— It’s...” Words almost failed him. “Mangy,” he said finally in his Slaetho-Xathpyrian dialect.

    “Huh? Oh! Mangy! Good word for it! Um… Have you ever seen a gdoyng from D-Yhhrri banging its head against a—”

    “Yeah. Why they call them that. Gdoyng, gdoyng, gdoyng,” he said musically.

    “Uh-huh. Well, that’s what a very, very cautious look behind that soup of Orbiting Vvlvanian Moonblaster Specials that Captain Marvel keeps in his head felt like. After that, I stopped.”

    “Definitely a job for Trff,” he decided, shuddering. “But what made you suspect him in the first place?”

    “Dunno. I had a bit of a think about who turns up at every F-Day celebration in the Known Universe—” She shrugged. “It came down to him or J’rd’s Executive Director for the Unfederated Worlds.”

    “Huh?”

    “The J’rd’s I/C FWs, FW head!”

    “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Um... both of them?” he said in a hollow voice.

    “All things are possible. But this Executive Director’s a newish one. Well, suspicious in itself, I grant you. But the records match, the old one retired: it was an Orpetularian, it had to go home and divide.”

    “Got it,” he acknowledged. “So what’s the newish one?”

    Jhl winced. “A Whtyllian.”

    “Doesn’t that prove it?” he said sweetly.

    “Mm-mm... He was on nn-pth-qR before this.”

    “Never heard of it,” he said instantly.

    Jhl gave him a bored look.

    “In that case, he’s that rather pleasant humanoid being that bought that load of extra-special plush-moss off me at an extra-special price.”

    Jhl made a rude noise.

    “Almost an extra-special price,” he admitted.

    “Right. As he did so, rooking you out of those atmo-blobs that you were maintaining the said plush-moss with, for approximately one megazillionth of their market value.”

    BrTl began indignantly: “What would you have done? Those blobs are IG-illegal in the two galaxies and he said he had friends in Space Patr—Ugh,” he ended weakly.

    “Well, possibly ugh. But actually, his saying it inclines me to think that he’s probably harmless. Well, would you advertise the fact, if you were particularly well-connected?

    BrTl thought about it. “Double bluff?”

    “That’s possible, too.”

    “Well—uh—you looked? Yes. Gdoyng, gdoyng, too?”

    “No. Commodities Exchange, more or less verbatim.”

    “Would any being voluntarily keep that in its head?” he croaked. “He’ll be one of them! Uh, hang on, couldn’t he be another Y-K-W entirely?”

    “Huh?”

    He blinked pointedly.

    “Space Patrol?” Jhl gave a yelp of laughter. “No! No, the being’s a cursed sight subtler than any of those simple-minded little shaded beings with their toy probes.”

    After some time, in terms of the commonly perceived Y-K-W, BrTl said: “Well, where does that leave us?”

    “Where we’d better be Vvlvanian-cursed careful!” she said with feeling.

    “Yeah. And avoid Captain Marvel like a b’x fever plague—right.”

    “They’ve gone where?” she gulped.

    The motherly, in mammalian terms, Belraynian Chief Delegate’s bond-partner replied in surprise: “I didn’t think you’d object, Captain. Little G’gg was very keen to go.”

    He wasn’t all that little, of course, in terms of mammalian humanoid norms, and of his mammalian humanoid age, but let it pass: almost any sentient being except an elderly Mklontian, a Thwurbullerian or a full-grown female-tended xathpyroid was little to a Belraynian bond-partner. And his brain was little, all right. So was that of the Vvlvanian-cursed quintuple idiot that hadn’t put a block in said brain on the subject of Carnival Extravaganzas. Great splintered shards of quog!

    “Jaff and Joff are with him, of course,” offered the Belraynian bond-partner.

    In mammalian humanoid terms they were less than G’gg’s age and so was their shared brain.

    “And I sent Lieutenant dqxH ut paxeR along with them to—er—keep an eye on them,” said the Belraynian bond-partner with the Belraynian equivalent of a slight cough.

    “Thank you, Father-of-Jaff-Joff,” said Jhl politely in his Belraynian dialect.

    Perking up amazingly, the Belraynian bond-partner seemed prepared to settle down for a lovely chat about the relative merits of the First Schools on Belraynia, Bluellia, and all points north, east, west and south of them, but Jhl excused herself politely—he was well-meaning, if, at least in Belraynian terms, dimmer than M’mri’in—saying she thought that, dqxH ut paxeR or no, she’d better go and look for them before it got dark.

    “Darkish,” Father-of-Jaff-Joff corrected.

    “Yes. But neither of the Old Rthfrdian moons sheds very much illumination, to the humanoid eye,” explained Jhl politely.

    “I’m so sorry,” he said formally.

    Bowing politely, Jhl replied equally formally: “Thank you. I’ll take my leave, then, Father-of-Jaff-Joff.” And escaped.

    Great steaming piles of mok shit, what a— Yes, well, never mind that. Follow the smell of mangy semi-sentient beings and very old blobs struggling to maintain some sort of lift and find Vvlvanian-cursed Captain Marvel’s Vvlvanian-cursed Carnival Extravaganza, she supposed, signalling frantically for a— Oh.

    “No hire-bubbles,” a Thwurbullerian from the next parked ship but one reminded her helpfully, waggling its frontal lobes slightly.

    In return Jhl managed the mammalian humanoid equivalent, a pale mammalian humanoid smile. “Right. Pudrio Groump Lramsdorl, then?”

    “Pudrio Groump Lramsdorl it is,” agreed the Thwurbullerian dully.

    They waited, perforce…

    “Dark!” gasped the Thwurbullerian, stumbling on the uneven ground.

    Kindly Jhl extended an appendage. “Yes. Primmo,” she said grimly, since it was between their off-world selves.

    “And how!” gasped the Thwurbullerian, grabbing the appendage. It weighed something like fifty times what Jhl did, but the Thwurbullerian weight in any sort of grav usually redistributed itself in order to allow the being to keep its balance, so this one regained its confidence and righted itself without much difficulty. “If it wasn’t for the low grav, I wouldn’t know which way was up,”  it noted mournfully.

    The grav was pretty well mammalian-humanoid-normal, but Jhl agreed glumly: “You said it. Where are you heading for?”

    “The J’rd’s. Their I/C FWs sent me a customized individual invitation to a reception. You probably got one, too, every being attached to every delegation did. It’ll be a J’rd’s-ware party, of course,” it said heavily, “but what else is there to do in the dark on a primmo like this?”

    Jhl didn’t venture any suggestion, it wasn’t far wrong.

    “No nnru dives,” it added kindly.

    Starting slightly, though it hadn't literally been reading her mind, Jhl agreed: “You said it. Let me take you there: it’s really close, we’re right downtown.”

    “Is it? Thank you,” it said glumly.

    “You wouldn’t know it,” she agreed. “It doesn’t look much lighter to me than it does to you.”

    “You are humanoid, Captain, aren’t you?” it said cautiously.

    “Yes, but as some of us might have mentioned, this,” said Jhl grimly, guiding it away from a huge pot-hole, “is a primmo.”

    They reached the J’rd’s without further mishap. True, it had a giant lumo-blob sign three xathpyroid storeys high on top of it that said “J’rd’s” but down here at pot-holed street level, where they were, that didn’t help all that much.

    “Thank you!” the Thwurbullerian gasped as an IG-illegal-before-F-Day porto-blob wafted it away to the reception, or, as it were, J’rd’s-ware party, on the top floor.

    “Don’t buy anything!” called Jhl with a laugh.

    “I always do,” came its lugubrious reply as it was wafted aloft.

   Jhl smiled a little but set off with a grim look round her mouth to the outskirts of the business area, where Captain Marvel and his Carnival Extravaganza were parked on, more or less, a vacant lot.

    When she got there, G’gg was suspended fifteen IG fluh in the air by a very old lift-blob, which was about to give out. Whether or not this was a Test, Jhl didn’t pause to consider. An Eeiiay was standing nearby, emanating boredom: she sent a warning message to its bird-brain and it swooped up and caught him just as the exhausted blob gave way.

    “Galaxious!” he gasped as it set him down.

    “That was not part of the ride. This being has just saved your life. –Thank you very much indeed,” said Jhl grimly to the Eeiiay.

    “Not at all. Are you in charge of it?” it returned courteously. It peered at them in the dim light of the slightly-less-than-a-thousand flickering lumo-blobs of the Carnival Extravaganza. “I beg your pardon: of him.”

    “Not at all. I am now, and I can assure you he won’t be going up, in, on, or by anything else,” said Jhl grimly.

    “Good,” said the Eeiiay. It peered again. “Captain, is it? Have you heard anything about tonight’s reception at J’rd’s, Captain?”

    “Reliably reported to be a J’rd’s-ware party.”

    “Goes without saying,” it agreed mournfully.

    “I think quite a few beings have gone,” said Jhl cautiously.

    “I’ll try it,” it decided lugubriously, flapping away.

    “Galaxious!” gasped G’gg as its scrawny form vanished into the dark of the Old Rthfrdian sky.

    “Shut up, you asteroid-brain! Couldn’t you feel that blob was almost dead?” said Jhl fiercely.

    “Slgg says they don’t actually die: they—Um, was it?” said the asteroid-brain in confusion.

    Jhl gripped him fiercely by his mammalian ear. “Yes.”

    “Ow-ooh!” he gasped. “Don’t!”

    “You’d prefer a mind-lock, would you?”

    “No!” he gasped in horror.

    “I see your Uncle J’f has used one on you,” she said sweetly.

    “Yeah!” he gasped. “Don’t, Aunty Jhl, please!”

    Groaning, Jhl replied: “I’ve no intention of doing so, you blobbed-out asteroid-brain. Where is the crested one? And, if it’s not too much to ask, Jaff and Joff, who are, now I come to think of, only twelve Bluellian years old,” she noted grimly.

    “Um, they said they were nine,” he fumbled.

    “YES!” she shouted. “Nine Belraynian years! Where ARE they?”

    They were, apparently, “over there.” Jhl went “over there,” dragging him, with marked consideration which he did not deserve, not by the ear or with a mind-lock, but by the skinny arm.

    Jaff was feeding jolly-berries to a fuzzy Quarvaynian Riffle in a… cage. Jhl gasped. “That’s a sentient being within the—”

    “It isn’t really, Aunty Jhl,” said her nephew quickly.

    She took another look. Uh—nor it was. “Jaff,” she said, touching his appendage gently, “don’t waste jolly-berries on that, it isn’t real.”

    “Isn’t it?” he said in confusion. “Oh. Nor it is. Okay, I won’t. Want some?”

    Jhl refused, wincing, but G’gg amiably shared them with him. Jaff emanated happiness: he preferred doing things with a partner. Which reminded her—

    “Jaff,” she said clearly: “where is Joff?”

    “I’m just over here,” he replied in surprise.

    Wincing, Jhl conceded silently that she might have expected that: they were only twelve years old in Bluellian terms, after all. And who was she to say that by this time they ought to have sorted out that shared brain of theirs?

    They’re a bit thick, said G’gg in her head. Wincing again, Jhl conceded: Right. And shut up. “Jaff!” she said sharply. “Pay attention! Where exactly is Joff?”

    “I’m—Oh. He went off on a ride,” he said vaguely.

    Blerrinbrig’s! No doubt as they spoke he was suspended fifteen IG fluh in the air, ready to be dropped. “Take his appendage and don’t let go,” she ordered her nephew grimly. “JAFF! Come on, we’re going to join Joff. –Don’t think about it, just do it!”

    “I am,” he said vaguely, munching jolly-berries. “Aunty Jhl, could we have some Njneeainwearian chewing-taffy?”

    Blinking only slightly at being adopted as an aunt by a being twice her height and twenty times her girth, Jhl agreed: “Only if we find Joff and paxeR both whole and unharmed, and if I decide the Njneeainwearian chewing-taffy is—uh—not genuine: acceptable to your metabolisms. –Yes! Both of your metabolisms, G’gg! –Okay?”

    “Ye-ah! Galaxious!” the adopted and mammalian humanoid nephews both breathed.

    Joff was discovered inside Captain Marvel’s Z42-Class Asteroid-Reducer.

    “It doesn’t work,” he reported sadly.

    “Good,” returned Jhl heartlessly. “Get out of it before it reduces you to a pile of cosmic asteroid-dust.”

    “Oh, is that what they do?” he said, clambering out of it.

    “Only when in working order. Come here, take your cognate’s appendage, and DO NOT LET GO.”

    “I won’t,” they both said, appendages joined, emanating happiness at her.

    Jhl set off in search of the crested one—it must be her overdeveloped sense of responsibility, or some such—dragging G’gg by the skinny appendage, G’gg in turn gripping the near appendage of the appendage-joined Jaff-Joff. And that was the way it was gonna stay, until they were all safely back aboard the Belraynian ship.

    “Asteroids of Hhum!” she gulped.

    “PAXER!” screamed G’gg.

    The crested one was upside-down, fifteen IG fluh in the air, suspended by an ankle from what might have passed for a P-385b-Class, Space Issue Mega-Crane if you could remember back to a time they’d been in use, which no sentient being in the Known Universe except possibly the Ju’ukrterian it-being could.

    “That thing looks rusty,” croaked the Belraynian twins.

    “Doesn’t it?” agreed Jhl cordially.

    Faintly borne on the gentle breeze of the mild Old Rthfrdian summer night came paxeR’s voice: “Help! I think it’s stuck!”

    Captain Marvel himself was leaning on what might have passed for a (gulp) control panel if you could remember back that far, emanating a sardonic boredom.

    “H-Fi,” decided G’gg. “I think it’s an actual machine.”

    “One of those, yeah,” she croaked. “Um—hullo, Captain Marvel. Is that thing stuck?”

    Captain Marvel was, nominally, a tripedal noornithoplasmoid. What he actually was, was any being’s guess. At some stage he had lost one of the noornithoplasmoid upper appendages and had had it replaced by a very obvious mechanical prosthesis. That sort of thing was regarded as outrageously bad taste on many worlds but at the moment Jhl frankly didn’t give a Vvlvanian curse if Old Rthfrdia might have been one of them. At least two of the three noornithoplasmoid visual orbs had also been replaced. What with, exactly, was any being’s guess. His three short legs, however, were more or less intact, though there was some sort of parasite in the second joint of one of them.

    He twisted his head on its cylindrical, neckless body slowly in their direction, still emanating sardonic boredom. The dead-white skin was slowly overtaken by a bright blue blush which rose up like a level tide from chin-level.

    “Blerrinbrig’s!” gulped G’gg.

    “Father says that sometimes that’s what happens when a skin colour change goes wrong,” said Jaff-Joff dubiously.

    Captain Marvel’s blue flush vanished: he stretched his noornithoplasmoid olfactory organ in a nasty simulacrum of a mammalian smile. The three young beings linked to Jhl’s left appendage blenched.

    “Hullo, Captain,” he said, closing two eyes in order to peer with the third at her Number Twos in the gloom beneath his P-385b-Class Mega-Crane. “Great splintered shards of quog: Jhl Smt Wong! What are you doing here?”

    “Seconded to the Belraynian Delegation. For my sins. I’m still Space Fleet Reserve,” said Jhl grimly.

    “In spite of that little incident on—?” He broke off, with an excellent simulacrum of a mammalian cough. “Good to see you. There isn’t a nnru dive on the whole of this primmo, do you realise?”

    “Yes,” said Jhl with a sigh. “Try the native drink called uissh. Hasn’t got a delayed kick, though. How are you, Captain Marvel?”

    “Oh, flourishing like the proverbial plush-moss spore!” he replied cheerfully.

    Jhl didn’t wince: he must be aware that she was aware that that expression was regarded as the nadir or possibly aphelion, depending on your spatial orientation, of bad taste on most worlds of the Known Universe: and therefore he’d used it on purpose. G’gg and the young Belraynians gasped, but Captain Marvel didn’t react.

    “Glad to hear it,” she said drily. “Is that P-385b-Class Mega Crane stuck?”

    “Yes,” he said simply.

    “That’s our friend up there!” cried G’gg.

    “Is it?” said Captain Marvel in astonishment to Jhl.

    “Uh—acquaintance,” she conceded, wincing.

    “Oh, dear,” said Captain Marvel politely.

    There was a short silence, apart from, dimly borne on the mild breeze, the crested one’s cries of: “Help! Help! It’s stuck!”

    Captain Marvel looked pointedly at the blaster on Jhl’s right mammalian hip.

    “If I did that,” she said, not pretending that she hadn’t picked him up but pretending very hard that she hadn’t also picked up “Gdoyng, gdoyng,” “what being would catch him?”

    He shrugged.

    “I could climb up there,” quavered G’gg.

    “Not and live,” returned his aunt without interest.

    “Well, some being’s gotta do something!”

    “Why?” said Captain Marvel politely.

    “Will that mechanism’s grip release him?” asked Jhl, after some thought. Largely along the lines of, if she was Vvlvanian-cursed stupid enough to climb up there after the crested one herself, Captain Marvel would, take your pick, (a) kidnap the youngsters, (b) eat them, (c) feed Jaff-Joff to his Brqan fiend and eat G’gg, (d) put them in a cage, or (e) sell them to the highest bidder. Or any permutation thereof. Without any doubt whatsoever. That was, if he was merely Captain Marvel. What he might do if he was a Y-K-W didn’t bear thinking about, so to speak.

    “Who knows?” replied Captain Marvel politely.

    “Has it released any beings in the past?” asked G’gg keenly, if misguidedly.

    “Who knows?” replied Captain Marvel politely.

    G’gg subsided, with a baffled glare.

    “There’s a chance he may be safe enough for the time being, then,” Jhl concluded.

    “Yes,” said Captain Marvel, bending very slowly to leeward until his stocky, cylindrical noornithoplasmoid body reached an angle of approximately forty-five degrees. Jhl ignored this, and he righted himself with a slight stagger.

    “He’s got a being in his knee-joint,” said G’gg in a low voice to his aunt. “It’s, um, gnawing at it.”

    “Fascinating,” she said blightingly.

    G’gg subsided again.

    “Well,” she decided briskly, “paxeR is nominally an adult being, in fact he’s nominally in Space Service. He’ll have to take his chances. Nice seeing you again, Captain Marvel. Watch it, when you’re feeding your Brqan fiend, won’t you? I’ve heard they enjoy the occasional taste of noornithoplasmoid flesh.”

    “They do,” he agreed, rubbing his mechanical arm.

    Managing not to laugh—largely because, for one reason or another, G’gg and Jaff-Joff were all about to burst into tears—she said cheerfully: “Come on, you lot! I don’t think that counts as whole and unharmed, do you? We’ll skip the Njneeainwearian chewing-taffy.”

    She dragged them off. She had to apply considerable force, little of which she would have been capable of applying before she landed on Old Rthfrdia, but with a bit of luck—hah-hah—Captain Marvel wouldn’t be looking.

    “He’s still up there,” said G’gg tearfully, glancing over his shoulder as they reached the small gate in the impenetrable fence, where Captain Marvel’s small puce Flppu, bracelet and all, what else, made you pay one whole ig or local equivalent each to see the wonders of the Carnival Extravaganza.

    “Yeah,” said Jhl, glancing over her shoulder. Captain Marvel’s stocky form was again bending very slowly to leeward. “Tough,” she added as it reached an angle of approximately forty-five degrees and, there being no noticeably soft touches within appendage-range of the Captain, righted itself with a slight stagger.

    “But Aunty Jhl—”

    “Shut up, or you’ll find that your Uncle J’f’s mind-lock was a bath of nga’a-nga’a feathers compared to mine!” she snarled. “Wait,” she added grimly. She stuck her head into the puce Flppu’s ticket-box or, to put it more accurately, cage, and said: “What’ll your master take for that miserable, mangy, broken-down Quarvaynian oorlp he’s got in that cage that’s pretending to be a small field?”

    “From yourself, gracious lady, many sweet kisses.”

    “WHAT?” she bellowed, turning about the same shade as it was.

    “Humblest apologies, Captain!” it gasped. “Five—um, one super-ig.”

    “Blast it out your auscultatory organ,” advised Jhl, going on her way. “Come ON!” she snarled.

    They came. In tears, but they came. G’gg even revealed, snuffling horribly, that a Public Ground Transport vehicle stopped just “over there”. Not, however, referring to it as “Pudrio Groump Lramsdorl.”

    Five thousand other beings were waiting at the stop but fortunately none of them outranked her, so Jhl, snarling: “Captain’s privilege, do you wanna argue about it?” led her lot to the front of the queue.

    Once they were in Old Rthfrdia’s idea of Public Ground Transport she said heavily to their snuffling forms: “Listen. The only way we could have managed to rescue him would have been for me to climb up there, agreed?”

    G’gg began: “I could of—” but thought better of it.

    Jhl looked hard at the Belraynian physiology. “Agreed?”

    “Yeah,” they all muttered.

    “Right. And if I had climbed up there, Captain Marvel would have, take your pick, kidnapped you all; or eaten you all; or fed you, Jaff-Joff, to his Brqan fiend, it doesn’t like humanoid flesh, and eaten you, G’gg, he does; or put you in a cage like the rest of his mangy exhibits; or sold you to the highest bidder. –Believe it!” she snapped. They didn’t, so she gave them a very nasty mind-picture of the fate of certain less fortunate beings Captain Marvel had encountered in the past. They didn’t wholly believe that, either, but they did all burst into tears, so—

    Jhl sat grimly silent for the rest of the journey, sweat starting to her forehead as she struggled to maintain her shield against the now absolutely-undoubted mind-powers of an at-the-very-least Commissioner of the IG M.C.

    “You did quite right, Captain!” gasped Father-of-Jaff-Joff in horror, as she reported. “Of course you couldn’t desert the children! I had no idea he had that reputation!”

    “Yes. Next time, check with your bond-partner before you let the offspring go anywhere by themselves on a strange world,” she said heavily.

    “I will, Captain! Most certainly!” he gasped.

    “And Jaff’s been stuffing himself with jolly-berries, I think that’s possibly why Joff’s got stomach cramps. Wait.” She had a look. “Also, Joff’s been stuffing himself with Captain Marvel’s Own Gelbo-Delight.”

    “Gelbo-Delight? That’s quite harml—”

    “His is made of recycled lubolyon,” said Jhl heavily.

    “But that’s inert!” he gasped.

    “Quite. He’ll chuck it up in a few minutes,” said Jhl, dragging G’gg away before it could happen.

    “But we can’t leave paxeR up there!” he wailed. “He’ll die!”

    Jhl had had enough. She expunged the lot from his asteroid-brain and to boot put him to sleep. She then had physically to drag him to their quarters, but never mind: it was better than having to listen to him.

    … “I could happily leave him up there,” noted BrTl happily.

    Jhl sighed.

    “Though we are, of course, in some sort his superior officers,” he said glumly.

    “Quite.”

    “Show me.”

    She did. BrTl gaped. “That’s not high!”

    “It is to ME!” replied Jhl, getting rather loud.

    “Oh. Right. Sorry. Well, I suppose I can hoik him down, if you insist.”

    “BrTl,” said Jhl with a groan, “this isn’t good old Captain Marvel we’re involved with, here, remember.”

    “Are you sure?”

    “YES!”

    “You weren’t before,” he pointed out. “Not a hundred per—”

    “I’m SURE!” she shouted.

    “Oh. Right.” BrTl looked at her dubiously. “You look sort of almost lurghple. That’s a bad sign with humanoids, isn’t it?”

    “Not good, at any rate. –I’m all right,” she said with a sigh. “Just tired: have you ever had a mind-tussle with an at-the-very-least Commissioner of the IG M.C.?”

    “Would I be here now, if I had?” he returned wildly.

    “No. Well, only if they’d decided to use you as an undercover agent, forgive my paranoia,” she said wanly.

    “It’s worse than mine!” he gulped.

    “Mm. That can happen, after a mind-tussle with a Y-K-W.”

    “Uh-huh...”

    “Don’t try to look,” said Jhl tiredly. “He didn’t read me. But I didn’t read him, either. We sort of agreed to call it quits, okay?”

    “Y—Buh—That means he knows!” he gasped.

    “He knows we’re up to something, yeah. But not what.”

    “He could have guessed that much from the mere fact of your presence on this supposedly resourceless primmo.”

    “Just DROP IT!” she shouted.

    After a moment BrTl said, scratching his shoulder: “I’ll go by myself: it’ll be easy.”

    “BrTl, he is an IG M.C. COMMISSIONER!” she shouted.

    “Don’t do that,” he groaned.

    It’s all right. This it-being has—

    “Shut up, Trff, you-it’s no help,” he groaned.

    It replied with a dignified speech along the lines of although no mere IG Minerals Commission official could penetrate the Ju’ukrterian shield, there were one or two, it didn’t say as many as three, very superior IG M.C. beings who might just be capable of recognising the presence of a J— They didn’t listen, they’d heard it all a megazillion times before.

    Then it’ll come, it sent sulkily.

    “Trff,” replied Jhl with a groan: “you will not come, and that’s an order! Whatever your mind-powers, and I grant you they’re immeasurably superior to those of a mere Y-K-W, physically you-it is a small and fragile, forgive my size-ist usage, physical being! –And don’t tell me that’s repetitious, thanks!”

    After a moment Trff replied crossly: All right, it’ll just help from a distance; and don’t blame it if it all goes wrong!

    “It always says that,” noted BrTl as they set out into the gloom of the Old Rthfrdian summer night.

    “Yes. Well, it’s not too magma-pit-hot at managing your actual action. –Over there. It’ll be quicker if you gallop.”

    “Hop aboard,” he said graciously.

    Gritting her pearlized teeth, his Captain hopped aboard.

    “Ow!” he yelped.

    “Sorry,” replied Jhl with manifest untruth.

    “Where?” he groped, peering.

    “BrTl, it’s more or less a standard o-breather, c-based humanoid world,” she reminded him heavily.

    “Oh, yeah,” he said, hastily adjusting his vision with a few blinks. “That’s better. Uh—where, again?”

    “You want the actual bearings, do you?”

    “Uh—no, I can’t navigate too well in only two dimensions.”

    “I’ve noticed that. –Thirteen o’clock,” said Jhl unkindly in archaic Slaetho-Xathpyrian.

    “Hah, hah!” replied BrTl crossly, setting a dead straight course for Captain Marvel’s Carnival Extravaganza.

    “Good, there’s no being around!” he hissed, as they reached the closed and silent, impenetrable fence of the Carnival Extravaganza.

    The whole area was now pitch-black: it was just clear of the business district but there were no Old Rthfrdian dwellings in sight. Well, it was now too dark to see them if there had been, but Jhl had registered the point earlier. “Ssh!”

    BrTl shrugged, but shushed. He poked the fence with a cautious toe. “Huh! Only an optical ill— OW!” he gasped, hopping.

    Asteroid-brain, said his Captain evilly in his asteroid-brain. Now will you shut up and LISTEN?

    Standing on five feet and shaking the other one slightly in the soothing Old Rthfrdian breeze, BrTl listened. I can’t do it! he sent frantically.

    Jhl returned calmly: You can, easily: that fence is only ten IG fluh high. I know it looks higher, BrTl, that’s part of the—er—illusion. Just take my word for it. Ten IG fluh. You could practically hop over it.

    BrTl descended to rubbing the toe on the opposite calf. I may have to. What if you’re wrong and I crash into it?

    Then we both fall heavily to the ground. Very possibly breaking something. There’s also the possibility that you roll on top of me, in which case that’s all she wrote. Shall we try it?

    Well, um… Trff? he sent plaintively.

    Nine point nine, nine, nine— Very nearly almost ten IG fluh. You-it can do it, easy, BrTl!

    “Well, hang on tight,” he ordered his Captain grumpily.

    Jhl held on tightly. She had ridden worse, in her time. Though not much, true.

    BrTl drew a giant breath. He backed off. He drew another giant breath. He thundered down the gentle Old Rthfrdian slope of the rubbly Old Rthfrdian road at the fence. Jhl shut her eyes. He leapt. He soared...

    “OW! Help!” he gasped, landing neck-deep in a Vvlvanian magma pit. “HELP! Drowning! Burning! GLUG!” he gasped.

    BrTl, IT’S AN ILLUSION! shouted Jhl desperately in her First Officer’s drowning mind. It’s NOT REAL! BrTl continued to drown. Jhl leapt off him, rolled over on the scruffy grass near the broken-down Mini-Whirly and scrambled breathlessly to her feet. There was little point in pretending they weren’t there: anything but a dendrion rock or some similar non-sentient object of similar density within a radius of ten thousand IG spans must have heard him land. “BrTl!” she shouted, aloud: “It’s NOT REAL! There’s NO MAGMA PIT! IT’S ONE OF CAPTAIN MARVEL’S CURSED CARNIVAL TRICKS!”

    “Oh,” said BrTl foolishly, ceasing to drown. “Sorry.”

    “Understandable,” she granted, dusting herself off. “Come on. This way—I think. It’s not far from the oorlp’s field. I mean cage.”

    “I can smell it,” he allowed.

    They found the P-385b-Class Mega-Crane without difficulty. Their eyes, with a little help from their shades, had now more or less adjusted to the gloom, so they were able to see that paxeR was still up there. And that at the foot of the crane Captain Marvel was leaning on the control panel, emanating sardonic boredom.

    He eyed BrTl thoughtfully. “One of the Br-cognates, is it? BrJk?”

    “Yes,” lied BrTl uneasily.

    Captain Marvel blinked one eye incredulously. “My very dear Lieutenant BrTl,” he said, sounding incredibly familiar: for a startled moment both BrTl and Jhl could have sworn it was Fleet Commander Vt R’aam: “even if I didn’t recognise your impressive physical appearance, which is about, let me add, half an IG ton heavier than the real BrJk’s, I can read your Space Service ID quite clearly, even in the inadequate moonlight of this abysmal primmo.”

    “That explains what one of those eyes is, then,” noted BrTl through the crunchers.

    “Yeah. –Let that idiot Nblyterian down, Captain Marvel: what in Federation can he mean to you?” said Jhl grimly.

    “Oh, well... A tradable commodity?” he said, shrugging

    “No-oo!” wailed paxeR from above them. Well, above Jhl: BrTl was interestedly investigating the mechanical grip round the crested one’s ankle.

    “I can bite through this,” he reported.

    “No!” gasped paxeR in horror.

    “Not the ankle, asteroid-brain,” he said irritably.

    “All the blood’s run to my head!” gulped paxeR plaintively.

    “I don’t think that’ll help,” said BrTl kindly. “Shall I give it a go?” He bared the crunchers, ignoring paxeR’s terrified yelp.

    “Look again,” drawled Captain Marvel, still sounding horribly like Shank’yar Vt R’aam.

    “I've never actually tasted blob,” said BrTl thoughtfully.

    “Wait,” warned Jhl.

    “For what? Until he summons up his—uh—puce Flppu?” he said incredulously as it bobbed up out of the night.

    “NO!” shouted Jhl as BrTl reached out a casual pseudopod to brush the Flppu away. “It’s not the Fl—”

    Snarling, the Brqan fiend leapt for BrTl’s great length of throat.

    Jhl drew her blaster—but somehow her hand hadn’t moved.

    BrTl and the Brqan fiend rolled over and over on the scruffy grass, snarling. Above them, paxeR burst into walls of terror.

    TRFF! sent Jhl angrily.

    “It can’t help, my very dear Captain Smt Wong,” explained Captain Marvel sweetly, “because, as we all know, physical manipulation is not its forte. And my Brqan fiend is very physical.”

    Jhl struggled to move. Sweat poured off her: she gasped for breath. Captain Marvel watched sardonically as she gradually leant to leeward, attained an angle of forty-five degrees, failed to right herself, and fell over.

    Meanwhile, BrTl and the Brqan fiend rolled over and over on the scruffy grass, snarling. BrTl had a hand clamped over its muzzle. It had one set of claws sunk deep in his flank, another buried in his neck-hair, and was groping with a third set for his eyes.

    Jhl sobbed for breath. Tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks. She struggled to rise but her legs and arms were a useless tangle. Above, paxeR was so terrified that he’d stopped wailing.

    BrTl let out a roar of anguish. Captain Marvel smiled slightly.

    “BrTl!” shouted Jhl desperately. The words never reached the air. With a tremendous effort she sent: BrTl, it breathes through—third—paw!

    BrTl turned his head with a ferocious snarl and bit off the paw that was groping for his eyes. Whatever it was that it had in its veins spurted. The breath whistled from the severed limb, and the fiend went limp.

    BrTl spat, shuddering. “That was easy.”

    “Wasn’t it?” agreed Captain Marvel sardonically,

    “LOOK OUT!” shouted Jhl as the noornithoplasmoid leapt into the air, twisting as it came into the form of a xathpyroid to match BrTl’s own strength. They came together with an almighty thud and twin snarls.

    They were, in fact, very evenly matched. Was Captain Marvel doing it to amuse himself? wondered Jhl dazedly as they rolled over and over, snarling, tails lashing the grass in tremendous sweeps. At one point she was rolled right over to the low fence round the Mega-Crane by BrTl’s tail. Apart from that she didn’t move: she wasn’t entangled any more, she was simply immobilised. Possibly she was lucky he was still allowing her rib-cage to move.

    It has sent the Palace Guard! it sent.

    Well, goody, let’s hope they’re in time to be eaten! replied Jhl bitterly.

    Think, Jhl. Concentrate.

    Jhl was about to wither it when she realised what it meant. Oh. Um ...

    She was no longer aware of the snarling xathpyroids on the grass. Her chest heaved painfully, her face was a strained greyish lurghple, and her hair was soaked with sweat as she fought to understand the physical lock Captain Marvel had applied to her limbs. Was it... physical? Ye-es... No; yes: nerves and—OW! Great splintered shards of— Gasping, Jhl concentrated fiercely.

    “Don’t try it,” he said softly.

    Jhl sat up with a gasp.

    “Oh, the inept ship-companion isn’t hurt. Not very much. We were evenly matched: it’s more fun that way,” he drawled.

    BrTl was about ten IG spans away. He gave a low growl, head lowered. Jhl realised he couldn’t move.

    “Of course I could immobilise both of you at the same time,” Captain Marvel continued sweetly, “but this is much more fun, isn’t it? But don’t move,” he added, with a slight motion of the blaster in his fist.

    He was silhouetted dimly against the sky. Jhl couldn’t quite make him out: he was against the light. She peered muzzily. Two legs? Ooh, had BrTl—? No. Pity.

    “Look again!” His shoulders shook in a silent laugh.

    Shan.

    “That’s very clever, Captain Marvel,” said Jhl steadily, “but haven’t you heard that Fleet Commander Vt R’aam and I had a bust-up some time since?”

    There was a flash of pearly teeth in the gloom. “I heard it, yes: I was there, remember, darling? You were very loud—but aren’t you always?” He gave an intimate little laugh.

    Concentrate, Jhl!

    I—am! she managed.

    Captain Marvel chuckled. “I don’t pretend I can pick it up, darling, but do tell me: is the ubiquitous Slp-Og V. Trff sending to you? Tell it it’s pointless,”

    “Don’t believe him, Captain!” screamed paxeR suddenly.

    “You’d take the word of that?” said the figure before Jhl with a lightly contemptuous laugh. Tone and laugh were Shank’yar Vt R’aam to the life.

    Jhl ignored him. If only she could— She knew BrTl’s physiology better than she knew her own: she must be able to— Lean into it, BrTl! she sent, sweating. Remember the leg!

    “Darling, Captain Marvel’s always been one of my best disguises,” he murmured. “Remember I told you about the first time I came here? –Yes, that was as me,” he said as Jhl’s mind cried, in spite of herself: HAH! Gotcha! “But then a couple of times, I wasn’t disguised as a ‘trader,’ exactly—well, couldn’t expect me to give all my little secrets away to you at once, could you?” he said, laughing silently, shoulders shaking. “No, I was here as good old harmless Captain Marvel most of the time!” He added with a chuckle: “The lady poet of the Lower Cwmb found it such a romantic disguise! Oh, I was humanoid for the benefit of the Old Rthfrdians,” he assured her. “I only do the noornithoplasmoid bit to impress all you qwlot-soaked diplo lot.”

    Whether he was reading her, or reading BrTl, or had had the low-down from the plasmo-blasted Full College—yes, extremely likely, now she came to think of it—Jhl didn’t believe for a moment he was Shan. Well, ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine percent of her didn’t.

    Concentrate! repeated Trff.

    Panting, Jhl concentrated.

    “Darling Jhl,” said the humanoid figure before her—Bones of Brqa, those were Shan’s thighs, all right!—as he took up a more casual stance, though still with the blaster steadily aimed at her, “I’ve been myself again since round about F-Day minus ten. The Full College, the IG M.C. and I have come to... let’s say, an accommodation.” He eyed her mockingly.

    “Your mother’s agreed, of course!” panted Jhl, concentrating madly. Suddenly she felt that BrTl had—No, he hadn't. Vvlvanian curses!

    “Mother had very little choice in the matter.” He paused. “I don’t say, very little say. She spoke at length.”

    “Hah, hah!” gasped Jhl, fighting to appear as if she was actually listening to the Gervaynian worm, whilst concentrating on helping BrTl to unlock that lock, and keeping her more ordinary or Jhl Smt Wong shield up sufficiently for Captain Marvel to believe in it or at least have some faint notion that it might be the real one; and behind that, at a much, much deeper level, to maintain her real shield. She had sensed briefly that Trff had taken over all the other shields she had had digits in, thank the Federation. …Was Captain Marvel intuiting, rather than reading? Yes— Irrelevant. Concentrate!

    Suddenly BrTl gave a yelp and fell over, rolling heavily a few spans towards them.

    “Oops,” said Captain Marvel, not budging nor turning his head the slightest fraction.

    “BrTl!” screamed paxeR.

    “I could drop that,” noted Captain Marvel idly.

    “I’m sure you could, Shan,” agreed Jhl cordially.

    “But I’d have to go over to the control panel,” he said plaintively.

     “Oh, couldn’t you move it from here?”

    “Never have been any good at mechanical manipulation,” he replied sadly.

    This was true. Jhl’s lips tightened for a moment.

    “Shall I immobilise you, then, and go and drop it?”

    Jhl ignored this.

    “Or would you prefer it if we did a little swap? Lieutenant dqxH ut paxeR in exchange for the ubiquitous BrTl?”

    “You wouldn’t like the taste,” said Jhl nastily.

    His shoulders shook silently. “I haven’t much liked the taste of a lot of the meat I’ve had to eat during the Captain Marvel thing, darling! Ever tried Flppu? Ugh! –What about the puce one, with the bracelet key to do as you like with, plus dqxH ut paxeR?”

    “You’re not getting BrTl,” said Jhl through her pearlized teeth.

    “Darling, it may have escaped your notice, but I’ve got him,” he drawled.

    –Another low, anguished growl from BrTl. Jhl could feel, however, that he’d almost regained control of his tail. The sweat trickled down her hairline. She tried not to pant.

    “I’m being terribly generous, darling Jhl,” drawled Captain Marvel or whatever he was: “you give it up and let me—um—get rid of all the nasty memories,”—the pearly teeth flashed—“and I’ll give you those two. I’ll just keep BrTl as a little payment. A thank you.”

    “To do what, Captain Marvel?” replied Jhl nastily. “Put him in a cage? Sell him to the highest bidder?”

    —The tip of BrTl’s tail had twitched. Come ON!

    “Not quite. It’s part of my little accommodation. The Full College wouldn’t agree to anything less.”

    Jhl gave a short laugh. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to distract him for long. Vvlvanian curses! Come ON, BrTl! She could feel Trff was trying to show BrTl what to do. Its grasp of xathpyroid physiology didn’t seem to be as good as her own: all those IG years concentrating on plasmo-blasted blobs instead, what a waste!

    “I was under the impression that the Full College already knows more than enough about xathpyroid paranoia,” she said, trying to sound lightly mocking.

    “Enough to perform any number of cures, yes.” He paused. “One gathers that they’d like to be able to, er, manage the occurrences thereof? Something like that.”

    “Charming. –Why is we talking Intergalactics?” said Jhl suddenly in her bad Whtyllian.

    “Darling, because your Whtyllian is so superbly bad, of course!” he replied in feigned astonishment, in faultless Whtyllian.

    She gave up on that one and switched back to Intergalactic. “I haven’t had much chance to practise, lately.”

    “No, indeed,” he said sympathetically. “It must have been so dull for you. Never mind. It’s all over. Let’s stop this silly pretence: your mission’s accomplished, there are sufficient rafts of super-igs being credited to your account as we speak, and—er—you and I are quits. But you must see it wouldn’t be safe for me, for some appreciable period, to let you retain all that knowledge you’ve picked up.”

    “For some appreciable period until you and the Full College and the IG M.C. have got your appendages on your sons’ interests here, you mean?”

    “Indeed,” he said with a slight bow. The blaster in his hand didn’t waver, though. Not that it would, if he actually was Shan.

    —Come on, BrTl, you can do it! You only think he’s controlling the muscles, find the lock!

    “What in the name of the Federation was my mission, Shan? I’ve been trying for months to figure it out,” she said lightly.

    “Just to keep my sons from destroying each other. And incidentally to protect my interests.”

    “Uh-huh. Wouldn’t your interests be better served if they did destroy each other? Neither of them have got offspring.” Jhl looked at him mockingly.

    “Oh, very true. But one would have to go through so many tedious legal formalities. So much easier to fix all that up now that they’ve safely entered the Federation, don’t you agree?”

    Jhl blenched. He wasn’t, of course, Shank’yar Vt R’aam, if he was a cursed good simulacrum of him. But that sounded just so horribly likely!

    “Come on, Jhl, darling, it’s all over. I’m sorry if you expected…” He hesitated. “Something else? Something more?”

    “Like what?” –Come ON, BrTl!

    “Oh, Federation knows, darling! Altruism on my part? Er—paternal affection?”

    Jhl’s choler rose, to such an extent that she almost lost contact with BrTl.

    HELP!  he gasped

    You-it’s feeding him-it, Jhl! sent Trff urgently.

    I can’t HELP it!

    Wait, it sent.

    Oh, thanks very much! thought Jhl dazedly. Then, for an instant, the humanoid figure before her seemed to waver and—almost dissolve? Nothing as definite as that.

    “Very clever: was that the Ju’ukrterian?” he said admiringly. “I didn’t know that it—not knew anything of, undoubtedly it knows it somewhere in its consciousness—but let us say, was interested in, in humanoid terms, the creation of illusion.”

    “You seem to have managed to interest it,” said Jhl tightly. She and BrTl had almost gained control of his tail...

    NOW!

    BrTl lashed out with an almighty sweep of the tail, Captain Marvel gave a yell as he was swept off his feet, and Jhl bounded up and blasted him through the chest.

    BrTl staggered groggily over to her. “Dead?”

    Jhl was on her feet, legs well braced, blaster steady on the fallen humanoid figure. “Dead if it’s humanoid and if that’s its chest, yes.”

    BrTl peered at it, his blaster in a pseudopod, his hands poised to grab. “It still looks humanoid... Metamorph?”

    “Dunno. I’ve heard of them, never met one.”

    “Never met one before,” he corrected heavily.

    “No-o... That might have been illusion, BrTl.”

    “It felt as strong as me!” he said indignantly.

    “Yeah, but you thought you were drowning in a magma pit, a bit back, remember?”

    “Oh—yeah.”

    “It looked as strong as you to me, too,” she admitted.

    “Thanks. –Is that blood?”

    “Only if it’s dead and humanoid.”

    “Right.”

    Faintly from above came the crested one’s voice, with a wobble in it: “Is he dead?”

    “Have you see him dead before, paxeR?” called Jhl.

    “No-o... Watch out, Captain, he’s evil!”

    “We couldn’t have guessed!” muttered BrTl, rolling his eyes.

    He-it is dead.

    “Thank you, Trff!” replied Jhl with perhaps justified tartness. “What is it, she, he, or they, if it’s not too much to ask?”

    Look at his-its genetic encoding, it will tell you-it, returned the engineering brain.

    “I AM, I can’t tell whether it’s REAL, you asteroid-brain!” she shouted.

    Whtyllian, it returned succinctly.

    Jhl staggered.

    BrTl shot out a pseudopod and supported her round the waist. “Did it say Whtyllian?”

    “Mm.”

    He swallowed hard. “Possibly he was playing some sort of double game all along, then,” he croaked.

    “Or possibly the Full College got hold of him, why did we ever let that Vvlvanian-cursed Full Surgeon near him?” she cried in anguish.

    “It was my fault,” he muttered, shuffling his feet.

    “No, it wasn’t, BrTl,” said Jhl, wiping her cheeks with the back of the hand that wasn’t holding the blaster: “we’ve all been manipulated nicely. But I’m plasmo-blasted if I know when it started.”

    “Me neither,” he conceded glumly.

    The it-being—

    SHUT UP, TRFF! they both cried at the tops of their minds.

    BrTl poked at the fallen figure very cautiously with his toe. Not the one that had previously suffered from the wall. “I suppose Trff couldn’t be wrong? He is Whtyllian?”

    “Mm!” said Jhl, gulping and sniffing.

    BrTl also gulped. “He must have been plotting it all for years.”

    “Mm.” Jhl pushed his pseudopod away. Slowly she knelt beside the fallen humanoid figure.

    “Is he—?”

    “Whtyllian, yes. I’m looking,” she said through her teeth.

    The it-being—

    “SHUT UP, TRFF!” they bellowed.

    There was a short silence.

    “Shan, why did you DO it?” cried Jhl painfully. She gave a loud sob. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

    JHL, IT ISN’T HIM-IT! sent Trff desperately.

    “What?” she said blankly, sniffling.

    BrTl’s blaster hadn’t wavered. “It looks like him. Inside, too.”

    No! sent the Ju’ukrterian crossly. The it-being has not ceased to monitor the emanations from Fleet Commander Vt R’aam!

    BrTl coughed slightly.

    The it-being isn’t mistaken, BrTl. The combined Full College couldn’t practise that sort of deception. Not even with the help of the IG M.C. It’s... It faded: BrTl and Jhl looked dubiously at each other. A matter of sprtzz fibres, concluded Trff, somewhat weakly.

    “Trff, the genetic encoding’s exact!” cried Jhl. Somehow there was a loud sob in there, too.

    Not exact: look again.

    “Yeah—uh—concentrate,” advised BrTl awkwardly.

    Sniffing, she concentrated. “It is a bit different,” she said dubiously. “I think.”

    Yes, agreed Trff. This is... It means a... brother? Yes. Like the Regent and D’ru-son, it explained with some relief. Same humanoid father.

    Jhl sat back limply on her heels. “Bones of Brqa and all fourteen of its moons!”

    “Blast me out beyond the last black hole, too,” agreed BrTl, sagging. “Another cognate?”

    “I’d have said he was Shan’s age, or more,” said Jhl dubiously, poking at the corpse with a cautious digit.

    He-it is a brother of the Fleet Commander, sent Trff.

    “WHAT?” they shouted.

    Same father? it repeated, sounding less sure of itself.

    “The whole culture-pod’s in the plot!” cried BrTl wildly.

    “Yeah.” Jhl peered into the dead Whtyllian’s face. “He is awfully like him.”

    “Horribly,” he agreed.

    “Is he really dead?” came a wobbly voice from above.

    “Oops!” said Jhl.

    “Hang on, paxeR!” cried BrTl. “–An unfortunate choice of phrase,” he muttered to himself. “Um—if we’re absolutely certain sure that this is dead,” he said, poking it with the toe again, “I’ll hoik paxeR down, shall I? But by the way, that isn’t a blob holding him!” he suddenly realised.

    “No,” said Jhl with a great sigh. “Nor it is. Well, that proves this creature isn’t Shan, if we needed further proof. He doesn’t go in for inflicting gratuitous pain.”

    What BrTl had originally thought was a blob cunningly incorporated into the mechanism of the Mega-Crane’s grip by Captain Marvel was now very plainly revealed to both of them as an artery from the Nblyterian’s ankle. The severing of which by BrTl’s crunchers would have resulted in the almost instantaneous death of the crested one.

    “You were right to tell me to wait,” he said. “Did you know?”

    “No, I just had a sickish feeling. Plus and I could feel something creeping up on you.”

    “Uh-huh. –Hold on.” Blaster poised, he turned to the dead Brqan fiend. It was still a fiend. And still dead. Very dead, it was starting to smell even worse than it had when it was alive. He vaporised it.

    “There’s one or two of the menagerie,” said Jhl with a wince, as they both became aware of a growing clamour in the background, “that wouldn’t have minded a piece of that.”

    “Oops!” he said cheerfully. “–Shall I?” He waved the blaster suggestively at the corpse of Captain Marvel. “Or would you care for the honour?”

    “I’m tempted to feed it to the menagerie, but I have heard of cases of, um—”

    “Symbiotic regeneration?” said BrTl, fingering his blaster lovingly.

    “Something like that.” Jhl got up and stepped back. “Do it.”

    BrTl vaporised the corpse of Captain Marvel. Just to make sure, he vaporised the spot again.

    “That’ll do it, I think,” said Jhl feebly, looking at the six-IG-fluh-deep crater.

    “What about paxeR?”

    “Lift me up, I’ll give it a go,” said Jhl, chewing on her lip.

    BrTl lifted her up. Kindly he took paxeR’s weight in a pseudopod.

    “Thanks!” gasped the crested one, tears of relief oozing from his eyes.

    “I’m sorry, paxeR. We didn’t realise he had a piece of you in here,” said Jhl.

    “It doesn’t really hurt,” he lied bravely.

    “Mm. That better?”

    “Ooh, yes!” he gasped. “I can’t feel it at all!”

    “Uh-huh...”

    Can you? said BrTl in her head.

    I think I’ll have to actually operate: I can’t figure out the plasmo-blasted mechanism.

    Go on, then.

    Jhl severed the artery. It wasn’t much different from a humanoid one. Quickly she stuck it back together again.

    Ugh, is that Nblyterian blood?

    “Shut up,” she said before she realised he’d only said it in her head. “Um—there!”

    Can he feel it?

    No. It might bother him a bit off and on until it’s properly healed, but he won’t actually feel, replied Jhl with a wince, what the charming Captain Marvel intended him to feel. If he lived.

    “Good. –All fixed, paxeR!” he said brightly, aloud.

    “Thanks, Captain. Thanks, First,” said the crested one with a brave smile.

    BrTl replied cheerfully: “Any time!” and set him down.

    Poor paxeR gasped, leant to leeward, attained an angle of forty-five degrees, failed to right himself, and fell over.

    “He’s only got two legs,” said Jhl heavily.

    “Right. I sort of forgot those other two were arms,” admitted BrTl glumly, picking him up in a pseudopod and putting him on his back. “Hold on tight, paxeR.”

    “You can put me down, both my legs are working,” noted his Captain acidly.

    “Huh? Oh: right! Sorry.”

    He put her down. Jhl dusted her uniform off. “We’d better do something about the menagerie.”

    “Don’t think we’ll have to,” he said, as the whole Carnival Extravaganza was suddenly bathed in a white light from above and a greatly magnified voice boomed: “You are surrounded! This is the Palace Guard! Surrender!”

    “You shouldn’t be here,” said Jhl tightly, as Rh’aiiy’hn jumped out of the lifter and ran to her side, blaster at the ready.

    “Are you all right?” he replied.

    “Yes. It’s all over. And some beings,” she said, looking hard at the green fluffy sphere that was bobbing in his wake, “were panicking unnecessarily. –YOU WERE ORDERED NOT TO COME!”

    “It thought you-it might need it. Why did you-it let BrTl vaporise him-it?”

    “Trff,” said Jhl through her pearlized teeth: “thank you for your help from a distance, which was what was required of you. And remind me that in your leisure moments when we’re back aboard you’re going to undertake a stiff course in xathpyroid physiology. Now get back on that lifter before I really lose my temper!”

    “I vaporised him because we thought there might be a slight case of symbiotic regeneration or some such,” BrTl explained glumly, as it went.

    Rh’aiiy’hn was looking at the six-IG-fluh-deep crater. “Was—?”

    “He was a Whtyllian,” said BrTl sourly.

    “Mm, the Trff said. Are you all right, Lieutenant?”

    “Yes, thank you, sir. Um, the odd patch here and there might be starting to sting,” he admitted, wriggling slightly. “And I can still taste that Brqan fiend. –Have you ever been to Brqa?” he asked his Captain.

    “Yes. Dead. Covered in bones, hence the expression. Why?”

    “I see, the fiends ate everything,” he said, rubbing a place on his flank.

    “Something like that. Just keep still, I’m taking a look at you,” said Jhl with a sigh. “Um, sir,” she said somewhat belatedly to the Regent, “if you wouldn’t mind, your men would be usefully deployed in seeing to Captain Marvel’s menagerie.”

    “Vaporise them,” advised BrTl, yawning. “Ow! Do you have to?”

    “Sorry,” replied Jhl vaguely. “–That better?”

    “Yes. Thanks. Can you do anything about the taste?”

    “No. Try a basin of iirouelli’i juice.”

    “I might do that. Uh—well, shall we go?”

    “Yes. Pick me up.”

    Emanating mild surprise, BrTl picked her up and put her on his back behind the crested one.

    “Was that the Regent?” said paxeR in a squeak.

    “Uh—galloping grqwary gizzards,” she muttered. “Um, yeah.”

    “Bored. Wanted a diversion?” offered BrTl unconvincingly. “Better say goodbye.” He went over to where Rh’aiiy’hn was now supervising the capture of the oorlp. “Watch out, sir, it’ll kick. I’d say it was half-starved.”

    “Yes, sir: they’re all more than half-starved!” said Jhl loudly from her elevated position.

    “I see,” said Rh’aiiy’hn, looking up at her anxiously.

    “Vaporise them,” repeated BrTl laconically, dropping the “sir” bit.

    “We have a very humane little zoo near the Central Botanic Gardens,” he murmured.

    “I’d vaporise ’em,” he said sourly.

    “Sir, he’s tired,” explained Jhl feebly, feeling paxeR becoming agitated.

    “Of course. Are you sure you don’t need transport back to your ship?”

    “No, thank you, sir. And, er, thank you for coming.” –A faint echo of the thanks came from paxeR.

    “Not at all,” said Rh’aiiy’hn formally.

    I’m leaving, said Jhl in his head. She felt rather than saw him turn pale. “Goodnight, sir,” she said aloud.

    “Goodbye,” said Rh’aiiy’hn tightly “Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

    “Goodnight, sir,” replied BrTl, saluting.

    He just managed not to yawn until they were more or less out of the Regent’s presence.

    “We’re leaving tomorrow,” said Jhl grimly. “Don’t plan on sleeping in.”

    “Good,” he replied simply. “I’ll gallop. Well, lope.”

    “Do that.”

    He loped.