proud. Everyone thought Ehfts were funny, and no one knew what Ehfts thought about anyone.
It was true that, once, four kung had boarded a grounded human ship during the bad old days and killed thirty-five crew before the last kung went down under the weight of Clipe needles. It was true that on certain diplomatically-forgotten occasions shandi had, with great ceremony, eaten people. So what? How could you evaluate this unless you could think like an alien?
We dismiss each other with a few clichés, she thought. It’s the only way we can live with one another. We have to think of aliens as humans in a different skin, even though we’ve all been hammered by different gravities on the anvils of strange worlds …
She sat up in the darkness, listening. The ship hummed to itself.
She padded naked down the equatorial corridor. Something that had been nagging at the back of her mind had surfaced, and she had to find out …
Ten minutes later she entered the control room, where Marco was still sitting under the screen.
‘Marco?’
He ducked his head, then pushed the screen up and grinned.
‘Everything’s going fine. What’s that you’re holding? It looks like a melted plastic sculpture.’
‘This was the box the raven was in. Bioplastic. It doesn’t melt below one thousand degrees. I found it in the airlock,’ snapped Kin, tossing it onto his lap.
Marco turned the shapeless mass over, then shrugged.
‘Well? Are these birds intelligent?’
‘Sure, but they don’t tote cutting torches around.’
There was a pause while they both gazed at the melted box.
‘Jalo could have done it,’ said Marco uncertainly. ‘No, that doesn’t work – he was surprised to see the bird.’
‘To put it mildly, yes. I don’t like this sort of mystery, Marco. Have you seen the raven?’
‘Not since Jalo did. Hmm.’ He reached out one lank arm and punched the ship’s panic button.
Bells and sirens echoed through the ship. Within forty seconds Silver thundered in, crushed snow from her sleeping pit still sticking to her fur. She braked when she saw them watching her, and growled.
‘A human joke?’ she said. They told her.
‘It is odd,’ she agreed. ‘Shall we search the ship?’
Marco spoke at length about the number of small spaces in a spaceship. He added details about what happened if something small and feathered crawled into a vital duct, or blundered into the wrong cable.
‘All right,’ said Kin. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You two go back to your rooms,’ said Marco. ‘Seal them off, and search for the bird. I will evacuate the rest of the ship. This is standard anti-vermin drill anyway.’
‘But you’d kill it,’ said Kin.
‘I don’t mind.’
Later Marco sat watching the build-up of power in the ship’s fusion driver, out there in the centre of the toroids ring field, and wondered about the bird. Then he dismissed the thought, and wondered instead if either of the others had noticed him hide the magic money purse after Jalo’s death. Just a matter of prudence …
Silver turned over in the snow hole in her environmentally frozen cabin, and wondered if either of the others had seen her remove the magic purse from Marco’s hideaway and secrete it in one of her own. For later evaluation …
Kin lay watching the blinking red light that indicated vacuum in the corridor outside her cabin, and felt a vague sympathy for the raven. Then she wondered if either of the others had seen her take the magic purse from the place Silver had hidden it and drop it out of a disposal chute during an Elsewhere jump. By now the purse was barrelling on towards the edge of Universe, propelled by the steady ejection of Day bills from its open mouth.
Spaced at four arbitrary compass points around the ship were quick-air chambers, installed during its construction to conform with Board of Trade regulations. They meant that, if caught during sudden decompression, a crewman could duck into a chamber instead of having to struggle with a
It was true that, once, four kung had boarded a grounded human ship during the bad old days and killed thirty-five crew before the last kung went down under the weight of Clipe needles. It was true that on certain diplomatically-forgotten occasions shandi had, with great ceremony, eaten people. So what? How could you evaluate this unless you could think like an alien?
We dismiss each other with a few clichés, she thought. It’s the only way we can live with one another. We have to think of aliens as humans in a different skin, even though we’ve all been hammered by different gravities on the anvils of strange worlds …
She sat up in the darkness, listening. The ship hummed to itself.
She padded naked down the equatorial corridor. Something that had been nagging at the back of her mind had surfaced, and she had to find out …
Ten minutes later she entered the control room, where Marco was still sitting under the screen.
‘Marco?’
He ducked his head, then pushed the screen up and grinned.
‘Everything’s going fine. What’s that you’re holding? It looks like a melted plastic sculpture.’
‘This was the box the raven was in. Bioplastic. It doesn’t melt below one thousand degrees. I found it in the airlock,’ snapped Kin, tossing it onto his lap.
Marco turned the shapeless mass over, then shrugged.
‘Well? Are these birds intelligent?’
‘Sure, but they don’t tote cutting torches around.’
There was a pause while they both gazed at the melted box.
‘Jalo could have done it,’ said Marco uncertainly. ‘No, that doesn’t work – he was surprised to see the bird.’
‘To put it mildly, yes. I don’t like this sort of mystery, Marco. Have you seen the raven?’
‘Not since Jalo did. Hmm.’ He reached out one lank arm and punched the ship’s panic button.
Bells and sirens echoed through the ship. Within forty seconds Silver thundered in, crushed snow from her sleeping pit still sticking to her fur. She braked when she saw them watching her, and growled.
‘A human joke?’ she said. They told her.
‘It is odd,’ she agreed. ‘Shall we search the ship?’
Marco spoke at length about the number of small spaces in a spaceship. He added details about what happened if something small and feathered crawled into a vital duct, or blundered into the wrong cable.
‘All right,’ said Kin. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You two go back to your rooms,’ said Marco. ‘Seal them off, and search for the bird. I will evacuate the rest of the ship. This is standard anti-vermin drill anyway.’
‘But you’d kill it,’ said Kin.
‘I don’t mind.’
Later Marco sat watching the build-up of power in the ship’s fusion driver, out there in the centre of the toroids ring field, and wondered about the bird. Then he dismissed the thought, and wondered instead if either of the others had noticed him hide the magic money purse after Jalo’s death. Just a matter of prudence …
Silver turned over in the snow hole in her environmentally frozen cabin, and wondered if either of the others had seen her remove the magic purse from Marco’s hideaway and secrete it in one of her own. For later evaluation …
Kin lay watching the blinking red light that indicated vacuum in the corridor outside her cabin, and felt a vague sympathy for the raven. Then she wondered if either of the others had seen her take the magic purse from the place Silver had hidden it and drop it out of a disposal chute during an Elsewhere jump. By now the purse was barrelling on towards the edge of Universe, propelled by the steady ejection of Day bills from its open mouth.
Spaced at four arbitrary compass points around the ship were quick-air chambers, installed during its construction to conform with Board of Trade regulations. They meant that, if caught during sudden decompression, a crewman could duck into a chamber instead of having to struggle with a
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