Angelmass

Midway down the side of the ship, he disappeared up the long fold-out stairway that led inside. He'd never even looked back.

Blinking back tears, Chandris turned and trudged back to the wire fence and the gate with the faded sign Hova's Skyarcher above it. Across the street, visible between the ships parked on that side, the sun was touching the distant hills. She'd spent the entire day here, going from one huntership owner to the next, trying to find one who would be willing to take her on.

None of them had been especially polite. Most had been rude, or sarcastic, or even angry.

All had said no.

For a long minute she just stood there, leaning against the gate, too weary and drained to move. The clink of metal and the hums and growls of machinery came from all around her as huntership crews worked to get ready for the next morning's launches. All that studying aboard the Xirrus—all that time she'd spent reading and memorizing and struggling to understand. And then getting caught on top of it all, and having to chop and hop without a single nurking thing but the clothes she had on.

All of it for nothing.

A motion across the street caught her eye: a middle-aged man, rather overweight from what she could see of his profile, coming stiffly down the stairway of the huntership housed behind the fence over there. Carrying a small handled box in one hand, he disappeared toward the far end of the ship.

For a moment Chandris hesitated. It would end like the others, she knew; but it was the last huntership on this side of the launch area and the only one she hadn't yet tried her luck at. Might as well make a clean sweep of it.

The gate was unlocked, its overhead sign proclaiming the ship beyond to be the Gazelle. Chandris let herself in and headed back toward the stairway, studying the ship towering over her as she walked alongside it. In slightly worse shape than the average, she decided, at least as far as the exterior was concerned. A smooth circular indentation in the hull caught her eye, and she stepped over for a closer look. A handful of small flat lenses and fine-mesh gratings were grouped within it, their sparkle and cleanliness in marked contrast to the pitted and faded hull itself.

"It's a sensor cluster."

Chandris turned toward the voice. The overweight man was standing at the foot of the stairway, watching her. "Yes, I know," she told him, sifting quickly through her memory for the pictures of such things that she'd seen in the Xirrus's files. "Half-spectrum and ion analysis."

He smiled. Not a smirk, but a simple, friendly smile. "Right as rain. You must be the little girl who's been driving everyone in the Yard frippy today looking for a job."

"I'm hardly a little girl," Chandris snapped, suddenly tired of having to take this dribble from every jerk on Seraph. "And if you just came over to tell me you don't need any help, don't bother."

She spun around and stomped off toward the gate, eyes blurry with sudden tears of frustration and fatigue. To hell with it. To hell with all of them. She should have known better than to try something this puff-headed in the first place. She might as well head back to the city where she could steal the price of a meal and find a place to sleep. Tomorrow she'd hit the streets, try and hook up with one of the local scorers—

"So tell me what sort of help you're offering."

She stopped. "What?" she called warily over her shoulder.

"You want a job, right?" he said. "So come inside and tell us what you can do."

Slowly, Chandris turned around to face him, half afraid this was just the setup for a parting twist of the knife. But there was nothing but calm curiosity in the fat man's face.

"Well, come on," he waved, starting up the stairs with the same stiff gait she'd noticed earlier. "It's not getting any warmer out here, in case you hadn't noticed. You like tea?"

Chandris took a deep breath, her fatigue vanishing like nothing. To have found here, of all places, a real, genuine, open-faced soft touch. Sometimes she couldn't believe her own luck. "Thank you," she said, walking quickly back toward the stairway. "I'd love a cup of tea."

The tea was hot and rich and strong, with a sprinkle of sadras spice and probably some ci

Not that it wasn't welcome. It was indeed not getting any warmer outside, and Chandris hadn't realized how cold she'd actually been until she began to warm up. Holding the mug to her lips, she inhaled the steam rising from it, suppressing a shiver as she did so.

Or at least she thought she'd suppressed it. "Still cold, child?" the plump woman sitting across the table from her said, reaching for the teapot. "—Ach!" she added, pushing back her chair to get up.

The overweight man in the chair beside her was quicker. "I'll get it," he said, heaving himself to his feet. He plucked the empty teapot from her hand and stepped toward the simmering samovar on the counter. "A sprinkle and a half of sadras, right?" he asked over his shoulder.

The woman gave Chandris a knowing look. "You can see how often he makes the tea around here," she said.

"Unfair," the other protested, turning around and throwing her a hurt look. "How can you say things like that? Why, I just made some—let's see—yes; it was just two years ago. On a Sunday, as I recall."

The woman rolled her eyes skyward. "I hope you like lots of sadras in your tea," she warned Chandris.

Chandris nodded silently, watched as the man bustled with cheerful clumsiness with the teapot, and wondered what in the world she'd walked in on.

Their names were Hanan and Ornina Daviee. Not husband and wife, as she'd first assumed, but brother and sister—the only such team, according to Hanan, among the two hundred-odd hunterships currently in business. The family resemblance was very strong, once she knew to look for it: both were of medium height, both overweight—Hanan more so than his sister—with long faces and intense brown eyes. Ornina's dark hair was shot through with gray; Hanan's hair had nearly disappeared entirely.

And Hanan was crippled.

Neither of them had said anything about it, but it wasn't like it was a secret they could keep. Every time Hanan stretched out his hand for something Chandris caught a glimpse of the thin exobrace ru

And if she concentrated, she could hear the faint whine of tiny motors, starting and then stopping in time with his movements. Gazing down into her mug, listening to the motors but determined not to stare, she wondered uneasily what had happened to him.

Abruptly, right in front of her nose, the teapot spout appeared, jolting her out of her thoughts.

Snapping her head up, she found Hanan looking down at her, an impish twinkle in his eyes. "More tea?" he asked i

"Thank you," Chandris said, giving him a stern no-nonsense look as he poured. He smiled pleasantly in return, set the teapot down on the table, and maneuvered himself back into his chair.

Ornina hadn't missed any of it. "You have to excuse Hanan his little games, Chandris," she said, giving her brother the same kind of look Chandris had just tried, with about equal success. "Or at least learn to live with them. Arrested childhood, you know." She picked up the teapot, added some to Hanan's mug and then to her own. "Now, then. Hanan said you were looking for a job."

"That's right," Chandris nodded, shifting mental gears. The cold little girl routine had been an easy one to slip into, but that wasn't the role she was supposed to be playing here. "I've just graduated college, with degrees in astrogation, piloting, and spaceship functions. I wanted to get some smallcraft experience, and thought this would be my best opportunity."