3 x T

Like the ships, the spaceport buildings were on what was to her a heroic scale. Foitani who carried things that looked a lot more lethal than stu

Inside the administrative center or whatever it was, Foitani tramped purposefully down corridors wide and tall enough to echo. Some were armed like the guards outside; others spoke into computers. They all went about their business with the serious intensity that seemed a hallmark of the species.

Thegun Thegun Nug stood outside a place marked by writing in the angular Foitani script. He spoke to the air. Je

Je

Then a Foitan spotted Je

"You will pay your respects to Pawasar Pawasar Ras." Thegun Thegun Nug turned his translator back on as soon as the office door disappeared behind his party. He pointed to the Foitan behind the desk.

Je

"I greet you, human," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said; Je

You're pretty trusting, then, aren't you? was what she wanted to say. Since the Foitani who had kidnapped her already knew exactly how she felt about that, she kept her mouth shut.

Dargnil Dargnil Lin nudged her. A nudge from a Foitan was almost enough to knock her off her feet. "Answer the honored kin-group leader when he questions you," Dargnil Dargnil Lin said.

"I survived the journey," she said. Let this honcho make what he wanted of that.

Pawasar Pawasar Ras said, "You are doubtless of the opinion that you have seen a sufficiency of our kind." Je

He touched something on his desk. A door appeared in a different wall of the office. Je

A man dressed in trader coveralls came through the doorway. Je

Bernard Greenberg looked sheepish, although the top of his head was devoid of wool. "Hello, Je

"Well, they bloody well did," she said, then added bitterly, "Were you so angry at me for going off to the university instead of staying a trader that you decided to get even? This isn't even; this is overkill."

"No, no, no." He plucked at his salt-and-pepper beard in distress. "It's not like that, Je

"Now that you mention it, yes," she said with a sidelong glance at Thegun Thegun Nug. She studied Bernard Greenberg and decided she'd made a mistake. "I should be the one who says she's sorry, Bernard. It's not your fault?not all your fault, anyway. I just hit out at the first thing I could reach without climbing onto a box." She looked at Thegun Thegun Nug again. His translator was working, but if he caught what she'd meant as well as what she'd said, he gave no sign of it.

Pawasar Pawasar Ras said, "Enough, if you please; this is not an appropriate time or place for social intercourse. Human Bernard, be so good as to define the problem for your colleague here." He knows Bernard's name, Je

"If I could define the problem, honored kin-group leader Pawasar Pawasar Ras, I wouldn't need a colleague," Greenberg answered. Pawasar Pawasar Ras bared his teeth. Je

She nodded. "Given what they did to themselves so long ago, it's hardly surprising."

"No, it isn't. The local population on Odern has mined the planet pretty thoroughly, when you consider how much of what used to be here has to have rusted away or whatever over the past umpty-thousand years."

Not enough, Je

"Scavenging turned into a whole different game for the local Foitani when they reinvented the hyperdrive," Greenberg said. "They had some idea which stars held planets their species had settled once upon a time. When they went out to look at those planets, they found that a lot of them were dead. Some had no Foitani left, some had no life at all?sterile. Fission bombs, diseases, asteroid strikes, poison gas?I don't know what all. The old imperial Foitani?"

"The Great Ones," Pawasar Pawasar Ras corrected.

"The Great Ones, I mean?well, they seem to have had a more advanced technology than we do now. They were great at killing, that's certain. And on a lot of those dead worlds, the toys they left behind survived in much better shape than on a place like Odern, where everything got reused over and over again as the world was sliding into barbarism. Now, on one of the planets that used to be part of the empire, they've come across something they can't handle."

"They said that themselves," Je