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around the base of the pod where he couldn't see them and knocking out his power supply. He'd been in silent darkness ever since except for the dim light and muffled sounds filtering in from the shuttle-bay-sized room around him.

Without power, of course, his dioxide/oxygen converter was also useless, and there'd been a couple of tense hours when he was debating with himself how close to suffocation he should get before he risked popping the hatch. But while the air inside the pod had slowly grown stale, it hadn't gotten any worse than that. Clearly, the aliens had arranged a supplementary air supply to him, probably funneling it in through the valve he'd weakened earlier when he dumped the pod's reserve oxygen.

For a couple of hours after that he'd worried about bacteria or viruses against which his immune system would have no defense, wondering if his captors had had the foresight to filter such things out. But there was nothing to be gained from such speculation, and eventually he'd abandoned it. Under the circumstances alien variations of influenza were probably going to be the least of his worries.

Outside, the blue light flashed twice more, and as it did so Pheylan noticed that his body was beginning to press into his seat again. Weight was returning; and unless the aliens had belatedly decided to spin the ship, that could mean only one thing.

Wherever they'd been heading, they had arrived.

It was fourteen minutes before the sudden rumbling vibration that indicated they'd made planetfall. The noise and motion died away, and for another fifteen minutes Pheylan sweated in the dim light, his survival-pack flechette pistol gripped in his hand, waiting for his captors' next move.

When it happened, it happened all at once. The pod's exit hatch at his left was abruptly rimmed with light, and with a crackle of superheated metal and a cloud of brilliant sparks the hatch cover blew outward, landing with a muffled clang on the deck below. A cool breeze flowed in through the opening, carrying with it the stink of burned metal. Setting his teeth, Pheylan pointed his gun into the air flow and waited.

No one tried to come in. But then, no one had to. Sooner or later he would have to come out on his own, and waiting until he ran out of ration bars would gain him nothing. Sliding his pistol into the inner pocket of his jacket, he unstrapped from his chair and worked his way through the cramped space of the pod over to the blackened opening. The edges were still warm, but not too hot to touch. Getting a grip on the handholds, he looked cautiously out.

The light outside was too dim to see very well, but he could make out a row of indistinct silhouettes facing him from three or four meters away. Worming through the opening, he dropped to the deck beside what was left of the hatch cover. "I'm Commander Pheylan Cavanagh," he called, hoping the quaver in his voice wasn't as noticeable to them as it was to him. "Captain of the Commonwealth Peacekeeper starshipKinshasa. Who are you?"

There was no reply, but one of the shadowy figures left the line and stepped toward him. He stopped a meter away, and Pheylan had the impression that even in the dim light he was having no trouble looking the prisoner over."Brracha," he said in a deep voice; and as he did so, the lights in the room came up.

And Pheylan finally got a clear look at the creatures who'd destroyed his ship.

They were roughly human in height, with slender torsos and a pair each of arms and legs in more or less human arrangement. Their heads were hairless, the faces roughly triangular in shape as large brow ridges over the deep-set eyes narrowed to hawklike beaks. They were dressed in tight-fitting footed jumpsuits of a dark shimmery material, with no insignia or other ornamentation that Pheylan could see.

Nor were there any obvious side arms in sight. Pheylan eyed them, wondering if it was possible that the basic concept of hand weapons could somehow have passed them by. If