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turret to scan. It would swivel to any sighting, anything massive. "Now let them put their nose down here." Her joints were sore. Alarms were ringing and lights were flashing on the maintenance board, cargo having broken loose. She ran her tongue over the points of her teeth and wrinkled her nose for breath, worrying what quadrant of the scan to watch. She put The Pride into a slow axis rotation, gambling that the kif would not come underside of station in so obvious a place as the one in line with last-known-position. "Watch scan," she warned Hilfy, diverting herself to monitor the op board half a heartbeat, to see all the telltales what they ought to be. "Haral, get up here."
    "Aunt!" Hilfy said. Pyanfar swung her head about again. A little dust had appeared on the screen, some of the chaff spinning their way from above. She had the scanlinked fire control set looser than that and the armament did not react. The lift back down the corridor crashed and hummed in operation. Haral had not acknowledged, but she was coming. "We fire on anything that shows solid," Pyanfar said. "Keep watching that chaff cloud, niece. And mind, it could be outright diversion. I don't trust anything."
    "Yes," Hilfy said calmly enough. And then: "Look out!"
    "Chaff," Pyanfar identified the flutter, her heart frozen by the yell. "Be specific to quadrant: number's enough."
    Running feet in the corridor. Haral was with them. Hilfy started to yield her place at scan; Haral slid into the third seat, adjusted the restraints.
    "Didn't plan to do so much moving," Pyanfar said, never taking the focus of her eyes from scan. "Anyone hurt?"
    "No," said Haral. "Everything's secure."
    "They're thinking it over up there," Pyanfar said.
    "Aunt! 4/2!"
    Turret was swiveling. Eye tracked to the number four screen. Energy washed over station's rim: more chaff followed, larger debris.
    "Captain, they hit station." Haral's voice was incredulous. "They fired."
    "Handur's Voyager." Pyanfar had the origin mapped on the station torus and made the connection. "O gods." She hit repulse and sent them hurtling to station core shadow, tilted their nose with a second burst and cut in main thrust, shooting them nadir of station, nose for infinity. Pyanfar reached and uncapped a red switch, hit it, and The Pride rocked with explosion.
    "What was that?" Hilfy's voice. "Are we hit?"
    "I just dumped our holds." Pyanfar sucked air, an expansion of her nostrils. Her claws flexed out and in on the togglegrip. G was hauling at them badly. The Pride of Chanur was in full rout, having just altered their mass/drive ratio, stripped for running. "Haral, get us a course."
    "Working," Haral said. Numbers started coming up on the comp screen at Pyanfar's left.
    "Going to have to find us a quiet spot."
    "Urtur's just within singlejump range," Haral said, "stripped as we are. Maybe."
    "Has to be." Beyond Meetpoint in the other direction was stsho space, with a great scarcity of jump points to help them along, those masses by which The Pride or any other jumpship steered; and on other sides were kif regions; and knnn; and unexplored regions, uncharted, without jump coordinates. Jump blind into those and they would never come back again . . . anywhere known.
    She livened another board, bringing up jump-graphs. Urtur. That was the way they had come in, two jumps and loaded-a very large system where mahendo'sat did a little mining, a little manufacture, and licensed others. They might make that distance in one jump now; kif were not following . . . yet. Did not have to follow. They could figure possible destinations by dumped mass and the logic of the situation. O my brother, she thought, wondering how she would face Kohan. He would be affected by this disgrace, this outrage of lost cargo, of flight while a hani ship perished stationbound and helpless. Kohan Chanur might be broken by it; it might tempt young males to challenge him. And if there were enough challenges, and often enough. . . .
    No. Not