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handling the transfer the same way we handled my meeting with the Slaasriithi ambassador. We rendezvous with the Ktor at a module floating in space. They get Shethkador and go back to their ship. We return and go into quarantine. That way, no one”— which is to say, me—“has to journey into the belly of the Ktoran beast.” Caine waited for someone to say something, even Alnduul. But no one did. “Well?” he asked.
    Downing looked up. “Caine, if we do that, we’ll be losing an immense opportunity. By asking for us to return Shethkador, the Ktor are also inviting us to go to their ship. To see it from the inside.”
    Caine blinked, sputtered. “Well, it’s just fine with me if we pass up that ‘opportunity.’”
    “Caine, our ability to fight the Ktor—which hopefully won’t happen for some time, if ever—will be markedly improved by every bit of specific data we can gather about them and their technology.”
    “Well, then send an engineer, someone who’s got that skill set.”
    “Caine, your powers of observation and deduction are exactly the skill set we need in this circumstance. If we sent an engineer, we might miss important social and cultural details. If we sent a xenologist, we might miss technical components. We need someone who specializes in observation itself, and who has a broad enough knowledge-base to sift out significant factors from background noise. And that specialist is you. That’s why you’ve become the first choice for first contact.”
    “Richard, you may mean that as flattery, but I hear it as a death sentence.”
    “I know you do, and it’s beastly bad luck that we have to ask you to go back into the bull-ring again, but we’ve been handed a short-lived opportunity and no time to prepare for it. You have the best skill-set, and you also have had the closest prior contact with the Ktor.”
    “When you say ‘close contact,’ are you including that arm-spike Shethkador fired into my back in Jakarta? The one that would have done me in if it hadn’t been for Dornaani surgeons? Because, I’ve got to tell you, that kind of ‘close contact’ is a little too close for my tastes. Don’t want to repeat it.”
    “We—and significantly, Alnduul—will not allow that to happen.”
    Vassily opened his hands in appeal. “Besides, if you will not do it, you know what will happen, of course.”
    Caine felt his stomach sink. “You’ll send someone else.”
    Sukhinin shrugged, his expression a hang-dog acceptance that life was inherently unfair. “Of course.”
    Riordan pushed back from the holotank, disgusted. “I guess I don’t have a lot of prep time.”
    Downing’s eyes were sad, apologetic. “No, you don’t. Let’s get started.”

Chapter Four
    Far orbit; Sigma Draconis Two
    Strapped into one of the forward acceleration couches in a Commonwealth armored pinnace, Caine glanced back toward the cargo section where Tlerek Srin Shethkador and Miles O’Garran’s security detachment were waiting. Downing was alongside Riordan, studying the feed from the forward sensors. “Do we have a visual yet?”
    Downing shook his head. “No, but it’s still early.”
    Caine rubbed his hands, felt chilly despite the constant twenty degrees centigrade maintained inside the armored pinnace. “You know, I’m surprised the Ktor agreed to have me come aboard. My prior exchanges with them haven’t exactly been pleasant, and I just outed Shethkador—and therefore, all of the Ktor—as humans a couple of days ago. I doubt I’m on their ‘favorite Earth-folks’ list right now.”
    Downing’s smile was faint. “True, but it’s of no consequence. You’ll go aboard, present your credentials, participate in whatever ridiculous minuet of courtesies and verbal fencing they elect to impose, and be present long enough to see Shethkador aboard to the satisfaction of this Olsirkos Shethkador-vah.”
    “Sirs,” the co-pilot called into the passenger compartment, “I have a visual of