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Methryn.”
    “Not on your life!” Valthyrra interceded. “We will be over
in a few minutes.”
    “You want to see how a new ship works?” Theralda asked.
    “This from a ship whose claim to fame was her ability to get herself
blown out of space?” Valthyrra responded even more sharply. “I can
still take you in a fight, sister. I just wanted to see if you were keeping
yourself in any sort of order.”
    “You just bet. Come on over, and I’ll show you how it’s
done.”
    “Just clear a path,” Valthyrra said, and cut the channel. She
turned her camera pod to look at Velmeran. “You know, I think I like
her.”
     
    When Velmeran and Consherra reached the transport bay, they found that
Valthyrra was already waiting for them. The small wedge-shaped hull of the
probe was hovering near the door of their transport, the shielded camera pod at
the end of its long, flexible neck bent around to regard them.
    “You have elected to join us?” Velmeran asked. The probe was
perfectly capable of independent space flight, as small as it was. It was
essentially just a field drive system and a transceiver for Valthyrra’s
use inside an armored shell.
    “I might as well take it easy on myself,” she replied.
“All of my remaining probes are getting a little shabby, and we are
sitting in a very cold and uncomfortable section of space just now.”
    The probe turned and drifted inside the open hatch of the transport, and the
two Starwolves followed, but they paused in mild surprise as soon as they
stepped inside. Venn Keflyn stood in the aisle between the transport’s
rows of seats. The Aldessan was not as massive a creature as she seemed but
exceptionally rangy, a dragon’s body in long, chestnut-colored fur, both
sets of long, triple-jointed legs braced wide as she held to the back of the
seats with all four arms. Her head was bent low to avoid the rather low
ceiling, her large cat’s eyes glittering at them through the fringe of
her mane.
    “Glad that you could make it,” Velmeran commented.
    “You people seem to think this business quite important,” Venn
Keflyn replied. “There is a reason why I should be there.”
    That was certainly vague enough. Velmeran had met several Venn warriors from
her ancient and mysterious race, but she remained his idea of the archetype.
The Venn were the members of the elite group of warrior-scholars of the
Aldessan – an admittedly strange combination of professions for anyone.
They had created his own race, the Kelvessan, some fifty thousand years before,
supposedly as the ultimate peacekeeping weapon – a function that they had
not fulfilled especially well – but apparently also for the excuse for
having the company of another race that was in most ways like themselves.
Velmeran was even less certain that that had worked out quite as well as
intended.
    They were still taking their seats when the small ship came to life, rising a
short distance from the deck. A moment later the deck itself dropped away as
the massive doors of the cargo bay opened, the interior atmosphere held in by a
containment field. The transport moved down through the containment field and
out between the parting halves of the bay doors.
    Velmeran looked into the control cabin, curious about their impatient pilot.
He and Consherra were still taking their seats in the front of the main
compartment. The pilot glanced at him rather guiltily, and Velmeran was surprised
to see his own daughter.
    “Keflyn, what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, then regarded
her shrewdly. “You expect an invitation to this meeting.”
    “Oh, sure, since I am already going in that direction, I mean,”
she agreed innocently, as if accepting that as an invitation in itself.
    Keflyn had of course been named after that same Aldessan standing behind
them in the cabin, at a time when Velmeran had felt far more impressed with the
mysterious Venn Keflyn. She was in most ways like her father, although she was
always eager and ready