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the starship. They were hard-shelled, and their tips were as sharp as shards of glass.
    More by luck than planning, Choransky had brought the Sultan down at the edge of a natural clearing. The ground was so thin-soiled that only ankle-high moss grew on it. That was fortunate, because the trees beyond the clearing were thirty or forty meters high, with trunks so thin and closely spaced that they resembled a field of giant wheat.
    Starships' plasma exhaust could clear landing sites in almost any vegetation, but the blazing, shattered trunks would form an impassable barrier. The debris would have locked the crew and cargo within the Sultan as surely as hard vacuum had during the voyage.
    A Molt stumbled off the ramp and bumped a guard. "God damn your crinkly soul to Hell!" shouted the spacer as he lashed out with his boot. The chitinous alien tried to back away, but one of its legs flailed spastically. It fell toward the human again.
    Piet Ricimer grabbed the crewman by the collar and jerked him backward. "You!" Ricimer said. "If I hear you blaspheme that way again, you'll swab out all three holds alone! Do you think God no longer hears us because we're off Venus?"
    "Sorry, sir," the sailor muttered. Gregg had expected more trouble—and was moving closer in case it occurred. Ricimer's fierce sincerity shocked the man into quiet obedience.
    Navigator Bivens appeared at the edge of Cargo One. He cupped his hands before his mouth as an amplifier and shouted, "Watch out, boys. There's aircraft coming, the radar says."
    "Hell take them!" Gregg snarled, meaning life in general. He was glad an instant later that he hadn't spoken loudly enough for his new friend Ricimer to hear.
    And after all, the spacer was right. They were going to need the Lord's help here in the outer reaches of his universe at least as much as they did among the familiar verities of home.
    Captain Choransky was on the radio, trying to raise the Sultan 's consorts and whoever was in charge of the Federation settlement. Ricimer, Gregg, and about two dozen armed crewmen shepherded the cargo of Molts onto the surface so that the holds could be washed down. So far as the men aboard the starship were concerned, Ricimer's task was the more important.
    They'd loaded ninety-eight Molts aboard the Sultan on Salute, a slight majority of the total, with the rest split between the smaller Venerian ships. Ninety-two had survived thus far, but many of them were on their last legs, and in a confined space they stank like death itself.
    A single air system served the entire starship. The Sultan 's human complement had been breathing the stench throughout a voyage of seventeen days.
    Men checked their weapons. Only a few of those guarding the Molts had brought rifles: cutting bars were lighter and more effective, both for use and as threats. More riflemen and another flashgunner in a hard suit appeared at the lip of Cargo One a moment after Bivens called his warning.
    "Don't shoot unless I tell you to," Ricimer shouted to the men spread in a loose perimeter around the Molts. "Remember we aren't here to fight. We're traders!"
    "Hope they remember that," said Jeude as he spun his cutting bar for a test. His tone undercut the words.
    Gregg thought he heard the faint pop-pop-pop-pop of motors. He glanced at the cloud-streaked sky. The sound didn't have a clear direction.
    "Which way is the settlement?" he called to Ricimer.
    Ricimer turned from the Molt he'd helped over the coaming at the bottom of the ramp. The alien was the last to leave the Sultan. It was either sick or very old, and the ramp's four-centimeter lip had stopped it like a slab of bedrock.
    "That way," Ricimer said, pointing across the clearing toward south-southwest based on sun position. "Five klicks, a hair less. Once a ship the size of the Sultan commits to landing, you don't maneuver much."
    Someone hammered within the starship's hull, freeing a stuck latch. One, then five more meter-square hatches swung open along