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sausage seller down the next street that's not too bad. He used to have a stall near the school. Just don't think about the sausages too much."
    It was good advice, Goth reflected, as she ate a few minutes later. Still, if it didn't kill her, it'd probably do for food, or at least something to fill the hole where her stomach used to be. And Pausert was obviously good at following his own advice, as he ate three of them.
    He had been a bit difficult at first. "No. I couldn't. Really. I am not hungry," he said.
    "Huh," said Goth. "I owe you for helping me when I had that . . . fit. And I won't eat alone, and I'm starving and you wouldn't want me to starve, would you?"
    The sausages smelt reasonably good. She could see that he was tempted. "Look. I'll hire you to show me around Nikkeldepain City. Payment will be some of those sausages. If I had to get a proper guide they'd skin me for a lot more. You get to eat, and I get a guide. How is that for a deal?"
    He nodded. "Okay. If you're sure."
    "Sure as can be," said Goth. "Now, what'll you have?"
    They washed the sausages down with some lime-green juice that Pausert liked, and Goth thought was rather like the sausages—best avoided. Now that her hunger was eased, Goth began to think about why she was here. It was really neat meeting the captain as a boy her own age, but there had to be some terrible danger threatening him.
    She began fishing for details as they walked. He was determined to give her a full sausage's worth of a guided tour. Nikkeldepain City didn't have a lot of sights, but he was going to show her all of them. On foot, and not by the monorail that seemed to be the normal mode of transport here.
    She got the feeling that he was also fairly lonely. Well, judging by the gang of boys back at the botanical institute, he didn't have a lot of friends. She began to tease out bits of his life, school and family from his conversation. She was surprised to find herself learning a fair bit about her own father in the process. Threbus had also come from here, years before. And he had left quite a mark. His niece, Pausert's mother, was a widow. She'd come back to Nikkeldepain after Pausert's father had been killed in a military action somewhere on the borders of the Empire.
    He was not from Nikkeldepain, and the locals didn't like that much. "I'm an outsider," admitted Pausert. "And Great Uncle Threbus managed to make himself infamous here. Ma says when she was growing up it was a bit different. I mean his practical jokes were still talked about, but after the Flidean expeditions on the Venture he made quite a lot of money. And where there is lots of money Nikkeldepain will turn a blind eye."
    "I bet," said Goth. But, as interested as she was in finding out what had happened—she was pretty sure that a lot of Threbus' "practical jokes" were the start of his klatha skills manifesting themselves—Pausert was curious about life on the lattice ship, or just life off-world in general. It became very clear that long before he had rescued Goth and her sisters on Porlumma and gotten himself into trouble with the authorities on Nikkeldepain for associating with the prohibited planet of Karres and its notorious witches, he'd been getting ready to leave, anyway. Their intervention had forced him to flee to the life of a vagabond of space, but he seemed more than happy with it. Thus Goth was willing to feed that desire, although she had to be careful not to mention Karres. After all, Captain Pausert had, in perfect truth, said that he had never heard of it.
    It took her a little while to realize that they were being followed. And whoever was doing the organizing was good at it. If Nikkeldepain's memorials and prominent sights had been a little more popular with visitors, she would not have noticed. But it was improbable that the same man with tan shoes and blue trousers would be visiting the corn exchange, the statue of Nikkerliss, and the old fortification, at exactly the same time