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freefall hammocks; apart from them, and a cubicle containing a freefall chemical toilet, the room was bare, though it stank. This would be the smell of unwashed extraterrestrial; she wondered if they found it as unpleasant.
    Oomoing feasted her eyes on the two forms in the hammocks. She was already familiar with their general appearance and the facts of the case from reports that had been beamed to her on the way here, but actually to
see
them . . .
    ‘Are they still keeping to the timetable?’ she said.
    ‘By and large. They do it less and less.’
    The first time Long and Short, as she thought of them, had lapsed into this coma, there had been a major panic amongst Stormer’s men and frantic, long-range, time-delayed calls to her on the ship, asking her advice. A Kin deprived of resources would lapse into the Small Sleep, but these two had food, so what was happening? Were they dying?
    The fuss had died down abruptly when someone actually approached the two, and suddenly they started moving again. When it happened again, half a day later, Oomoing had given orders that they were not to be disturbed. The creatures always got into their hammocks before passing out, so obviously they were expecting it. She surmised it was indeed like the Small Sleep, some kind of resource-conserving coma – just one which happened on a regular basis. Or maybe it was just a way of passing the time when nothing was happening. It clearly wasn’t life threatening, and that was the main thing.
    ‘How are they eating?’ she said.
    ‘They drink the water we provide,’ Stormer said. ‘And you remember what we decided were emergency rations from their canteen? The tall one fell on them when we produced them, but since then it’s gone off its appetite. The short one hasn’t touched a bite.’
    ‘That’s worrying.’ Oomoing gazed in concern at the unmoving form of Short in its hammock.
    ‘As the Learned Mother pleases,’ Stormer said, and Oomoing remembered that Short had apparently despatched five of his soldiers before being subdued.
    ‘Can I see this stuff you’ve been feeding Long? I mean, the tall one?’ she said. Stormer nodded at one of his men, who handed Oomoing a slim, rectangular object wrapped in some kind of plastic.
    She looked at it curiously, turning it over and over in her feeding hands. It was about the same size as two talons side by side and was covered in what she suspected was script. The plastic crinkled in her grip and a tab at either end practically begged, ‘pull me’.
    So she did. The plastic peeled away and revealed a dark brown, waxy substance. It was divided into rows of three squares and without any difficulty she broke an entire row off. A strange odour, pungent but very rich, tickled her olfactory pores. Embedded in the broken edge she could see what looked like some kind of dried fruit.
    ‘Remind me why we decided these were emergency rations?’ she said.
    ‘They come out of a machine mounted on the wall,’ Stormer said. ‘If I’d built this place, I’d want emergency rations to be easily accessible to anyone who needed them. And smell it, Learned Mother! It’s bursting with energy.’
    Oomoing sniffed the dark slab and had to agree. And yet – she looked back at Long – the extraterrestrial had gone off its feed. Maybe they didn’t need to eat that much. Or maybe they needed a more varied diet.
    She could try and second-guess them for ever. It was time to start using Barabadar’s authority.
    ‘I want the tall one let out,’ she said.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’ Stormer said, so outraged he even forgot the ‘Learned Mother’.
    ‘It’s the safer one, isn’t it?’
    ‘Well, I, I mean . . . well, yes, the tall one hasn’t killed any of my people, if that’s what you mean,’ said Stormer.
    ‘Then I want it let out. Don’t worry –’ Oomoing held up all four hands to placate him – ‘we won’t give it free rein. I want to follow it, with an armed guard, of course, just to see