"Ah, sir . . . ?" Ran Colville said as he looked cautiously from the Szgranian guard of honor to Commander Kneale. "I should be going on duty in ten minutes."
Here on their own planet, the Szgranians' accouterments included plasma dischargers, massive tubes that were crew-served weapons in human military forces.
The twenty guards escorted a closed palanquin the size of a boat, the same vehicle which had awaited Lady Scour when the Empress of Earth docked. It was carved from ivory which a glance suggested was all one tooth. That didn't seem likely, but the Szgranian ecosystem was in the portion of the hynogogue course which Ran still hadn't finished.
"I know what the duty list looks like, Colville," Kneale said with pointed calm. "Trust me to take care of that end, won't you? Our docking here has gone more smoothly than I'd have expected at Sonderburg on Grantholm—in peacetime. That's because of the personal intervention of Lady Scour. I'd say that if the lady wants to show you the town, Trident Starlines should accommodate her. Don't you think so too?"
The city of Betaniche climbed the crags above the combined space- and riverport. Two starships were already on the ground when the Empress dropped into the system from sponge space: a small freighter of Grantholm registry, and the private yacht of a merchant stocking his gallery with Szgranian carvings. They had been hastily moved to the edge of the field to give the larger vessel sufficient room.
"Ah," said Ran. "Yes sir."
An earthen levee restrained the river. Flowers covered the inner face of the embankment and the mudflats separating it from the land baked and blasted by magnetic motors. The Empress dug craters three meters deep beneath each nacelle when she landed with only four tugs, but the port authorities were too busy greeting Lady Scour to show any concern over the damage.
"Then go, for pity's sake!" Kneale snapped with a brusque gesture.
Ran stepped quickly down the gangplank. He glanced back and saw Wanda Holly entering the Embarkation Hall. They'd planned to get together when his shift ended—Szgrane was a new planet to both of them—but the summons from Lady Scour put paid to that notion. Ran waved to the Second Officer and hoped that Kneale would fill her in.
Szgranian flowers tended to blue and blue-gray petals. Their scent was sharp rather than sweet, and it mingled unpleasantly with the smoke of shanties ignited as the starliner docked.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do!" Wanda called from the starliner as a female page threw open the door of the palanquin.
The first thing Ran noticed as he got in was that the vehicle had double-wall paneling. The intricate carvings on the outside were complemented by those of the separate sheet some twenty millimeters within. Ran could look out from the shadowed interior of the palanquin, but the offset panels acted the way a one-way mirror does to protect the privacy of those behind it.
The second thing Ran noticed as the door closed behind him was that Lady Scour already reclined on the cushions he was expected to share.
"Good evening, Junior Lieutenant Randall Colville," the Szgranian noblewoman said. The palanquin rolled upward on the shoulders of its eight bearers. "Are you surprised to see me? I was going to send the palanquin back . . . and then I thought I should watch as you got your first view of my planet."
"I—ah, I'm surprised and pleased to see you again, Lady Scour," Ran said. His mind clicked through possibilities, all of which were absurd except for the obvious male/female connection.
Of course, Lady Scour wasn't human . . . though Ran didn't find her as inhuman as he would have expected before meeting her.
The Szgranian chuckled, but Ran couldn't be sure whether the impetus was humor or scorn. They faced forward in the palanquin. She looked out through the ivory panels and asked, "What do you think of my city?"
The vehicle didn't pitch in a front-and-back motion, as Ran had rather expected, but it rocked side-to-side as the bearers stepped forward. Eight right legs paced, then eight left legs, as regular as clockwork. Lady Scour shifted sinuously so that her hip brushed Ran's at every stride.
"It's fascinating," Ran said. "I very much appreciate the opportunity you've offered me."
Starliner crews normally saw only the slums or the quick-look tourist spots of their ports of call. Even if they were on the same run for ten years straight, they had only a day or two at a time unless they were on the beach—dismissed, deserting, or abandoned. In those latter cases, the slums provided all the beachcomber wanted anyway.
None of the human colonies, even the largest and most powerful, were old enough to have a culture truly distinct from that of Earth. Szgrane was an alien society. The portside facilities that catered to starfarers and deracinated Szgranian watermen were similar in kind if not in personnel to those of a thousand other ports, but Lady Scour's palanquin left those areas behind in minutes.
Ran was seeing the real Betaniche, the real Szgrane. For all the human aspects of the natives, particularly Lady Scour herself, Ran had the feeling that he'd been shrunk and dropped into an anthill.
The entourage climbed the bluff that bounded the river's floodplain. Instead of a street, the clan mistress's escort proceeded through a tunnel fringed by multistory houses with walls and roofs of translucent paper. Open walkways crossed between the higher floors. Sunlight trickled through the sides of buildings, creating a shadowless ambiance.
The pavement twisted like a snake's track. It was thronged with pedestrians and shoppers at open-fronted booths.
A guard twenty meters ahead of the palanquin blew a horn made from the coiled shell of some sea creature. The warning note was a deep lowing punctuated with hacking emphasis, like the bellow of a cow desperate to be milked. Commoners struggled to get clear, shouting and waving a desperate profusion of arms.
Lady Scour chuckled again. "Look at Rawsl!" she said. The fingers of her three left hands played over Ran's sleeve like butterfly touches. "Isn't he angry?"
Lady Scour's chief aide followed immediately behind the signaler. He had drawn a pair of long swords, one in each upper arm. Rawsl slashed and thrust at any commoner he could reach, whether or not the target was actually in the palanquin's path. Rawsl's swords were more than a meter long.
"What's the matter?" Ran asked. He tried to keep his voice neutral, despite his distaste. "Didn't he want to make a trip back to the Empress?"
Rawsl stabbed through the side of a barrow. Thin wood splintered. The blue-clad woman huddling under a tarpaulin within screamed and thrashed upward, then collapsed.
"Who knows what men think?" Lady Scour said dismissively.
She looked at Ran as her fingers played with his garment again. "He didn't want me to go back," she said. "And more particularly, he didn't want to see you again, Ran Colville. But I am mistress of Clan Scour."
The palanquin came out into open air. The sun was low on the horizon. The western sky was flame-streaked, sharply changing the balance of light. The paper-walled town filtered out all colors except duns, grays, and yellows so pale that they might as well have been grays.
"This is my home," said Lady Scour. They passed a pair of gateposts, stone but carved as intricately as the panels of the palanquin itself. "All that down there—"
She gestured with the delicacy of a sea anemone clasping prey, one hand/two hands/three.
"—is to serve me."
The palace was a complex of buildings and gardens, encompassed by a high stone wall. An additional score of armed Szgranian males was drawn up in the first courtyard. Beyond them—in the same line, rather than as a separate rank—were officials in court dress, wearing ludicrous but highly symbolic headgear; noblewomen; and so on down through craftsmen to menial servants.
There must have been a thousand people greeting Lady Scour and her entourage. The last in line wore rags and stank obviously of night soil. The palanquin bearers quickened their pace at that point. All of the waiting contingent put their hands behind their heads and warbled tunelessly until their mistress's vehicle swept to the porte cochere serving one of the separate buildings.
Ran thought he recognized the maid who opened the door on his side of the palanquin as one of the pair who'd attempted to summon him to Lady Scour's suite on the Empress. On the other side of the vehicle, Rawsl stood stiffly at his mistress's service.
Lady Scour strode by the warrior, ignoring him. She offered her three left hands to Ran above the palanquin poles. "Come," she said. "We'll eat first, and then we'll have entertainment."
She laughed again. "And then," she said, "we'll have entertainment."
The fine fur on Rawsl's face and bare limbs stood out like the quills of a porcupine. The muscles of his arms were as rigid as the blades of the bloody swords he held.
* * *
"Good evening, Abraham," Marie Blavatsky called to the lone passenger she'd spotted amid the transparent bulkheads and real fish of the Undersea Grotto. "I'd have expected you to be out on the town tonight."
Abraham Chekoumian rose from his chair with a lazy smile. "Szgrane is an exotic place to the other passengers, even the crew, Marie," he said. "Myself, I import from Szgrane; I travel here ten times a year on buying trips. Sometimes I come twice a month."
Chekoumian stretched. He held a hologram reader in one hand and in the other—as Blavatsky expected—the slick blue spacemail envelope of one of his fiancee's letters.
"Today," the importer continued, brandishing the envelope, "I am going home to marry my Marie—not to do business. I don't need to see Szgrane this trip. The part of their society which they show humans is—"
He shrugged.
"—dirt. And the rest of it, the way the Szgranians themselves live, that would appeal even less to me if I had to be here for any length of time."
The section of wall behind the importer was stocked with benthic species from the depths of Ain al-Mahdi, patterns of slow-moving dots which fluoresced rose and warm yellow. Occasionally two patterns merged in sluggish dance that ended with one partner progressing down the tooth-fringed maw of the other.
Considered merely as a light show, it was a soothing background.
Chekoumian gave Blavatsky a little grin to show that he knew he was being floridly bombastic. "Trust me, little Marie," he said. "Szgrane isn't a place for humans. And it isn't a place for Szgranians either, except for the one who's on top of each community's pyramid."
"Oh, of course I trust you, Abraham," Blavatsky said brightly. "I was just surprised to see you here, is all."
In fact, Blavatsky had been surprised to learn from Bridge that the importer was still aboard when her watch ended—but she'd been ninety percent sure that she'd find him in the Undersea Grotto when she strolled past Bridge noted that Chekoumian had ordered a drink only ten minutes before.
"Marie's telling me about her sister's wedding," Chekoumian said, waggling the letter again. "That's her sister Irene, the younger one. But please, sit down! You're off duty, are you not? You can have a drink."
He signaled for a steward as he gestured Blavatsky to the contoured chair beside his own.
"Well, maybe a little wine . . ." she agreed shyly. Abraham was aware of her duty hours.
"Irene's the young one," Chekoumian added with a frown. "Marie—my Marie, little Marie—"
He dropped the letter on the circular drinks table to pat the back of Blavatsky's hand.
"Marie's bothered by that, I know, though she doesn't say it," he continued. His broad face brightened like an equatorial sunrise. "But won't she be thrilled when I sweep up to her door in the most expensive limousine I can rent on Bogomil?"
"Sir and madam?" asked the steward who paused at their table.
Chekoumian and Blavatsky looked up. On the wall behind the bar, the brilliant denizens of a coral atoll on Tblisi wheeled in tight patterns. "Could I have something from your homework!?" Blavatsky asked. "Tblisi has wines, doesn't it?"
"Wonderful!" cried her companion. "Yes, of course. Bring us a carafe of Evran with two glasses—and take this away."
Chekoumian thrust his part-finished screwdriver across the table. "The vintage is from gene-tailored grapes," he explained to Blavatsky. "We're very up to date on Tblisi."
"A carafe of Evran," the steward said to the bartender. Both men were natives of New Sarawak; and both had been aboard the Empress of Earth since her maiden voyage.
The bartender glanced toward the only occupied table in the lounge. The passenger had switched on his hologram reader to project plans of the house he intended to build. He was pointing out details of the widow's walk to the Staff Side rating beside him.
The bartender raised an eyebrow.
The steward, out of sight of the couple at the table, hooked the first and middle fingers of his left hand. He jerked them upward, as though they were a gaff landing a prize fish.
* * *
Three court ladies sang the 17th-century Terran ballad about Clerk Colville, who'd gone to tell the mermaid who'd been his mistress that he intended to marry a human female. A fourth of Lady Scour's companions provided the lute accompaniment in the dining room paneled in richly-carved woods and ivory. She deliberately used only two hands to achieve the delicate fingering.
"Would you agree that 'My skin is whiter than the milk,' Ran Colville?" Lady Scour asked.
One of Lady Scour's hands flicked her blouse like a bullfighter's cape. The smokey fabric might have been translucent in strong light, but it was effectively opaque beneath the dining room's paper lanterns. The single garment, unless surprise and the mere glimpse had deceived Ran, was the only thing Lady Scour wore over her breasts.
"I would agree with anything your ladyship said," Ran replied. "Because of your rank, and your beauty . . . and because of my respect for your mind, all three."
He chose his words carefully so as not to bring up the fact that her words had been from Clerk Colville. The line just before the one Lady Scour quoted was, "It's all for you, ye gentle knight. . . ."
The clan mistress leaned forward chuckling. She took a shellfish from a dish of pungent sauce and popped it into Ran's mouth. He chewed and swallowed. The tidbit, like most of the meal that had preceded it, was excellent. He'd forced himself to stomach only a few items, and those more for texture than taste.
Lady Scour held out her thumb and forefinger, still red with the sauce. "Go on," she said. "Lick them clean. You wouldn't have the mistress of Clan Scour going about with greasy fingers, would you?"
Ran began to laugh. He was man enough to be flattered by the attention, and Lady Scour was woman enough to be—interesting. Whatever sort of flesh wrapped the package.
The Szgranian's fingertips seemed slightly warmer than a human female's would have been, but Ran couldn't claim perfect objectivity.
Another lady-in-waiting, this one clad like a yellow beachball in swathes of gauze, flounced into the dining room. She whispered in her mistress's ear.
Lady Scour nodded, then rose to her feet with the grace of a willow tree swaying. "Very well," she said in satisfaction. "Now, Randall Colville, for the entertainment But you'll have to be perfectly quiet. Stay close and let me guide you by touch, because there won't be any light."
She led Ran toward the wall behind her couch. He didn't realize it was a door until Lady Scour touched a band of dark wood. A section of balanced paneling pivoted open on its vertical axis.
The hallway beyond was narrow and almost completely dark. Ran's eyes had adapted enough during dinner to make out a faint glow fifty meters along, but that was all.
The court ladies stared after their mistress and her guest, but they continued to sing. An instant before the door rotated closed again, their voices dissolved into giggles and whispers that Ran couldn't make out.
Lady Scour touched Ran's shoulder and hand and the point of his hip, where her fingertips rode lightly, shifting like valve tappets on a cam lobe.
"Very quietly . . ." Lady Scour whispered, her breath warm on Ran's ear.
The screen at the corridor's end was double-walled like the panels of the palanquin. It looked down into a lantern-lit room in which Szgranians writhed together. For a moment, Ran wasn't sure either of the number or the intentions of the folk he watched. There were too many arms and they could have been locked in murderous violence.
The scene came into mental focus: it was a couple, and they were making love.
"Rawsl," Lady Scour breathed into Ran's ear. "I asked my maid Sins to entice him into this room."
A soft plosion of warmth did duty as a snort. "Rawsl would never wonder why. He thinks he's irresistible."
The couple lurched and staggered around the room. The female was silent, but Rawsl snorted loudly. He held Siris from behind, clutching her four breasts and spreading her thighs. The maid's feet were off the floor, and her six arms reached back to clasp him.
"Are you that strong, Ran Colville?" Lady Scour whispered as her multiple hands undid the pressure seams of his uniform. "I'm much heavier than Siris. Only someone very strong could support me."
Ran hadn't noticed it happen, but Lady Scour had lost her clothing somewhere. The down on her skin was soft and warm by comparison with the hard fabric of her dress.
"You're not that heavy," Ran said as he turned from the screen to his hostess.
She wasn't human—but neither was Rati, the Hindu goddess of lust
And nobody could deny that Lady Scour was female.
She had thin lips and a tongue as long and coarse as a cat's. As they kissed, she undressed him. Though the pattern of human clothing must have been at least slightly unfamiliar to her, the Szgranian's six hands and suppleness made an easy job of it.
Ran's eyes had adapted to the current level of light. When he stepped out of his trousers, his elbow nevertheless thumped the wall of the corridor in which they were engaged.
"There's a chamber through that door . . . ." Lady Scour said, nodding vaguely toward what seemed a blank panel, but she didn't stop what she was doing.
Nor did Ran.
At the last moment, it occurred to Ran that the relative size of genitalia can vary widely between species of similar total mass. If that was a problem, though, it was her problem and she was in control. Lady Scour gripped Ran with two pairs of arms and the heels of her feet locked behind his buttocks. Her remaining hands guided him within an orifice that seemed tight but slid smoothly.
All the Szgranian's muscles tightened. She screamed, not in pain but in sheer ecstatic triumph.
Part of Ran's mind wondered what the couple in the room below thought. But he didn't much care.
* * *
The Embarkation Hall was lighted at thirty percent of Earth daytime norm—more than adequate to see by, but dim compared to the brilliance of the Empress's exterior floods scattered in through the open hatchway.
"Good evening, Mr. Streseman," Commander Kneale said from the angle of a pilaster as the Grantholm passenger moped past with his eyes lowered.
"Oh!" said Streseman. He was alone. An hour after the Empress of Earth landed, stewards had carried his train of static-supported cases across the starport to the Grantholm combination vessel Thornburg, He must have paid off the staff at that time, because no little folk from New Sarawak pursued the young Grantholmer now for their tips.
"I regret that you had to be transshipped to reach your destination," the commander said. "I've heard good reports regarding passenger accommodations on the Thornburg, though. I don't think you'll find her too uncomfortable for a short hop."
"No, no, of course not," Streseman said. "You couldn't possibly be expected to land on a planet in the middle of war. A ship as valuable as this . . ."
He looked out the hatchway toward the alien city beyond. Betaniche was a dark mass. Occasional lamps glowed through the paper walls like will-o'-the-wisps over the surface of a marsh. Without turning back toward Kneale, the youth asked, "Has there been any word of the Brasil, sir?"
"No sir," the commander said. "Nothing at all since she entered sponge space in the Tblisi system. At this point, we can only hope that her passengers and crew are safe somewhere."
Streseman grimaced. "You think she's been hijacked, I suppose," he said. He met Kneale's eyes. "Well, that's the only reasonable possibility, isn't it? First-class starliners don't simply go missing."
"Not often, no," Kneale agreed. "But I don't intend to make unnecessary assumptions without data."
The commander smiled tightly. "Nor," he added, because Franz Streseman ceased to be simply a passenger on Calicheman, "do I intend to let up my guard."
The young man laughed without humor. "I imagine you're glad to get rid of all us Grantholmers here. Well, you've got a right to feel that way—but don't forget that you loaded quite a number of passengers on Nevasa, too. Some of them may just have been getting off a potential bomb target—but you're bound to have taken intelligence personnel aboard too."
The Empress's ventilation system kept up positive pressure, as always on a planet, but the stink of the fires ringing the field still crept into the Embarkation Hall. Streseman's nose wrinkled as he looked out into the night, though the disgust he felt had little to do with the odor.
"I'm not unaware of that, Mr. Streseman," Kneale said quietly. "I hope you don't feel that Trident Starlines has discriminated against one or the other party in the conflict."
"No, of course not," Streseman agreed. "I'm—"He shook his head. "I'm not—in a good mood tonight, sir. I suppose I'd better get over to the Thornburg if I'm going."
There was a series of pops and crackles from the night. Commander Kneale visibly stiffened.
The rating stationed on the gangway leaned back within the hatch and called, "It's just fireworks, sir. A bunch of the—"
He looked at Streseman and recognized the youth as a Grantholmer.
"—passengers we disembarked here, they've took over a couple dockside bars and they're having a party. Patriotic songs and as much hell-raising as the locals let 'em get away with."
"Thank you, Rossignol," Kneale replied. When the crewman had returned to his post, Kneale said in a low voice, "You don't have to leave the Empress, you know, sir. We have empty berths."
He cleared his throat and added, "Mr. Streseman, I'd find you a berth in my cabin if I had to, after what you did on Calicheman."
Franz Streseman stepped forward and clasped the Trident officer by both hands. "Sir," he said, "I have to go. You understand duty. But I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
He turned his head very quickly, but Kneale could hear tears in the youth's voice as he went on, "She doesn't understand, though. I told her that I would come back to her as soon as the war was over, but I had to report to my unit. I'm a Streseman. She says if I loved her, I'd stay with her and we'd—we'd build a new life on Tellichery or somewhere.
"But I'm a Streseman!"
Kneale squeezed the younger man's hands in sympathy. Streseman forced himself to turn and look Kneale in the face. "What do you think, sir?" he asked. "I'm going to do it anyway. But am I wrong?"
"I think . . ." the commander said very carefully. "That you're eighteen, Mr. Streseman. And yes, I think you're wrong, because you're doing more or less what I did at your age. And I was wrong."
He smiled with genuine affection. "But that's what being eighteen is for—making mistakes. Just don't kid yourself about what you're doing."
Streseman squeezed back, released his hands, and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. "Sorry about that," he muttered. "I'd best be going. Thank you, sir. I appreciate—everything. You'll give my regards to Lieutenant Colville?"
"I will indeed," Commander Kneale said. "I'm—you might say waiting up for him right now. I think I may have . . . given Mr. Colville an order, more or less, that I wouldn't have done if I'd known quite as much about Szgranian culture as I've found since reviewing the pilotry data in his absence."
Franz Streseman straightened and gave Kneale a stiff-armed Grantholm salute. "Thank you again, sir," he said.
"One thing, Mr. Streseman . . . ?" Kneale said.
"Sir?"
"If you survive what you're getting into just now," the commander said, picking his way with delicacy through his vocabulary. Kneale knew Streseman's rank in Grantholm society; but he knew there was no society equal to that of the men and women who held civilization together across the starlanes.
"If you've done what you feel is your duty," he continued, "come and see me, will you? Because Trident Starlines can always use officers who know their duty."
Kneale grinned starkly. "And know how to handle themselves in a tight spot. Which both you do very well."
He returned the salute, not as a Trident officer with palm outward, but with one languid finger to the brow, the way the Parliamentary Guard on Sulimaniya recognized their officers when Hiram Kneale was a boy of eighteen.
* * *
The shanties at the edge of the port area were still smoldering when Ran's palanquin swayed to a halt, then grounded. There were no open flames, but the sludgy reek of incomplete combustion hung in a waist-high layer in the pre-dawn air.
The Empress of Earth brilliantly illuminated herself. The starliner's glare trickled through hundreds of meters of paper walls, providing a dull beacon for the last stage of Ran's journey back from the palace. A Staff Side rating lounged at the top of the main gangway, the only human in sight at this hour.
Haifa dozen of the servants preceding the palanquin carried lanterns. The leading male blew his seashell horn as before, though the streets were empty except for a few figures huddling at the corners of buildings for shelter. Ran wondered if those derelicts had owned the dwellings which the starliner ignited on landing.
He hadn't expected an entourage to accompany him back to the Empress. If anything, his escort was larger than had been the force which took him and the clan mistress up the bluff. There must be at least thirty armed and fully-caparisoned warriors surrounding the palanquin.
Rawsl stalked through the streets immediately ahead of the palanquin. Unlike the other warriors, he carried only pairs of swords, daggers, and short-hafted axes—the weapons traditional to his race before Szgrane came in contact with starfaring humans. Several of the escort lumbered along under the heavy tubes of plasma dischargers. The remaining warriors carried either an assault rifle for the lowest pair of hands or a brace of machine pistols with snail magazines.
There were no inside handles on the palanquin doors. While Ran fumbled for a catch which didn't exist, Lady Scour's chief aide twirled the door open and stepped back. The eight bearers had withdrawn to the fringes of the entourage of Szgranians.
"I hope you have enjoyed your trip through Betaniche," Rawsl said, placing his hands behind his neck in the Szgranian gesture of submission.
"Yes, thank you," Ran said as he got out of the vehicle. He ached in unfamiliar places. He was pretty sure that every one of Lady Scour's fingertips had left a bruise on his back as she climaxed the third time.
Rossignol from Commander Kneale's watch was on gangway duty. He straightened with a bored man's interest in any change.
"May we tell our mistress that you are fully satisfied with the way we carried out her instructions to bring you back to your ship, then?" Rawsl asked, still in his formal posture.
"Yes, certainly," Ran said. Rawsl was acting like a concierge prodding his guest for a tip.
"Let no one leave the vessel," the Szgranian aide snarled in his own language.
A dozen of the escorting warriors, including those with plasma weapons, rushed toward the Empress. Rossignol bolted backward. Hatches began to shut across all three gangways. A klaxon within the starliner began to honk.
"Since we have satisfied our mistress's instructions," Rawsl said, "now we can satisfy the demands of honor." He drew both his long swords.
Ran bent, grasped a palanquin pole, and jerked. The smoothly finished hardwood was screwed and pinned into its socket. The vehicle skidded a few centimeters when Ran put his back into the effort, but as a weapon it was as useless as the bedrock.
Rawsl gave a high-pitched chirp. He thrust. His swordblades were slightly curved, but if Ran hadn't ducked behind the palanquin, the point would have crunched in and out through the bone and gristle of his rib cage.
"Prod him to me," ordered Rawsl. "This animal must not be allowed to hold back in the slaughter chute."
The main hatch had shuddered, then reopened fully again. Szgranians facing the starliner aimed modern weapons up the gangways from which human help might come. The other warriors had drawn their swords. They formed a rough circle with Ran, the palanquin, and Rawsl as the hub. Lower ranking Szgranians, male and female both, squatted beyond the ring of warriors and called encouragement to Rawsl.
Two warriors on Ran's side of the palanquin shuffled toward him, their swords raised like crab pincers. They'd drawn daggers in their central pairs of hands. Ran had as much chance of grabbing a weapon from one of them as he did of surviving a bath in battery acid.
Commander Kneale in his white uniform appeared at the main gangway. A Szgranian fired a machine-pistol in the commander's direction. The burst may have been aimed to miss, but several of the little bullets whanged and howled off the bulkheads of the Embarkation Hall.
This was going to be an international incident—particularly if some of the Empress's crewmen got into a gunfight with the Szgranian escort. Rawsl and his confederates didn't care in the least.
If Ran had thought it would do him any good, he might not have cared about an open firefight either. All it would do was get good people killed, though. The Empress of Earth wasn't a warship with external weapons. The Szgranian warriors outgunned anything available from the starliner's arsenal. If there was enough ordnance flying around, Ran wouldn't survive long enough for Rawsl to cut him into collops.
How Lady Scour would react to the event was an open question. Ran's bet was that she wouldn't deign to notice it. As mistress of Clan Scour, she had the right to do anything she pleased; but her evening of bestiality was no matter for pride, even to her overmastering will.
Anyway, Rawsl and his confederates wouldn't care if their mistress had them flayed alive. They would have served their honor and their clan's.
A warrior poked his sword a calculated distance toward Ran's buttocks. The Szgranian didn't want to kill Ran—that was Rawsl's perquisite. But if the human wouldn't go to his death willingly, then he would be thrust to it in a welter of his own blood.
Instead of waiting for the pricking blade, Ran leaped on top of the palanquin. Spectators cackled with delight. Rawsl stepped back and spread his swords wide. If Ran tried to overleap the Szgranian, the blades would come up and cross through his body, cutting the human into three segments while he was still in the air.
Someone switched off the Empress's external lighting.
"Down!" cried Wanda Holly as she rose from the edge of a shanty behind the circle of Szgranians. She pointed a broad-mouthed weapon.
Ran jumped off the end of the palanquin, putting himself as far as he could from Rawsl and the warrior who'd approached to prod him forward. Intense light hammered through Ran's closed lids and the flesh of the forearm he'd thrown across his eyes.
Szgranians screamed. Swords dashed together, and a warrior emptied his automatic rifle in a single long burst. It was God's own mercy that one or more of the plasma weapons didn't belch nuclear hell as well.
The throbbing pulses stopped. Ran was flat on the ground, though he didn't remember hitting it. Szgranians sobbed and bellowed.
"C'mon, c'mon!" Wanda shouted. Her right hand gripped Ran's arm to guide him as he stumbled to his feet.
She wore the padded, dull-colored overgarment of a Szgranian commoner. She wouldn't pass for a local if anyone looked carefully—but no Szgranian of rank would look carefully at a commoner.
The nerve gun and powerpack slung to Wanda's breast weighed forty kilos. Ran didn't see how she could carry it and move so quickly. The weapon projected light pulsing at critical neural frequencies. These differed for various species—for humans and the great apes, it was just under seven and a half Hertz—but at some frequency, any chemically-based nervous system could be stimulated to dump neurotransmitters wildly.
Hundreds of Szgranians, many of them armed, had gone simultaneously psychotic. Most of them still writhed on the ground, their limbs locked into pretzel shapes that might mean broken bones. One warrior chuckled as he stabbed himself repeatedly in the abdomen. His daggers pumped in sequence like the pistons of a reciprocating engine.
The Szgranians facing the Empress hadn't been spared either, because the light had reflected from the starliner's gleaming hull. An arc of servants sprawled where bullets had cut them down, and a warrior was pounding his own feet to pulp with the heavy tube of his plasma discharger.
"You were waiting here?" Ran gasped. He'd scraped the hell out of his right palm and elbow. They felt cool from oozing blood.
Wanda's face was a mirrored ball. She'd polarized her helmet visor to protect her from her own weapon, even though it was calibrated to the slightly higher critical frequency of the Szgranian physiology.
"Don't be a damned fool!" she snapped. "I waited for you at the gate of the palace. You didn't think I'd let you get into something like that without backup, did you?"
Commander Kneale and the two ratings from Ran's own watch grabbed the pair of them and helped them up the gangway. The submachine guns the three men carried clattered against one another and Wanda's nerve gun.
"No," Ran mumbled. "I don't guess you would have."
It was good to have friends.