Starplex

"Incoming signal," said Lianne. She touched keys and a hologram of Rissa's beaming face appeared inside a floating frame.

"Hello, everyone," said Rissa. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Pdssa!" said Keith, rising to his feet.

"Hello, darling," said Rissa, smiling radiantly. "Rhombus," said Keith, "can they dock with us, given the course we're on?"

"They can if I give them a tow with a tractor beam."

Keith was grinning widely. "Please do so!"

"Okay, guys," said Rhombus, "prepare to be grabbed by a tractor."

Longbottle's gray face popped up next to Rissa's. "Prepared are we!

Home we come!"

"Locking on," said Thor.

"Thor," said Keith, "do you have a fix on Cat's Eye?"

"Yes. He's about ten million klicks ahead, at about nine o'clock to the green star."

"I've located a vacant frequency in the darmat babble, in case you want to talk to him," said Lianne. "Somebody must have left the conversation recently."

"Excellent," said Keith. "Keep track of it. As soon as Rissa's back on board, I'll want to open communication."

"We'll have the Rum Runner in docking bay seven in about three minutes," said Rhombus.

Keith was anxious as hell. He tried to hide it by checking status reports on his monitor screens, but his mind wasn't registering the words. At last, the' starfield split and Rissa appeared, framed by the corridor beyond. Keith ran to her, and they hugged, then kissed. The rest of the bridge crew cheered as she entered. A moment later, Longbottle popped up in one of the two open pools. Rissa knelt down beside him and rubbed his bulging forehead. "Thanks for getting us home safe and sound, buddy," she said.

"We're doing a quick parabolic path," Keith said to them.

"I don't think the darmats can grab us this time, but I want to communicate with them — find out why in the hell they attacked us."

Rissa nodded, stood up, kissed Keith once more, then moved over to her workstation. She pressed keys, calling up the translation program.

"Do we still have a vacant frequency?" asked Keith.

"Yes," said Lianne.

"All right. Let's jump into the conversation. Lianne, open a channel from my console with automatic translation, but put a five-second delay in before you send whatever I say."

He looked at Rissa. "I'll speak directly to Cat's Eye, but if I say anything wrong or something that you don't think will translate properly, jump in, and we'll reword the message before it goes out."

Rissa nodded. "Ready," said Lianne.

"Starplex to Cat's Eye," said Keith. "Starplex to Cat's Eye. We are friends. We are friends." Keith glanced at a counter. At light-speed, it would still be thirty-five seconds before the message reached Cat's Eye, and almost that long again before any reply would arrive.

But no reply came. Keith waited an extra full minute, then another.

He touched a key and tried again. "We are friends."

Finally, after a forty-second delay in addition to the round-trip signal time, a reply came through. Just two words, in a curt French accent: "Not friends."

"Yes," said Keith. "We are friends."

"Friends not hurt," came the reply, with no delay beyond that caused by transmission times.

Keith was taken aback. Had they somehow hurt the darmats? It was almost inconceivable that they could injure such giant creatures.

Still… perhaps the sampling probes had caused pain. Keith didn't have the slightest idea how to apologize; the vocabulary Rissa had built up didn't deal with such concepts.

"We did not mean to hurt you," said Keith.

"Not directly," said Cat's Eye.

Keith spread his hands and looked around the bridge.

"Anybody understand that?"

"I think he means whatever injury we caused wasn't a direct injury," said Lianne. "We didn't hurt them, but hurt — or were going to hurt — something that was important to them."

Keith touched the transmit key. "We intend no injury to anything. But you — you deliberately tried to kill us."

"Make you. Not make you."

Keith keyed the mike off. "'Make you. Not make you,'" he repeated, shrugging helplessly. "Anybody?"

Lianne lifted her hands, palms up. Jag moved all four of his shoulders.

Rhombus's web was dark.

Keith reactivated the mike. "We want to be friends again."

The response time was getting shorter as Starplex's parabolic course brought the ship closer to Cat's Eye. "We want to be friends again, too," said the darmat., Keith thought for a moment, then: "You say we injured you somehow. We did not intend any injury. So that we don't do it again, will you tell us what we did wrong?" The delay time was nerve-racking. Finally: "Attacking each other."

"You were bothered by the battle?" asked Keith.

"Yes."

"Worried that explosions would hurt you?"

"No."

"But then why did you fling those ships into the star?"

"Afraid."

"Of what?"

"That your activities would destroy… destroy… point that is not a point."

"The shortcut? You were afraid that we would destroy the shortcut?"

"Yes."

"No explosion could damage the shortcut. It's not fragile."

"Did not know."

Jag barked softly. "Ask him why he cares."